The three girls looked at each other, seeming far more worried than they had before. The main girl took a step back and touched the other two girl's hands, either looking for reassurance or perhaps lending them some. Elijah wasn't acting himself. Whinney had never seen him look worried before. Worried didn't do it justice; it was more like he was scared, but why? What did the man who apparently couldn't die have to be scared of? Whinneyd had gotten the same feeling from him when he was talking about the hypothetical monster at the café, but this time it was intence. This time, Elijah actually believed there was something out there. Whinney stepped in front of Elijah, facing him.
"Hey! Calm down. That's enough, you're scaring them."
She was starting to feel just as scared as the girls looked.
"Whinney, I'll explain later, right now I need to call Mot and get us backup. I think I know what kind of thing is out there, and I'm not going near it. I've seen it before, and it's death."
He said this loud enough for the girls to hear, and the girl who claimed to have listened to the thing in the woods said,
"You know what that thing is?", sounding almost excited, "See! I told you the monster was real".
The main girl answered carefully,
"Let's just go. This guy needs serious help."
Elijah had started to fiddle with his phone, so Whinney turned to the girls. They had begun walking away the same way they came, all watching Elijah like prey animals, hoping to sneak away unnoticed from a wolf. She called out to them,
"Hey, sorry bout my friend. Seriously tho, stay clear of the forest for a while."
The girl who'd spoken the least looked at Whinney. Out of all three girls, she was the only one who seemed the most affected by what Elijah had said, and not only by the madmanish manner he'd said it.
Elijah held the phone to his ear, and a few seconds passed in eerie silence. Then, a tiny voice murmured from the telephone, and Elijah shot up.
"Mot, we need agents. We've heard people talking about wheezing breathing in the woods where we suspect the circle is. There's something more here than our recon suggested."
The muted sound of Mots' voice came slow and monotone. Elijah's face fell.
"Sir, I don't care if we've only been here for less than a day, if what we've learned proves to be true-"
Mot replied with only one word, and Whinney could just about make it out.
"If."
"Mot! Listen to me, I'm not risking it. This could be the same as those things two years ago."
The voice on the other side was quiet for a while, then spoke for a long time. Elijah nodded along and affirmed whatever Mot was saying with the occasional 'yup' or 'uh-huh', but his face told Whinney that he was feeling more hopeless and frustrated with each word.
"Alright, but once we get that, you'd better be ready to get over here."
Another single-word response, then Mot ended the call. Whinney felt totally out of the loop. All of the metalanguage told her, clear as day, that Elijah thought Mot was being stupid for not considering the risk and believing him.
"What's going on? You need to tell me."
"I'll tell you in the car, I've gotta think things over."
Elijah was deep in thought all the way back to the car, and even when they were both seated, he still sat thinking for a while.
"Elijah, talk to me, what did mot tell you?"
"If we want backup, we need concrete evidence. Since the intel told us this was a first circle, he doesn't believe there to be anything here."
"So, why do you? You said yourself it wouldn't make sense."
"No, it doesn't, but I just got this feeling. A gut feeling I can't ignore."
"Ok, so how do we get the evidence we need?"
"That's the thing, Mot's gonna do a bit of digging and send us a simple ritual to perform. We'll need to prepare, and the thing is, the ritual will need to be performed at night in the forest."
"Ok, then we'll do that. You seem way too worried. No one else has died since the first ritual. Right? How bad could it be?"
"That's another thing that doesn't add up. I just don't get it. There are so many things about this whole situation that don't sit right with me."
They drove on in silence until they arrived at the hotel, and when they got to the room, Elijah fell into his bed. Whinney felt uncomfortably influenced by his bad mood. She sat down on his bed and slapped the back of his head.
"Hey, you said something about two years ago. What's up with that?"
Elijah rubbed his head where he'd been hit, then turned over and sat up.
"Don't hit me." As if this were the first time. "There was a special assignment where all of us freelancers were deployed alongside a few actual agents. I was still relatively inexperienced back then, and I didn't get to know all that was going on. There were 13 of us back then, and I'm the only one of us who survived that ordeal. All of the other freelancers you know now are new recruits since two years back."
This wasn't helping the mood.
"Damn, that's crazy."
Smooth.
"Yeah, so if this is one of those things we met back then..."
Ok, new plan.
"Wanna go grab a beer at that brewery? I could sure use one."
"Can you handle that? Alcohol, I mean."
"Oh, c'mon! Give me some credit. A few beers won't make me go crazy."
"Uuuugh, naw. You go. I gotta think."
