Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan/Case Closed.

Pairing: KaitoxShinichi

Chapter Rating: T

Collection Summary: No matter where or what they are, their lives are always entwined. KaiShin stories in fantasy settings.

Chapter Summary: Shinichi is the new detective at the magical crimes division, and Kaito is the demon he's made a contract with to help him on his cases. Their successes are drawing a lot of attention—perhaps too much.

A Demon's Jealousy

[Demon Verse]

Part 6

"You mean that the case you four were working on which involves someone who was stealing the souls of young women involved the same kind of pendants we found in Takaharu's workroom?" Amuro frowned. "This is a good find for you then. Now you know your culprit."

"That's not the problem," Shinichi said. "The thing is, we don't know where the girls' souls were taken. And with Takaharu in a coma, he can't tell us. We're preserving the victims as best we can, but we need to find those souls and get them back as soon as possible if we want to make sure we can save everyone."

"Well, my team has conducted a thorough examination of the family's estate. What would you put a soul in? Like a…jar or something? A special room?"

"It could be anything," Shinichi admitted. "In the past, people tried putting souls into dolls to give them life or so that they could speak to the souls' owners that way, so that's one possibility. Human shaped dolls would hold the souls better as they would resemble the original bodies."

"We didn't find any dolls."

"Oh. Well, other containers would work too if you put the right spells on them. Glass or crystal containers would work the best."

"Plenty of those," Amuro said, tapping on the clipboard he'd been perusing where he had a stack of papers listing the various items that had been found in the estate. "I'll have them sorted out and brought here so you can examine them."

"Great," Heiji grumbled. "More work."

"If you can finish deciphering his codes, you might be able to read the labels for us. That would shorten the time we need greatly."

"Yeah, yeah. I've got about a third of the way done, I think. I'll get right back to it once we're done here."

"Here's the thing though," Amuro said seriously. "Takaharu was supposed to deliver these to that occult group he's been working with."

"How do you know that?" asked Sera.

"One of their members came to the estate in disguise while we were searching the place. He claimed he was a friend of Takaharu's and that he was supposed to be picking up a chest of jewelry from Takaharu for his sister. We told him everything in the house was still considered evidence, so he couldn't take anything, and he left."

"Did you follow him?" asked Sera.

"Of course. Though we believe the man suspected that he was being tailed. We tracked him to an area near Red Wind Park before he gave us the slip."

The girl nodded. "Well, at least it's somewhere to start."

"We'll keep you updated on what we find."

"Thank you," Shinichi said. "About the souls though. Would it be possible for Kaito and me to go to the estate this afternoon? There are spells we can use to help us check of the stolen souls are there. That way, you won't have to have everything shipped here to the office. It would be safer too since we wouldn't want to damage any of the souls by accident."

"Damage?" The blond man's eyebrows rose. "I always thought souls didn't have any physical substance. Can they be damaged just like that?"

"Souls without bodies are delicate," Kaito interjected. "They might not be exactly physical, but they do have form in energy. Disrupting the patterns of that energy form can cause lasting damage to the person's soul. Handle a soul incorrectly and you could end up erasing someone's memories or even damaging a person's ability to function. Such injuries do heal over time, but it can take years—sometimes lifetimes. Some three hundred years ago, there was a wizard who removed souls from people's bodies then damaged them on purpose in a way that would render the person emotionless before he put those souls back into their bodies. He created an army of soldiers who had no emotions and no thoughts. They just killed and killed, and when they ran out of enemies, they killed each other then themselves. In the end, not a single person in that kingdom survived. The wizard himself was one of the first to die. That was the first and last time anyone tried such an experiment."

There was a stunned silence. All the humans in the room had turned a little green in the face at the disturbing story.

Eventually Hattori broke the silence with a cough. "And on that incredibly awful note, I say let's get back to work. I'll go with you guys to the estate. I think I've figured out enough of these codes to read a few labels."

"I'm going to go see if I can learn more about this guy's contacts," Sera said, rising to her feet. "See if I can figure out what they want with the souls. It's been bugging me."

"Me too," Shinichi admitted. "But finding the souls is the most important thing we need to do right now. We don't knowhow much longer the preservation spells we've been using will keep those girls alive. They need their souls returned."

Amuro frowned. "Well, forensics hasn't finished going over everything yet, but I assume you two can do your work without disturbing anything. I'll take you over there myself right now, if you have the time."

Shinichi glanced at Kaito, who shrugged. Then the detective nodded. "Now would be perfect."

The drive from the police station to the Takaharu estate was not a short one. Not knowing what else to talk about, Shinichi asked Amuro if he could share more information about the cult Takaharu had been working with.

"They're a strange lot," he explained after some thought. "We think they were doing immortality research, which I assume you know is illegal if they were actually conducting experiments. But we never found any proof that they weren't just discussing theories, so nothing came of that. It wasn't until recently that they started behaving suspiciously."

"Immortality research?" Shinichi echoed. His thoughts drifted back to the diagrams he had been studying, and a sudden chill raced up his spine.

Sensing his unease, Kaito leaned over to murmur into his ear. "What is it?"

But the detective shook his head. "Just a thought. We'll talk about it later."

-0-

The estate hadn't changed much since the night of the party.

