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Detroit, Michigan, USA
30th of January, 2:25 p.m. (GMT-5)
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Beyond the stacks of the sixth floor, the librarians sat behind their circular desk, each with a hot beverage and a stack of books beside them. Their dirty blonde hair was tied back—Chloe’s in a braid and Dot’s in a low ponytail—and their blue eyes were fixed on their respective tomes.
Joined from torso to hip, they had spent their entire lives at each other’s side, Chloe on the right and Dot on the left. Their form of conjunction was the simplest to separate surgically, but they had never seriously considered disunion, although it was mentioned in their more contentious disagreements. The truth was, neither sister could image life without the other, even when the other was being insufferable. It would be like cutting off one’s arm; no matter how bothersome or uncooperative it was being, it was still an integral part of you, for better or for worse.
And there were advantages to their situation. Being two minds in one body made it nigh impossible to charm either of them, and they covered twice as much material with their eidetic memories by specializing and coordinating their knowledge acquisition. They always had someone to consult with on difficult matters, and like many twins, they understood each other on a whole other level. As Chloe was fond of saying, two heads were better than one. To which Dot invariably rolled her eyes.
Currently, they were doing some research for Weber, who was itching to tinker with some of the esoteric power generated at the Masonic Temple by the Detroit Roller Derby. The golden circle that the late Sarah Pullman had originally built as a magical bomb had been refitted into a generator. As the skaters made their circuit on the track, their expended will and determination was captured and turned into esoteric energy, which was siphoned off and stored in arcane batteries of Weber’s design.
Leader had earmarked a portion for the Salt Mine’s reserves, but the rest was allocated to the sixth floor for research and development. While the German engineer daydreamed of applying greater arcane applications to field gear, the librarians were considering all the rituals, spells, and enchantments that had previously been off-limits due to the amount of power it would take to pull them off.
“Oooo,” Dot crooned, “how about Eye of the Wyrm?”
“Doesn’t that require a scale of an ice dragon?” Chloe gently pointed out. “Where are we going to find one of those? Especially with global warming—”
“Are you sure we don’t have any left in cold storage?” Dot grasped at straws. She had always wanted to do that one.
Chloe sighed. Of the two of them, Dot was always the dreamer. “We can check later, but for now, I’ll add it to the list of possibilities, contingent on material components.” She neatly penned the letters under the heading “Abjuration” and placed an asterisk beside it.
The phone rang and the flashing light indicated the call was coming from the fourth floor. Chloe, who was the designated people person of the pair, picked up. “This is Chloe.” Dot heard the voice coming through the line but couldn’t make out the words. However, she did discern a change in Chloe’s tone. “Of course. We’ll take a look at it right away, Ethan.”
Dot waited until the receiver was back in the cradle before parroting her sister with exaggerated coquettishness. “Of course. We’ll take a look at right away, Ethan. And after that, maybe I could suck your—”
“Dot!” Chloe exclaimed. “I’m just being friendly. LaSalle left big shoes to fill.”
“I’m sure you would have no problem helping Ethan fill something...” Dot snidely muttered.
Chloe smiled mischievously as she turned on the monitor and jiggled the mouse. “Would that be so terrible? Ethan’s cute.”
Dot looked up from her book in disbelief. “A butt chin is not cute.”
“It’s a dimple that happens to be on his chin,” Chloe corrected her, “and I think it looks distinguished.”
Dot shrugged to give the impression that she was over it, but she couldn’t help herself. “As he gets older, it’s going to look more and more like a scrotum.” While there was much the sisters shared, the same taste in men was not one of them, and historically, the ones they had agreed upon were never any good for either of them.
“Growing old wasn’t what I was planning on doing with him,” Chloe playfully replied before turning to serious matters. “Martinez sent in a signature for analysis, and the second floor thinks they may have found a match but they need verification.”
