Emil had no alibi for Misra, nor did he when a third body showed up the next day with just as damning ties to Raven's Roost. Between that and his almost hostile response to Scuiltz's accusatory questions, it was no surprise when he was arrested on suspicion of three counts of murder. Without actual evidence though, they couldn't exactly bring him up on charges so the longest they could hold him was 72 hours, and Josefine explained as much to him when she came to visit on day three of his incarceration.
"I do remember them," he kept his voice low and leaned against the bars so that only she would hear him, "they came for magic supplies, but not one of them had a lick of it to speak of." Something about the way he said it reminded her of the death of Judge Harford and suddenly she had an idea.
"Could an Ala control someone's actions?" Emil raised an eyebrow and hummed quietly to himself in thought.
"Most demons can manage a minor form of mind control, so I suppose so. Why?" Josefine smiled.
"I need to check something, but I think I figured it out."
#
Josefine pulled up outside the Oracles of the Obscure chapter house and turned off her motorcycle, studying the building for a moment before she dismounted. Judge Harford's case had been open and shut as far as the police and the Bureau had been concerned. Still, if the young officer who'd stabbed him had been controlled by inhuman magic, it was too much of a coincidence to believe at least two members of the Oracles were murdered within a couple of days. Add to that Misra and the last body that both had evidence of attempting to practice magic hidden away in their homes, and Josefine drew the connection.
So she'd looked into Harford's files and found a building on the outskirts of the city under his name.
The building looked relatively normal on the outside, so she approached the door and tried the knob. She exhaled a breath she hadn't meant to hold when she found it was locked as if her instinct knew something was off about this place. Wolf shifted on high alert in her head, setting her on edge as she fished her bump key from a pocket and worked to get the door unlocked.
The corridor it opened to was dark and cold, enough so that Josefine's breath fogged in the air before her.
She pulled her revolver from its shoulder holster under her coat.
"Anybody here?" She called out as she took a few steps over the threshold, pausing to listen for movements or voices.
Nothing.
Josefine made her way down the hall, pausing when she came across a large room built like a small chapel, a large eight-point star mosaic on the floor. At two points were two figures in what looked like ceremonial robes. Neither moved or made a sound and she began to suspect they were frozen, like the others. She kept her pistol leveled with chest height and approached, peering up at their faces beneath the hoods to find glassy-eyed individuals she recognized from the DA's office back when she'd worked for the Bureau.
She turned away, making a mental note to call the police in once she was done. Josefine moved further into the building, clearing it room by room until she heard the hiss of a snake and shivered. She followed the sound into a small closet, but even as she'd been about to turn around and go back out of the room because of her aversion to small spaces, there was a spike of cold and the door slammed shut behind her. She reached for the knob but ice was spreading rapidly across the surface and the cold bit into her skin causing her to jerk back. "No," Josefine slammed her fist against the door as the walls began closing in on her, "no, no, no, no." She pounded on the door a few more times before she stepped back against the back wall and fired three rounds into the handle and holstered the pistol to try again, but the door wouldn't budge.
The space shrank further and her breathing went ragged. Her fingers bit into her arms as she shrank down into a tight ball against the door.
"Let me out," she begged, "please."
#
Emil paced the entryway of Raven's Roost bookstore. The store wasn't open yet but he'd left the door unlocked when he'd come home from holding the night before because Josefine had promised to swing by after she finished checking "something", but now the sun was rising outside, painting the cloud sea in vibrant reds and oranges and there was still no sign of her.
Emil was certain something was wrong.
Josefine, for all her secrets, didn't make promises she didn't intend to keep, and the way she'd talked about this "something" she had to look into made it sound as if she hadn't expected it to take long, but even if Emil had initially assumed she was simply running late, this was too long.
"Something went wrong," he stopped pacing and looked over at the white raven picking through the pages of a newspaper for pine nuts, "You'll watch the shop for me, Holmes?" It didn't react to the name Josefine had given it despite his telling her it'd been in poor taste.
