"Nobody ever really cheats death. She knows all the best tricks, and she can beat you to each of them. A little sleight of hand, and suddenly you're bits of gem dust scattered over your own inert corpse." - Janet M. Boroughs

Hope never expected the times she received The Call, but she carried them with her for her whole life thereafter. But they'd never been so... hateful before. That stung in a way she wasn't used to.

Not that she could ever get used to these.

She'd just packed her bag for the gym, and was about to reheat some of last night's dinner to take as breakfast, when the phone hanging opposite the kitchen bench rang once, twice. She snatched it up partway through the third.

"Fearnley."

"Speaking. Is that Lara?"

"Fearnley, you bastard. What happened?"

"Is something wr-"

"What the fuck happened?"

"No need to spit th-"

"She's dead, Fearnley. Deckard's dead!"

Hope recoiled. No, no, no, Phoebe couldn't die. There was too much on her shoulders. If she was gone, then that meant...

What scared Hope more than anything is that she had no idea what that meant.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, Fearnley. Yeah, you know what? I'm in her bedroom right now, poised over her body with two girls I've called specifically for their investigation skills, and I have the pieces of three broken soul gems in a zip lock bag in my hand. But you know what? Maybe you're right. Maybe I should check if she's dead somehow, yeah?"

"Look, look, I'm sorry, this is just a lot-"

"No you look! I know how long you've wanted this. Some excuse to tear into us and pick apart everything we've worked for. I want you, her replacement, and a damn good explanation here at her apartment as soon as physically possible."

Hope opened her mouth to speak, but her breath was aligned with a click, and followed by a tone.

It didn't make sense.

It was inevitable that they'd lose her one way or another. Hope knew that. She lost everyone. She always lost everyone.

But it didn't make sense.

She slammed the phone back into its wall receiver with spontaneous, furious grief.

For once, she had two things in common with Lara. They needed to hold this city together, with or without help between them. And more than that, they needed answers.

Hope had never been to Phoebe's apartment before, except for a couple of times she'd walked her home last winter (which... she would never get to do again. Jesus Christ). She lived on the upper floor of a two-storey ring of apartments, in the middle of which sat a small mound with a eucalyptus tree reaching out to caress the sky above like a jewel nestled firmly in its palm.

Hope knocked on the door to what once had been Phoebe's apartment. Lara answered, looking what Hope decided was uncharacteristically grim.

"Come on in," she shrugged.

Hope obliged, and stepped into what had once been Phoebe's now inappropriately named living space. "Didn't expect to see you so shaken by this."

"I don't know," Lara shrugged again and shut the door. "I'm still processing stuff. She was a friend, you know? Not a close friend, but a friend for sure."

"Yeah, that's fair. Never stops hurting, though. It's like a death in the family, yeah?"

One of the Deeplighter investigators - Selene, Hope remembered her name was - spoke up while running a finger along a wooden bookshelf. "She told me you'd already had this happen twice this month."

"Hang on, is that any of your business?"

"Sorry."

Lara shook her head. "So where's Phoebe's big prodigy child, anyway? And how did you get ahold of her if you didn't even catch her name?"

"She didn't," Kyubey interjected, appearing from seemingly nowhere and curling up atop the fridge. "I did. She's on her way over here now. I'm accompanying her, in fact."

"Okay, come to think of it, you've been no help on this investigation at all. Why don't you stop being such a coy little rodent, and tell us who killed Deckard?"

"Because I don't know. I actually have no idea at all! You seem to act under the impression that I'm watching over everyone's every move at all times. I have much more important ends to pool my resources toward, as it happens."

"So, you didn't see anything unusual in the area or anything?"

"Nothing at all. And I had no reason to suspect there would be in the first place, save for the fact that everything about your species is impossibly unusual."

"So you're saying..."

"As I said, I have more important goals to work toward right now. I advise you keep at the investigation, though, because you're all helping us a great deal by being as miserable as you are. Goodbye."

He helped himself up, slunk behind the fridge, and promptly disappeared.

Lara groaned, and rocked back and forth on her heels. She sent a private thought Hope's way: "First Vu, then Woodward, now Deckard. Really feels like the end of the old guard, huh."

"I dunno how you can live surrounded by all this death, and still choose the path of violence."

"Don't you have anything in your life worth fighting for, Fearnley? Surely you must, or else you wouldn't be getting up in my grill all the time."

