datadiving | [smooth jazz music]

And on the desk is the right word for it, the man in question practically draped over it, chin in his hands and elbows resting right atop what's probably very important paperwork.

"Always. Let's talk about your work, shall we? I'm sure you've got some important secrets drudged up here and there."

Practically all paperwork that's fit to be on the desk is important paperwork, and so it makes this all the more irritating. Which, he supposes, must be the point.

"Surely you've heard of client confidentiality," he replies, dryly, as he rolls up the newspaper he'd put aside for later. "I can't exactly divulge any of these 'important secrets', even if I had any."

Well, there were the darker, more esoteric things. But he sees no reason to tell anyone about that, much less the man who keeps making himself an annoyance.

"So, what, you don't even have any gossip at all? Not even the tiniest, juiciest little morsel for me?" He puts on what he thinks is a sweet, sexy, pouty face. The result just ends up looking ridiculous.

"I'll get off your desk if you tell me."

It certainly looks cute, though Ekkehardt would rather survive a shootout (again) than tell him as much. It would only encourage his bad behaviour. Or annoy him. Or both.

He weighs the potential consequences, and decides not to say anything.

"I have plenty of gossip, but would it really interest a nice, respectable socialite like yourself? Surely you have other things to concern yourself with." He's almost certain that if he really did have better things to do, he wouldn't be visiting this dingy little office all the time, but what's life without a little teasing.

That earns a soft chuckle out of him. "What's a socialite like me have but free time? It gets so boring all alone in that manor after all. And I'd rather have someone else's troubles to stew over."

He tilts his head to the side. "You won't even try to help a grieving man take his mind off things for awhile?"

"I'm not exactly the type of person whose work lends itself well to a personality that's good for comforting the griefstricken," he says, his voice blunt (though he gives himself less credit than he deserves, in this). "But I suppose if you want something to occupy your thoughts, it should show up sooner or later-"

As if adhering to dramatic timing, there's a knock on the door. He sighs.

"Will you make yourself useful for once and open the door for my guest, or do I have to make do as usual?" He's already getting up, anticipating the answer.

A response that's wholly correct, as when Avery straightens up, it's only so he can laze about in the chair across from the desk, looking slightly put out by the sudden intrusion.

He could have gotten somewhere if business hadn't decided to barge in. Maybe. Probably.

The most charitable thing Ekkehardt might vocally admit to about Avery is that he has a good imagination. What that means is probably up to interpretation.

He shakes his head as he passes by to open the door, apparently choosing to talk with his potential client there instead of bidding them to talk with him near the desk. The hurried, half-whispered conversation continues for some time; if Avery chooses to eavesdrop, he'll hear 'trapped' and 'haunted' continuing to come up as key words.

Eventually, the client leaves, and Ekkehardt is left with a frown on his face, deep in thought. He doesn't even seem to realise Avery is still lounging about in one of the chairs as he paces the room before stopping at the office's dingy window.

Really? He's going to have this conversation right outside the door like that? It may not qualify as rude, persay, but it is most certainly annoying.

He drops the damsel act in a second, crossing his legs and frowning at Ekkehardt's back. "So. 'Haunted,' eh? Care to elaborate, or are you going to keep pretending I'm not sitting right here?"

It takes him a moment to respond to even that; there's clearly something else weighing on his mind.

"I'm evaluating what I have, and whether it will be enough for this job," he replies. I'm not pretending you're not there. "And why so interested in anything to do with hauntings? I thought you were something of a skeptic."

Avery relaxes a little now that that the attention is back where it should be. "Oh, I still am, trust me. I'm just curious as to why a detective is pulling double duty as a paranormal investigator. Get these sorts of cases often, do we?"

He knows he's being a bit harsh, and the combative tone might be much, but with honey having failed, perhaps it was time to give vinegar a try.

"You'd be surprised how often the two can overlap," he says, his voice dry. He opens his filing cabinet, rifling through it for various items that he places on top of it; a knife, a flask, a torch, and other things, wrapped in cloth, that are harder to discern the use or even identity of. "There are a few inconvenient things I can bypass that others cannot, in fact, which is why so much trouble ends up coming to me."

He glances back at Avery for a moment, as if to prove his point.

Avery takes it all in stride. If anything, it's a compliment.

"And what sorts of things are those, if you don't mind me asking?" Curiosity is starting to get the better of him. Maybe he'll follow Ekkehardt along to this "haunted house" of his, just to see what tricks are up his sleeve.

He eyes him for a moment, then, as seriously as he's said everything else: "If I need to question victims, they're far more able to speak to me, for a start. Regardless of state."

