Poor Unfortunate Souls, Chapter One: Birds on the Wire
Chapter One: Birds on the Wire
Contents and Warnings Like most things in life, it opened with a knock on the door and a distraught client on our couch. I bustled around making tea, glancing at our client over my glasses, while Allie introduced us and assured the poor girl that we were here to help.
“I’m Aliea Veldon, and this is Lindsay Pilot,” she said, introducing us, “we specialize in cases of misuse of magic, but we will take any case that we believe is in our power to solve.”
The girl, who was in her early twenties, strawberry blonde, and quite pretty, looked at Allie with red-tinged eyes and the expression of someone busy composing themselves enough to speak. Over my glasses I could just make out the faint, plum-tinted blur at the edges of her outline: her natural aura. Compared to Allie, whose form was completely obscured by cobalt-blue light even now, when she wasn’t actually doing any magic, the purple shadow was especially faint. This girl was not a mage, and she certainly wasn’t carrying any spells on her, knowingly or not. I set a teacup near her on the end table, adjusted my glasses, and sat down next to Allie.
Allie shot me a questioning glance, and I shook my head, which she knew to mean that I hadn’t seen any traces of magic. Meanwhile, our client was taking her time to get her thoughts in order, having taken the teacup and started playing with the spoon.
“We have coffee, if you want some,” I told her.
She looked up and tried for a smile. “No, thank you. This is just… hard to explain. I didn’t even know about magic until a couple of days ago, and now I’m consulting a pair of wizards about something I don’t really believe in, because I’m just that desperate.”
I toed Allie’s foot out of pure habit before she could correct our client, and she gave me an unamused look.
“If you don’t mind my asking, miss…?”
“Kavanaugh. Call me Kate, though, please. I know it’s a mouthful.”
“Kate then. What made you believe that your troubles might be magical in nature?” I watched very carefully as Kate put down the cup, clasped her hands over her knee, and began.
“It’s not my trouble precisely: it’s a friend, actually my roommate, and I’ve come to believe that she’s in danger from the man who she is currently dating.” As with so many clients, once the story started she continued on without seeming to want to stop. “Just a few months ago, before graduation, I had to do a story on a Seattle or Portland area businessman, as a sort of inspirational piece for my college’s newspaper. I chose Christian Grey - CEO of Grey Enterprises Holdings, and spent a few weeks trying to get an interview. When the interview rolled around, I had picked up the flu, because half the rest of the editing staff had it, and I asked Ana if she could do the interview for me.”
[Kate presents the case]Ana must be the roommate. “So, it wasn’t possible for you to reschedule?” I asked.
Kate fidgeted again. “Well… you know. It had been a pain in the ass to set up that interview, and I really wanted it to go in the newspaper before all the space was taken up by graduation. I really should have, but Ana’s an English major and I figured that as long as she stuck to the questions I’d prepared and got it all taped, it would work okay.”
It was at this point that Allie cut in. “What happened at this interview?” she asked.
“I don’t actually know - I have the recording, but aside from Grey being condescending, nothing they said there really seems have any connection to Ana going out with him.”
Allie and I both opened our mouths to ask the same questions, and realized it at the same time. She looked at me and I gave her a nod, mentally dividing up the necessary questions.
“Do you still have this recording of the interview?” Allie asked.
Kate hesitated. “Yes, I brought it - do you really think it will help?”
“Every scrap of information helps,” I told her, “meanwhile, I don’t think you’d quite gotten to the point where Grey and Ana started dating, or why you think she is in danger from him.”
She nodded. “She started dating him, I guess, after the two of us and José had gone out for pre-graduation drinks. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but she’d had too much to drink, felt sick, and said she was going to call someone for a ride home… and she never did come home that night. I was worried about her, but she didn’t call, and later I found out that she’d spent the night with Christian Grey, who up until that point she’d never so much as mentioned. There are some people who I wouldn’t worry as much about in that situation, but Ana is… well, naieve, really. She had never dated before, and used to blush if someone mentioned underwear, or if I swore, but suddenly she was completely convinced that she was in love with Christian Grey. He came to our apartment, just barged in there, then our graduation - she’d known him for less than a week - and he was suddenly taking her to all these different, expensive places, and she never talked about anything else but him. But I’ve seen them together, and when he gets a certain tone of voice, she flinches.” Kate pursed her lips, then shrugged. “I knew something was wrong at the time, but… I didn’t really know exactly how wrong, you know? It seems so obvious looking back on it, but really I was graduating, and packing, and sending out resumes throughout that whole week, so maybe I didn’t notice as much as I should have. But then he convinced Ana to sell her car, and that was just wrong. Ana would never, ever in her right mind sell that car: she’s had it since she was sixteen, and her stepfather helped her buy it. She even named it Wanda.”
