Infernal Investigations

Tarver, it is cold out, Gregory thought as he trudged through the snow.

The sun was out. The snow was melting. It still was cold, even with a coat on. He’d thought he could maybe risk only the single one this time, and was paying the price for it. Not as cold as this morning was still cold by most people’s standards, and it still meant for difficult walking.

Difficult to deliberately keep his pace safe and slow when every instinct told him to run. Ever since stepping outside, only a few eyes stared at him, but every one felt like it was looking at a cut of meat.

Stupid, stupid assumption he was already cursing himself for making, but every time one of the few Infernals who were out and about grinned with pointed teeth wide, there was that desire to hunker down and get away.

Irrational fear, well, not entirely irrational but nothing about this was because they were Infernals. There were half a dozen streets he could walk down and have the same worries. Pointed teeth just added to it. And the silence, despite the company.

His only companion trudged on ahead, not having talked once since they set out. She’d barely said a word beforehand either.

Part of it was what they’d mutually found out only a short time ago when he’d followed her out into the street to find out why she was storming out.

Their conversation earlier had been brief, him trying to find out what had been yelled about, her turning around to yell something, pushing him back. The motion yanking his scarf loose from where it had covered Malvia’s bite mark on his skin.

He’d forgotten about it, not enough time before the Mourner had come in. He hadn’t paid a second thought to the dull ache it had become by the time talking was over. And like that, what had started as her storming out had become a hurriedly whispered conversation between the two of them before she stormed back in, twice as mad as before.

He’d thought Malvia flustered from meeting with her brother, and if all he’d heard was Alice’s explanation of that meeting, he’d think the decision to try and hold her own life hostage to convince some gang leader to stand down.

Instead, it had probably been that she’d just gotten through making out with Alice. And then half an hour later would end up kissing him as well. Without mentioning any of it.

It would be easier if there was any way to ascribe malice to that, but he couldn’t think of what malice could be attached to this. Not when it was easier to arrive at an entirely different conclusion that fit the easy to spot pattern of Malvia and everything around her having to be so chaotically difficult.

Then again, maybe he was wrong. He hadn’t thought straight, couldn’t understand how he’d made it through that last conversation without demanding an answer. He couldn’t add something else to agonize over, not when there were so many other things pressing in on his life.

Least he could do was at least understand where things stood between him and Alice, which was difficult because he knew nothing about her. Malvia’s ex, another Black Flame member, another frequent visitor to Malvia’s basement when tied up. Short, very well-muscled, scarred, and reminded him of Singer Hamilton. Great tenor, good range, could and would fight entire bars in the evening and come out ahead even with two black eyes and missing teeth. Little else.

Might as well try to fix that.

“So,” Gregory said loud enough for her to hear. “I’m assuming part of the reason you wanted to come along is so we could talk?”

“No,” Alice replied sardonically, pausing and turning around. “I came along because after a day of knowing you I’ve grown so attached I want to be your Infernal shield because my former lover asked me. Not even in person, but through you.”

The Infernal looked…tired. Exhausted really, and like she’d rather do anything than discuss this.

“Look,” Gregory said. “I understand if you’re upset with me-”

“I can’t be upset at you,” Alice interrupted. “I don’t even know you. Neither does Tolman, or Melissa, or pretty much anyone else I talked to besides Varrow, and he keeps getting more deranged every day. All I know is that Malvia apparently decided it would be a grand idea to make out with you as well and then think telling neither of us about the other was a good idea.”

“Was it a good idea?” Gregory asked mildly.

Alice hissed, finally turning to face him.

“No, it wasn’t in the sense she didn’t just make it so I’d be more pissed about it later,” Alice snapped. “Earlier today she had me blubbering about how I treated her and now I’m ready to punch her lights out, but unfortunately the world doesn’t stop turning because I’m having a chaotic day.”

“Like a roller coaster,” Gregory muttered. It was the closest to describing an experience similar he could think of.

“A what?”

“There was a demonstration at Prince Hughes birthday a few months ago, it’s shelved until they make it work right assuming the government ever lets it be used aga- you know what that’s not important.”