Whinney wasn't taking no for an answer. She grabbed his arm and forced him out of bed. She practically put his shoes on for him, then took his hand and dragged him across the street. He was unenthused, but offered up little in the way of resistance.
They drank and ate at the little brewery Dean had recommended that afternoon. Whinney hadn't had a beer in forever, and the refreshing, cool, amber liquid gave her a feeling of freedom she'd been missing. Elijah drank as well, but far from as much or as greedily. Whinney had finished her third beer by the time their burgers came.
"Now this is a burger. I can still feel the Burger King myasma in my mouth."
"I guess, but it's not the same. This is a burger burger, not a burger."
"You mean this is an actual burger."
"That's not what I meant, it's just not the same thing. Theirs no point in comparing them."
"Course there's a point. You gotta recognise superior quality."
She took a big bite and washed it down with a gulp of her beer, then spoke without swallowing.
"B'chides, u' can'd geh beur a' Burrrking"
"Uff, don't speak with your mouth full, please."
She swallowed.
"Hey, I've been thinking. What if you were like bropped in a vat of acid?"
"What now?"
"Could you come back if there was nothing left of you?"
Elijah thought.
"No clue. No one's ever tried. I don't come back in perfect shape, ya know. I recover from all injuries, but not everything heals up nicely, just like anybody else. You should see some of the X-rays I've got back from the doctors. I've got bone fragments in all types of places. I once had a rib that never attached, punctured my lung. I shot myself, and when I came back, the rib had set."
"Wow, morbid. Who needs surgery?"
"Yeah, I never even get a cold. I just tell Mot I'm not feeling a hundred and he gives me 'the pill'."
"How'd you get your power?"
Elijah looked at her, then he looked up as if remembering something. His eyes became distant, then he looked back down at her.
"Just sorta have it. Don't think I did anything to get it."
"Boring."
"Do you know how you got yours? Most don't."
"...No." That wasn't the entire truth. "I guess sometime during my late teens is when I can see the first signs, but I think it started earlier. I don't wanna talk about that though."
They ate while chatting casually, avoiding the subject of work. Whinney tried to find the HQ on Google Maps, but other than that, it was about two and a half or three hours from Denver by airplane; she had no clue where to look. She drank a total of six glasses of beer before Elijah told her to cool it. She didn't feel drunk at all, but the chain had begun to weigh down on her hips, so she took that as a sign.
Back in the room, they both sat in bed watching a movie on TV; nothing remarkable. Elijah's phone pinged, and he checked it.
"Mot sent us the ritual specifications. We need... blackened bones, the first flight feather from a crow to make a pen from, a jar of fresh dirt, black bile or purge fluid to draw with, and wormwood."
"How the hell are we supposed to get all that?"
"Might take a while, but he also sent a few pages of a book; there are substitutions we could make work. We should also get a compass and a ruler to draw perfect circles and lines."
"Ugh. Aw, well."
The following day was spent entirely looking for resources. Bones were easy enough to get hold of from a local hunter who was glad to part with them in exchange for a generous donation. Wormwood was hard to find, but they had a lucky break when they tried a pharmacy as a last resort. The pharmacy itself didn't have it, but a friendly clerk said her grandma was bound to have some, and she could get them however much they needed if they came back tomorrow. The feather was surprisingly easy to get at a Texedermist a few towns away in Montrose. The jar of dirt needed to be fresh, so that would have to wait, which left only the black bile or purge fluid. Not knowing where to get either, they consulted the book they'd been sent. Genuine Mummy brown would be nearly impossible to find, so that was a no-go. Even something like Iron gall ink might be tough to find. Instead, they settled on the best dark purple paint they could find. Elijah spent the rest of the day until dinner time, alone at the edge of the woods with the tube of paint, muttering half-understood mantras in Latin and French. The paint was their weakest link, but hopefully, the added effort of whatever he was doing to it would make up for its inferior quality. He looked ridiculous sitting there, meditating and mumbling with a tube of children's paint in his hands.
When evening came, Elijad made a sign with his hands, then put the tube in a piece of old cloth and wrapped it. He put it in his pocket and walked back to the car, where Whinney had been waiting for hours. She couldn't download games on her phone, but she could access YouTube and had been watching cooking videos.
"Y'all done?"
"For now, but to be safe, I'll do the same thing tomorrow. We only have the wormwood left to get, so we should have loads o'time."
"Couldn't we just have bought the stuff we needed on Amazon?"
"Maybe, but I'm not sure the S.O.F. would've let us make an account."
"That's dumb."
"Yeah, we might have been able to now that I think about it, but at this point, we already have all we need. I'll do a little cleansing ritual for the rest of the stuff once we've had dinner."