"Yeah, I do. The rights of our bloody people and the good health of ALL people. Not your crude little copy-paste of the world's injustices into some jill-off power fantasy of yours."

"Alright, alright. Forget I said anything, if you're going to get all political about it! Come on, I just wanted to share some goddamn sympathy."

"...Alright, I'm gonna go wait outside for the human. You Deeplighters try not to burn this place down until then, alright?"

"Yeah, piss off."

Hope didn't meet Lara's eyes on her way out, but Lara didn't feel relieved of her glare until she was gone.

"Man oh man, what a morning, huh? It's times like these I start to wonder if becoming a magical girl was even worth it in the first place."

"Yeah," the older of Lara's pair of eyes on the case - Naomi, her name was - answered absentmindedly as she scanned the wall. She paused when her hand reached the corner of the room, then double-took at Lara. "Wait, what did you become a magical girl for?"

"Eh, I don't talk about it all that much. It's a bit embarrassing. I was really spiteful and jealous and dissatisfied with life when I was... would've been your age or so. Now I don't get upset at other people, because I'm fantastic and perfect and great."

Hope leaned on the handrail overlooking the mound within the ring when she heard Marie approach.

"Where've you been, kid? You're holding up a Marquess of the Deep Light."

"Is that a big deal?"

"She likes to think so."

"Phoebe told me about her. Lara, right? Really intense, she said. Always tries to pull conversations out from under you."

"I really can't imagine you holding a grudge. Who was it against?"

"Oh, nobody you'd know, not least of all because you're from the southern 'burbs. A human I knew from high school. Total arsehole. Complete and utter. Her name was..."

"Yeah, that's all you really need to know about her. C'mon in."

"Sure. It's crazy, actually. I used to know this really annoying, self-centred bitch who happened to be named Lara. Of course, that was north of the Harbour, so it's not, like, the same Lara. Let me tell you, you should be thankful it's not..."

"Marie Crawford."
"Lara Macquarie."

Marie and Lara tapered off at the same time, the instant their eyes met, gaze on gaze like flints, where a glance became a spark, and a spark became a devastating wildfire.

"Marie... Crawford..." Lara repeated.

"What the complete and utter f-"

"Everyone else can see her, yeah? I'm not going mad?"

All present nodded, but for reasons they weren't sure of, kept their voices low and their distance great.

"Well doesn't that just make your piss boil? Look, Crawford, I'm sure it would be great to catch up and all, get back to the good old days, you know, me wiping the floor with you, you making fun of my sister for no good reason, you know, all that lovely stuff, but this is a crime scene you're at right now. I don't know how you found me, but-"

"What? Kyubey told me you wanted me here."

"You know Ky- Wait. You're the..." Her face fell. "You're Deckard's trainee."

"And you're some kind of esteemed extremist group leader."

"I... oh, hahaha. Hahahahaha! Oh my god, this is great. Deckard's protege was Marie Goddamn Crawford?!" She shook her head and chuckled, pulled her phone from her pocket. "I have to tell this to Whitman. She's gonna flip."

The forecasted action Whitman would undertake was imitated by the opening of Lara's phone. She dialled a number and put it to her ear.

"Hang on. Who's Whitman?" Hope asked.

"She's my visceroy."

"You mean viceroy," Marie corrected.

"Ha! You wish I meant viceroy. Oh, hey! Maddie, it's me! Remember how I said I'd be meeting Deckard's bitch? You'll never believe who- huh? Wait, really? Why didn't she tell me, then?"

Lara opted to continue this call in the next room over.

Marie massaged her temples. "What the hell kind of cruel trick of fate is this? Is Macquarie back in my life again now?"

"Fair go, mate," Hope shook her head. "It's not like the rest of us are getting off easy on that one either."

"Man, whatever. This whole situation is just... so gay."

"Crikey, you- could we not use gay as an insult, yeah?"

"Why? Are you-"

Marie took a long, hard look at Hope's unkempt hair, the pixie cut on the right hemisphere, the baggy flannel overshirt with sleeves rolled to reveal the skin of her arms, embellished to a fractalline level with what looked to be the tribal tattoos of a culture Marie had never seen before.

"...Oh."

"Took your sweet time sussing that one out."

Lara approached from behind Marie and spoke at a normal volume while hovering directly before her ear. "Sorry, just got off to Whit-" Marie turned and, unbeknownst to herself, broke her personal best record for furthest jump backward. "Just got off the phone, to Whitman, is the thing I was saying. What's the problem?"