The murdered dead usually want something; to be reunited, to be taken somewhere. Revenge. To be asked to find a body - or to scout out a location to find one - usually comes with the additional complication of hearing what it has to say, whether he likes it or not.

He begins packing the items he's retrieved into a bag, more to occupy his hands than anything else. He's still halfway lost in thought reviewing what he knows of the place he's been asked to explore.

"Uh-huh." Avery cocks an eyebrow. Speaking the the dead... He knows shady mediums exist out there, but he didn't figure Ekkehardt Gehring to be one of them. Probably some sort of metaphor or a way to hide his real techniques, Avery figures. Otherwise he wouldn't be so recommended.

"You know, good hosts don't just up and leave without warning. It's kind of rude. The least you could do is let me go with."

"I don't think it counts as me hosting you if you just waltz in here whenever you like and make yourself comfortable," he grumbles, in response. But he hasn't tossed Avery out on his ear yet, so clearly his dislike for annoyances hasn't yet outweighed whatever novelty value the other man brings to their constant meetings. "I'd tell you not to follow, but I have a feeling no matter what I said, you'd follow me anyway."

He finishes piling everything into his bag and slides out a blank card, scribbling something on it.

"Got it in one!" Avery announces cheerfully, getting to his feet with an eager hop. "Of course, I'll defer any and all detective work to you. Wouldn't want to get in the way of an active investigation. Whatever this is an investigation for."

"I'd love to know, myself. We'll find out when the victim tells us," is all Ekkehardt says.

"Get yourself ready and meet me here around five. I'd like some light for when we start." He hands Avery the card, which has an address neatly written on it, and begins to rifle through his filing cabinet for something else rather than step out of his office and leave Avery alone and unsupervised in it.

Avery takes the card in hand, looks it over, and then back up at Ekkehardt. "I'll right. I'll be there. But just so you know, if it turns out this is one big plot to ditch me, you and I are going to have words," he says, and turns on his heel to exit the office, holding his blazer in one hand and letting it drape over his shoulder.

He just sighs in response, tying up his hair and paying no mind to Avery as he stalks out the door. He has other things to worry about, right now.

--------

The dilapidated, crumbling mansion crouches at the end of a decaying street, a hulking pile of once-grand architecture. Someone had loved this place, once; now it's merely a ruin sometimes explored by the brave and foolish, containing a dangerous maze of rooms threatening to cave in on themselves from neglect.

Ekkehardt waits on the sidewalk in front of the house's long-neglected driveway, dressed in red, carrying a black umbrella and his bag. It's still raining, even now.

Between his outfit and his umbrella, Ekkehardt is bright as a beacon on this grey, dreary day, and Avery makes a beeline for him, holding tight to his umbrella and practically walking on tiptoe in his loafers to keep the hem of his slacks from getting wet.

"Yeesh," he comments as he gets a good look at the mansion. "No wonder people think this place is haunted. I'll be surprised if we get out without the roof collapsing."

"It's a miserable place, isn't it?" Ekkehardt's mouth twists in a clear, unambiguous sign of displeasure. "But all sorts of things crawl into abandoned places, so we'll have to tread lightly regardless while we search."

He retrieves one of the packages from his bag, opening it to reveal a set of lockpicks, and gets to work on the door.

"Watch the house while I open this," he instructs, "and tell me if anything moves. Windows especially."

Squatters, Avery thinks, but keeps an eye on the house all the same, hand not holding onto the umbrella resting on his hip. "Surprised you're more worried about the house than someone coming by to ask what you're doing."

But everything along this road has seen better days. More than a few people have probably found less clean ways of entering rich old houses like these to get what they wanted.

"It's the house that worries me the most." He works at the lock, with the fluidity of someone who's gotten plenty of use out of the equipment. "Just keep an eye on it."

The house is still a towering hulk; nothing seems especially out of place, save for the fact that the windows are completely empty of glass, rather than just being unclean, broken or cracked. As Avery keeps an eye on things, the only oddity is that one of them begins to reflect light, as if someone had placed a new window in.

Avery does a double take at the window, stopping his scan and narrowing his eyes. Was that glass? But none of the other windows had any. Come to think of it, why didn't the other windows have any? Wouldn't there still be something there if someone broke in?

He shakes his head. "So are these windows supposed to be glass-free or has a particularly particular thief already been by?"

"I've been here twice before," he replies, by way of explanation. The lock clicks open under his meticulous handling. There's a grunt of exertion as he pushes the door inward to open it. "Once to search, once for removal. House had windows in it then, but if someone's removed them all, then they're sensible. Glass is an invitation here."

