His thirst subsided, Elliot and Cordelia settled into old habits. Nearly twenty years had passed since the duo had seen each other, but it was as if it were only yesterday. Elliot sat the third martini glass on the table next to him with the others. He could feel the life force flowing through his veins again, his heart beating against his chest which he had been missing for days. His reflection now looked fuller; his cheeks had a bit more color to them. He kicked his legs up on the chez lounge opposite Cordelia and tilted his head back against the rest. The edges of his mouth turned up in a small, satisfied smirk.
Cordelia was lounging opposite him. Her hair was now draped down to her shoulders in gentle waves. A soft robe now covered the outfit she had been wearing while tending the bar. The tumbler in her hand only had a sip left of amber liquid with a large cube of ice sitting in it. She looked over at Elliot with a studying look.
"Another?" Cordelia asked. Elliot responded with only a small head shake. Any other person might have only seen a twitch if they had seen anything at all. Cordelia learned long ago how to read the vampire's subtle movements, particularly when he had recently fed. She drained the remaining liquid from her own glass and set it aside. "So, Harpies in Harlem?"
Elliot chuckled. "Good book title, but it was more the Upper West Side." He started recounting the tales of his adventures over the past twenty years. With each tale came laughter from the duo. Cordelia listened intently, pouring herself another drink in the midst of the stories. Elliot had solved so many crimes, and yet rarely received credit for any of his work. Of course, this is how he wants it. The legend of the vampire detective travels through the supernatural underbelly of the world. There are many that dread him taking a case.
"…then this kid shows up in my hotel room and tells me he killed someone," Elliot concluded, looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling.
"You decided to help him, just like that?" Cordelia asked, taking another sip of her drink. "There must be something."
"I made the connection," Elliot said suddenly. "The kid smelled like wet dog and didn't have the air of a killer about him."
"Unusual for a werewolf," Cordelia said.
"Not if the kid came from Salem," Elliot said.
Cordelia sighed. "Something always draws you back there, doesn't it?"
Elliot smirked. "Usually, whatever else is drawn there and wants to destroy the town."
"You think it's going to be that bad?" Cordelia asked.
Elliot sat up, swung his legs back over the side, and stared intently at Cordelia. His eyes now glinted with gold flecks the way they did when he was well fed. A familiar flame lit his eyes. "Three girls disappeared a few days ago. The scene was staged to look like a murder. Someone didn't want them found. Someone didn't want people looking too deeply into this. I want to know why."
"What does that have to do with me?" Cordelia asked.
"Rumors in this region always make it back to your bar, not to mention the latest issue of Phoenix," Elliot's eyes darted to the table between them where a magazine laid open. The glossy page showed a moving image of a woman in a suit holding what looked to be a glowing gem. The headline read: ARIES Agent Captures Poltergeist Plaguing School.
Cordelia took a long sip of her drink, a sip that lasted longer than it should have given what little liquid was left in the glass. When she brought the glass down from her lips, it was fuller than it had been when she started, now nearly covering the ice cube. "What do you want to know? there haven't been any confirmed werewolf sightings of late."
"Not since the last one was discovered, right?" Elliot noted.
"Twenty years ago, yes," Cordelia confirmed. "You just won't let that one go, will you?"
Elliot shook his head. "One of the few cases that I never solved."
"Caldwell has moved past it," Cordelia said. "I never moved past the both of you destroying my bar."
Elliot shrugged. "Dirk Caldwell came into the case late in the game. And we both more than compensated for the damage we caused." Elliot stood and walked toward the line of shelves in the lounge. "He wasn't as invested as I was, not to mention his mortal memory isn't great and declining fast."
Cordelia thought for a moment, staring at her old friend. She tapped her foot against nothing, her eyes narrowing. "There have been a string of disappearances across New England. They started out sporadic at first, but there has been talking in the bar about them. Missing persons cases have been on the rise within the past year. None of them seemed connected, until the past few weeks." She stood and walked over to a nearby shelf. "The area of the disappearances have narrowed, with many claiming they had seen large dogs or wolves in the area around the time of the disappearances."
Cordelia returned to her seat a moment later and placed a copy of Phoenix on the table. The shimmering red title of the magazine was emblazoned at the top of an image of a forest. The forest was shown in shades of deep purple. As Elliot stared at the picture, a shadow started forming in the tree line, creeping slowly along with the trees. After a moment, the head of the shadow snapped around toward the camera, showing their glowing, golden eyes before the moving picture reset to show the deserted tree line again.
"That was taken just outside of Lexington three weeks ago. Two days later, it was reported that a young man went missing from the town." Cordelia continued. "Could just be a coincidence, but…"
"I don't believe in coincidence," Elliot cut her off, picking up the magazine and flipping to the midpoint where she knew the full article was.
Cordelia shrugged. "Exactly." Most of the time, whenever a mortal wrote something off as coincidence, it meant they didn't want to acknowledge something that was there. Usually, it had to do with the supernatural that the average mortal brain couldn't comprehend. Mortals liked to feel safe, comforted. If anything were to threaten that feeling of safety, they refused to give it any thought and moved along with their lives. It was this baser instinct that kept the supernatural world hidden.
Unless a supernatural being did something incredibly irresponsible. And that was when those like Elliot Carson intervenes.
"Have there been any sightings around Salem lately?" Elliot asked, still skimming the article.
"Not that have been reported," Cordelia replied. She summoned her tumbler again and lounged as she waited for Elliot to finish reading. When he finally folded the magazine again, she looked over at him. "Tell me something…what makes you think this kid isn't a killer?"
Elliot set the magazine on the table between them. "I didn't say that. Young werewolves are volatile and a lot of times they don't have the control to remember what the wolf did when it was in control. He very well could have done it and didn't remember."
Cordelia frowned. "Why are you helping him?"
Elliot sighed heavily, looking away. "I have lived a long life, Delia. Met a lot of people, been a lot of places. And you know what I have learned in all that time?"
"Not how to sit still, I know that much." Cordelia jabbed.
Elliot either didn't notice the jab or didn't care. He was staring at a string of framed pictures lined evenly on a shelf. The photographs were old, some of them over a century old, perfectly – and magically – preserved. They showed different clients that had visited the bar. Each photographed individual had stood out in the bar's, and Cordelia's, history. The most recent was a photograph nearly twenty years old, of a twenty-year-old ARIES field agent and Elliot on the night the duo had met. The day one of Elliot's only cold cases began. Each of the photographs had one other thing in common.
Each person photographed had been a person Elliot had helped in some form or another.
"A guilty conscience doesn't define a good person." Elliot finished, then stood to leave.