Maria didn't disappoint. By the time Coraline got back, Maria had managed to chase down the last details on the location of another beldam in Delaware, in the west side of Newark.
"You do not want to know what I went through to get this information," said Maria as she handed Coraline multiple printouts.
"Did it involve cursing?" Coraline thumbed through the papers.
"I came pretty close."
"Did it involve gnashing of teeth?"
"More than you can imagine."
"And is that a dent in the monitor?"
"Would you believe me if I said no?"
"Heh." Coraline looked at one sheet. "You're guessing this one's about half a century old?"
"About that. So she'll have at least one soul, maybe two, that you'll have to free." Maria looked straight at Coraline. "When will you be heading up?"
"I was thinking now, while it's still early. I've already got my shotgun on standby, and there's only a few other things I need to take. I can cut through Maryland, get there, and stay in a motel for the night. You'll definitely see me back tomorrow."
"Cool. Don't die."
"Why break a habit? Oh, that reminds me. Did you get round to resewing the...?"
Maria sighed and, with some effort, pulled up Coraline's trench coat. Thin lines of stitching ran along where the beldam from the day before had slashed it open.
"I don't see why you can't resew your own stuff," she said, handing the heavy garment over with both hands.
"Because when I try stitching, it looks like a catatonic spider with needles for legs wandered onto the coat. Wybie's even worse. Whereas you're so, so good at precise, delicate stuff like ..."
"Is that meant to be obnoxious flattery?"
"Yes."
Maria smiled. "I gave the chainmail that showed a scrub as well. Getting it rusty would be a pretty bad idea, I think."
"I'd imagine so."
If your trade was fighting the supernatural, and you intended to live to do so regularly, you required certain tools of the trade.
Such as a shotgun, loaded with custom-made, iron-coated slugs. Reflexes like a snake on a hot pan. Information on the enemy you were going to fight. And, of course, a long coat interlined with iron rings of chainmail.
"I'm on a roll at the moment, actually," said Maria. "You know New York?"
"Never heard of it. Is it a college town, or...?"
"You're a loss to comedians everywhere. Anyway, I'm getting evidence of another beldam there, working in partnership with something else. A horla."
Coraline paused, caught mid-buttoning her coat up. "A despair-eater? That...that should be interesting. We've only encountered them a couple of times before. Both times, it wasn't for long."
"You know our policy. If it's a creature we've never encountered before, or if there's more than one, then it's a full department outing."
"Right. How's your fire discipline?"
"It...um..." Maria waved a hand uncertainly. "It might exist?"
"Then once you're done here, get to a shooting gallery and brush up. I know it's been a while since the last department outing, but..."
"I know, I know."
"Take Wybie with you." Coraline finished the top buttons, and picked up her backpack and the case with her shotgun. "Tell him I'll be back tomorrow, and that if he sets anything else on fire, I'll tear out his heart with his own detached hands."
"I'll quote that in full."
"You do that. See you tomorrow, Maria." Coraline opened the front door and left, Maria watching her go. She only stopped to put her case and bag in the boot of the Department's elderly electric van before she got in the driver's door and started the motor, setting the sound system to a gentle hum. The van peeled out onto the road snaking through the streets to the main highway, soon lost to sight by the rising towers of the city.
Maria closed the door and returned to her desk. She settled into her chair, nudged the computer awake, and opened the window containing an index of databases.
Her eyes set in concentration, and she got back to her work.
She pulled up fields of data from districts in New York, comparing rates of cases of missing people and children to one another. She removed cases which had been resolved, retaining those which were unresolved or which were still disputed. She narrowed in on the highest numbers of those, and carried out cross-searches. She combed through lists of buildings, for those which were old or culturally or emotionally significant, and checked them against the different districts' cases of missing people.
She worked quickly, her hand tapping across the keyboard and the pointer on screen blurring from field to column. Her mind could sift quickly through the information, and could quickly notice incongruities or broken patterns.
She then found a likely candidate, and her mouth pulled taut at the edges with satisfaction.
And then, based on her earlier hunch, she pulled up similar lists of suicides.
Her job wasn't especially glamorous or exciting, but she took quiet satisfaction in it regardless.
It was all very well to have a trouble-shooter, but only if you knew where trouble was.
From the back of the building, another person was also hard at work.
Well, technically, two people. And a cat.
"Do you see how close my two fingers are together, Sayid?" said Wybie, his hand outheld and his index finger and thumb nearly touching at the tips. "That is how close I am to a breakthrough. I will have a functioning Eroder before the month is out. Before this day is out."
"Of course you will," said Sayid diplomatically.
"Seriously, I have a good feeling about this try. I saw where I went wrong with No. Seventeen and I fixed it. And I've given this one two dry runs and it hasn't gone on fire or fried any electronics or torn a hole through the floor or anything unexpected like that."
"That bodes well."
"Exactly. So give me Tripod."
Sayid unconsciously clutched the cat closer. "Are you sure he's not going to be hurt?" Tripod wriggled and mwwred, as if to support the query.
"Absolutely sure."
Sayid hesitated, then passed Tripod over. Wybie took him and gently placed him down in the middle of a circle made from the connected cords of the latest prototype of the Reality-Eroder. The cat stood patiently while Wybie bent down beside the cuboid heart of the machine, checking a tiny dial and looking over the Eroder for any last immediately obvious flaws. He then shuffled around so that he knelt just outside the circle.
"Standing well back, Sayid?" he asked. "This time. This time for sure." And with that, he jabbed at a button.
There was a faint buzz, and what felt like the crackle and tug of static electricity in the air within the circle. Tripod looked around in interest, and there came the faint scent of honeysuckle.
Wybie waited for a few seconds, then, when nothing happened, stepped inside the circle and looked down at Tripod.
