A/N: I would like to start this chapter off with a trigger warning. This chapter mentions suicide and hanging. Viewer discretion is advised.
She could sense them behind the door to the Hotel room. Sometimes, she could even hear their voices. Long ago, she learned that it was easier to hear the whispers and murmurs of the dead if she shut off one of her other five senses. So, she sat on the carpet of the fifth floor of the Oceanview Hotel with a makeshift blindfold over her eyes while shuffling the deck of tarot cards in her hands. She'd been sitting there for over an hour now, and yet still it seemed that the ghosts of the three victims were reluctant to speak to her. Though, she couldn't exactly blame them. The shock of being killed in such a way- at the hands of someone they no doubt dearly trusted- must have been tremendously devastating. She didn't even want to think about how those poor children must have felt after their young lives were swept out from under them so suddenly during a family holiday.
No, she had to shake away those thoughts. She couldn't let her emotions cloud and disturb her energy if she wanted to get any information from these ghosts. To be honest, she had never had such a hard time contacting the dead before- usually, she could simply speak and they would speak back. However, this situation was much different. She'd never actually spoken to a Spirit immediately after their death before. Winona could sense their melancholic aura from behind the taped-off door, and it made her feel as though her very presence there was inappropriate. It felt as if she was impeding on something. Winona also felt as though she had no choice, and she had honestly grown quite bored of waiting. So, she cleared her throat to speak.
"You know, I know how frustrating it is to feel stuck and alone. It's distressing and after a while, it gets dreadfully boring. I've only been here for a week, and let me tell you- you do not want to be stuck here for all eternity. This isn't the afterlife that you, nor your daughters deserve." Winona sat the tarot cards down onto the carpet. "I can help bring you somewhere in the Aether where you can exist in eternal bliss- but we can't do that unless we sever all the ties that keep you bound here. We'll have to get your family the answers they deserve. I'm sure they're terribly devastated after what's happened to you."
The whispering halted after she spoke, and the silence that followed was nearly deafening. She felt as though she had to accept that the Spirits would not talk to her verbally. But that was okay, at least she had their attention. Winona decided that she should take the opportunity and begin.
She spread out the cards on the ground in a rainbow shape and hovered her hands over them. Using nothing but her intuition, she allowed her right hand to explore the cards, touching and tapping them gently. She knew when she came about the right card when she got a tingling feeling in her fingertips, so she flipped up the card without a second thought. She then used her left hand to parade the spread until she found a second card. Winona repeated this process until four cards sat in front of her. She would have continued, but she felt a little tired after using so much of her energy and concentration. So, content with her results, she began to remove the blindfold when she was suddenly grabbed by the forearm.
"Ma'am, you are not supposed to be here! This is an active crime scene!" The stockings that she had tied around her head that acted as her blindfold were suddenly snatched away, and she now face to face with the same police officer who had caught her trying to sneak up to the fifth floor just a couple of hours earlier. "I was being nice when I just gave you a warning before," The Officer continued, "I should have you cited for trespassing!"
Winona winced under his tight grip around her arm, "O-Okay! Okay, I-I'll just leave, just let me go please." She tried to pull herself out of his grasp, but the officer kept her arm in a firm squeeze.
"No, I'm escorting you out of the building ma'am, you do not belong here."
The Officer dragged her all the way to the elevator at the end of the hallway and pressed the button on the wall as Winona resisted at his side. She was flustered and honestly kind of scared. She wasn't worried about what the police might do to her- she was actually more concerned about how she was going to explain to Klaus that she got trespassed from the building. Not only would he be upset that she decided to investigate the sixteenth murder on her own, but she was willing to bet that he'd be furious with her after coming back to the hotel room only to find her gone- even if it was against her will. However, with a nervous glance at the Officer's firearm, she decided it would be best to comply with the orders she was being given.
Lucky for her, that wasn't how this situation would play out at all. As the metal elevator doors swung open, she was met with two confused, yet familiar faces. Espio and Vector stood inside of the elevator, their widened eyes glancing from the Officer to her, then to the Officer again. She mouthed the word 'help' at them while the policeman wasn't looking- so Espio looked up to Vector, who promptly swung into action.
"Good afternoon, detectives." The Officer greeted unenthusiastically.
"Excuse me, what in the hell do you think you're doin'?" Vector put his hands on his hips, "First you give us trouble at the door yesterday, now you're tryin' to arrest our colleague? What's next, you gonna arrest us too?"