Kate took a deep breath, then continued, “There was just something so wrong about that, it made me start searching for information, starting with my notes from the interview. I thought that he’d never dated anyone out in the open, publically, but when I dug a little deeper I realized that whenever he brought a date to a charity function or shopping anywhere, he did it at places his family owned or invested in, and that they weren’t girls who attracted a lot of attention. I couldn’t find out any of their names; there are really very few pictures of him at public functions. I finally got some information, from Elliott - by a really weird coincidence, I met Elliott the same night that we went out for drinks, and he’s Christian’s adoptive brother - and he told me that Christian always dates girls who look almost exactly the same: brown hair, big eyes, shy girls who haven’t dated much. None of them stuck around long - the longest, Elliott said, was about three months. He was concerned too - he said his brother was always angry, and it ended up driving all his girlfriends away.”
She fell silent for a long moment, and I decided it was time to ask a few clarifying questions. “How did your roommate, Ana, get his number?” I asked.
Kate frowned. “Now that you mention it, she said he gave it to her when she interviewed him.”
I felt a little chill run up my spine. “Do you know of any specific times when Ana seemed uncomfortable around Christian?”
“Yes,” she replied immediately, “When he came to our apartment - they had sex, not even bothering to be quiet about it, and then he tried to leave right after, and he made her cry - I shouted at him for a good ten minutes at least. He just sort of… stared at me, like I didn’t exist. It was creepy. Then, she was always kind of antsy about the gifts that he gave her: some books, which he was clearly just using to show off how much money he has, phone and a computer. She definitely didn’t want him at graduation, and I thought that when she went to spend some time with her mother in Georgia, it would be the best thing for her. I figured her mom would have the easiest time talking her out of dating Christian, but from what I can tell, the asshole actually followed her there. She broke up with him, came home early, and doesn’t intend to ever go back as far as I can tell, but the fact that he followed her makes me feel really guilty about leaving for Barbados in a couple of days.”
Allie tapped a finger on her knee thoughtfully. “You said that Elliot was concerned about Ana and Grey’s relationship when you talked to him?”
“Yeah. I know it looks kind of hypocritical that I think Ana was moving too fast with Christian when I’ve known Elliot for the same amount of time, but right now we’re sort of friends-with-benefits, and it turned out that my parents knew his mom. It’s been fun, but I’m hardly looking to settle down with him… well, you know.”
This time, Allie nudged me with her foot before I could say anything at all about sudden romances. I nudged right back.
“Could you describe Elliot and your initial impressions of him?” I asked, “It might help us get an idea of what the whole family is like.”
“Elliot? Funny, impulsive about relationships but sensible about money, really high energy, a little dense when it comes to his family. He’s runs a green construction company and is really busy during the work week. He’s a good guy, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he’d never even suspected there was anything wrong about Christian. He’s got a sister, Mia, who is honestly kind of a ditz, and their parents are pretty nice, but really stiff: both of them are workaholics, perfectionist types. Mr. Grey is a lawyer and Mrs. Grey is a pediatrician. Oh, and their house is tacky as all hell, because Mrs. Grey is such an obsessive fan of Elvis that they modeled their house after his.”
I nodded, and beside me, Allie was doing the same, faking understanding. We hadn’t been in this world long enough to understand any pop culture references, and the burning question of “Who is Elvis?” didn’t seem terribly relevant to the investigation.
Allie looked at me, inclined her head slightly towards the door, and, when I nodded, turned her most capable, all-will-be-well-just-trust-us smile on Kate. “Well, I think that’s all we need so far,” she said, “If you’d just leave us your phone number and that interview, we’ll contact you if we have any more questions or when we have information that you need to know. Our rates are quite reasonable.”
Kate reached for her purse. “I just want you to know, I do feel somehow better about all this now that I know it’s not in my imagination,” she said, rising. “All the same, I’m not entirely sure I feel comfortable about the two of you investigating Christian Grey - I just have sort of a feeling that he’d be very dangerous if he found out someone was investigating him.”
“Allie and I are quite capable of taking care of ourselves - and each other,” I assured her, “please don’t add us to your worries.”
She looked skeptical.
“Pick a piece of furniture in this room,” Allie said suddenly.
“Um. The coffee table?” Kate said. I interpreted her expression as ‘unsure what the hell Allie was talking about.’
Allie nodded, and the coffee table slowly rose six inches into the air. Kate let out a little squeak and overbalanced backwards into the couch, purse and all. She had the presence of mind to yank her legs well out of the way as it continued upward, until its feet were well above waist height, and slowly sank back down. Then she sat up, shakily, and passed her hand over its surface, checking for wires.
“The magic is real,” Allie told her, “and it gets results.”
If Kate had known the first thing about magic, she would have been just about as impressed as she was shaken. Spur-of-the-moment telekinesis is hard, especially in such a controlled manner. More than ninety nine percent of the population can’t push so much as a pencil, after all, and real mages don’t start raging tornadoes of death like they do in cartoons. As it was, though, she handed me a flash drive, a card with her phone number on it, and a Polaroid photograph, muttered her thanks, and fled through the door before I could do more than get indignantly proud of Allie.
