Chapter 10: Heart Stealer

8-5-1-18-20 19-20-5-1-12-5-18

16-15-19-20-5-4 1 1-21-7-21-19-20 2015

The humidity of the day had crossed over into the night, so strong and potent that Harper Wilcox could still feel it from her perch fifty feet in the air. Only the pole of her broomstick prevented her from plummeting into the Midwest trademark corn fields below her. But, being a skilled flyer, she hardly took notice of the danger potential. Her focus laid split between two places—how uncomfortable her red letterman jacket was in this weather and the man drawing a summoning circle in a twenty foot clearing beneath her.

Harper's plump lips formed a scowl as she saw the one-eyed star being drawn within the circle with chicken blood. She lowered her binoculars, revealing a pair of brilliant green eyes that seemed to glow in the velvet night. Harper was, to say the least, a beautiful girl. Her skin was so black that it glossed in the moonlight like the ebony of a grand piano. Her narrow face was framed by a curtain of dreadlocks, though the front few pieces had been pulled away from her face and done up in a bun behind her head. Unspeakable power radiated off her like heat off the pavement, but not once did she seem threatening. Anyone who looked at the adolescent would only think her to be confident and powerful.

Harper placed her binoculars in the messenger bag hanging off her shoulder before scratching the ear of her familiar, a black cat, who sat at the very tip of her broom. "Do you see that, Behemoth?" she asked. "Looks like Deegan's summoning the Perception Demon. That stupid dwarf lied to us."

Behemoth meowed. It was a short note, but it sounded like words to the witch. She sighed, leaning back. "I know, I know. But the past three demons would rather die than tell us where he is." She twirled one of her dreadlocks around her finger. "Then again, he's always been at odds with Perception. Maybe he wouldn't mind ratting the douche out."

When her familiar meowed again, apparently giving his agreements, she reached back into her bag. She had hexed it long ago to have unlimited space, allowing her to carry all of her belongings while she traveled. But having a small pocket of literal space in your bag makes it difficult to stay organized. She rummaged through her stuff, pushing aside herb bottles, clothes, and books until she found what she was looking for. She pulled out a smooth stone. It was a little smaller than her palm, triangular in shape with a hole bored through the middle.

She held it up for Behemoth to see. "Once Perception realizes he's under attack, he's gonna start altering with our sight, smell, hearing—anything he can mess with," she said. The milk-light of moon hit the wide brim of her witch hat, one so old and loved that the tip curled downwards like the spiral on a snail shell. The light was the same color as the band buckled around it, signifying her expertise in magic. "I'm going to use the seeing stone to prevent it. I need you to turn off your senses and use my eyes to navigate. Besides that, it's the normal drill. Understand?"

Behemoth meowed and she knew they were ready to go.

Harper started to guide her broomstick towards the ground until a new thought came to her. She mused over it for a moment before reaching into her bag and pulling out a spool of string. In a second, she had the string tied to seeing stone in such a way that she could wear it over her eye like an eye patch. Once done, she finally flew down to the earth. She stayed behind Deegan, hiding in the forest of corn stalks. Behemoth jumped off the broomstick as she dismounted, rubbing his sides against her claves before slinking silently into the shadows, getting into position for the attack. Harper stashed her broom and bag behind the stalks.

She took a deep breath, tugging at the sleeves of the letterman jacket and adjusting the brim of her hat. She was careful not to move too much, as her boots might crack a twig and alert Deegan of her presence. Now all she had to do was wait for the moment of attack. Confidence swelled in her chest. She had done this plenty of times before and never lost. She could do this again.

Harper watched Deegan chant the summoning spell from an ancient looking book. His voice wavered and his accent was off, obvious signs that he was an amateur. She made a face of disgust as she tied the seeing stone over her right eye. Leave it to an idiot to try to summon one of the most powerful demons in the universe.