The Officer furrowed his brow, "Colleague?" He looked at Winona, who swiped her hand from his grasp, "How was I supposed to know? I've never seen you guys work with her once in my life-"
"Nobody else has clearance to get up here, wise guy." Said Vector, ushering Winona back into the hallway, "Can't believe how unprofessional cops can be these days." He scoffed and shook his head. Espio stood silently at the Crocodile's side with a smug smirk, eyeing the officer with his arms crossed. The Officer swore at the two detectives under his breath as the elevator doors closed and carried him to the first floor. Meanwhile, with a relieved sigh, Winona turned to Espio and Vector.
"Thank you," She put a hand to her anxious racing heart and laughed nervously, "I could've just gotten into quite the pickle, huh?"
"What are you doing here?" Espio asked, his smile fading, "You're not supposed to be up here, are you aware of the entire family that was murdered on this floor?"
Winona corrected her posture, "I am, actually. Although, I've actually been here for a week now- The murder is why I'm on this floor though." She turned to the tarot cards in front of the door which had been thrown about the hallway haphazardly during her scuffle with the Officer and sighed, "Well, that's fantastic." She scurried over and bent to pick up the cards while the two detectives stood by, watching her curiously.
She was so weird. He couldn't deny that. Not that it was a bad thing- but he found that everything she did was just so… unpredictable. She was crouched near the floor, muttering to herself as she flipped the cards around. She looked at them with deep consideration, meticulously arranging them into a shape. Espio and Vector peered over her shoulder with their brows raised. The Ninja cleared his throat.
"Um, Winona, you didn't exactly answer my question-"
She spun her head toward him, "-Huh? Oh!" She laughed and held her head in her hand, "I'm sorry, I'm in my own little world here. I'm speaking to the dead people. The lady and her two children." She said this casually as she turned back to her spread on the floor and continued to arrange the cards around until she made a sudden expression of realization and her face flushed red "Oh, I understand- If you two are here you must be assigned to this case! Let me get out of your way-"
Vector held up a hand and chuckled, "No, actually I'm quite interested in what they might be sayin', can you tell us?"
Espio glanced at his partner disapprovingly. Even if they did get some valuable information from her this way, was it really okay to use clues that they gathered from the Dead to aid in their case? He thought about it for a moment- he supposed it couldn't necessarily hurt so long as whatever the Spirits told her were accurate. Though, they might get even more odd looks from law enforcement for relying on a Spiritualist- but that didn't really matter if they actually managed to solve this case with her help. Espio then knew exactly what was going through Vector's mind. The Crocodile had a thoughtful grin on his face.
Winona looked up at Vector as if she hadn't expected him to be interested in her little endeavor at all. She smiled meekly and nodded. "Erm, well," She cleared her throat and pointed to the first card which depicted the image of a heart with three swords piercing it, "This entire event was triggered by something that caused significant heartbreak. I get the feeling that your suspect wasn't thoroughly possessed until the actual event took place- this is what we call 'oppression'- which is the process of becoming possessed by an entity." She spoke clearly with articulation, yet didn't look at them at all as if their presence made her nervous. Espio took her words into consideration, thinking about the picture they had found in the wife's wallet. "I suspect… infidelity." She nodded, "Yes, his wife had an affair. That's what triggered him. He must have found out while they were staying here, and in his moment of weakness, the Demon decided to strike and take over."
"You can tell all of that from just that one card?" Espio asked.
The Ninja wasn't completely foreign to tarot cards. Amy often used them to tell fortunes, usually in an effort to see if she and Sonic would ever date- but he didn't know that they could be used to contact the dead. Winona seemed to know what she was doing, and after seeing what she was capable of after Charmy's exorcism, he trusted her expertise completely. Even if she was a little clumsy about it.
Winona looked at him unenthused as if she felt insulted, "Yes, is that a problem, Chameleon? Are you skeptical?"
Vector shook his head, "No not at all, we're just-"
"-Impressed." Espio replied, "Continue, please."
He received an odd, yet surprised look from his partner, which he ignored. Winona looked away again and cleared her throat, picking up the second card. She held the upside-down image of the Queen of Wands in her hand, which depicted a woman sitting upon a throne with a sunflower scepter in her hand. Winona gave this card extra consideration, looking at it as if she were absorbing information from it- like a computer downloading data.