“Alright,” Alice said, eyeing him suspiciously. “Well, it sounds like she was the one who decided to pursue you, so I can hardly blame you for not divining that she was messing around with me earlier that day. I’m mad at her for deciding to do it, and not telling either of us.”

“Understandable,” Gregory said evenly, and her eyes narrowed further.

“You can drop the serene act,” Alice said gruffly. “It’s starting to become unnerving.”

“I’m not acting serene, I’m just thinking,” Gregory replied.

“There’s an easy joke to make about that but I’ll pass,” Alice muttered. “Seriously, you aren’t upset?”

“I’d be upset if I thought she meant any of it maliciously, but I don’t think she did,” Gregory said. “Do you?”

“I don’t know,” Alice said bluntly. “It wouldn’t matter anyway because it’s just one of the reasons she’s given for being angry at that self-destructive little fish!”

That got a stare from the only other person currently on the street, who quickly turned their attention elsewhere when Alice glared at him.

“The incident earlier to-“

“Yes, I’m mad because Malvia decided to solve a situation that was normal back in the day by inviting some human to stick a pistol against her head,” Alice snapped. “I don’t know what the fuck she’s been doing while you’ve been around her, but that ain’t normal. She can be pretty damn strange, but that level of disregard for her own life is new.”

“Yes,” Gregory said. “I can’t claim to know her anywhere near as long as you have, but while she has risked her life multiple times, never for something so small.”

Malvia would pull off some of the most insane plans, if they even were plans, arguably most dumb if not for the fact they worked out, but usually there was something on the line. Something that made the risk…well perhaps not understandable but you could see the line of logic

Offering to have some criminal press a gun’s muzzle against her head during tense negotiations? Because otherwise they might insist they leave for somewhere else? That made no sense.

“Was there anything about that place that meant the meeting needed to take place there?” Gregory asked.

Alice laughed harshly. “The only thing that mattered was Versalicci being able to smuggle me away from there, and that went up in smoke when I decided to stay. And what a grand decision that turned out to be. Also, Prince Hughes’ birthday?”

Damnit, he shouldn’t have mentioned that. “I might have been there. I don’t know the prince personally though.”

“Oh hells you’re rich,” Alice said, rolling her eyes. “If you have lingering doubts that she’s into you for the money, let me tell-”

“Disowned, dishonored, and already getting the sense my social circle considers me on the downward trajectory for the thankfully few that really care about that,” Gregory said sharply. “I think we can leave it at that. Did you not read the accounts of what happened in the last case? I thought you were here because she slandered you?”

“I came because she made me think she was dead,” Alice replied just as venomously, then softened. “Sorry. No, I remember the name Montague being involved, I just didn’t think you were the same Gregory.”

Meaning somehow she had gotten one of the few newspapers not making not-so-subtle hints about him and her plotting some kind of unholy union after killing off his entire family.

“So,” Alice said. “That chipper attitude earlier has faded and it’s making me suspect it was a front. That makes me even more suspicious of what she might be doing, if she’s decided to try and act positive before reaching the gallows.”

“I don’t think that’s connected,” Gregory said. “We talked a little about what she went through when that devil took her over. She’s trying to be better. It’s just being better makes it look like she’s an entirely different person,”

Alice snorted. “I suppose that’s right. She talk much about how it all happened and what drove her to decide to be more pleasant?”

“A little,” Gregory said. “Not the specifics, but apparently Barnes-”

“Woman in that blinding pink suit?”

“Yes, she, who is something I am not quite sure of yet, responded to Malvia being changed and that dead devil’s diabolism trying to make her a devil by putting Malvia’s soul in a different realm to recover and prepare for it.”

“So this..Barnes’ sent her into some kind of fey realm?” Alice said. “Like in stories.”

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“Like in reality,” Gregory countered. “The fey are real.”

“You’re talking to someone who grew up in the Quarter in a city,” Alice said. “Only fey I thought I saw before I moved to the country was some mutated water bug from the Nover. And after I went to the country, the only fey are the ones that made a deal with the Squire to not have their trees chopped down and their spring damned, and they’re a sorry sight. But this was actual powerful fey magic?”