She set the stone in place and opened her eye. Her vision immediately distorted until she closed her vulnerable eye. The seeing stone blanketed her world in monochrome. Everything was bland and undefined, save for any sentient being. They were cloaked in a blend of colors as unique as a fingerprint. She looked down at herself and saw her normal blend of hot red, bitter green, and millions of other colors that she couldn't place swirling on her skin before pouring down the existential strings attached to her. The strings were her tie to her place in the universe. Naturally, they linked back to Behemoth across her way.

Using the stone, Harper watched Deegan (whose colors were another indescribable, but unique combination) finish the spell. The circle glowed a dull icy blue before a great flash of light burst from its lines. A low exhale of breath filled her ears as an invisible silver pen drew a five-pointed star in the middle of the air. Deegan fell back as a single eye opened in the middle. The demon finally took on a tangible form, as his smooth voice filled the air. "It's been a long time since an incompetent one tried to summon me." Deegan squeaked as the Demon of Perception hovered above the circle, his twig arms held in the air like a bestowing saint. "What do you want from me?"

Deegan stumbled over his words for a few moments. "W-w-well, you see, I have a brother—"

Harper stepped out into the open. She said nothing, but her presence was so strong that the demon immediately looked at her. Deegan followed suit, though he didn't seem to understand why the demon's one eye widened as he burst into a fit of laughter. "Oh, I see what's going on here," Perception said, snapping his fingers. Deegan immediately screamed as something indistinguishable buzzed around his face. Harper could only presume that it was one of the illusions the demon was capable of creating, and the seeing stone was allowing her to see through the demon's tricks. "It's my turn to waltz with the Heart Stealer."

The same fuzziness consumed the corner of her vision, signaling the demon's attempts to use his powers against her. She felt something claw painfully up her combat boots and legs, threatening to slither up the skirt of her plain black dress. She felt hot breath blow around the rim of her ear as a threatening voice demanded her flesh. In the distance, she heard someone desperately cry out her name and beg for help. Harper took a deep breath, reminding her racing heart that this was only a trick. If she couldn't see it through the seeing stone, it wasn't real.

Harper touched the brim of her hat, tugging it closer to her face. "We don't have to dance, Perception," she replied, voice steady. Her glare was piercing as the green of her eyes intensified. "You just need to answer my questions."

Perception scoffed. "And I supposed that's what you told the others?"

She held out her hand, focusing her magic. In her head, she pictured the patches on the back of her letterman jacket—browsing through the stitched sigils and summoning circles until she found the summoning circle of a fire demon (they come a dime a dozen, so ripping out its heart and embedding it into a patch was no major accomplishment). She felt the pulsing of the demon's powers before tugging at it with her magic. It channeled down her arm until forming a ball of fire in her hands. She felt another sigil kick in, one that protected her from the burning flames.

She grinned. "It's what I'm telling you," she said.

He looked impressed, or as impressed as a being with whose only facial feature was one incandescent eye can be. "So the rumors are true," he said. "You're competent in demonic magic."

"Please. I've mastered it."

He burst into raucous laughter. "And do you really think that you can ever hope to defeat me?" His eye burned a dangerous red as he floated higher in the air. Energy beams burst at his palms. The show was so routine for Harper that she hardly flinched when it zapped at the space around her feet. "I am a powerful being with abilities far beyond your—"

Harper shot a fire blast at him, one just strong enough to push him back a few feet. She was careful not to hit his eye, as a demon's eye is his heart. She pulled energy from the sigil patch for the Moon Demon, feeling a silver glow replace her flames. Harper threw it like a Frisbee and it latched on Perception like a leech. He growl as his magical energy was drained and channeled back to her.

Harper felt hands wrap around her legs, claws brush through her hair, and knives plunge into her back—a thousand sensations to send her crumbling to the ground as a panicked wreck. Harper bit her lip, forcing away the indescribable pain and focusing on her sight. Ignore the touch, ignore the smell, ignore the sound…

"Harper!"