"He didn't immediately react upon hearing this news. In fact, the Demon allowed this man to entertain it with his sorrow. He festered for a while, feeding the demon with his pessimism. If you can recall, I told you in that forest- a Mortal Soul tastes better to a Demon after prolonged suffering." She shook her head and Espio ignored the shiver that shot down his spine as the thought of teal trees from the winding woods invaded his mind, "Anyways, the sunflower represents an object-"
"Perhaps a murder weapon?" Vector asked enthusiastically. Espio could tell that the Crocodile was enthralled by her explanation. His partner was listening with giddiness, tapping his foot excitedly.
"Perhaps." Winona replied, "Whatever it is, it's important. It's an object that contains a lot of sentimental value. Something that to him represented his wife's loyalty… something that she used to express her adoration for him. I also get the sense that it represented the longevity of their relationship." She bit her lip as she thought, "A container? Or a box? I'm not entirely sure. It's pretty hefty- say, how were they killed?"
The two detectives looked at each other with amazement in their eyes.
"Blunt force trauma," Vector muttered.
The corner of her mouth twitched upward before she turned to look at them, "Don't quote me, I cannot guarantee that this thing is your murder weapon, so please don't get your hopes up. All I know is that you should look for it." Espio nodded and wrote down everything she had told them into a notepad, flashing his eyes back up at her when he was finished, prompting her to continue. She cleared her throat, "The tower," She held up the card in front of their faces. The art on the card was indeed just that- a tower. It was tall and made of stone, and it was crumbling down into the people below it. "This is the event itself, not much to say about this one, honestly. It's just an unforeseen tragedy." She made a sad noise as she turned the card over. For a second, Espio noticed that she had become distracted or disturbed by something and had fallen silent.
Espio knew somehow that she was channeling those Spirits. It was something that he knew only his Clan's elders to be capable of. They never did it often- but Espio had been lucky enough to see it happen once during a festival that he attended as a child. Though, when his elders did it, it was much more aggressive and obvious- and perhaps even a little theatrical for the sake of the ritual. In his Clan, it was considered something that could only be done by Shinobi of the highest caliber. However, Winona did it very discreetly and naturally as if it was a sixth sense. To put it simply, Espio was astonished. Blown away, even. He might have even felt a bit of jealousy.
She continued after she noticed him staring, "The final card is somewhat enigmatic to me-" She lifted the fourth card up to their eye level. A man had been struck down onto the ground, impaled by ten swords in his back. "The Ten of Swords symbolic meaning is obvious at surface level, but there's something more here that isn't quite clear to me." She inspected it closely, "I feel as though this particular event has yet to happen. It'll be a severance. A permanent severance. I could make predictions but," She shook her head and clicked her tongue, "I'm not too great at that sort of thing, I'm afraid." When she was finished, she bent to continue picking up her cards with a relatively unbothered expression. The two dumbfounded detectives just sat and looked at her. When she looked back up at them, she looked a little uncomfortable.
"What?" She asked.
"How would you feel about joining a Detective Agency?" Asked Vector suddenly. Espio could practically see the dollar signs in his partner's eyes, and the Ninja could do nothing more than shake his head. Though, Espio certainly couldn't argue against Vector's offer to her. If he didn't know for certain that her words would come to fruition, he would maybe advise against making that decision so quickly. However, he had full confidence in her skills. She'd proven herself to them in more than one way already, and he had no reason to believe that she wasn't telling the truth.
Winona's mixed expression made it evident that she didn't quite know what to say. She looked around the hall as she contemplated, but after some consideration, she finally responded with a shake of her head. "No. I-I wish I could, but your priorities and my own do not align. Besides," she looked away in an attempt to hide the sad glint in her eye with a look of disinterest, "I'm not really supposed to leave here."
"Come on, Winona." Vector's attempt to make her reconsider came off rather pushy, and she shrank near the wall as the Crocodile begged, "We could totally help you handle your brother. What do you say? You scratch our back and we'll scratch yours! Or maybe, you could just come with us while we scope some places out-"
Espio held his partner back, "Vector, she said no. Let's respect her wishes. After all, she's already been a big help to us. Let's just take those pictures of the blood splatter like we originally planned and get going." The Crocodile sighed in disappointment. Before the two detectives proceeded into the crime scene for one last time, Espio turned to look at Winona.
"The offer still stands if you change your mind."
Winona was gone by the time they were finished, and so, they left for their secondary location- the family's home. It was your typical two-story residential with a white picket fence. It was located a city away, and it was an hour and a half ride to get there. Honestly, they hadn't expected to find anything at all. So, they planned to make their sweep through the home quick. As the sun began to set behind them, Vector threw a cigarette butt onto the driveway while he exited their vehicle, then stamped on it with his boot as they looked up at the house.
