MIAKODA


Miakoda was probably being a little optimistic when she thought that that would be the last she'd see of the Special Agents. The Professor had fallen back into her routine of getting up, get dressed, give her lecture, food, bed, repeat, adding a run in there if she felt like it when Special Agent Johnson showed up at her house.

"Special Agent Johnson?" Miakoda glanced over to see the car – which was a very pretty one at that – was empty.

"Yeah, hey again." He gave her a smile and she cocked her head to the side.

"Can I help you with anything?" The scent of Mrs Wilkens, her next-door neighbour, floating into her senses and the professor glanced to her right. "You might want to come in. Mrs Wilkens is kind of a gossip. And this town already has enough drama with the murders and stuff."

"That's what I want to talk about actually." Dean followed her into the kitchen, where she waved for him to sit down at the faux marble worktop.

"Certainly, tea or coffee?"

"Coffee, sugar and a bit of milk." Nodding, Miakoda went about making his coffee before the two moved to the 'library'

"What's up?"

Dean straightened, "Okay so first, I would just like to note that we went to your office first but they said you didn't do hours and gave us your address."

She let out a laugh, taking a sip of her tea, "I gathered that."

"What's the feel of witches 'round this town?" he said bluntly and Miakoda blinked, slightly surprised at the question.

"This is Massachusetts, Special Agent Johnson," She got up and grabbed a few books of Salem that she had, "Witches have been the subject of paranoia in this state since the Puritans came in the 17th century."

"But this town isn't Salem." He pointed out and Miakoda nodded slightly.

"True, but the paranoia spread after the calls of witchcraft were first heard in Salem. Cambridge, though full with scholars, is also filled with people who grew up with the stories of Witches coming to take bad children in the night."

"Why aren't you?" Dean noticed she was calmer than he expected when he spoke of the witches.

"Moved here permanently when I graduated from my undergraduate. I also grew up with worse things that a witch to keep us children in line." A melancholic smile pulled up onto her face when she remembered the stories her Grandfather told her brothers and sisters about the Red Woman, an orgress who dismembers and then, if she so inclined, eats people.

"I know what that's like." There was something to his scent that Miakoda couldn't place that smelt dark.

"Besides," she shrugged, "I'm a historian, it's part of the job description to sort out fact from fiction."

"Have you heard of any talk of witches around Cambridge?"

Miakoda thought about it. There was a rumour of one, not in Cambridge, but an hour or so from her, where Victoria was from. "Victoria joked about the Witch in her town, but she never told me her name."

There was a glint to his eyes and something certain to his scent now. "Did she ever tell you what the 'witch' looked like?"

Miakoda shook her head. "But she did say that she had an accent, said she was Bulgarian or somewhere like that." With a sigh, she continued, "You know some people, if someone is different, they're an outcast."

Dean, realising that the description matched the psychic from yesterday, drained the rest of his coffee and got up. "I think that about sums up what I wanted to just double check but if you need anything, just give me or my partner a ring."

She held out a hand, disregarding the lingering scent of gunpowder that lingered on his hands and shook when he grasped it. Dean's hand near swallowed hers as he noticed it. Professor Hart wasn't exactly a short woman, taller by a few inches, compared to the psychic, but still several shorter than him or Sam.

"Have a good rest of your day, Doctor." Special Agent Johnson smiled and Miakoda ushered him to the door.

"Well, I have essays to grade so…might provide me with a bit of entertainment. You too, Special Agent, I hope you find out what's going on."

Giving the Agent a wave as he left in his car, Miakoda smelt the oversweet scent of Mrs Wilkens and plastered on a grimace. "Hi, Mrs Wilkens."

"What was that fine young man coming to see you for, dearie?" she gave Miakoda a saccharine smile and Miakoda bit back the urge to hit the elderly lady.

"Oh, he and his partner had come to my lecture yesterday and needed some help with a case. That was because he had some further questions he wanted to follow up with. Nothing life-threatening, Mrs Wilkens, I can assure you of that. Could you excuse me, I have some essays to grade," lifting a hand over her shoulder, Miakoda vaguely pointed to the door behind her, "so, I'm just gonna go…do…that."

Giving the old lady a smile that felt slightly like a grimace, Miakoda slipped into her house and rested her head against the dark wood. With a sigh, the wolf made her way up to her room where her laptop was, and brought that, along with a bag of crisps, a crispy bacon and garlic dip and a big bottle of ice tea and sat in the garden, before beginning the long-ass task of grading essays.

After a while, she got bored with the quiet and therefore got her earphones, also nabbed her forgotten phone, and returned to listen to her music as she made notes on one Alex Harris's essay, correcting a little and putting a comment. She'd found that, both from experience as a student in both high school and university, she flourished in her writing when her teachers offered a bit of advice on how to make something sound better, so Miakoda had done that from the start of her teaching career and her students loved her for it, flourishing in their skills just like she had.

Through her music, Miakoda felt a buzz on the wooden armchair beside her and pulled a bud out before lifting her phone up to see a text from Dave, one of the photography lecturers at Tufts University.

Hey M, drinks?

Rolling her eyes, Miakoda simply sent him a picture of what she was doing, along with 'Unlike you D, I actually have work to do. ;D'

Well that sucks, see you on Monday.

See you.