"Bugger all, really. Just telling Marie not to use 'gay' as an insult."

"Jeez, Marie. It's 2009!" (That is to say, Lara shouted the concurrent Julian year. If the exclamation point indicated a factorial, this conversation would be significantly longer.) "Can't you show a shred of maturity around people who are different to you?"

"Wow, sorry! Sorry. I had no idea it was such a big deal to you guys."

"Don't try to cover your arse passive-aggressively like that either. That's so gay."

"I-"

"But enough subtextual homoeroticism. Fearnley, Crawford? Care to explain why the only figure standing in the way of the Attendants getting driven out of the city's a bunch of glass and metal shards in this little plastic bag?"

Menacingly slowly, Lara extended and uncurled a fist holding a small plastic bag, filled with splinters of three shattered, un-transformed soul gems.

"I'd love to," Marie shrugged. "There's just one small problem."

"Yes?"

"I don't know the answer."

Lara rolled her eyes. Hope suddenly found it significantly easier to believe that these two knew each other.

"But seriously, you think I killed her? She was just about to start teaching me everything she knew! Not to mention she treated me... like nobody else had before."

"Strewth, really?" Hope cut in. "The two of you just seemed like good mates."

Marie looked away. Lara started chuckling to herself.

"Still, though, she was pretty important to us, too, y'know? Diplomat for a reason, and all. Wouldn't want your mob freaking out and attacking... What's so funny?"
"That's what she means, Fearnley. Crawford doesn't have any good friends. Who would have thought that if you're a pretentious, unlikeable blowhard everyone sucks up to-"

"Yeah, and you seem pretty fucking chill so soon after your friend died!" Marie snapped.

"What, you think I should be heartbroken? You think I should be on the ground, sobbing my eyes out? What are you, a large moron with a side of fries? Breaking news, dipshit, I can't." Lara flaunted the silver ring on her left hand, a small jewel embedded thrumming with a hypnotic violet glow. "I'm too fragile...~ I've gotta keep my mind off things...~"

Marie gawked. It had never occurred to her that...! Wait, that must have been how she kept cheating at lacrosse, somehow!

"Hey, why don't you two just come look at the body? Look at you, Crawford. I can tell you're thinking about sports. And at a time like this! Someone's just died! Read the room!"

She marched toward the bedroom, and bid her two investigators and two suspects join her.

Phoebe was lying, closed-eyed, on her side on a bed in the middle of the room. Marie had to kill the urge to say her greetings halfway up her throat, and struggle not to choke on its carcass on the way back down.

She'd been talking to her... what? Nine or ten hours ago?

"Lift 'er up," Hope sighed. Naomi stepped forward to do just that.

"This is a crime scene," Lara seethed. "What are you gonna do, toss her like pizza dough? We've checked the body, it's fine."

Naomi took a step back.

"I wanna check if she's been killed. Maybe-"

Naomi took a step forward, blinked, and stared at Hope as if she'd started balancing on her head and reciting seven digit prime numbers.

"What the...? You've seen her soul. Ain't no coming back from that, Fearnley."

Naomi took a step back.

Hope raised a finger. "Can it for a sec, I'm thinking. Y'know the Oblivion Techniques? Ol' text about death and stuff-"

"Yeah, I know of it. It's a load of weird shit you can do with a soul to make it effectively dead, yeah?"

"Right on, or wish it was. C'mon, darl. Lift the body for two secs. I wanna get a quick squiz-"

Naomi took a step forward. Lara thrust a palm in her direction. A circular sawblade hovered millimetres from her throat. She stopped in her tracks.
"This isn't a goddamn weightlifting contest! Nobody's spotting you, idiot! Step! The hell! Back!"

Naomi... took a step back.

"And you! Fearnley! What the hell do you think happened to her if she wasn't killed?"

"Nah, I think she was killed. I just wanna eliminate all other possibilities before I call it for certain."

"There are due processes for that. We've literally been going through them for an hour before you got here." She retracted the sawblade and paced toward Hope. "I get it. Now that you're in Day's shoes, you think you're some know-it-all mega-genius. Like when Aristotle killed Plato in his cave and absorbed all his knowledge and powers-"

"-I don't think-"

"-but guess what? It's not like that at all!"

Hope threw her hands up (relative to the ground, not gastronomically) in surrender. "I'm just trying to consider possibilities you might not have thought of."

