ONE
.
Author's Note:
This is set between Constantine 1x10 and 1x011. Spoilery references are made to 1x10 and earlier.
.
.
"Ok then, Roberta - see you tomorrow," the woman called. Long blonde hair and a very smart suit to match, she picked up her briefcase and collected her umbrella.
Roberta, at her large desk at the head of the office, looked up. "Already? What time is it?"
"Time we were both going home, boss," she replied, flashing her a smile as she headed for the far door. "I'm out of here - you don't pay me enough in overtime."
"Yeah, yeah," Roberta sighed.
"Pack up and go!" She paused at the door, pushing the glass open but pausing mid-stride. "If I come in tomorrow and find you still at your desk, I'll kill you - boss."
Roberta swung her chair right round to look down the long room at her. "You would, too. Go home, Elena. I'll just be a few more minutes - I promise. I'll call you later."
Elena sighed, shook her head, and left. The door swung closed in a gradual arc, obeying the laws of the safety device atop.
Roberta swung her chair back to her desk, obeying the laws of deadlines. "Just a few more minutes my ass," she grumbled. "Like this project is going to approve itself." She swiped black hair1 from her eyes and paged back to the front of the heavy document in front of her, to search for a page number in the very long list of contents.
The glass door gave a swish and a subtle thump.
"I said a few minutes, Elena," she called, pre-occupied. "If I don't do this you won't get any overtime paid, because we'll all be out of a job."
Silence.
She looked up. Her eyes scanned the office. Empty grey cubicles and their partitions greeted her. She shook her head and looked back at the words by her hand.
A wisp, a tremble of something on the carpet.
She huffed. "Get whatever it is you've forgotten and go! You're not supposed to be in here this late!"
The brass name plate on her desk shifted. She jumped and stared. It began to tip all by itself, until 'Roberta Moors, Company Director' fell flat on its face.
She pushed herself away from the desk and got to her feet. "Hello?" she called.
She didn't even see the killing blow.
.
ooOoo
.
The janitor hummed to himself, riding the lift up to the top floor. He began to sing quietly, trundling his cart of cleaning supplies down the hallway to push at the large office door. He tutted as he found it unlocked.
"Ms Moors!" he called, pulling the cart in behind him. "You in here still? This won't do."
He looked up across the room, toward the large desk at the top. Shaking his head, he left the cart where it was and went up to the wooden desk. He put his hands on his hips to frown at the boss, currently face down on her arms on the surface.
"This really is ridiculous," he sighed. "Working late all the time. I know going home freshly divorced ain't no fun - believe me, I know," he said, coming round the desk to Roberta's side. "But trust me, you don't want to make a habit of—"
He put his hand to Roberta's arm and pulled. Roberta Moors, thirty-eight year old company director of Moors Incorporated, slumped back in her chair.
And blood gushed from her suit. It erupted over the desk, over the floor, and over the poor, screaming janitor.
.
ooOoo
.
Chas hefted the two large brown bags from the front seat of his cab and elbowed the door shut. He manhandled them up to the front door of the mill house. He paused to find the key, and then successfully got them both inside. He managed to get down the wooden steps, along the top landing, and even down the iron staircase and to the millstone before dropping any of the groceries. He was just congratulating himself on this small miracle when a voice surprised him.
"Mr Chandler?"
He froze, thought about it, and then turned slowly. Nothing out of the ordinary caught his attention; the distant bookshelves watched him with smug amusement as he checked the table currently covered in a scrying map, and then gave the staircase a glance. "Hello?" he hazarded.
"Up here."
He turned to his left and then his head went back. A woman, no more than forty years old, was watching him, her light brown hair obscuring one eye. Her pale lilac shirt and brown trousers were somewhat out of tune with the Converse trainers she had on. So too was the way she hung just an inch from the ceiling, as if her elbows were on strings.
"Ah… hi," he managed.
"Little help?" she asked with a polite smile.
Chas backed up one, a hand to the knife in the sheath tucked discretely under his shirt. "Uh - mind if I ask how you got in here first?"
"My name is Nayda. I'm here to see Mr Constantine."
Chas' hand relaxed slightly. "Of course. You a friend of his?"
"He doesn't know me. I was told he might be able to help me."
"And how did you find this place?"
She smiled. "A cab driver. I'm a witch, Mr Chandler. Spirits of the air and of the earth led me to the area. They informed me that I would have to get past you before I could speak to him." She looked around. "He is here, isn't he?"
Chas folded his arms. "Probably." His head tilted. "These spirits of the air and of the earth - they didn't warn you about the booby traps, did they?"
