Author's Notes, 2009: Greetings readers! This fic follows "All About Elizabeth", currently in progress. Since I finished this fic in 2005, then wrote the two stories that come before it, some details in this fic have changed. So I've rewritten it in a few spots, just to reflect that. There ARE minor spoilers for how AAE turns out, and I can't promise that a handful of things might change yet again before I finish that one at last... no plans, mind you, but who knows? However, this version is more current. Enjoy!
Prologue:
A match was struck. Sulphur and magnesium flared into a flame that quickly lit the wicks of a number of tall black candles. The slender white fingers holding the match shook it out and dropped it into an immaculate wastebasket, arranged the candles carefully one last time, then smoothed down the body of the flowing white robe that their avian owner was clad in.
She let out a nervous breath and turned to the feline behind her. Unlike her, he was dressed in hip casual wear: tweed pants, a red shirt with white stitching on the details, even the modern wing-tipped shoes. Despite the darkness of the room he was still wearing his sunglasses, which she had only seen him without once or twice before.
"You look ridiculous," she told him.
"Hey, I'm not the one wearin' a sheet, babes," he shot back, grinning around a toothpick. "'Sides, this is the height of fashion today."
She sighed. "I mean with the sunglasses. I can barely see in here. You don't need those right now, Richie."
His expression was indignant even through the tinted glass of the spectacles. "Like I said. Height of fashion."
"Fine," she grumbled, and crossed her arms tightly over her body. "Sorry. I'm just... tense." Truth was, she'd never felt so nervous in her life.
"S'natural, babes." She glared at him, and he corrected himself. "Sorry - Stella. It's natural. But you're gonna do great, trust me! You been practicin' all year - you're the one with the talk that's gonna raise this boogeyman, an' then I'm gonna talk to 'im an' ask all the questions. It works out right, we'll have a business goin' in less than a month."
Stella frowned. Somehow this just didn't seem right. She checked the candles and the pentagram on the floor - they looked just as they did in every book she'd read. Taking a deep breath, she nodded. "Okay... I guess you're right. Let's go."
"Gimme a minute, babes, I gotta hit the head." She grimaced as Richie left the room - he was so crude sometimes. Alone in the room, she shivered a little as the candles flickered and cast shadows that never stayed still on the wall.
Mediums weren't supposed to be scared. Even first-time mediums were supposed to radiate implacable calm. Evidently she was a pretty poor medium because she didn't feel like there was a calm bone in her body. What was she doing here?! Halloween night at nearly 2 am and she was up in the back room of her house raising the dead. Well, the spirits of the dead - okay, a spirit, but it was essentially the same thing. Richie had such faith in her - but considering Richie's general mental aptitude, she wasn't sure that meant much of anything.
When the hand came down on her shoulder, she shrieked.
"Whoa! Cool off, babes! You supposed to be so jumpy?"
She whirled on him. "You did that on PURPOSE," she said angrily, "and I think it's perfectly understandable that I be jumpy!"
"Okaaaay," Richie said doubtfully, leaning back against the wall. "Anyway - let's go, huh?"
Nodding, she breathed, "Right." Here goes nothing, she thought, and knew it was a lie.
It began with chanting, words from the book repeated over and over in a rhythm that was nearly musical. Her arms were held wide, as if to embrace the spirit world, but words in the chant protected her by confining those she summoned to the pentagram below. The pure white robe represented the purity of her self and of the chant, and she believed in it fervently as the flames on the candles flickered, grew higher, and began to bend by some unfelt wind.
They blazed up fiercely with a final verse of the chant.
A shadow rested in the confines of the pentagram, hovering a few inches above the floor, dark as night but without form or substance. Stella spoke the first verse of a new chant, and the spirit opened its eyes slowly and looked at them. The effect was chilling - two large, clear eyes within a mass of dark nothing. Stella felt her stomach freeze, but she held eye contact with the spirit and waited for Richie to address it.
Richie, however, had other ideas. "Oh, wow," he said in a frightened whisper from behind her. "It's - it's real, isn't it? Wow."
"It's real," she said quietly, and felt cold all over. Those eyes were glaring at her. "And I don't think it's happy. Do something, Richie."
"I..."