“Meh,” Dot uttered, which was shorthand for You’ve got this, right? Because that sounds totally boring to me. Unless it’s something interesting, in which case, you should fill me in. Chloe waved her hand in reply, which meant Shouldn’t take long. You keep reading. After a lifetime together, they had cultivated a remarkable efficiency to their communication.
Magical signature analysis had long been automated based on the principles of pattern recognition. As computer technology improved, the Salt Mine had developed algorithms to check for the presence of elements and their relative position to each other. From there, it assigned a percentage of concurrence. Anything below 75% was deemed as not relevant, but anything above that was reviewed by a skilled analyst because there were enough shared features to warrant a closer look. The wheat was separated from the chafe and sent higher up the chain, and Chloe and Dot were the final word in interpreting signatures. It was similar to fingerprints—computers could be helpful in narrowing the search, but it couldn’t beat the eyes of a skilled latent print examiner.
As the hard drive woke up from sleep mode, Chloe clicked the Salt Mine intranet icon and opened the awaiting file. First, she looked at what Martinez had sent in: three photos taken in the field at different angles with varying amounts of light. When she was certain that all three were a match to each other, she selected the best one and opened the image from the database, comparing them side by side.
“Well, it is a match,” Chloe declared, and Dot filled in and it’s not good news from her taut enunciation.
Dot put her book down and looked at the screen. It was undead, that much was obvious. The orientation and clustering of the triumvirate scrolls suggested incorporeal. She continued systematically analyzing the signature’s components, interpreting them in isolation as well as part of the whole. When she counted the number of branches off the main trunk, she frowned. “Poltergeist.” In those three syllables, Dot conveyed her agreement—this was bad news.
Physically speaking, undead came in two broad categories: corporeal and incorporeal. The ones that had physical bodies were solidly present in the mortal realm, although their anti-soul was firmly planted in the land of the dead. They were literally a bridge between two worlds, and severing that connection was fairly obvious: kill the undead. The exact method varied by creature and culture, but speaking practically, one of the Mine’s banishment bullets took care of most of the lesser corporeal undead. For the more powerful ones, the sentient ones, it took a little more work to break the anti-soul’s connection to the mortal realm.
Incorporeal undead were less straightforward because you couldn’t just shoot them. They didn’t have a body. Some could even possess people, but killing the vessel didn’t eliminate the undead creature from the mortal realm. Additionally, there was more variation in what they could do and how to effectively eradicate a troublesome one.
Poltergeists, like ghosts, were able to manifest in the mortal realm. They could produce sound, knock on doors, open kitchen cabinets, and move other objects of various sizes depending upon individual strength. They tended to do so when no one was looking but were sure to notice. Even the nicest of poltergeists liked to make their presence known. That’s how they got their name—German for “noisy ghost.”
However, unlike ghosts, poltergeists could physically touch people, and the mean ones had no qualms about biting, pinching, or hitting those that rubbed them the wrong way. The metaphysics behind that behavior was enough to make even the librarians’ heads spin. In theory, poltergeists could be appeased, but it was best to expel them altogether because the last thing anyone needed was an angry one hurling knives or physically attacking someone.
“Get word to Deacon,” Dot suggested as she returned to her book. “He should have no problem taking care of it.” The one good thing about poltergeists was that they were anchored, tied to haunt a location or person. Once you knew you were dealing with a poltergeist and figured out its anchor, it wasn’t hard to sever its connection to the mortal realm.
“Oh, it gets better,” Chloe ominously informed her sister as she scrolled down the screen where all known encounters were listed. This, Dot could not ignore—she was the dark one, not Chloe—so she joined her in looking at the screen. The signature had four hits in the past two months, all found by Deacon. Her brow furrowed as the implication sunk in. This was Deacon’s current white whale, the mobile poltergeist he had been hunting for weeks. “Any bones found?” she inquired.
Chloe opened a different folder in a new window. “Not yet,” she answered.
“You better call Leader,” Dot advised without a trace of sarcasm or sass.