"No they did not," she allowed. Her hands turned out in an attempt to shrug. "I don't mind being up here all night, Mr Chandler, but I'd rather not waste your time. Either I see him or you send me home and I try to sort this out myself." She jerked her head to one side, blowing air up her cheek to try to move her fringe from her line of vision.
"Well… I'll need to check he's receiving guests first." Knowing him he's prancing around naked in pig's blood again - or worse, he thought. "Just - uh - stay there."
"Sure," she shrugged, wholly resigned.
Chas2 shook his head and walked off, going to the staircase. He got halfway up before he heard noises far off to his right. Looking up, he hurried up the steps and went along the upper landing. He followed it along, trying to put something together in his head that described the situation yet sounded credible. His boots paused on the creaky boards as he heard two sets of definite grunting noises from behind a door - then a voice.
"Ngghh - come on, John! Harder!"
"Keep your - ngghh - bloody hair on - ngghh - love!"
"Is that - all you've - got!"
"Well - ngghh - 'scuze me Zed - ngghh - for bein' a sprinter - and not - ngghh - a marathon runner!"
Chas looked at the doorknob. He considered turning and running away instead.
"Harder!" Zed said, rather angrily.
"I am!" John countered.
The synchronised grunting got louder.
Chas stepped back.
"There!" John grunted. "That hard enough - ngghh - for you - love?"
"Better!" Zed panted. "Keep it - keep it - up!"
Chas' face squirmed in discomfort. He looked around the corridor for some hole to conveniently open up and swallow him and his embarrassment.
"Nearly - nearly - nearly!" John cried.
"Ok just - just - harder!"
"Ngghh - so close!"
"Oh - oh - nearly - nearly—"
"Ngghhaaaa! And we're home!" John shouted in victory.
Zed grunted and laughed, and Chas heard skin being slapped. He stepped back directly onto the creaky board.
"Is that someone outside?" came John's voice.
Chas turned, determined to run for the staircase.
The door whisked open and John appeared, covered in sweat - and his white shirt and tie. His black trousers looked dusty but at least they were present. "Chas, mate?" he called.
Chas stopped and swivelled back to look at him. "Oh, ah, hey," he said gamely. "Didn't realise you were up here."
Zed pushed John onto the upper landing and looked out of the door. She, too, was rather sweaty but her two tank tops and jeans were definitely in place. "Hey, Chas," she panted. She patted a hand into John's shoulder, safely on the white cotton, her other arm going round him to hang off his shoulder. "Want to know what we've been up to?"
"No!" he blurted. "Absolutely not. Nuh-uh."
Zed pushed herself off John. "We fixed the chandelier," she said innocently. "Took us, what, ten minutes to yank that thing up by its rope?" she guessed, looking at John over her shoulder. "It was heavy."
He picked up the end of his tie, wiping his face with it. "That's me knackered. Any food going?"
Chas' chin lifted as he began to smile. "Oh! The chandelier!" he cried. "Right! Yes!"
"So you'll be the one stickin' new candles in it," John said. "I'll be buggered if I'm getting up there after the fight we've just been through."
"Me neither," Zed said. She folded her arms and leant her back against the wall. "Did you need something?"
Chas grinned. "Yeah, uh, kinda. There's a lady downstairs to see you, John. Said she's a witch, that the spirits of the air and of the earth told her where you were."
"Don't know if I like the sound of that," John said.
But Zed looked awed. "A witch? Cool."
"Well you go meet her then," John grumped.
"Oh come on," Zed smiled. "She came to call on the great John Constantine for a reason. Maybe she just wants to do some witchy shopping - you do have a lot of weird stuff downstairs."
"The house has her in a trap, so… you'll have to get her out of it first," Chas said.
"Then lead on, mate," John said. "'Spose we'd better see what she wants."
The three of them wended their way down the corridor and the staircase, ending up at the bottom.
John slid his hands in his pockets, looking up at the ceiling. "Ooh, blimey," he said to himself, surprised. "She's a bit of alright, ent she?"
Zed came out from behind him. "You know you said that out loud, right? Did you not feel your lips moving?"
John continued to smile, apparently oblivious. "Alright, love?" he called up. "Chas said you wanted to see me."
The woman was watching him. "Constantine? John Constantine?"
"In the flesh," he beamed. His eyes ran over her in a coldly analytical manner. "Before I let you down, would you care to tell me what you're doing here?"
She pulled on an arm slightly, twitching as if to get comfortable. "My ex is dead. I need you to help me find the killer."
"Certainly," he said with a serious nod. "Let me give you my personal hotline to all things magically helpful. Ready? It's nine… one… one."