The spirit didn't move, didn't even blink, but she knew it did something, and a second later a candle fell over. Another followed, and a table skittered across the room, shrieking loudly in protest. "Richie! DO something!"
"I - I'm sorry, Stella!" he yelled, and ran out of the room. The spirit's eyes became stronger, and she heard Richie yell somewhere down the hall, then silence.
Something flew over her head. Oh, this wasn't going the way it was supposed to at all. Putting her anger at Richie's abandonment aside, and trying to quell her fear that something had happened to him, she searched her mind for what the book had said to do. She knelt and bowed her head. "O Spirit of the Unknown - Your humble servant begs you -"
Another candle fell. The spirit's intangible mass began to seep from the pentagram, and she knew she was out of time. Frantically, she tried a banishment spell. "I revoke your invitation to this plane! Begone!" she cried, but it did nothing. The mass continued to spread. Her heart in her throat, Stella let her fear overtake her. She stood and ran out of the room, and the walls reached for her as she went.
"RICHIE!!" she screamed as she fled down the hall, twice as long as it had been five minutes ago, and the floors curved beneath her. "RICHIE IF YOU'RE HERE YOU BETTER DO SOMETHIIIIING!" I'm going to kill him the next time I see him, she thought, unless of course we're already dead.
The banister of the stairs felt alive, snakelike, under her hand. She pounded down the steps as quickly as she could, feeling the unhappy spirit close on her heels and wondering how long she could keep ahead of it. The walls downstairs were like a mouth, a jaw, curving around her with a possessive hunger. Richie must have made it out - no sign of him, not even of a body.
She couldn't get to the door - tables flew at her, the walls bulged, and she felt herself getting dizzy. Have to keep my head... She dashed for the kitchen, grabbed a vase on her way there and swung at any object that flew at her. There was a back door - she'd try that...
It was a mistake to go into the kitchen. Utensils were flying through the air, and several embedded themselves in the wall as she came in. When she stepped to the side, she was raised into the air as easily as if she were a doll. Vertigo ensued as she was spun around, and finally she screamed, "I CAST YOU OUT!" and fell back to the ground.
The activity didn't stop, but she was encouraged by that response. Mentally she ran through any spell she knew that might end this and tried each of the most probable as she ran back into the living room, dimly aware that she was sobbing. She tripped over her robe, and the vase was wrenched out of her hands as she fell. "Oh, this can't be happening," she moaned, tears running down her face "This can't be happening!!"
She pulled herself to her feet, and the door was in front of her but moving farther away somehow, and she ran for it as the floor buckled beneath her. Finally, just as the boards dropped from below her, she jumped at it and found herself clinging to the doorknob. It wouldn't turn. "No," she sobbed, "No, no, no, no!" She let go. The drop to the floor was surprisingly minimal all of a sudden. She ran again without knowing where to.
She stopped in the centre of the living room, lightening flashing around her, and she didn't know her house anymore. Images were before her - people - she felt drugged with fear. Sobbing, turning about blindly, she screamed "DEMON BEGONE! I cast you OUT!"
But there was no response, not even a pause, and as the lightening drew closer to her, her feathers stood on edge; and then it hit, and she screamed and disappeared and had no thoughts for a very long time.
Upstairs, the spirit hovered, surrounded again by quiet. The candles went out. The mass pulled close together, concentrated in a corner, then faded.
The eyes closed. All was dark.
Chapter 1
The room was flooded with light, and dust motes suspended in the sunbeams were clearly outlined as they floated behind the bookshelf in the left corner.
A figure entered, his arms full of a stack of fabrics that towered so high they thoroughly blocked his vision. He tried peering around the side and promptly stumbled over something in the middle of the floor.
"Oh! Watch out for the rug, the edge of it tends to curl upwards!" the woman behind him said belatedly.
"Gotcha," he answered, and stared down between his feet to try and see whatever else might be on the floor before he tripped over again.
He walked into the table before he saw the legs, and let out a pained "Oof!"
"Launchpad! Oooh, that looked like it hurt, are you okay?" The woman rushed to his side, put down the much smaller stack of fabrics she was carrying, and took the ones his fingers were now curling into.
He gave a tense nod. "Sure," he managed, though it was choked. "I'm okay. Is this where ya wanted 'em, Beth?"