The silver disappeared from her hands as she twisted her heads towards the sound of her sister's voice. "Piper!" she cried out, feeling her blood rush through her veins. She could hear her heart pound in her ears as hands ripped at her skirt helm. She looked down and saw the fuzziness at her chest, reminding her that she was experiencing was an illusion.

Something in her calmed. Piper was back in Salem with Mama. She was far away from here…

But the demon was right in front of her.

He glared at the seeing stone tied to her face. Harper felt it heat up until it was burning red and scorching on her face. She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to distinguish between reality and fiction. She couldn't remember if Perception had fire abilities or not, but the heat was too intense to be fake. She heard Perception chuckle at her distraction. Harper swore. She needed to focus.

She reached behind her head and undid the ties. The seeing stone fell off her face, taking the unbearable heat with it. Harper breathed a sigh of relief, rubbing the sore area of her face. She froze. Her face felt fine, like the burning never happened…

Skeleton hands with dripping red skin wrapped around her face from behind, covering her mouth and eyes. Harper screamed as tendrils oozing with bloody slime wrapped around her arms and legs, holding her arms and legs taut as they dragged her back into the corn stalks.

The witch struggled against her restraints, screaming into the humanoid hand, knowing deep inside that everything she was seeing—everything she felt—was fake, but she couldn't calm down. She was being held back, being dragged away to where no one could help her. She needed Behemoth to defend her. She needed her magic. She needed Mama to weave her out of this horror story.

Harper felt the leaves of the corn stalks brush against her cheeks, rooting her back into reality. Although she felt herself being dragged away, she knew that she had to be walking herself into the crop. Her foot hit her broomstick and the strap of her bag snagged on her ankle.

A new plan formed in her mind. She wanted Behemoth and Mama to save her? Fine. That was what she was going to have to do.

The hand clasped tighter around her mouth, ensuring that all of her screams would be muffled. Yet she still shouted her familiar's name, summoning the cat from his hiding place. She trained her mind's eye to her cat, seeing the feline's perspective how he grew in size. He dashed across the field of what appeared to be burning grass at an impossible speed, but he paid no attention to it. He was a familiar—he could recognize an illusion only when she could. When he was twice the size of a tiger, Behemoth leapt into the air, soaring over the hyperventilating Deegan, before sinking his teeth into Perception.

All illusions disappeared as Behemoth brought the demon to the ground, teeth still in the demon's side and paw pinning down the middle. Harper shook away the lingering feeling of the hands, before scooping her bag into her arms. From it, she pulled out the spool of string and muttered an incantation. Her magical energy spilt into the thread as she ran back to the clearing. She tossed it at Perception and, the moment it hit the ground, the string came alive.

It shot into the air like a rocket, spreading out across the sky like dye in water, before swarming down onto Perception. They wrapped around the star form, rooting itself deep in the dirt, as they crossed over and over and over him again and again in a tight cocoon. The demon fought against the holds the entire time, and Harper pushed more and more of her magic into the threads. Finally the threads pushed the demon into the ground, anchoring him in place. Once bound, Behemoth spat out the demon from his mouth before digging his claws into Perception's eye.

A sound beyond human recognition pierced through the air as squirts of black shot out from the eye.

"Be careful, Behemoth," Harper scolded, stepping into Perception's view. The hexed thread was wrapped around her fingers, crisscrossing each other like a spider web. She held it before her, holding it tight as she smirked. "We don't want to damage his real heart."

"You're a rogue witch!" Perception spat. "You need a demon master to use demonic energy. You couldn't handle my power without a demon's help!"

"Don't even try. I'm more than capable of using your power if I wanted to," she said. "But I don't want to. I just want you to answer my question. If you do, I won't 'steal' your heart." She played with the threads, feigning interest in the web design as she waited for the demon to reply. But he said nothing, which in demon terms is as good as an affirmative. "You've probably heard by now that I'm looking for the Dream Demon—Bill Cipher, as he calls himself. Where is he?"

