This Isn't Hogwarts, And All The Owls Are Dead

"Ray, why you ackin' so cray cray?" Mabel asked over lunch.

The man rolled his eyes at her turn of phrase, but confessed nonetheless.

"I hope you don't mind, but I investigated down in the red light district while you were recovering yesterday."

Red?

Red room.

Another odd flash of memory that seemed disjointed and unreal. Mabel pushed it aside to tease Ray through a mouthful of food, "Why would I mind?"

"We're partners." Ray took a small bite so he could still talk around it, "We're supposed to work together. Make decisions together. Investigate together. So on and so forth."

"Ray," Mabel gulped, "In two months you'll be doing this stuff on your own. Heck, you're good enough to do it on your own now. I'm doing my job right as your mentor if you're choosing to take initiative. Not to mention, it saved me quite a headache!" She smiled and pointed to the bruise on her head.

Ray smiled too, but tightly, at the joke. He still wasn't okay with the fact that she'd been injured. That he wasn't around to do anything. And that she could recall what she'd been doing.

"What did you find out?"

Mabel was good at distracting people. Ray launched into his findings with that simple prompt, "Well, I air-dropped your photos to my phone. Hope you don't mind, but I know the password is Waddles. The first two places I went, they kicked me out as soon as they saw the circle. I learned my lesson after that, and started with asking about the supernatural community, pretending like I wanted to get involved." Ray flipped open his notebook and handed it to Mabel, "The stuff they told me seemed pretty cliché. But I'll let you be the judge of that."

Reading Ray's handwriting was a bit of a challenge, but Mabel had grown used to it over the past few months and powered through. Palm-readings. Séances. Fortunes. Charms. The works.

"Did you get anyone to tell you about demon summoning?"

"A pretty hole-in-the-wall place had a decent selection of books. I asked if they carried any on that subject and they said it wasn't a topic that was in high demand. More like taboo. But they also said they'd had a weird customer come in for warding spells not too long ago. They asked about demons too."

Mabel tapped her chin, "Did they say who it was?"

"The clerk I talked to only placed the order, they didn't have any contact with the customer who didn't leave a name."

A dead end. But considering all the luck they'd had with the case so far, it was bound to happen eventually.

She propped her chin up on the table with her good hand, pouting, "Superstitious people aren't much help. But it probably means that our demon is the real deal."

Ray took a sip of his drink, "What are we going to do about it?"

"The best defense against demons is to stay the hell away from them." Mabel confessed, "The only exception to that rule is if one takes an interest in you. But since there's not much we can do about that, the best we can do is pray we find this murderer before he tries anything dramatic."

"What are the chances we can do that?"

"Very good."

While Mabel's optimism usually had a way of soothing Ray's fears, it wasn't the case this time. His gut twisted as he mulled over the little hints and sightings he hadn't shared with her. She wouldn't understand. Intuition. Hadn't that been her excuse last time for keeping him out of the loop?

For a few minutes, there was silence as Mabel and Ray continued to eat. He finally broke the silence with a conversation that took Mabel by surprise.

"When Miranda decided she wanted a divorce, I can honestly say I was blindsided." Ray started. His smile was self-depreciating. "Pretty stupid, huh? I wanted to be a detective, but I never even saw the signs that my wife was cheating on me. Everything happened so fast. I barely even had time to find a lawyer."

Mabel was pretty sure her mouth was hanging open. Ray never voluntarily talked about his divorce. The few things she knew about it were cursory, what she could glean from dropped hints and conversations.

"That lawyer wasn't even worth the money I scrounged up to pay him. His arguments were half-assed at best, so it didn't even surprise me when I lost custody of Nina."

Ray could feel Mabel's compassion and confusion, but he continued. He had a point here.

"Nina's fifth birthday was two weeks ago. I went to the public park in San Jose – where Miranda lives now with her new husband – to see her at her party. Luckily Nina recognized me and Miranda didn't call the police on me. I was able to give her a hug, a kiss, and a birthday present. Then I left."

He turned his eyes from where he'd been staring out the window to meet Mabel's steady gaze.

"Tell me more about your brother." His voice was even, though his throat felt constricted just thinking about his tiny little girl in his arms, her grip tight around his neck.

A slanted smile curved Mabel's lips, "So that's what you were getting to."

"It's only fair."

"It's not really fair that you volunteered that information without my asking. You set me up."

"That was the point." Ray shrugged, "I don't want to interrogate you, Mabel, I just want to know more. You've been off your game as of late. Maybe talking about it will help."

Mabel sighed and smiled, no bitterness this time. "I guess you're right." She leaned back as she began. "You already know the stuff about his disappearance, so the only thing left to tell, really, is how big of a doofus he was."

Ray looked like he wanted to interrupt, but she continued without letting him.

"Dipper kept records of everything. He had these notebooks he filled with notes for win/loss records of games we played together, catalogs of different ciphers, conspiracy theories he came up with, secret societies he wanted to investigate, revenge plots. Dip was kinda paranoid and socially inept." Mabel admitted.

"Sounds like it." Ray muttered.

"I might have been the only person he trusted completely, though he did have this weird thing with Pacifica one time at this fancy party." Mabel's thoughts wandered off, but she quickly snapped back to attention, "We were the Mystery Twins. Maybe we didn't do everything together, but we did almost everything together."

"You two were pretty close?"

"Not always. Our parents kind of treated us like only children. We had separate rooms. We never had to share anything. We had vastly different interests. Sure, we got along when we were kids, but it wasn't until we spent that first summer together in Gravity Falls that we grew close. It made us inseparable. We'd go on adventures in the woods whenever he wanted to 'investigate' something. Which was a good, because I probably saved his life, like, on a daily basis, he was such a wimp. People made fun of him a lot, but he didn't like it when I defended him. He wanted to earn people's respect for himself. He wanted to know things. And he wanted to be right."

Ray thought about whether or not such a desire was healthy, but Mabel was already talking again.

"Dipper might have been a doofus, but he was a smart, clever, and resourceful doofus. That's probably why it took so long for me to believe that he was gone. That he wasn't coming back. That he wouldn't show up and ask me why I was reading his mystery novels on the floor in his room."

A valid line of reasoning in Ray's opinion.

"I think I would have liked to meet him." Ray said when Mabel looked like she was done talking about it.

Mabel shifted, suddenly uncomfortable, "Well the point is moot now."

She'd like to think that Dipper could be friends with her partner, but her brother had been habitually crippled by his inability to trust people. She wouldn't place any bets on their camaraderie. Heck, Grunkle Stan would probably bet against him. Especially after Dipper's weirdness during the weeks leading up to his disappearance. Both she and Grunkle Stan had never mentioned it to either her parents or the police. No one would believe them anyway.

There was no way someone's shadow could be a triangle.

"Let's go tell Robbie that this drug case is getting wrapped up," Mabel announced, pulling money from her pocket to pay the check, "Maybe Chris needs some help negotiating an agreement."

Ray followed after his partner, the unease curling in his stomach still palpable.

And more is revealed. What do you think? As usual, StarfleetRambo was here first: (starfleetrambo tumblr com/post/106418864048/to-the-center-of-the-city-where-all-roads)