"Any luck?" he said hopefully.
Tripod met his gaze, and then purred "Mrrew."
Wybie said a word which shouldn't be said in front of the young and impressionable.
"So that's a failure, I take it?" said Sayid.
Wybie cupped one hand around his chin and tapped his foot as he looked down at the machine and the cat. He bent down, switched off the machine, and resumed the pose.
"Once she gets back, and the next time Coraline's going out on a hunt, I'm going with her," he decided. "I need to check something in the Sur-real itself. There's something obvious I'm missing here, I'm just not sure what."
"Shall I put this away?"
"Leave it. I'll do it. You … do whatever it is interns do. Make coffee. File stuff. Collect my mail."
"You don't send mail to each other. And you don't get mail from anyone else either."
"Less pointing out facts, more fetching my mail. And take Tripod with you."
Sayid smiled and picked up Tripod, who favoured him with a few token claw-slashes. The intern left, closing the door behind.
Wybie looked again at No. Eighteen. Then he drew out a pen from one of the pockets of his labcoat, and a pad of notepaper from another, larger pocket. He knelt down beside it, and kept one eye trained on the machine as he wrote in a spidery scrawl.
Outcome: Failure. As device showed no faults during initial testing, a run with a feline subject was carried out, which failed to produce anything intelligible. PROGRESS - (This was underlined repeatedly) – definite Sur-real energies tapped, no explosion, seems to respond best to mineral fragments rather than bio. fragments, as used in past attempts. Greater structural integrity of Eroder a possible reason? Hypothesis needs evidence before it becomes worthwhile.
Nineteen: possible shortening of cables, so as to produce more breakthrough in a smaller locale. Different and greater quantities of bio tissue. Note to self – check thauma tables, compare specimens. Iron contagion? Contrast?
He focused on the task ahead of him, another hypothesis lying disproven at his feet. But though this was typical of his work, though it caused him endless frustration, he accepted it as the price of eventually pinning down the answer.
And this was the least of what he did. He had greater, longer-running projects than this. For example, his constant recording and classification of the creatures they encountered in their work.
There were more than beldams in the Sur-real, more than beldams who preyed upon humanity. There were horlas and ragamolls, seelie and unseelie, wendigos and sluaghs and djinni and nuckelavees and things beyond counting which didn't even have names, yet unknown as they were.
But as alien as they were, even they had rules.
Wybie scribbled and thought and already saw the shape of his next attempt in his mind, his scientific mind exploring the possibilities and filling in flaws and applying knowledge already learned.
He was a scientist. He sought to find out the mechanics of the supernatural, to find out how it functioned, and what lived in it, for the sake of knowledge, and for safeguarding those closest to him.
And damned if it wasn't satisfying.
And later, much later, when the night was at its darkest, Coraline went on the hunt.
The lairs of some Beldams were a subtle corruption of the world just outside them. Some were exact replicas. And others were dark reflections.
In contrast to the poor house in which the door to the beldam's lair lay, this lair was a vaulted palace. Slim pillars rose from a cold marble floor, supporting a roof formed from a million drifting gold-white stars. The high, curved walls gleamed with a grey sheen, as opaque and inchoate as smoke caught in glass.
Echoing emptiness pervaded. Through it, a monster stalked slowly. It had the upper body of a woman, her skin as smooth and white as Arctic ice, in sharp contrast to her dark rosewood button-eyes. Her spiderish body was glass-like and dark, her carapace as fat and dark as a full carafe, her thin legs like glass tubes filled with some pitch liquid.
She had finished feeding a few minutes before. What remained of her meal was slumped against the wall at the far end of the room.
Until there came the sound of cracking stone from one side of the large room.
Startled, she spun, and saw a lattice of cracks appear around the hinges of the little doorway which led to her hunting ground. She tensed, uncertain yet dreading the worst.
One more blow tore the door out of the wall with an explosion of stone dust, and the beldam scuttled back on her dark glass legs as a figure unfolded from the doorway. It was enveloped by some great coat, and a shotgun was in its grasp.
This beldam was older than some, and warier than many, and well-informed. She suddenly had no illusions about what had come for her.
"Stormcrow!" she spat, her voice sharp and rough with fear, and turned and ran, her hands striking against two gleaming statues. "Defend me! Defend your maker! Hold the intruder here!" The statues, adult-sized figures carved from gleaming rock and glass, set with rosewood buttons in place of eyes, stirred at her touch, moving ponderously to life. They sighted for the intruder, and staggered towards them.
The shotgun's retort pealed around the room like a clap of lightning, and the fragments of stone that were once the statue's torso clattered on the floor like hollow thunder. The other statue lurched on, undaunted, and it drew in close enough to take a swipe at the coated intruder.
But the intruder was faster than stone and glass could ever be, and as she pulled away from the swung arm, she seized it with one hand and pulled sharply, using the statue's own momentum to send it crashing downwards. As it cracked against the floor, the intruder kicked its head with all her strength, breaking it off and sending it tumbling across the marble floor in a river of shards and fragments.
Coraline swore, bending momentarily to clutch at and rub her foot, from which a sharp pain was coming. As she did, her eyes glanced around the room.
And sighted the beldam's last meal, tiny against the wall.
She stood up straight, the pain now meaningless. Her hands moved on long-learned reflex, loading another slug into the shotgun, her gaze straight ahead, her eyes like points of fire.
From the corridor down which the beldam had fled, there came another shrieked command of "Hold the intruder! Buy me time!" From the ground in front of the corridor's entrance, there rose two more statues, twisting themselves out of the living marble amidst billowing clouds of stone dust.
"Drag this out all you like," said Coraline, in a voice so full of fury that no room was left for volume or inflection. "It won't do you any good."
She held her shotgun before her and marched, gun blazing through the smoke.