Standing in the middle of the room that had once been Takaharu's workroom, Shinichi closed his eyes and held his arms out to his sides, palms up. There, he let his mind calm and his other senses sharpen as he envisioned the spell he needed. Detection and tracking spells were something of a specialty of his, but the estate was large. There was no way he'd be able to cover the entire area with one casting. He was just thinking that he was going to have to get a map of the house and draw up a search plan when he felt Kaito's hands come to rest on his shoulders. The demon's mind touched his own. A moment later, the demon's raw, wild energy flowed into him, pulsing through his body before expanding outward to follow the spell network Shinichi had laid out in his mind. The sudden influx of power pushed the radius of the search spell outwards. The ensuing deluge of information would have overwhelmed Shinichi if it weren't for Kaito's support. As it was, it took all of Shinichi's powers of concentration to keep the spell running and sort through the feedback it was bringing him.

When it was finished, he staggered, head spinning. Kaito caught him, helping him to sit down with his back against the wall.

"Sorry. Was that too much?"

"It's okay," Shinichi gasped out, eyes closed against the disorientation. "It was better to do it all at once. Less chance that we'd miss something."

"I had the same thought. Don't try to move yet," he added, placing a hand on Shinichi's shoulder to keep him where he was. "Your body needs time to recover. Take deep breaths."

Shinichi did as he was instructed, inhaling deeply and slowly letting the air out again once, twice, then three times. With each slow exhale, he could feel some of the tension from the casting leaving his body, and his mind too would become a tiny bit more clear.

Shinichi leaned his head back against the wall and opened his eyes, gaze turning to Kaito.

"They're not here, are they?" he asked.

Kaito shook his head. "Not a single loose soul anywhere on these grounds. They must be being kept somewhere else."

Shinichi grimaced.

"Those diagrams," he murmured. "Being back here and seeing the structure of the house and the way they arranged everything, their magic circles, the furnishings… I think I'm starting to understand it."

"You are?" Intrigued, Kaito leaned forward. "So what do you think it is?"

"I think…" Shinichi began, gaze growing distant as though he was looking back into another time. "I think—and this is just a guess—that he might have been trying to make himself into something like a demon."

Kaito started to laugh then stopped. "You're serious."

"I was thinking about it, and I think he was trying to summon the essence of other people's souls—the part that holds them together and makes them eternal—into himself. Fuse himself with the life energy and knowledge he stripped from those souls. If he'd been able to funnel all that into a single being and made it meld, he'd have become something more…well, just more."

"If that is what he was trying to do then he was headed for an epic failure," Kaito replied with a derisive snort. "There's no way a spell like that could help a human become anything other than a mess—albeit a long-lived kind of mess, I guess. He's better off in his coma."

"Humans have done a lot of stupid things in the pursuit of longevity and power."

"Can't argue with that. I must admit, it's something I've never quite understood about humans. I can see how a long life can be attractive if it gives you more time with the people you want to spend time with and to pursue your dreams, but what's the point in pursuing a long life just for the sake of having a long life? It seems rather pointless. Yet I've seen countless humans throw away everything—friends, family, worldly possessions, opportunities, even happiness—to do just that."

"I think most people who search for immortality aren't so much interested in living as they are in not actually dying," Shinichi replied. "Fear is a powerful motivation, and it's all the more dangerous because it's a kind of motivation that easily overwhelms reason, leading people to do things that a rational mind would consider stupid."

Kaito nodded slowly. Put that way, it did make more sense.

"You know," the detective said quietly. "I wonder sometimes if that's another reason why so many people don't like demons. They look at your people and feel like your people have everything that we humans don't."

"So they feel inferior."

Shinichi shrugged. "Some people probably do, though they may not admit it even to themselves."

"Believe it or not, I'd say some demons are the same. I suppose it's like that human saying. The grass is always greener on the other side."

Shinichi raised an eyebrow in surprise. "I thought most demons thought of humans as inferior life forms."

"That is the general consensus among my kind, yes. But there are things that come naturally to humans that we have to struggle for."

"Really?" Intrigued, Shinichi opened his eyes and turned his head so that he could see Kaito's face. "Like what?"

Kaito caught his gaze and held it as he reached out to place a gentle hand over Shinichi's heart. "You dream."

Shinichi blinked, puzzled. "Dream…?"

"Indeed. You have dreams—things you want and strive for. Things that make you feel fulfilled."

"Don't you have those kinds of things too?"

"I do now, but that's because I learned. My people have power because that is the essence of what we are. In some ways, I suppose it is all we are. We exist. And that's it. We have no real needs, and so we care for nothing, and when you care for nothing, you have no dreams. But without dreams, there is also no real happiness. Or at least that's how I've come to see it. When we come to your world and take on the forms of mortal creatures, we begin to learn what some of that feels like, but it's a slow process. We begin to learn to amuse ourselves or to indulge in more carnal pleasures. But actual caring? It took me centuries to learn what it meant to care for something. And I was only able to learn at all by watching your people. It's just not something that comes easily to us."

"That's…kind of sad," Shinichi murmured, looking down.

Smiling fondly at his detective, Kaito scooted closer and slid an arm around Shinichi's waist. "I suppose it would seem so from your perspective, but don't let it bother you too much. Like I said, most demons don't care one way or another."

Shinichi closed his eyes and rested his head on Kaito's shoulder. He supposed he could understand what Kaito meant, but it made him wonder… Did Kaito ever regret learning to care? After all, though it might be true that you couldn't be happy if you didn't care about anything, you couldn't be sad without caring either. His chest clenched, and he curled closer to Kaito, the question teetering on the tip of his tongue. But he just couldn't quite bring himself to ask it.

-To be Continued-