"Yeah... I'm sorry, I didn't know you couldn't see! You should have made me carry more!"
"What're you talkin' about? I'm fine," he argued ineffectually.
Beth sighed, looking at him sternly but somehow fondly, and smiled a little. "Too much of a gentleman, that's what you are," she said, and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "I can get you some ice to put on your leg if it still-"
"Nah, that's okay. I'm fine, really," he repeated, grinning. "It feels better now." She seemed appeased, and he looked about the bright little room they were standing in, taking it in. "Ya know, I think this room'll be nice for sewin'."
Brightening, Beth said, "Won't it? That's just what I thought last time I was in here to dust. I mean, I've got all these extra rooms, I already have a guest room, this one was just going to waste and I finally thought 'You know, I should move the sewing machine out of the basement and put it in here!' Eventually I can get one of those dress dummies and I'll really be able to make some nice things. It's so well-lit in here, too, don't you think? Although now that I look at those curtains maybe they're a little too blue. It kind of takes away from the overall cheer of the room..."
She wandered off to examine the curtains in a bit more detail, and Launchpad shrugged. The whole place looked fine to him, but... "Is it always chilly like this in here?"
"Yeah. That's the only downside. I don't come in often enough to know how it is year-round, but it might be one of those rooms with bad ventilation that's always hot in the summer and cold in the winter. I mean, it's the end of October, but it's not this cold any place else in the house..."
Launchpad shivered mildly. "Kind of a weird cold, don'tcha think?"
Shrugging, Beth joined him at the sewing table. "I don't know. But if it gets worse I won't be able to work in here."
"Well, hey, lemme know. It might be the heating, an' I'll see if I can fix it up, if ya want."
"That'd be great." She sighed, looking up at the ceiling and walls as though she could find a visible source of the temperature controls. "I hope it warms up just a little in here over the next few days. I really need to work on my costume for the Muddlefoots' party."
"Yeah. They give the greatest parties... You shoulda come last year."
She smiled. "Launchpad, I had just bought the house, I hadn't moved in yet, I barely knew anyone and I wasn't exactly a party animal type, you remember."
"Ya knew me. I went."
"Okay, okay, Mister Persuasion. I'm going this year, is that enough?"
He grinned. "Maybe. So whatcha gonna be?"
"Um..." Beth blushed and ran a finger over the sewing table as if checking it for dust. "I can't tell you. I'm not sure that I'll wear it yet."
Launchpad remained silent, but his interest was piqued. If she was blushing and not sure she'd wear it, he had a feeling it was something he really wanted to see.
"So how about you?" she asked in turn, her attention still on the sewing table; it looked as though she had actually found something to examine, because she'd lost her evasive tone of a moment before. "What's the 'in' costume for pilots this year?"
"Awww, well, I don't really know yet." He ducked his head a little bashfully when she lifted her head to look at him, eyes wide.
"You don't KNOW?" she said, almost incredulously. "But it's the 24th, Launchpad! The party is in like, four days!"
"Yeah, I know! I just don't have any ideas! I thought about goin' as a pilot but DW said that was kinda... what was it? Redundant."
From Beth's expression, she seemed to share the sentiment; but she smiled mildly. "You should ask Gosalyn. I bet she has more costume ideas than she can use in a lifetime."
"That's what I'm afraid of." He sighed, then grinned.
She backed toward the door, beckoning him a little. "C'mon downstairs, I think I have some iced tea left to use up." Nodding, he followed her down the hall, but paused at the top of the stairs with his hand flat against the wall. Halfway down the steps, Beth turned to look back up at him. "What's the matter?"
He frowned. "The wall. It's awful warm."
"How do you mean?" she asked, looking puzzled, so he motioned for her to come up and put her hand next to his.
"You probably do have a heating problem in the house," he said. "I'll take a look at it for ya."
She left her hand on the wall, a crease in her forehead. "I never noticed that before. Weird. It wasn't like this last winter..."
"Might be recent."
Looking up at him at last, she shrugged. "I can just call someone," she said, making her way down the stairs again, and he followed.
"I wouldn't letcha do that! More money than it's worth."
"But I don't want to trouble-"
Launchpad stopped her. "It's no trouble."
"Well then," she said matter-of-factly as they reached the kitchen, "I'm just gonna have to pay you back somehow."