Well, that was a depressing situation to hear about, but he needed to focus on the situation at hand. Just maybe not too much as a pair of Infernals on the corner ahead of them stared right at him, toothy grins stretched wide across their faces.

Alice stared back at them unimpressed. “Either try something and eat divine magic in the face, or move. So, this fey realm?”

“She said it helped her decide to be better,” Gregory said, eyeing the pair as they continued to grin at him and Alice. One gave a jaunty little wave as they passed. “I think a few hours, even in a fey realm, isn’t going to help, even if it helps get her aimed in a somewhat healthier direction.”

“So we’re back to her, probably planning to do something very stupid,” Alice said. “That she thinks will be smart, but won’t tell us because she thinks will hurt us. Which is different from what happened earlier because then she’ll intend the hurting, even if only because she thinks its necessary.”

“You don’t think it was on purpose?” Gregory asked.

“Do I think Malvia is deliberately setting up some cruel stunt to make us both fall in love with her only to suddenly pull the rug out from under both of us?” Alice said, then sighed. “I know I said I wasn’t sure, but thinking on it some now that the hurt’s fading just a bit? No, I don’t, same as you. Doesn’t change the fact that she did it, and now suddenly we’re living in the mess of it.”

On that, Gregory couldn’t agree more.

It was at the next intersection that a question he really should have asked earlier came to him.

“I probably should have asked before we left, but you do know where we’re going, right?” Gregory asked.

“Yeah,” Alice replied. “Out of the quarter. This is the quickest way out, and once we’re on roads where folks are less likely to jump you for not having horns, I want you to attest I ain’t no thief the first time some Halspusian tries using that as a reason to spike me. Is it in the right direction?”

“The Temple of Tarver isn’t too far off the way you’re heading,” Gregory said. “We’ll have to go a couple of blocks to the west, but then it’s straight down the street.”

“And once we get there?” Alice said. “You might be a priest, but I do not see them willing to hand over entire gallons of holy water.”

“Well, if we want access to the holy water in the grand vaults, we’ll have to get past the Muse Verivaein, he of eight wings, via a tale told through song and harmony,” Gregory started. “It’s a three-stage one, where we must trade off instruments to a new set to show our adept skills at different instruments. If he judges us unworthy of our arts, he may cut off whatever hand has proved itself incapable.”

Alice looked at him incredulously. “I don’t know how to play instruments.”

“Singing?”

“Uh…a bit. Been told my voice is like a donkey’s though.”

“I’m sure it isn’t, and even if it is a little rough, I can help train you. But we won’t have time for that. Poetry?”

“I suck at rhyming.”

“Hrrm,” Gregory said, frowning as rubbed his chin. “Nothing for it then. We’ll have to do the alternative ritual.”

“And that is?” Alice asked hesitantly.

“We get him a bottle of brandy and wait while he tells us a story. Usually he defaults to when he defeated the Three Discordant Chimes of Malten, but he has quite a few he rotates between. Even better, since you’re new, he’ll be excited to tell them!”

Alice stared at Gregory for a second and then laughed harshly, punching him playfully on the arm. “Cheeky fucker, you had me tricked for a bit there!”

Gregory winced. While he was sure that punch had been playful, even through his thick coat, that had hurt.

“People always assume the most dramatic out of us,” Gregory said. “And truthfully, yes. I’m considered very restrained. Almost un-Tarverlike in how restrained I’ve been lately.”

They had a point. Too much of a point recently, and well. Not anything he could control, though. Not anything worth bringing up with Alice or Malvia. They wouldn’t get it.

“Don’t care if it’s Tarver-like or not,” Alice said, grin fading back into a scowl. “Makes it damn hard to be angry at you though.”

“Do you want to be angry?” Gregory asked.

“I want to be angry at someone,” Alice muttered. “And Malvia is in some basement and probably would set me on fire if I interfered with the plan. She can hide behind that for a bit.”

“She said the same thing about confronting her own issues,” Gregory said. “Best to be ignored. Falling into bad habits.”

“Like she herself isn’t a collection of bad habits,” Alice said. “I bet she’s spent half the time since making out with you internally screaming over the possibility we’d find out about each other.”

