"Reese! I am so glad I ran into you!"
Reese Johansson turned away from his apartment's mailbox as he closed it, shifting the mail to his left hand, and looked to the young woman with long black hair who was walking up to him. "Hey, Shannon, what's up?"
"You're a tracker, right?" she asked.
Reese didn't know his neighbor that well, but they'd had a few interactions here and there. She was somewhere in her late forties, he guessed, and had several kids who often came by to visit. Mentioning he worked for the FBI in the division that handled parasapiens wasn't something that he often brought up, but sometimes it worked its way into a conversation on its own. He'd mentioned it once when he had a sprained wrist from a pùca that had attacked him. Though he hadn't mentioned the accompanying scars that were under his shirt.
"That's what it says on my badge. Everything okay?"
Shannon shook her head, looking wary and tense. "I think my apartment is haunted."
Reese's eyebrows went up. That's new. Occasionally he fielded questions from people about the parasapien community, but usually they were just inquisitive, though some bordered on racist due to ignorance. "I mean…I don't even think I believe in ghosts, no offense," he responded.
"This isn't about belief. Seriously. Let me just show you something."
"Ah…okay."
Reese tucked his mail under his arm and followed her up the stairs and over to Shannon's apartment, and she winced as she opened the door, looking around inside. "Okay, come on in." He did as he was told and she shut the door behind herself. "So. Watch this."
Shannon picked up shirt from a pile, one of several sitting folded on her living room table, and walked over to the bathroom. She tossed it into the air and it landed askew on the floor.
Reese went over to look at what she'd done, taking a quick glance around the bathroom, which was a mirror image of his since it was on the opposite side of the hallway. "What are you doing?" Reese asked.
Shannon waved him off. "Just…watch." She closed the door and waited to about the count of ten and then, tentatively, opened the door. When she saw what she was looking for, she let out a sharp breath and opened the door wide to display it to Reese, gesturing with a flourish of her arm. "There."
Right smack in the middle of the bathroom, the shirt was neatly folded. A grin broke out across Reese's face.
"Why are you- Look, my mother died last month," she said, prompting the smile to vanish from Reese's face. "No, it's okay, I'm grieving, going to therapy- That's not the point. She's haunting me. She was relentless when I was alive about keeping my place clean-"
"Shannon-"
"And now that she can be here whenever she wants, she's absolutely rubbing my nose in the fact that I can't keep my place up to her standards and this is her-"
"It's not your mother," Reese said tiredly. "It's a brownie."
Shannon looked at him in confusion. "A what?"
"A brownie. It's fae."
Her eyes bulged. "What?"
Reese nodded. He knew even the most ordinary civilians out there heard stories about fae, and how much trouble they could be. The best advice when dealing with a fae is not to; just turn and walk away. "It's not dangerous, don't worry. I mean, not any more dangerous than any other semi-wild animal; they're not aggressive and like you've noticed, they only do things when you can see them. Do you have any pets?"
"Ah, no," she said, shaking her head.
"Gotcha. They usually avoid homes that have dogs or cats. If you want it to leave, just offer to pay it."
Shannon's eyebrows rose. "Offer to… Seriously? It only does this for free?"
"That's how it works, yeah. Just tell it you're gonna start paying it, and it'll leave," Reese explained. "Put out milk or something-"
"Wait, I don't want it to leave!"
Reese narrowed his eyes. "I thought-"
"I wanted my mother to leave! I couldn't take the idea of her passive-aggressively cleaning my apartment!" Shannon exclaimed. "But a fae? This is like a free cleaning service!"
Reese let out a long breath. His mind went back to all the times he'd had to deal with cases involving humans being reckless when it came to fae. It really wasn't worth the mental effort to even attempt that type of conversation with her, and he'd long lost the patience for it. "Right. Sure. Ah, I had a long day, so-"
"Right, I'm sorry, I'll let you go," she said, walking toward the front door and opening it for him. "Thank you, though!"
"Anytime, Shannon," he said with a smile.
The door shut behind him and sighed as he leafed through the mail in his hands, shaking his head. "Your own mother, no, no way, but something fae? Totally fine. Makes perfect sense."