Zed elbowed him, catching him right in his side. "Hear her out first."
"Ow!" he said pointedly, glaring at her. Then he looked up at the woman. "Alright, then. What's your name, and who's the dead ex?"
"My name's Nayda Pasternak," she said slowly. "Yesterday morning I got a call from the police here. They said that…" She looked at the far wall for a moment, then back down at John. "They said that Roberta, my ex-wife? She's dead. Killed in her office."
"Your ex-wife. So why do you care?" John asked. Zed slammed a fist into John's arm. "Pack it in, will you?" he warned her. He put his right hand to his injured arm, stepping away from Zed. He looked back up at Nayda. "First things first: are you sure she was murdered?"
"Yes," Nayda said. "The police… they took me to the scene - Roberta's office. I saw the blood, I was told how she died. There's no evidence of anyone else in the building at the time of her death."
"Look, I'm very sorry pet, but I really think the best thing to do would be to stick with the police," John said. "I mean, I'm not their friend; all I do is dodgy stuff. If it's a murder, you really should just let them sort it out. They know what they're doing. Mostly."
"Oh of course," she snapped. "I went to the not insignificant trouble of collecting ingredients, learning new spells, and invoking the spirits of the earth at just the right time and place, just to ask them who could help me, and where they were, and how to find them, simply because I forgot Atlanta has police."
Zed smiled and nodded. "I like her."
John scowled at her, then looked back up at Nayda. "Alright," he groused. "Why did you ask these spirits for help?"
"Because at the crime scene I smelt brimstone, Mr Constantine," she said stiffly. "And there were bad signs by the desk. Nowhere else, just directly in front of Roberta's desk."
"Brimstone?" Zed asked quietly.
"Nowadays we call it sulphur," John said. He sniffed, running his tie through his fingers slowly. "You sure it was sulphur?"
"I'd venture I know chemicals and their elements better than you, Mr Constantine."
His face hitched up at one side, in either a wince or a smile, or in Zed's hopeful opinion, a combination of both. "And just how did I come up on your radar?" he asked.
"Your name came to me through water."
"Pissed yourself laughing, did you?"
Zed took a step and flung a fist out toward his arm but he side-stepped her neatly. He turned a shit-eating grin on her. She folded her arms, glaring at him.
He looked back up at the woman hanging from the ceiling and turned decidedly more serious. "Alright, I've heard enough." He went to the wall and put his hand against it. "Brace yourself. It should let you down slowly, but you never know."
"Anything," she said. "Just get me down."
He whispered something to the wall. She squeezed her eyes shut, expecting a quick drop and sharp stop, but instead she began to drift down to the floorboards. Her shoes connected with the wood just as her elbows dropped to her sides.
"There we go," John said grandly. "So. Where do we start?"
"Well first I'd like to thank you," she said, sounding a little out of breath. She swept her brown fringe from her eyes to sit neatly behind her ears. "I mean, you have no reason to help me, really. But the spirits said—"
"The spirits don't tell me what to do," he interrupted. "Unless it's gin. That does have a nasty habit of making me do things."
Zed walked up to her. "Nayda?" she asked. "Sit down. Start at the beginning, please. John will listen, I promise."
John rolled his eyes as Zed held out a hand, waving her to the chairs around the large table. The map it was wearing like an old and well-stained tablecloth didn't seem to faze Nayda at all.
Zed sat opposite her, placing her hands on the table and clasping her fingers. "So, Nayda," she said. "Please - tell us all you can about the crime scene - if that's ok. I know it's painful," she added gently.
Nayda smiled, then looked up as John wandered around the table. He hovered behind Zed, watching, as Chas came to the table and sat himself down. John glanced at her and she offered a small smile. Her hand went up and pulled a band from her hair, freeing the shoulder-length cut. She ran her hand through it, shaking it free. "Ok," she began. "The office is normal. It just… feels like work, and stress, and coffee and late nights, arguments with spouses. The usual."
"You're a kind of psychic?" Zed asked brightly.
"Not so much," Nayda said. "Only when I… when I make it work." She sniffed. "But the desk that Roberta sits - used to sit at… It's clean. It's hard work and good intentions. Until… There's a circle around it, and everything in it is evil." She paused and looked up at John. "It feels like Hell, Mr Constantine."
"And you'd know what Hell feels like, would you?" he asked.
"It's the closest word I can find that would describe it in terms you could understand," she said stiffly.
"Then you should have said LA in the summertime," he grunted. "Look, love, if you seriously want me to do this, you're going to have to cough up more than this."
"Like what?" she demanded. "That's all I know."