“You know,” Gregory said, a grin coming to his face. “There could be some fun to be had with that.”

“Sure,” Alice said. “Still leaving unsaid the most important part. Do you still want her?”

“Do you?”

Silence for a long, long time as they continued trudging. Not too far now, even with how slow going through the snow was.

“Do we need to answer this second?”

“No, I suppose we don’t. But it’s going to need answering sooner rather than later.”

“True. But still, until then, truce?”

“Yeah, truce. And for what you said, I suppose having some fun with Malvia over this mess she’s decided to land us both in. Nothing too likely to make her head smoke and her brain melt though.”

“Of course!”

More silence, as they made it to only four blocks away.

“So, how did you get with her the first time?” Alice asked quietly.

Was this her idea of breaking the ice? This was her idea of breaking the ice wasn’t it. Just think that because she said it quietly it was being subtle.

“We were never together in the first place,” Gregory said. “I think she wanted to, and tried but circumstances made me…reluctant to take her up on it.”

Alice cocked her head to the side, eyeing an Infernal passed out on the side of the street.

“Oi, greybeard, go find fresher meat than us!”

The Infernal remained seemingly lifeless as they passed by.

“Well, either I convinced him not to take a shot at us or he’s going to be dead from the cold soon,” Alice said, unconcerned about a potential death. “What did she do to make you reluctant?”

“A lot of smaller things,” Gregory said, trying to order the entire list inside his mind, and wondering if the Infernal next to him would even care. Alice seemed cut from the same cloth, albeit a bit rougher. Would she get seeing Malvia wanting to dance among corpses? Torturing people? Suggesting stabbing family members? Cackling as she poured acid into someone’s eyes? Just forgetting about Edward and leaving him in the custody of the drakes?

“What, stood you up for a date?”

Might as well find out. “More like she got my brother kidnapped by drakes. And tortured my friend. Oh, and her idea of romance was asking me for a ballroom dance on a floor filled with corpses. Most of whom her or I had just finished killing.”

Alice stared, then shuddered, chest shaking. Gregory shook his head slightly as the Infernal did her best not to laugh.

“Something about that amuses you?” He asked.

“Sorry, just, I guess you started prying chunks of her out of her shell faster than I ever did,” Alice said, getting her shaking fit of restrained laughter under control. “They used to consider me by far the most bloodthirsty of the two of us, but I knew Malvia was the more unhinged if you prodded her enough. So she tried getting you to dance on dead bodies?”

“Then she tortured one of my friends for information,” Gregory continued, forcing his way faster through the snow, only slowing when Alice's tail grabbed onto his arm and yanked back on him. “She said she wasn’t actually going to do it. She said she just needed him to talk so she could help get the case solved. If he hadn’t talked? Well, one of my friends might be missing fingers. Her only objection she voiced to me for not torturing people is that it’s not effective. She doesn’t seem to consider the fact that maybe she shouldn’t for moral reasons.”

“I beat someone to death for wanting my bed,” Alice said drily. “Mind you, it was winter, and not having a place with a roof and some decent walls meant a slow death in the snow. That doesn’t make it right. Doesn’t mean I don’t think of how else it might have been. All I know is that at that moment, when they tried forcing me out in that snow, that for me it was either get a rock or accept death. I got a rock.”

Gregory tried to say something, but couldn’t. Her tone was so casual when telling the story that trying to reply felt like trying to break through a wall with his fingernails.

“She wasn’t born in the Quarter, but it left its mark on her the same it does on anyone,” Alice continued. “Then your brother is the other big thing? She freed him, then let him get kidnapped by drakes? What happened after?”

“I tried to follow up with them, but well, drakes,” Gregory said angrily. “I was a black sheep member of a noble family who were actively trying to disown me. I’ll let you guess how my inquiries went. My other family, among the church, tried looking into it and got some very pointed messages about what would happen if they pried. It’s not even the same trio. They’ve seemingly vanished. What I have found out points to every other draconian in this city knowing only a little more than I do. They won’t say anything to me.”

“Consider it a gift they even gave you the warnings?” Alice said ruefully.

Gregory nodded. “Something like that.”