He flicks on his torch. Even with a sizeable amount of daylight left, the ruined foyer is less than inviting, and surprisingly dark.

"Try not to look in any mirrors," he says, almost casually. "Or anything that looks like it's reflecting light. It might cause delays."

Avery shrugs and shakes his head. "That makes absolutely no sense, but sure. Whatever." He closes up his umbrella and enters the foyer, resting the umbrella against the door frame.

There's no better word than "creepy" to describe a place like this, the sort of building you'd read out of some pulp horror novel or short story. It's not enough to send a chill up his spine, but it's absolutely unpleasant.

"It looked like there was a window in one of the, uh, window-holes or whatever you'd call them earlier. Someone probably missed one." Or it was his imagination."

"Just the one? That's better than I expected." This is apparently a prompt to say more cryptic things that apparently make no sense.

"Keep the umbrella with you, at least. We might not get the opportunity to leave out the front door." He closes his own umbrella, holding it in one hand loosely.

Sound seems to travel oddly in the foyer; there's a sense of unnatural quiet. Words, breath, footsteps; those things seem to die off much more quickly than they would in outside's rain-filled air.

There is the distant sound of knocking; once, twice, again. Ekkehardt raises his head, stopping to listen; when the knocking comes again, he veers off to the left of the foyer, apparently settling on a particularly dingy-looking hallway to go into.

Avery's knuckles hover just over one of the foyer's walls when a knock rings out. He jumps, much to his chagrin, unaware until now just how tense he is. The place is creepy even in daylight, the weird acoustics and talk of hauntings getting the better of him, despite knowing that it's an impossibility.

Thus, he takes that little bit of knocking personally, snatching up his umbrella from by the door and scowling as he follows behind Ekkehardt, glaring about to look for whatever intruder was about to get a piece of his mind.

There doesn't appear to be an intruder, as such. The knocking continues, sporadically, as they wander a veritable maze of dingy, decaying corridors. Portraits half-destroyed by mold and age cover the walls like wallpaper in some places; empty frames, awaiting canvases or even glass, lie scattered on the floors of rooms Ekkehardt glances into, and then passes by. There's a pervasive, prickling feeling of cold, not helped by the fact that rain is actively seeping into the hallways in some places - and the occasional discovery of a hole torn into a mansion wall, turning interior into exterior. (No damage happens the same way twice. Some don't even seem human; claw marks or eerily perfect tunnels.)

Whoever the owner was, they were an eccentric, decorating this way even before death. That much is certain.

"What in the world?" Avery mutters, stopping near one of the claw marks. He leans closer toward it, squinting, trying to find any sign that they might just be painted on or faked because they have to be. The sorts of things that could make that kind of gash in a wall like that or could burrow through the walls or make the world seem colder or any of this weird crap have to be fake.

"I didn't figure you to be the kind of guy for elaborate jokes," Avery says, struggling to keep his voice even.

"I wouldn't drag you all the way out here in this weather for a joke," Ekkehardt says, apparently unbothered (or so used to it that it doesn't make him flinch). He stops walking, turning back to glance at him. "What part of it do you take offense to?"

He stares at Ekkehardt in silence as though he's grown two heads, then spreads his arms, gesturing to both sides of the scratched-up, hole-infested hallway.

He just huffs. "They're old. Whatever made them isn't coming back, so you don't need to be that concerned." He taps the side of a hole with his umbrella, sending shards of wood cascading down. "They're useful if we need to leave in a hurry, however."

He gestures with the umbrella, beckoning him onward. "I still have to talk with my client. And I wouldn't advise being alone in this place." Despite the fact that by his own admission, he himself has been in this place, alone, several times before.

The questions come by the thousands, pouring into his head only to become jumbled up and pour from his mouth in complete silence as he tries to speak and fails. "You and I are having a talk after this," Avery hisses, wagging his finger at Ekkehardt even as he hurries to catch up with him.

"Aren't you the one who wanted to come? At least try to act professional." He opens another door and brightens a little, stepping through into a room filled with shattered mirror frames.

In the room is a woman, pale-faced in the way that comes from significant shock and blood loss, dark-haired and dark-eyed. She has one hand clasped over her throat, like she's holding her head in place; the jagged edges of some ugly wound peek between her fingers, though mercifully there's little blood.

One hand is curled into a fist; she drops it on Ekkehardt's approach. Her head moves, just a little, to look at him.

"Excuse me," Ekkehardt says politely, as he kneels in front of her. The rest of his words are technically comprehensible, but are hard to grasp, like their very nature is formless. They're certainly having a conversation, that much is certain, but what it's about is hard to grasp.