"Oh?"
"Mm-hmm," she murmured, her voice sing-song. "In some way you'll really liiiiiike."
"Um... peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?" he guessed.
She smiled and tilted her head, the very picture of cuteness, and his chest seemed to do a funny little twinge. "Yep!" She handed him a glass of iced tea, then took her own over to the table. "I'd make something else but you know how I am at cooking..."
"Hey, no problemo," he said dismissively. "It'll be worth it just to see ya in your Halloween costume."
Beth blushed a bright crimson and put a hand over her face, smirking. "You don't even know what it IS."
That was all the confirmation he needed; he really wanted to see this costume. "That's the point," he said, winking, and Beth smacked him lightly on the arm before turning her attention to stirring her iced tea. She was still blushing. He considered her, taking a moment to watch her while her gaze was elsewhere; things had changed between them, and he still wasn't entirely sure just how much, but he thought that it was mostly good.
Beth had been changing a lot, herself. She was seeing a therapist, and she talked about it a lot. Some of it was kind of personal, but a lot of it was actually really interesting - things he'd never thought to think of, and some things about her that he'd never known, like that she'd worked at a library in Duckburg during the same time that he'd been working for Mr. McDee. Mostly though she just sort of used him as a sounding board, and lately the phrase "my therapist said..." had been coming up a lot less and was replaced by "I was thinking..." and "what if I...?"
He'd worried, at first, that she was going to totally reinvent herself and end up as someone completely different from the woman he knew and loved. But Beth was Beth, and it seemed like even if she wasn't particularly happy about that fact, it was still true. He had tried to get her to realize that she didn't need to be someone else, she just needed to learn to like who she was; he needn't have bothered to try, because she reached that conclusion on her own a few weeks after returning home from her extended stay at her parents'.
He hadn't realized at first that it was all about more than just DW telling her flat-out he wasn't interested. Apparently there was a lot more to it than that, a whole lifetime she'd never told him about, or anyone else for that matter. Stuff with her parents, stuff with old friends - she had trust issues, she kept expecting that everyone was going to leave her. Once again, he'd had a hint of that when she'd finally talked to him about his feelings for her - there was an awful lot of emphasis on losing his friendship, which seemed weird, because as far as Launchpad was concerned being in a relationship with Beth would be like friendship times ten. But you couldn't push Beth; you couldn't just say "I would never leave you," you had to show her or something.
And so, here they were. Two months since DW had rejected her, a couple weeks less since she'd (gently and sweetly) rejected Launchpad herself, and he knew more about her than he had learned in the whole year before that. Launchpad, for his part, was quietly courting her. He didn't think she knew. Along with her statement "I don't love you like that" had come an unspoken need to show him how much she did care for him; so after a brief period of awkwardness, during which he'd learned not to mention his feelings for her unless she brought them up (which she never did), they'd resumed their friendship. Once they were comfortably spending time together a few times a week, he'd gradually upped the time to nearly every day, a couple of hours at least.
The upshot of all of this was that they were very nearly dating, but Beth didn't realize it at all. He took her out - to movies, to restaurants - mostly to keep her busy and make sure she didn't just isolate herself in her house; he bought her things, books and stuff, every so often. Mainly, he listened, because she needed someone to listen now, and because he was interested. Although nothing had happened between them in the weeks that had gone by, she touched him an awful lot more than she had before: leaning on him, rubbing his shoulders, and from time to time even holding his hand (which, inexplicably for such a minor contact, felt amazing). She grew uncomfortable if he so much as looked at her like he found her attractive, but at the same time she'd developed a manner of teasing him from time to time that bordered on flirtatious.
It was confusing. It was also really, really great.
She shifted, and he quickly looked away; if he was caught staring, she was likely to go all introverted again, and he wanted to avoid that.
But her demeanour changed, regardless. She sighed and straightened up a bit. "Hey... um, is, um... Is Morgana going to be at the party this weekend? 'Cause I, I know the Muddlefoots know her and all and it would just... make sense I guess, and um... I just want to know, in advance..." This was certainly much more like the Beth of old, as she was now even picking at the tablecloth with trembling fingers.
"Uh, I dunno," he said thoughtfully. "DW said she was invited, but he doesn't know yet if she's comin'."