Her obsession with serial killers wasn't something he would ever really understand even as he accepted it.
At least he was talking to the bird now and not himself as he tended to. "Right then," Emil grabbed his coat and scarf from the hook beside the door and rushed out into the street.
#
Tracking spells are relatively simple as far as most spells go; all one really needs is something that belongs to the target and the ability to focus the caster's intent to find them into the object and whatever it is will lead the way. Emil didn't have anything recent that belonged to Josefine so his first stop was her newly opened Private Investigator's office and apartment. He stood banging on the door for a few minutes before Bates—Josefine's roommate and assistant —opened it with sleep still in her eyes and curlers in her short blonde hair.
"Mr. Solomon? What are you doing here so early?"
"Did Josie come home last night?" Bates started to answer, thought about it, and then shook her head.
"Now that you mention it, I don't think she did, she's normally back before dawn even if she's out late." Emil slid past her inside and rounded the partition, moving forward to root through Josefine's desk in the corner. "What are you looking for?" Bates followed him in after closing the door.
"Something I can track her with," he trailed off as his fingers brushed a strip of black ribbon, and his mind's eye was overwhelmed with an image of Josefine reading a book while she combed her dark hair back to tie up in the ribbon. Then he blinked and was back. "This will work," he murmured as he lifted it.
"Is Doc all right?" Emil looked up at the worry in Maggie's expression.
"I'll find her," he replied because he could at least promise that.
#
The tracking spell took Emil to the edge of town where the invisible pull lead into the Oracles of the Obscure chapter house that sat there among a few trees. He confirmed Josefine was inside the building somewhere before tucking the ribbon into his coat pocket and adjusting the fabric as if in nervous habit. Then he approached the door, opening it slowly just in case someone or something was waiting on the other side. A dark corridor was all he found but a chill still ran down his spine as Emil stepped inside, his breath fogging in the air.
Bad things happened in this place, he could feel it as strongly as the inhuman magic in the air.
"Scheiße," he cursed under his breath as he flexed his fingers and kicked himself for not grabbing his bar ring on the way out the door; casting without a channel was dangerous, small spells like tracking spells rarely blew up but if he had to defend himself and Josefine when he found her, that magic would have more severe consequences. He took a moment to double-check his pockets for any bit of metal to use but came up empty. "Well, let's go," and hope for the best, he kept to himself just in case he jinxed it somehow. Emil rounded a corner and stopped dead in his tracks.
The room at the end of the corridor was built like a small chapel, with a large eight-point star tiled into the floor. At two of the points were two figures in what Emil assumed were ceremonial robes. Neither of them moved or made a sound and another chill ran down his spine as he wondered if maybe they were dead, flash-frozen just like the other bodies.
Then he heard the scratching.
It was an immensely unsettling sound, but maybe Josefine's curiosity was rubbing off on him because rather than avoiding the source of the sound, Emil went looking for it.
Then he heard the voice, hoarse and rough as if the speaker had cried themself raw.
"Please mor… I'll be good… I'll be quiet… just let me out…"
Emil started running then because he knew that voice. "Josie?" He called when he came to a few doors. The scratching continued from behind the nearest door and he pressed his ear to it, listening close to be sure it was the right one.
"Please…" the voice whimpered on the other side.
"Josie," he tried the door but it didn't budge, "it's alright, I'll get you out of there." He stepped back and put his hands out toward the handle and top hinge to direct his intent as he began muttering a spell under his breath. At his command, the metal melted and he made short work of the other hinge as well, gritting his teeth against the painful burn in his fingers.
Then Emil stepped back as the door fell his way, hurrying forward again when Josefine fell with it. Her grey eyes seemed haunted and her fingertips were torn and bloody to match the deep gouges on that side of the door otherwise covered in ice.
Emil felt his heart break.