Whinney drove them to a pizzeria where they ate and talked just like the day before. Elijah wasn't that talkative, and Whinney had to carry the conversation entirely on her own. Something about the paint ritual must've tiered him out. His behavior was more like he'd been after a day of training, back when he got shot a few times a day. She didn't like seeing him like that. The air of depression rubbed off on her, and by the end of the meal, none of them were feeling conversational.
When they finally got back to the hotel, Elijah went straight to bed and fell asleep almost immediately. Screw the cleansing ritual, aparenty. It was only nine o'clock, so Whinney turned the TV on and flipped through the channels. She settled on some show about truckers and watched that for a while. When she got bored, she pulled her phone up and resumed watching her cooking videos while the truckers kept blabbing on about icy roads or whatever in the background. About eleven o'clock, she felt that the room was getting stuffy and somehow too small, so she stepped out to smoke. She stood alone on the sidewalk. The smoke from her cigarette danced and snaked in the air before her eyes. The taste of tobacco was rich, and the smoke filled her lungs with a comforting warmth. She could really use a stiff drink, but thought that she probably shouldn't without Elijah there. She blew smoke and watched it disperse into nothingness. It was a small thing, but smoking made her feel a little better, more in control of herself. Maybe it wasn't a good habit, but it was hers. Since she could choose if and when to do it, it didn't matter that Aeshma was the one who'd told her to do it. Besides, it was something she did to relate to Elijah. It was odd how much Elijah's mood was affecting her own. Did she ever impact his feelings? Hard to believe. According to Hope, Elijah was born in the cave from where apathy originates, and had spent his entire life honing the skill of keeping people at arm's length. Whinney had a hard time believing all that, but when compared to Hope, it might as well be true. He wasn't exactly the sappy type, but he cared about people in his own way. The cigarette was nearly finished, and she considered lighting another, but decided against it. She took one last drag then stubbed it out.
When she reentered their room, she heard the soft snoring coming from Elijah's room, but there was something more. There was a buzzing sound, then it was gone, then it came again. Elijah's phone. She walked up to his bed. The phone had stopped ringing, but it lay beside him on the bed. He'd fallen asleep atop the covers, fully dressed, and it must've fallen out of his pocket. She took it and checked the lockscreen. Seven missed calls from an unknown number. She grabbed hold of Elijah's shoulder and shook him.
"Elijah, unlock your phone."
No need. Another call came from the same number, and Whinney answered immediately. The voice of a girl came through from the other end.
"Finally! Is this Elijah?"
"Ummm, He's waking up. This is his partner."
"The girl who was with him at the waterfall? I'm Dolores. We met on the trail yesterday."
"I remember. What's wrong?"
Dolores sounded like she was on the verge of hyperventilating. Whinney was gripped by an ominous foreboding. This could only mean one thing.
"My friends, they... because of what your partner said, they decided to go back to that clearing. The one we told you about."
"Oh my god. Are you with them?"
"No, they left without me. I wouldn't go."
"Shit. How long ago did they leave?"
"About ten minutes ago. Was he serious about the monster? Your partner."
"Look, Dolores, don't worry. We're on our way there right now. What are their names?"
"The tall one who was in the middle, her name's Persephoney, but we call her Persie. The dark-haired one to her right, or I guess your left back there, her name's Helen."
That meant this was the girl Whinney had noticed as they walked away, the one who looked especially scared back then.
"Alright, hang tight. We're going after them."
She hung up the phone and handed it back to Elijah, who'd sat up and was looking at her. His eyes told her she'd done something wrong.
"Whinney... We're not going."
What was he saying? Not going? His words were so matter-of-fact, no uncertainty.
"What do you mean? Of course we are. You were the one saying that there was a monster out there."
"No. There's no point. I heard what that girl said, and her friends are a lost cause."
"Are you kidding me?! No one has died there since the ritual, so let's just go there n' tell 'em to go home. Besides, your outburst is the reason they went. They didn't believe in the monster until you told them there was one."
"We're. Not. Going. That's final."
Why was he being so obnoxious?
"Then why did you give them your number, you asshole!?!"
Her chain was heating up and weighing her down. His nonchalant disregard for those girls' lives. She had to calm herself, but she couldn't stand being dismissed like this.
"For cryin' out loud, I'm not going to risk your life to save theirs. It's their own fault for not listening to me!"
"You have no right to make that decision for me! I'm going! If you're not coming with me, you can go to hell."
She took her jacket, put on her shoes, and left. As the door was shutting, she heard a deep sigh from inside. She kicked the door just as it was closing, slamming it shut. Who the hell did he think he was?