"What do you think it is?" he asked.
"I don't know - that's why I asked for someone to help me." She glared up at him. "Do you know what I do, Mr Constantine?"
"Plant herb gardens and dance naked under a full moon?"
Her lips stretched as thin as her patience. "I help people with natural medicine. I occasionally make it rain but mostly I cleanse houses of negative energy. I do not believe in Hell, or demons, or the pantheon of gods that people trot out on a regular basis to explain things they fear or are upset by." She paused. "The question is, can you help me? Can you find who did this and bring them to account?"
He spun away slowly, his hand around his tie, making Zed and Chas turn to watch him. He paced round in an aimless circle. "You hear your ex has been killed and you ask for help finding her murderer, and when you visit the crime scene you think it stinks of Hell - or whatever non-witches would call it." He stopped and stared at the floor. "And therein lies the problem."
"Sounds straight forward to me," Zed said.
John ignored her. "You reckon it's an evil entity that's done this. Not once did you stop to consider it was just a nasty bastard of the normal human variety. Your first conclusion, your first instinct, was that it must be something otherworldly. Why is that? What are you not telling us, love? And be honest. It makes things go so much smoother."
Zed and Chas looked back at Nayda. She took a deep breath and sighed it out, as if testing how long she could make it last. Then she sat back in the chair and looked at John with resignation.
"Come on, love. It's a fair cop, and all that," he said, but now his voice was softer. "What was your missus into? Is that why you got divorced?"
Nayda shook her head. "Roberta was… When I first met her, she was in this… group. Of friends. They were bankers, stock brokers, rich kids, into getting high on a Saturday night and partying till the wee hours. I met her on a Sunday, on one of her come-downs," she said, a smile pulling at her mouth. "We talked all day. She needed it. Then… She called me during the week. She still saw her friends, but… less and less. We must have been dating for… I don't know, six months? She broke off a festival weekend with her friends - she knew what I was, but she wasn't bothered by it." She paused. "Of course her friends decided it was all my fault, and… that led to arguments. Every time. But she made it clear - she chose me over them, over everything. We moved in together, she was off all the party drugs and even alcohol. She got promoted at work, was steadily getting higher." She wiped a hand over her face.
"Hey, uh, you want a drink?" Chas offered.
Nayda looked at him. "Just water, please."
Chas got up and went for the bags of groceries. Zed leant on the table with her elbows. "And then?"
"And then," Nayda said, "she realised she wanted to do more with her life. We were both content for me to be the stay-at-home wife. We got married, we lived in New York, life was good."
"Yeah, sure," John said scathingly. Zed turned round to glare at him but he was already pacing round in another wandering circle. She turned back to the table.
"She got higher and higher in her firm, then…" Nayda sat up straighter. "Then her father died. She was upset… She asked me to speak to him, to allow him to speak to her."
John raised his eyebrows. "So she heard 'witch' and just decided you could do anything 'occulty'?"
"Exactly," she sighed. "I said I didn't do that kind of thing, that I didn't know how to do that kind of thing. She thought I was trying to upset her…" She shook her head. "She went on about it for weeks. Then - just like that - she dropped the whole thing, said she'd had enough of it all."
"But that's good, isn't it? Maybe she just realised she had to get over it," Zed offered.
"Or maybe," John said, "she'd found someone else to do it."
Zed turned and looked up at him. He shrugged. She looked back at Nayda.
"So," Nayda said stiffly, "she said that because her father had died, his big company out in Atlanta needed a new director. She said… she said there was some clause that said it had to be her."
"More like someone had taken her money, researched the poor bird, then told her what she wanted to hear at a fake seance," John said. Zed turned again to frown at him in angry reprove. "What?" he asked innocently. "I would have done."
Nayda smiled slightly. "So anyway, it turns out she really was next in line. She came out to Atlanta, temporarily at first. I stayed to continue to run my business from home. She was streamlining her father's company, she said, turning it into a more modern place. I was so proud of her." She paused. "Then… she started saying she was too busy to have me fly down for the weekend. And then… she stopped telling me about the work outings."
"Let me guess," John said, "she was worried people would think you were a witch."
"I am a witch," Nayda said. Chas appeared at her elbow with a glass of water, and she took it gratefully. "Thank you," she said. Chas sat down again. She looked over at John. "I was never ashamed of it. Turns out she was. I ignored her excuses and I flew up one weekend - I wanted to be romantic and surprise her. Instead of a nice quiet dinner, she got drunk and told me she'd never believed in all my 'hocus-pocus', and her friend at work said it was all devil worship." She sipped her water.