It was a little eerie knowing the context of what had happened to the family. Regardless of that, Vector pushed a key into the lock and opened the front door. They'd walked into a dark living room and nodded to each other when it was time to split up. Vector explored the downstairs area of the house, whereas Espio continued on upstairs toward the bedrooms. He felt a heaviness as he passed the Children's bedrooms, so, he proceeded straight into the Master Bedroom.
It was a little messy with an occasional sock or shirt strewn about the room, but other than that, everything was perfectly ordinary. Beside the bed, above a nightstand was a couple of shelves that held little nick-nacks and curiosities. Between a picture of the Wife and Husband on their wedding day and a tiny sculpture of a bird, there was a large gap of space as if something was missing from that spot on the shelf. Beyond that, there was nothing more that interested him, so he met up with Vector in the living room. The Crocodile looked frustrated.
"Well, nothing's here. This was a good ol' waste of time-"
"There's still the garage," Espio suggested, "We might as well look while we're here."
Vector groaned, "There's probably nothin' in that garage- but I guess you're right."
His partner followed him outside to the garage begrudgingly. Together, they reached down to the sliding garage door and lifted it up.
What they saw left them in awe.
"A permanent severance, huh?"
It was the body that Vector was referring to. It was hung from a beam on the garage ceiling, swinging still as if it had just happened moments before their arrival. Their suspect was dead, that much was certain. His face was purple and his body was red. It was a hard sight to look at, and so, Espio simply looked away. And, as he did, he noticed a little bloody trail. He followed it to a workbench, which he reached under.
And viola.
It was their murder weapon, alright. A little wooden jewelry box covered in dried, muddy-looking blood. Vector loomed over the Ninja's shoulder and smiled.
"It's almost too good to be true."
Espio turned the object over and weighed it in his hands. Yes, if it was held with one of the four corners facing outward, one could certainly take a life with it. Curious, the Ninja opened the box and was a little startled when a stack of papers fell out. Vector crouched and picked up one of the many handwritten notes, quickly scanning it with his eyes before looking up to Espio with his mouth wide open.
"Dude, these are all love letters- Look," The Crocodile bent and grabbed another note off of the floor, "This one is, like, twenty somethin' years old. Look!" Vector pushed the note into Espio's hands, "It's just like what Winona said- it's sentimental- it's about loyalty- It represents the longevity of their relationship over the span of twenty years, maybe even more!"
The Ninja didn't even know what to say. What Winona had described to them was so specific- it left him with no words. If that was what a Witch at the lowest level was capable of, he wondered what she could do if she reached her peak potential. He was in so much shellshock that he didn't even notice Vector reading the Wife's diary that they'd recovered from her luggage.
"Yep, sure enough." The Crocodile passed him the diary, "She was in fact cheating on him,"
Espio skimmed through the passage. It was just as Vector said- The Wife had written about her woes, feeling trapped in a marriage. Her happiness and needs went unfulfilled while the husband worked to keep a roof over their heads. So, she cracked. To put it in her own words, she "needed some excitement" in her "melancholic bore of a life". So, she sought comfort in the love of another man. Unknowingly sealing her fate at the hands of her angry, Demon-possessed husband. Ironically, the love letters that she wrote for him long ago would play the starring role in bringing her to her ultimate end.
The Ninja lowered his head and silently paid his respect to the dead.
It was another case closed.
Vector could not contain his excitement as they left in their car back to the Agency. He was nearly shouting in Espio's ear, going on about how crazy that entire experience was. But the Ninja was only half listening up until Vector nearly ran a red light.
"Vector, pay attention to the road!"
"-I'm sorry it's just-" The Crocodile slammed on the break and turned to face his partner, "We need to get that girl on our team."
"You heard her yourself, Vector, she has more pressing matters that she needs to have dealt with." Espio shrugged, "Perhaps she'll change her mind-"
"-No, we've got to make her change her mind." Vector hit the gas a little too hard once the stoplight turned green and narrowly bumped the curb as he turned on the intersection, "Imagine the money we could make-"
"We can't force her to do anything, Vector. She's got a lot on her plate. I won't allow you to pester her anymore or else she might never be willing to help us again in the first place. She has our card if she ever needs us."
Vector grumbled as he pulled into the alleyway behind their house. It was dark at that point, and before the Ninja headed up the stairs to turn in for the night, he figured it would be wise to grab the mail before he went in since they had neglected to do so on their way out earlier that day. However, as he opened the mailbox, he was surprised to see no ordinary mail. No bills, no advertisements- just a scroll. His mouth fell open.
It was a message from home.