"If you want Cipher so badly, just summon him," Perception sneered.

"Love to, but I don't do that kind of stuff. Besides, in the past five rituals I've crashed, there's been nothing but static on Cipher's end, which can only mean that he's currently in this dimension and already tied to someone. I just need to know where."

"I don't know."

Behemoth dug his claws deeper in the heart, causing another agonizing scream from the demon. Harper blinked at the ear-splitting sound, already used to the noise. "I think you do. Cipher's a pretty powerful demon and anyone as smart as you would keep tabs on what he's doing."

"Why would I tell you, Heart Stealer?"

"Why wouldn't you tell me?" Anyone could tell that she was starting to get annoyed. "Seriously—y'all hate Cipher, yet you guys insist on protecting his location. What has the guy ever done for you?"

"It's a matter of principal," Perception replied. "Why would any of us let you do our dirty work?"

She pulled on the strings, tightening the cocoon around Perception. "I'm only going to say this one time more," Harper snapped. Her anger flared in her magic, causing the threads to burn like fire. "You either tell me where I can find Bill Cipher, or I'll make a nice little patch for you, stick your heart in it, and add you to my little collection of dead demons. Your choice."

Perception was quiet.

"Now would be nice."

"No one has heard from Bill Cipher for about two years now," he said at last. "But the last I heard, he was doing something in Gravity Falls."

She raised a brow. "Gravity Falls?" she repeated. Before numerous magical hot-spots started sprouting up around the country, the little town of Oregon was the main concentrate of magic in North America. She had been there a few times for her travels, but never for long. The last time she was there, it was to help out a local oddologist. To think Bill Cipher had been hiding there this entire time…

"Can I go now?" Perception demanded. "I gave you what you wanted, and a deal is a deal."

Harper smiled, though it was so strained that it could be nothing more than a grimace. The threads fell from her fingers and the cocoon around the demon unspun. "Absolutely. I won't steal your heart." She reached into her bag, shuffling through its contents until she found a few more spools of thread. "My familiar? He tends to do what he wants."

She hummed as Behemoth ripped away the eye before tossing it aside. He buried his face in the empty socket. A breath passed before Perception screamed again, this one colored by the finality of his real eye—his heart—being ripped away. Harper paid him no heed. Her deft fingers selected a few strands of white and blue thread before magic commanded them to weave together. The threads formed together, creating an accurate patch representing the demon's summoning circle. A hole had been left in the middle and, when Behemoth approached her with the black-dripping eye, she weaved it into the spot. Once finished, Harper held it for the familiar to see: a patch of Perception's summoning circle with his demonic heart embedded where the eye should be. Smiling, she used her magic to attach it to the back of her letterman jacket, along with the rest of her patchwork sigils and circles. It looked nice to see another heart in her collection. It's been far too long since she got another one. "There we go. That wasn't so hard now, was it?"

The cat sneezed.

"Hey, it was better than dealing with the Moon Demon. She was a bitch, remember?" Harper reached into her bag, pulling out her laptop. Ignoring the dissolving corpse of the defeated demon, the chicken blood summoning circle, and the traumatized man to the side, Harper sat on the ground with the computer balanced on her lap. She zapped a little energy into it as Behemoth shrunk to his normal size and climbed onto her shoulders. She smiled and scratched his ear. "Perception said Gravity Falls. Do you remember the name of that guy we helped out the last time we were there?"

Behemoth meowed.

"Pine Tree? Yeah that sounds familiar." She brought up a plain gray search engine, one made specifically for members of the paranormal community. She typed the name inside and waited a moment for the results.

"Hey?" Deegan picked himself off the ground, knees wobbling from the shock of what had happened. Harper rolled her eyes as his confused expression and lopsided glasses. "Who are—"

"Call me Heart Stealer," she replied curtly. "No, I won't explain what just happened. No, you shouldn't try to summon another demon. No, I don't know what you're going to do to help your whatever-the-hell-your-problem-is. Now get out of here and don't mess with forces beyond your control again. Got it?" He nodded. "Good. Now scram."