No frames are left intact, no shards remain. But still, there's the gleam and catch of glass reflecting light, here and there, like something is poking a light through into the dark room.

Avery's mind runs blank.

That's a corpse. There's no doubt about it--a moving, speaking corpse. And Ekkehardt is talking to her. Or at least he thinks Ekkehardt is talking to her? He can't hardly hear it, or he hears it, but it filters in through one ear and out the other like grains of sand through a sieve.

He catches glimpses of glimmering light and wonders if he should interrupt the conversation to warn Ekkehardt about them. It could be something. It could be nothing.

He swallows, the threads of his skepticism slowly tangling and unraveling as he holds the umbrella with both hands, as though he could knock them away like he was holding a bat.

The light gathers, here and there. Catching, like fish swarming to bait, birds flocking to scattered food. The way it moves in the darkness carries something wistful, strangely (artificially) nostalgic.

"--It will be done as you ask." Ekkehardt inclines his head; the woman smiles and closes her eyes, leaning back against the wall. He stands, finally, and glances over at Avery, and around the room, before stepping over the frames to get to the door.

(It's been propped open, not allowed to close fully. Ekkehardt had arranged that, too.)

"Come on," he says, beckoning to him. "Best not to linger. You might see things you don't like."

"Too late," Avery says, his voice cracking a little. This is almost too much to handle. Almost. Somehow, he manages to keep himself together. Not even he's sure how.

"What are you going to do? What the hell is going on here?" The questions are hissed for reasons even he's not sure of. Can the corpse woman even hear him? Is there a point in whispering?

"She's a client." Said like this is the most obvious thing in the world. "I'm fulfilling her request, even if it happens to be her last one." He snags Avery by the sleeve, insistently pulling him along back into the hall in the entirely likely possibility that he might have forgotten how to walk.

Things have changed; a not-insignificant amount of time has passed, for one. The sun has almost set, leaving only the faintest hint of light in the sky.

"And this house draws certain things to it, the way rain pulls debris to gather in gutters. It's a spot for finding lost things, especially ones that nobody else wants to be found. I usually check here, if all other avenues are exhausted, as my other client already did."

"You say that like it explains what's going on but it really, really doesn't," Avery says flatly, and lets out a heavy sigh, rolling his eyes. "Allow me to enlighten you as to what I know right now: hauntings are real and I just saw a talking corpse. Anything beyond that and you're going to have to get a lot more specific, Mr. Gehring."

Although he has a feeling that he isn't about to get an explanation for some time. "But fine. Whatever. Just tell me what you need me to do."

"I'm trying to keep my explanations short," Ekkehardt replies, with a shred of impatience creeping into his voice. "I can explain more later. Once we're out. Just follow me."

The darkened halls provide no challenge apart from those of nerves, at least at first. But as the last of the daylight slips away, flashes of mirrored light begin to shine from cracks and half-glimpsed rooms and decaying frames half-hanging off the walls.

They provide nothing so comforting as an ordinary reflection.

(Ekkehardt passes by a frame beginning to fill with what seems to be liquid mirror-light and it reflects, instead, the face of a stranger that's not him; but the same white hair, traces of the same smile remain. Sunlight, a strange countryside, more strangers dressed in clothing so unlike the stark reds and blacks he drapes himself in these days.

It's easy to get lost in mirrors, when they show you what you miss and what you desire.)

He switches his grip from Avery's sleeve to his wrist, continuing to tug him along.

Avery nearly stumbles at the tug, the movement just enough to distract him from a glimpse of woven sun within the mirrors that are not, but not enough to keep the image from taking root within his mind.

They're leaving he assumes (he hopes), and it doesn't take long for Avery to match Ekkehardt's pace, the only thing keeping him from rushing ahead being his unfamiliarity with the decrepit old house.

"I can hit whatever's in here with my umbrella, right?" he asks, voice quavering just a little bit.

It's easier to deal with all of this if violence is on the table.

"You can try," comes the not-at-all comforting reply. He keeps hold of Avery's wrist as they enter the foyer - comfortingly still and dark and devoid of reflections.

The handle clicks as Ekkehardt tries the door, and then he simply kicks it open and almost stumbles out into fresh night air, pulling Avery along with him. Light and the sound of strange voices follow them out, briefly, before the door slams shut and leaves them both in silence.

(The house's empty windows are shining bright.)

Ekkehardt finally lets go of Avery's wrist, just to sink to the pavement and take a moment to recollect himself, breathing hard. Even in the scant light provided by a half-full moon, it's clear that he's ashen.

[smooth jazz music]

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