John shrugged to himself. "That's what bad TV does for you. Blame your glorious American network gods."
"Well. Things got… difficult. I worked on my business more, and she called less. Then one day she came home, to New York, and told me that she knew I was having an affair with the next door neighbour."
"Was she a witch too?" John asked.
"He was a nice guy - a librarian," she said stiffly.
"You mean your wife hadn't noticed that you played for the other team?"
Nayda raised her eyes to his with the first glimmer of cold anger. "I play for all teams, Mr Constantine. Don't be so narrow-minded."
"Oh you'd be surprised how open-minded I can be, love," he said seriously.
She cleared her throat. "She was wrong. I told her she was wrong - I asked who'd told her these lies. She said it was a friend of hers, someone who had helped her with her father's wishes." She paused. "We argued - a lot. It was… horrible. She eventually told me that this friend of hers had spoken to her father through a ouija board."
"Christ on a bike," John heaved in disbelief. "A ouija board?"
"I know," Nayda sighed. "But this one apparently worked."
"I thought they were just for the movies," Zed said, turning in her seat to look at John.
"They are, Zed. You buy one from Hasbro and you're safe, unless you do something stupid like bleed on it whilst accidentally reciting a very long and awkward Latin invocation over it." He shook his head. "So Nayda, love. What did this ouija board tell her?"
"It said that I was cheating on her, that I would never be happy with her, because of her success." She paused to sip her water again. "We tried a separation after that - it was never the same. She moved out here permanently, to her father's firm. She rebuilt it, made it viable. She got down to the hard job of making money with it all. In two years we were filing divorce papers, not really knowing how we got into so many fights." She sighed. "She thought I was unhappy with her, with us. She never could just step back and appreciate life, like I could. I was content - completely content - to watch her climb the ladders and make all the money she wanted. I just needed my own speed. I never cared for public success."
Zed smiled apologetically. "Sounds like you're the grounded one."
"I thought so," Nayda said. "That was my sin, I think."
"Do witches believe in sin?" John mused, starting off on another wandering circle.
"When something like this happens? Yes, we do," she said.
Zed looked at Chas. "So when we do start?" she asked Chas. He opened his mouth to reply.
"We are not going down there," John announced.
Zed turned to frown at him. "But we—"
"We're not just sticking our noses into a police murder investigation," he interrupted.
"But John—"
He held his finger up, his lips pursed in decision. "We start with the crime scene. At night."
Zed grinned. "And I'm coming too, right?"
"Now hold on," John said hastily. "No-one said anything about you leaving this house—"
"Not fair, John," she argued. "Not after—"
"Life isn't fair," he said with a wide, haughty smile. He began to walk off, past the table.
"I had a vision!" she called, as he headed back to the staircase.
"Pull the other one," he called over his shoulder.
"It was you getting arrested!"
He paused with a frown, his hand on the railing, his back to her. "Oh aye?"
"Yeah," she smiled. "Someone called the police when you were at a crime scene you shouldn't have been at!"
He scowled at the staircase so hard it nearly buckled in fright. Then he huffed. "Fine!" he called. "But we're keeping a low profile on this one!" He hauled himself up the iron steps.
Chas got up, gesturing to the other side of the room with his head. Zed got up. "Uh, wait here, ok Nayda?" she said with a smile.
"Of course," she nodded.
Zed followed Chas across the room, glancing over at Nayda as they came to a stop by the far wall. "What?" she whispered at him.
"I don't know about you," he said, keeping his voice low, "but I don't feel comfortable with John being so close to anything evil, not so soon after Mexico."
Zed put her hands on her hips. "He's a big boy. He'll just have to… suck it up."
"But Pazuzu was a big-time demon king, Zed. John says he's fine, that he doesn't remember any of his time possessed, but I'm not so sure he's ready to go jumping into the whole evil-fighting thing just yet."
"He'll have us," she said firmly. "We don't leave him on his own. We look out for him." She paused. "You do that anyway. Why are you worried?"
"Inside this house it's easy," Chas said. "The house likes him, likes him being here. When he's out… It can't protect him."
"Then we make sure he's warded up before we leave here," she said. "Everything else… We've got his back, right?"
"Right," he nodded. "Let's work out what we're doing before the sun goes down and we have to go into the city to trespass onto a crime scene."
At the top of the staircase, John withdrew from the shadows of the metal stanchion, drifting back to a safe distance. Their overheard words rolled around inside his head. He studied his feet, scratched at the back of his head, and then spun on the balls of his feet to the upper corridor, with the intention of locating his room and his bag.
.
And we're off! My first exclusive Constantine story. Hope it doesn't disappoint.