A Weapon’s Serenade

Melody grimaced at the doorbell ringing early in the morning. Anne groaned as she rolled out of bed and reached for her dressing gown.

“What time is it?”

Melody squinted at the alarm. “Half past three-ish.”

“Fucking hell.”

When Anne and Melody finally made their way to the kitchen, Kuria had let the disturbance in already. Beatrice stood there, sweaty, dirty and soaking wet despite only light rain outside.

“Beatrice? Are you okay?” Melody couldn’t help but stare.

Beatrice just shook her head slowly.

Kuria took a deep breath. “I’ll conjure some clean clothes for you, do you want to take a shower before you tell us what happened?”

“Yea, please…”

The demon returned a kind smile and guided Beatrice to the bathroom.

Melody and Anne took that opportunity to get properly dressed. Beatrice didn’t take too long to return. After getting her settled on the couch with a big mug of hot chocolate and some biscuits, the obvious question was finally asked.

“What happened?”

“I honestly don’t fully know. Or more… I don’t understand. My father’s birthday is soon and my current project just finished so I decided to spend a few weeks at home before heading out again. I wanted to treat my family to a nice dinner, so I met them at the restaurant before heading home with them. That was already weirdly tense. My brother seemed incredibly hostile, my father apparently had already told him to hold back and be nice, and my mother was caught in the middle.”

“And it all exploded at home.”

“Yup. My mother asked about how the project went. Jake, my brother, interrupted her, insulted me claiming that I wasted my time helping people he called multiple slurs and that I should better spend my time shooting them all, so they don’t come here and, I honestly don’t know, take our jobs or something? My dad told him to stop it, bro didn’t want to hear any of that, I tried to defuse by offering to take a hotel room instead of staying. He managed to grab my phone first, crushed it and took a swing at me. My parents managed to grab him, I grabbed my stuff and ran. He just managed to scream at me that he will blow up my car and that he hates me. I didn’t want to risk it with the car, he had been outside alone for a while when we came back from the restaurant.”

Melody sighed incredulously. “So, you walked here?”

“Not the first time I’ve been threatened like that. Yea, I walked here. It’s about five hours to get from my family’s home to here if you stick to the fields and side alleys. But…” Beatrice let out an exasperated sigh. “I am alone here. Normally, I have my team with me. I didn’t know where to turn and without my phone I couldn’t call for help. Only people I thought to turn to were you. I’m sorry Kuria, I know this breaks our agreement. I just… I’m scared. Jake has never been like this, he always defended me. He always had a violent streak but nothing racist. I mean, we are a family of bullies but going after race and stuff is too low. I don’t understand. We got along amazingly just a few months ago.”

“I wish I could tell you. But… it’s one in a long list of people acting weirdly hostile recently. Doesn’t have to be anything magical but… it’s wild. I’m so sorry.”

Kuria frowned. “I don’t consider our agreement as broken. You needed help and you came to the only people you could trust to help you. You did the right thing. How do you want to proceed. I would send a message to mister Johnson and to the library. Johnson needs to know what happened to you and your equipment and to retrieve it, and you need protection that I cannot provide and a safe place to sleep.”

Beatrice looked up at the demon. “That would be great, thank you. Thank you all so much. I don’t know what I would do without right now… or where I would even be.” Beatrice was close to tears.

“You are doing good, I am proud of you. We all are. You can stay for how ever long you need, but I should organize a proper place for you to stay.”

“Thank you.”

Kuria nodded and got up, walking to the kitchen counter before conjuring some papers.

Anne got up from her little armchair and sat down beside Beatrice and put her arm around the now crying woman. “You know, we actually planned to check in on you in a few weeks. Despite all that happened at school between us, maybe actually because of it, we do care about you. Kuria gets a report from Johnson’s office every few months and all those reports speak highly of you. You are doing amazingly and the world is better because of you. Please never forget that, okay?”

Beatrice nodded slowly and wiped her tears away. “You don’t have to be so kind to me.”

Melody shook her head. “But we want to be. Do you want us to do anything about your brother?”

“I don’t know. I need sleep but I don’t know if I can.”

After a few minutes, Kuria stepped back towards the other girls. “You will at the very least get the chance to try. Nirrti will come by and pick you up, she is one of the librarians and capable of protecting you. The library has guest rooms, you will be safe there. Those rooms can be locked from the inside so no human can access them from the outside. No one will be able to come in to harm you, not through the door, not through the windows. Nirrti will get your luggage and car once you have your room. They have everything you need, food, drink, a safe space to stay and pretty much everything else you can ask for.”

“That is more than I could have hoped for, thank you.”

“I also got a message back from Johnson’s aide. Mister Johnson himself will meet with you next week when he returns from negotiations in India. She wants you to check in tomorrow after you got your new phone and new gear, she is sending someone to get it all to you tomorrow afternoon.”

“Alright.” Beatrice took a sip from her mug of hot chocolate. “Today I got what I deserved, didn’t I?”

“No. You deserve better now. You already have been punished for your past transgressions, you are a force for good now.”

Nirrti arrived by teleporting into the kitchen. “My apologies for intruding like this, I didn’t want to wake anyone up.”

“It’s all good. Nirrti, this is Beatrice. Beatrice, this is Nirrti, one of the librarians and obviously a demon.”

Beatrice smiled sheepishly. “Hey…”

“You look like you had a horrible night. How does a soft bed, all the time you need to sleep and a nice breakfast sound?”

“Sounds amazing.”

“Then we make sure you get all that. I can take you to the library once you finish your chocolate.”

“You can take it with you, it’s all conjured. The hot chocolate, the mug, the biscuits, the plate.”

“Then we will take it all with us and you can get settled, okay?”

Beatrice nodded. “Okay.”

Melody smiled reassuringly. “We will come by later, okay? To make sure everything is alright.”

“Thank you. See you later then, I guess.”

“See you later.”

Nirrti simply nodded politely and then teleported herself, Beatrice, the chocolate and the biscuits away.

“What a mess.”

“Yea… She really didn’t deserve such a welcome.”

Anne grumbled and yawned. “What a fucking piece of shit her brother turned into. With any reason seemingly.”

“That is a good point though… why? Is there any way we could find out what went wrong there?”

Kuria tilted her head slightly. “Potentially. I wanted to talk to Umbria anyway about some of the fancier things she can do as a Shadow that I might be able to learn from her. If these powers work the way I imagine, I might be able to do some spywork of my own.”

“Sounds dangerous, you sure?” Melody raised her eyebrows.

“Very sure about wanting to learn, less so about the spying. Still, I agree that we should find out what happened to Jake. I have a very bad feeling that something is deeply wrong here.”

“I have the same feeling. No matter what, we need to get some rest. It’s four in the fucking morning and we all have appointments later.”

“True. Let’s worry later, now is the time for rest. Anne?”

Anne had already fallen asleep on the couch.