He stared at her, as if processing what she had said. His shoulders sank as he dragged his feet out of the clearer, returning to where he had parked his truck. He didn't know what he was going to do about his ailing sibling, though he vaguely hoped that the witch would surprise him with a magical antidote. But by the time he was at the driver's seat and speeding down the country road, Harper had already forgotten about the poor man.

Behemoth meowed and she brought her attention back to the webpage. A picture of a man with a gentle smile filled the screen. Harper recognized the tuff of hair on his chin, the spark in his deep brown eyes, the curls of his unruly hair, and the infamous blue and white baseball cap. She remembered him looking far more exhausted in real life, though the light stubble was accurate enough. She scrolled down and read the profile:

NAME: Dipper Pines

ALIAS: The Pine Tree

RESIDENCE: Gravity Falls, Oregon

SPECIALTY: Oddology, the study and moderation of.

CONTACT INFORMATION: Unavailable

Harper skimmed through the list of his accomplishments, blowing a low whistle. "Damn, he's still as impressive as I remember, though I don't see anything new here…" She trailed off, reaching the last line of the profile:

The Pine Tree was found dead on XX January 20XX. Government investigators were at the scene a paranormal expert could be, so the involvement of anything paranormal can only be a suspicion, but the agents confirmed that he was murdered by unknown means. As of April 20XX, his murderer has yet to be discovered. Pines never took on an apprentice, meaning that his legacy in Gravity Falls cannot be continued.

"Seriously?" Harper closed her laptop, grumbling, "there goes my one chance at having an ally in this…" She shook her head, trying to erase the small feeling of sadness in her gut. "I think I remember him being a demon-lover anyways… nothing we can do about it now. Ready to go, Behemoth?" she asked, gathering her stuff. The spools of thread, the laptop, and her seeing stone were placed back in her messenger bag.

The familiar raced to the edge of the summoning circle, sitting at the edge to meow. "That's right. Can't believe I forget." Harper pulled a box of matches from her back. She lit one, threw the box at the center of the circle, and tossed the burning stick on top. It burst into flames, crawling to the surrounding grass and destroying all of the evidence that this had ever happened.

Harper watched the fire spread for a moment, shadows dancing across her face. The orange glow burned into her green eyes.

Then, very quietly, she mounted her broom. "Let's go, Behemoth." The cat climbed on, and the Heart Stealer soaring into the night, heading to a sleepy town in Oregon where fairies danced on the rivers and a half-demon lay restless in his bed, thinking about a man who was named after the stars.

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MW: I don't know what to say about this chapter, which is weird because Harper is a new character to the story. I hope you like her and her familiar, since they are going to be coming back to give our Mystery Squad some new problems. There is a huge thing about how her magic works and why she is a rouge witch, and all of that will be covered in later chapters. This was just an introduction scene for her so that she has a little set-up for her later appearances. Speaking of set-up, does anyone remember the references made to her in previous chapters? Check over some of the dialogue in the prologue and some of the cryptograms scattered throughout and find the places she's been mentioned!

Now for other matters of business:

The amazing bill-the-dorito-chip did an awesome cosplay of my version of Bill Cipher. If you want to see it, I reblogged it onto my writing blog (miamaroo) for all the world to see. Of course, go ahead and also check out his stuff since he does a lot of equally awesome RPs.

Also, the character Deegan is actually a cameo of my friend dddragoni. Not sure if I can explain how this came about, but basically he reads this fic and wanted one as part of a deal we made. Even though he chickened out, I still was generous enough to give him the opportunity to be a throw-away character. Good job Deegan!

I originally planned on updating Tuesday, but I'm not sure if I can make it since I have a lot of working to do next week. Let's pray I can do it!

Thank you for reading! New Gravity Falls episode this Monday, so I'll see you all after it airs. Until then!