Dave Knowles was an early 30 something who was a freelance photographer and semi-temporary photography lecturer at Tufts University. She'd met him when she was running, thankfully as a human, through the woods. He was trying to get a shot of a bluebird in the trees as she was jogging to Beyoncé singing about girls running the world. Unfortunately for him, Miakoda caught the shutter sound and had turned to see him pointing a camera at her. Dave had acted like a puppy, apologising but she'd noticed he hadn't deleted the photograph. They'd got talking, he began to smell weird, like the way people got if they liked someone, and hadn't relented, even after she'd blatantly said 'no'. Yes, he was into the Arts, but he felt too human for her. Like he was a bunny like he was prey and Miakoda didn't like picturing people like that.

Shaking her head, Miakoda absently felt the temperature had dropped as she read the rest of Alex's essay, marking him with a High Distinction with a happy smile. Mr Harris was a rather green young 21-year-old that lived and breathed history, though he seemed a lot more comfortable with the 20th-century stuff that she always did in the first week to ease her students into her rather heavy course, his confidence had grown with a little sculpting from her. The kid was weird, but when you find skeletons and forgotten civilisations fun, well…all historians were weird in some sense.

Deciding that, after she'd gotten through Mr Harris's essay and checking how many more she had to go through -which was about half, give or take one or two – Miakoda had had enough work done today to feel good about herself. Logging out of her professor's account, she moved inside before beginning dinner.

Humming along to her music, Miakoda began the process of making fajitas before she caught sight of the time and flicked on the news.

"…there has been progress on the serial murders not far from Cambridge, Massachusetts as the body of one Victoria van der Berg, aged twenty -seven, Harvard alumni and wife to one Ross van der Berg." They used a cutaway of a grieving Ross and Miakoda felt a little sick. Her stomach rolling, she switched off the cooked fajita mix on the stove and tucked everything away. Shutting the TV off, Miakoda made her way to her library, laptop in hand when she remembered something. Something Victoria had said just before she'd graduated.

"I'd went to Rose Quartz, this weird psychic place thing in my town, about an hour from here; I wanted to go to see if Ross and I could…work things out. There's a girl there, I forget her name, but she had an accent, like Russian but softer. You should try it."

Booting up Google, Miakoda typed in Rose Quartz Massachusetts and there were a few weird links before the website came up.

Want to seek the Truth in the Future?

Raising a sceptical eyebrow at the cheesy line on the backdrop of a starry sky, Miakoda hovered her cursor over 'Tarot and Palm Readings' before shaking her head, "Fuck it."

Clicking on it, she was brought to another screen, with different pictures of tarots, a brunette in a long skirt as a cloth-covered table with a hand hovering over them.

"Must be the reader." She murmured to herself as she scrolled down the page.

'Get your future and questions answered by the psychic Evdokiya Vankov at Rose Quartz Fortunes. It's up to you on how you portray what she says but you won't know what it holds until you come'

"That sounds cheesy…" Miakoda muttered to herself as she allowed herself to scan the page, taking in the information of what Evdokiya's cards could mean before on a whim she wrote down the address on a bright blue post-it, stuck it beside the trackpad and clicked off.

Her stomach growled, and Miakoda glanced at the clock on the laptop screen, 7:34 PM. With a sigh, Miakoda put the laptop down onto the coffee table and made her way into the kitchen where her food was and reheated the filling and got a plate. Piling three fajitas onto the plate, Miakoda made her way now into the living room when she sat back onto the sofa after snatching the remote off the table in front of her and flicking the DVR on and clicked on the latest episode of The Walking Dead she hadn't gotten to watch due to work and settled in for the night.

Shoving her foot into a boot, Miakoda hurriedly checked her bag and didn't see her laptop by the side of her bed or in it. Swearing the dark-haired woman realised she'd left it in the library last night and snatched her charger from the socket, shoved it in and rushed down the stairs to grab it and her car keys. Making a split decision, she also grabbed a juice from the fridge and an apple before hurrying out the door, apple jammed in her teeth as she unlocked the door to her black Jeep Wrangler. Throwing her stuff gently into the passenger seat, Miakoda turned the car on and tried to keep to a reasonable speed as she made her way to campus.

Hurrying into her office building, she nearly collided harshly with Professor Callahan, an older Law professor. "Whoa there, Miss Hart," he laughed slightly, a little patronising, holding his hands up to slow her down, "where's the fire?"

Not being able to hold back the flinch of the word 'fire', Miakoda immediately caught the slightly guilty shift of his scent. "Nowhere sir, I just thought I was late for my office hours to start, but it turns out, I have twenty minutes. If you could excuse me?"

Shuffling passed him, she made her way into her office and collapsed down into her seat with a shaky breath, scrubbing her face as Miakoda leant back in her seat. When it came to that time of the month, Miakoda always felt slightly restless in her skin and, as much as she wished to, hadn't gone on a run last night. Even though she was a supernatural creature, the murders had heightened the paranoia Cambridge already seemed to have to an almost stifling height.

Opening her laptop up, blue caught her eye and she spotted the post it for Rose Quartz. Keeping it, Miakoda stuck it down by one of her filing systems that were on her desk, leaving it at the back of her mind when there was a knock on the door.

"Professor?" Poking her head in, a blonde by the name of Sophie Clark, came in.

"Hey Sophie, what can I help you with?"

As her office hours went by like sand through an hourglass, the address to Rose Quartz didn't.