"Do you think she would?"
He shrugged. "I dunno. There's probably some kinda witch thing goin' on about now... I mean, it's nearly Halloween, she's probably got somethin' to do. She's too busy to see DW half the time he asks her out." Beth sighed heavily, and he wished he could take that last sentence back; sworn off of love or not, the subject of Darkwing and his lovelife was still a touchy one with Beth. "Uh, she probably won't show up," he finished weakly.
"I guess I seem like a total jerk," Beth said quietly. Launchpad reassured her that it wasn't the case, but she still looked unhappy. "I don't have any reason in the world not to like her, and I don't not like her, you know? I just... I'm just not really comfortable around her. That's all."
"Hey, I gotcha. Don't worry about it. You'll get used to her... I did."
Beth looked at him, trying to convey somehow that that wasn't what she meant, but gave up.
A little while later, she was walking Launchpad to the door when a very distinct *thump* was heard from upstairs. Both looked upwards momentarily, then at each other. Beth shrugged. "It's always something."
"Well, lemme know about havin' the heating checked, okay?"
"Sure," she said, and they stood together for about half a minute, in silence, before she smiled awkwardly. "Um... see ya?"
"Oh, right. Sorry." He chuckled nervously, gave her a little wave, and set off down her sidewalk. She watched from the door for a moment before shutting it behind him. Then she headed upstairs to figure out what had made the noise.
It hadn't sounded too heavy, so there probably wasn't anything damaged, thankfully. She checked in each room as she went down the hall, finding nothing out of place at first glance; by the time she reached the end of the hallway, before peering into the new sewing room, she had very nearly convinced herself that she was going to have to either look much more closely in each room or simply let the matter go.
But as it turned out, it was the sewing room that had been the source of the noise. Several of the fabrics on the top of the higher stack had fallen, as one, to the ground. The remainder weren't the least bit tilted in their pile.
Odd, she thought. Despite the chill in the room, there was no draft or an open window, so they couldn't have blown over. And the pile seemed to be quite level, so they shouldn't have tipped off. Oh well - maybe they were just overbalanced when she'd put them down. She sighed, shaking her head, and fingered the white fabric that would go into her costume for a moment before stooping to pick up the other sheets, refolding them, and replacing them evenly in a new stack on the table.
Satisfied, she gave them a small pat, and was just on her way out the door when she heard a floppy *thud*, followed almost instantly by a second. After a brief pause, she turned back to find that - sure enough - they'd fallen again. This time, more had fallen from the taller stack, and the entire new stack she'd set up was now on the floor.
With an aggravated sigh, she reentered the room and bent to pick them up again - but stopped. Something seemed... odd... She shivered as if a breeze had gone through the room, and suddenly felt claustrophobic. With a quick breath, she scooped up all the fabrics and dumped them in an untidy lump on the sewing table, well away from the edge, then made her way in wide footsteps out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her.
Standing out in the hallway, she paused to catch her breath, and suddenly felt incredibly silly. "What a dork," she muttered, blushing, and shook her head as she walked down to the kitchen to finish off the iced tea. Later on, she decided, she would come back up and work on the costume.
Hallway. It was blurry - and shapes, shapes were moving.
No... Where was she?
She turned a corner - running - she knew that corner, didn't she? It was familiar, but different, jutting out at an angle as though it were reaching for her. A voice followed her, mumbling words she didn't understand. It sounded so far away but no matter how far she went, it didn't go away, it just kept mumbling in a monotone -
And she was scared.
Another corner, another hallway - again, familiar - shadows like knives, the angles were so sharp, and...
She ran harder, toward a figure at the end of the hallway. A woman in white, too far away for her to recognize, but she ran, because she had to know who it was... She ran because she was being called, pulled. It was preordained, she knew she would go, just as she knew she would never reach the woman.
With a gasp, Beth jerked awake, blinking in the grey darkness just before dawn, trying to shake the visions of the sharp shadows from her dream.
Somewhere down the hall came a muted but heavy *thump*.
She forgot to breathe for a few moments, and her heart hammered in her ears as she decided she would wait until tomorrow morning to find out what that noise was. Even as she chided herself for being silly, she pulled the covers up to her eyes and tried to go back to sleep.