"Oh yeah? What's your magic three-thousand-year-old manuscript tell you that the two finest detectives I could find in this city can't?"

Naomi beamed with pride at the remark. Selene turned away and waved her off shyly.

"I'm just saying, fat chance she was anything but killed, yeah, but what if she was Silenced?"

Lara threw up (gastronomically, not relative to the ground) in her mouth. "She... no! Ew! Eww eww ew ew ewwww!"

Marie, who had until that point been ambling around the room uncertainly, perked up like a startled but generally rather unbothered gazelle. "What's Silenced mean, in this context?"

"Argh!" Lara raised a hand. "Can you not talk about it, please? That's awful. That's unimaginably vile."

"Can't imagine a worse way to go," Hope concurred. "Remind me and I'll explain later."

Marie nodded. "Cool. Meanwhile, while you were talking about convoluted and gross kinds of magical murder and acting incapable of agreeing about whether or not to investigate the murder you've come here to investigate, I've been looking around and... let me tell you, have I ever seen some odd shit in this room alone."

Hope loosened up. Lara took a step back.

"Did Phoebe ever tell you? My dad's in real estate. I know a thing or two about how a room should look. And this... wow, if you presented a room like this I don't think you'd even be able to give it away. The first thing that got me thinking was the bed being in the middle of the room. Sure, it's not a bad thing, there are no negative consequences of laying a room out like that. But nobody does it!"

"Do we seriously need to listen to a human?" Lara huffed. "Last I knew you your only skills were being a sore loser at sports and a debate team member kind of prick. You've... gone from that to solving a murder that involves literal magic in half a year?"

"First off, I'm a debate team captain kind of... cool person. Second off, I haven't solved anything. I just have some information that could be helpful!"

Hope rubbed her temples. "Look. I hate to be the one to say this, but we should really, really save the bickering until after we've figured out who's killed one of the most politically important magical girls in Australia. Carry on, Marie."

"Right. Right! What's also a little unusual is that each leg of the bed has a rubber stopper on it! You might see that on a chair or maybe a table, but anything that you're gonna be moving around... maybe once or twice in its whole life? Not so much. It got me thinking, what's going on with the bed that you need to keep it from scuffing the floorboards?"

She paused for effect. It took way too long before Hope spoke up.

"Alright, I'll bite. What is going on there?"

"Nothing at all."

"Nothing... at all?"

Marie developed a twinkle in her eye that Lara despised more than she knew how to say. "Nothing... at all."

"Explain?"

"With pleasure! First, though, it's a bit dark in here. Selene, could you please turn on the light?"

"Erm, it didn't turn on when we got here. It must have blown at some point."

"Oh, must it?" Marie grinned.

"Yeah...?"

"Don't be such an idiot, Antonio," Lara sneered. "Obviously, it's not working because of... a reason so obvious I'll let Crawford explain so she can feel smart about herself."

"A crisp twenty says it's not screwed in properly."

"Alright, Crawford. You're on." Lara beamed from ear to ear and set herself up for a running jump. Her gaze locked on the helpless bulb sitting apathetically in its socket like a smug bastard. She flash-stepped into a sinister-looking purple robe, her violet soul sitting neatly atop a spiked tiara, pirouetted off a bedpost, fitted the bulb into place with one effortless flick of the wrist, and landed on the floor in a clean shunt back in her day-to-day jacket. She curtsied with pride. Naomi and Selene met the gesture with rapturous applause, until the latter flipped the light switch and lit the room up. Lara's face fell.

"That'll be twenty dollarydoos, my dear bitch," Marie smiled.

"Ugh, fine. Goddard, gimme a twenty."

"Yes, ma'am," Naomi grinned with no less enthusiasm than she had applauded with seconds prior. Lara snatched the scarlet bill from her grasp and swung it violently at Marie the second it had been procured. Marie took it in with unfettered grace.

"So what are you getting at?"

"It keeps going! There's a rubber stopper on the bedroom door. Even the power sockets are thoroughly filled in with bakelite! Phoebe really, really did not want electricity to get into this room. Doesn't Francis Marlowe have electricity-based power? She was making the lights flicker at a café where I was meeting Phoebe, and I can't imagine anyone else she'd go to such measures to keep out."

The Deeplighters looked amongst themselves with varying degrees of horror. Lara, barely shaken, leaned in slightly.

"You think Marlowe had something to do with this? What would she have to gain from killing Deckard?"