“Yeah,” Alice said. “I know how that feels, and I doubt you can punch a drake then bite them somewhere sensitive. And it chafes knowing it could have been prevented so easily, right?”

“No,” Gregory admitted. “When I first found out, I was furious she’d abducted him then lost him, but as time passed it became..easier to hate her than anyone else involved. She was someone I could afford to hate, to keep the anger focused on all players bigger than her and me. I could have asked her to help”

“Maybe,” Alice said. “She might have said no.”

“She might have said yes,” Gregory said. “Although I’ll admit she might have just refused to tangle with drakes.”

“A good piece of advice for everyone,” Alice said. “Unless you’re Her Majesty, I suppose, drakes are out of reach. More trouble than they’re worth trying to wrangle.”

Not always, Gregory knew, but that wasn’t worth discussing.

“True, but again I didn’t give her the option,” Gregory said. “Besides, I’m uncertain if it’s actually the drakes that took him or not. He just vanished. Voltar claims he couldn’t find any trace of him. They were hardly the only people involved in that mess. Just the ones who vanished in the aftermath.”

Intelligence. The shapechangers who’d gone missing. Father. All of them were options.

“So, with all that in mind, why did you decide to make out with her?” Alice asked, glaring at a seemingly empty barrel as they passed by it. “Admitting you mishandled it is one thing; ending up trading saliva is something else.”

“I got caught up in the moment,” Gregory said. “She was very…persuasive.”

Alice snorted. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“Also,” he admitted. “I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be happy if I just told her no, and I was afraid she would bite me.”

Alice cackled. “My fault that I think. Teaching her bad habits. And she bit you anyway!”

“And she bit me anyway,” Gregory admitted ruefully. “Then Mourner Kelson walked in, and by the time we finished talking, I forgot it was there until you saw it. Partially because I keep wanting to talk to her. She accepted an apology too easily, when the truth is I kept my anger focused on her, again because everyone else involved was too formidable. And I ignored the fact that it meant they were too formidable for her to say no to in the first place.”

“I mean,” Alice said, idly dragging them out of the way of a very put out mother and daughter, the latter of whom couldn’t be more than four and actually hissed at the pair of them. “It sounds like she didn’t even try in the first place, so I wouldn’t say forgive her too much. It doesn’t change the other things either, and ‘Malvia Harrow tortured my friend and got my brother kidnapped’ is far more of a good reason to hold a grudge than half the people I’ve seen hate her.”

“True,” Gregory said. “I forgave her for that already, though. What do you need to forgive her for?”

Alice laughed bitterly. “Other way around on that. I got her forgiveness on what I did to her, which I’d say was bad enough to match what she did to you. Worse, probably, since she didn’t go into any of that intending to hurt you.”

“What did you do?” Gregory asked.

“I betrayed her,” Alice said soberly. “Seduced her only because I wanted protection, then drunkenly told her after getting her to tell me she loved me.”

Gregory was quiet, and after a second and a look at the Infernal, decided silence for right now was the best option available to him.

“If I hadn’t been so prideful, maybe we could have worked it out,” Alice said wistfully. “Mind you, she’d have to be less paranoid, and I’d already done the worst possible thing regarding her. She’s got a thing about betrayal and lies for someone who does it easily enough. I stepped on the very worst possible for her, and even apologies might not have healed it back then.”

“Speaking of her lying, she definitely has something planned,” Gregory said as they rounded the corner, pausing. “That one too?”

A tall, lanky Infernal slouched against a wall halfway. down the street. She had half of one horn shorn off, a wide-brimmed hat shading dark grey skin, had looked at them from under it for a half-second and was now heading inside the alley entrance next to her.

“Yeah,” Alice said. “Middle of the street, there aren’t any carriages to worry about. Want as much open space between us as possible.”

“Should we worry yet?” Gregory asked, staring at the alleyway entrance.

“Okay, do not stare there. If anyone is coming, it won’t be from there,” Alice said. “Let me worry about that. I’m probably faster on the draw. Three blocks from the end of the Quarter, and they won’t chase us past there.”

Whether they would have or not was moot, because the moment she finished talking, the first bolt was already in the air.