"Good question!" Marie retorted. "She'd have no reason to do that, unless she was a particularly violent and jealous ex, would she?"

"...Oh my Christ." Lara stood back and ran a hand through her hair. "Oh my Christ."

"You don't think she really...?" Selene began.

"She'd have to be the dumbest living organism to call a place outside of Crawford's skull home, but... but I don't know. We'll see."

"Are you going to question her?"

Lara's phone chose that of all times to buzz. She pulled it from her pocket, checked the caller, and...

"Oh, dingoes' kidneys, that's my mum. Hey, Mum."

"What's this about?"

"Right, right. Here's my idea, though: why don't you actually treat her like a daughter for once? I'm not her mother and besides! I'm at work right now!"

"I'm not saying it's your fault! It's nobody's fault and guess what? She's an actual human person! With actual human person problems that she needs actual human person help with! What's it going to take for you to get that?"

"Alright, fine. But I'm doing this for her. Not for you."

She hung up and sighed, long and hard, until she looked as if she would pass out.

"Sorry, guys. I really, really have to jet right now. Antonio, interrogate Marlowe for me. Don't be afraid to get under her fingernails if she plays dumb."

"Yeesh, alright."

"And Crawford? I'm sure it's going to be... interesting... having you back in my life. Great work here today, team. Let's pick it back up later."

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

For all the soul's vital components, there are other less significant - although their absence would certainly be unpleasant - pieces to an individual's spiritual composition. The most prominent of these is the name. While "name" is often misunderstood to refer exclusively to personal names (the two terms are practically interchangeable given how major an "organ" the latter is in the former's function), it may also refer to epithets, pronouns, titles, nicknames, or any other semiotic abstraction, be it lingual, textual, or otherwise, which defines or indicates the individual in question.

An often-joked-about and deeply underestimated but very real phenomenon pertaining to the function of a name, especially the personal name, is nominative determinism. The issue with the role nominative determinism plays is that the universe is a decidedly pretty complicated place, and that every slightly involute idea worth understanding that might permeate it is convoluted to the point where almost all mortals opt to perceive even the most universal facts of life as a joke.

For instance, if we're to take the name "Lara Macquarie", there are fundamental conclusions about its owner we can arrive at with a little bit of hard work. "Macquarie" is a name shared with many of Sydney's cultural artefacts (and a prominent figure in the city's history, Lachlan Macquarie (1762 - 1824), although since Lara is unlikely to join the British army, colonise the Sydney basin, or marry her own cousin, any deeper connection between the two can be ruled out), there arises the possibility that she shares some kind of connection to her namesake university, dictionary, hospital, fort, and so forth.

We can narrow this down if we examine the etymology of "Lara", deriving from "Lares", ancient Roman protector deities watching over specific locations. Combine this reading with the Macquarie clan motto, "Turris fortis mihi Deus" (God is my tower of strength), and it becomes reasonable to portray the all-seeing protector of a specific place not as a deity, but as a tower. If we want to drive the point home here, "Lara" also bears connection to "Larissa" - Greek for "Citadel", a location whose metaeclyptic ties have already been discussed.

Macquarie Lighthouse is the oldest lighthouse in Australia, first operated in the 1810s and completely functional since, but the roots of its construction stretch two decades prior. In 1790, Arthur Philip (1738 - 1814), captain of HMS Sirius called for the erection of a stone column on Sydney Harbour to indicate the location of the cove to passing boats. The landmark would later go on to serve as the base of the lighthouse. With its crew responsible for the column's creation, "Sirius", in turn, derives from its namesake star - the second-brightest when observed from Earth - occasionally nicknamed the "Dog Star" due to its prominence in the constellation Canis Major. With a vessel named as such acting as the agent of the lighthouse's initial conception, we can ultimately take the name "Lara Macquarie" to refer to a real son of a bitch.

An esoteric practice? Yes. Convoluted? For sure. Impractical? Absolutely. But important? Well... not really. But interesting, especially considering that upon becoming a witch, the meaning of an individual's name undergoes a metamorphosis much as their physical form does: it's not uncommon for an electricity-themed witch to be named Elektra, a war-themed witch to be named Victoria, a music-themed witch to be named Oktavia, and so on. If this clarity is so arbitrary that it can change mid-life, though, why is it important that it does change, or in fact exist at all in the first place? And what would happen to an individual with no name whatsoever...?