“That went well,” Allie grumbled.
“I’ve always told you that there’s something scary about levitation,” I replied, “not that it isn’t an improvement on sudden fire and all, but you have to admit, it’s kind of creepy.” I was sorting through the items that Kate Kavanaugh had left with me, and when I got to the Polaroid, I stopped.
The first had two young women in it: Kate was wearing a bright pink tank top, laughing, with one arm stretched out into the corner of the picture, presumably holding up the camera. The other was around another woman, who could only be Anastasia Steele. She was tiny, most likely less than a size four, pale, and had a curtain of rich brown hair hanging over part of her face. Her large blue eyes and her baggy t-shirt made her look several years younger than Kate, perhaps seventeen.
I stared at it for a moment, quietly shocked at how young they both looked: Allie had come around to stand behind me and look over my shoulder. She also appeared to be reading my mind.
“Were we ever that young?” she asked me, her hand a comfortable weight on my shoulder.
I shook my head. “Yes, but I’m not certain we were ever that innocent.” By the time we were twenty one, we’d lived on a half-dozen different worlds and counting. Needless to say, our continued education had been sporadic.
Then, I shook myself. There was no use standing about feeling old when there was work to do, so I placed the photograph on the coffee table and held up the jump drive.
“So, internet or interview?” I asked Allie lightly. “You decide.”
Allie had her lips pressed together into a thin line. “Interview,” she said, and plucked the jump drive out of my hand, heading for her laptop. I booted mine and began to exhaustively search the public record, starting with business sites, because I hoped I wouldn’t have to delve deep into electronic flashing tabloids before finding something. I had no desire to be spending part of this paycheck removing viruses, or this afternoon dealing with a sparkly-font and flashing pop-up induced headache.
The part of research that is always the hardest is finding the right sources and putting together the basics. Fortunately, the CEO of Grey Enterprises Holdings Inc - and wasn’t that a pain in the fingers to type, given that it sounded like the name of a company in a bad office comedy - was hardly low profile. To put it in layman’s terms, he had an ego that was visible from space, and, unfortunately, the money to throw it around.
About three quarters of an hour had gone by before I heard a noise from the couch, where Allie had been sprawled with a laptop, taking notes as she listened to the recording of the interview. I looked up to see Allie sitting up on the couch, her arms crossed, scowling at the computer. One of the couch pillows was resting at the threshold of the door.
“Problems?” I asked her.
“Kate,” she replied grimly, “was not exaggerating when she said this guy was a massive douchebag. He spent this whole interview - actually, he started this interview - by flat-out saying that he runs his business by manipulating his employees. No, sorry, by “incentivizing,” them, which I’m pretty sure isn’t a word. He’s also extremely creepy and offered Ana a job immediately after getting really mad at her during the interview and starting to ask her personal questions. In any case, none of this is evidence exactly, but it tells you a lot about his twisted mental state, and I think he might be a mage.”
That was news to me. “What?” I hadn’t found anything suspicious in my internet trawling, and I definitely knew what to look for. “I thought they were really rare in this world - well, trained ones, anyway.”
Allie shrugged. “It’s just a feeling,” she said. “He talks a lot about taking control by thinking that he can control things,” she checked her notes, “No, that he is ‘born to control things,’ and how he feels powerful because he’s the boss of thousands of people, and that he doesn’t have to answer to anyone, including a board of directors. I’m assuming he has one, though he says he doesn’t.”
A little chill centered itself in the back of my skull. “Well, that’s either textbook narcissism or a textbook evil mage,” I said, “and given that we know that he seems to go after a certain type of girl… do you think he’s controlling them with magic?” My mouth was dry when I finished the sentence.
“He might not be a mage,” Allie replied, though I could see that she was gripping her couch cushion quite tightly, “He could be controlling them some other way - emotionally, financially -”
I crossed the room and sat down next to her, resting my hands on her elbows. “He might not be a mage,” I confirmed. “And even if he is - I can conclusively prove to you that he grew up in this world. He’s got childhood records - newspaper announcements of his birthday, adoption papers, a birth certificate - he isn’t an Adept, Allie. No matter what else he is, he’s not an Adept.”
I had to swallow hard at the end of that sentence, but Allie looked up and met my eyes. I smiled gently at her and she twitched her lips in return.
“Well, no matter what he is,” she said, “I’m going to start preparing spells and wards.”
“Leaving me to deal with the paperwork, as always,” I said, shaking my head. “So far, I’ve got only a little more than you in the way of actual evidence. I turned to take my printed sheets off the printer, but Allie just lazily waved a hand and floated them over. Only one of them tried to flutter off the stack on the way. “All right,” I said, straightening the papers and adjusting my glasses. “Christian Grey is the CEO of Grey Enterprises Holdings Inc., which he started after dropping out of college, in Harvard, Nebraska. The initial investment of one hundred thousand dollars was contributed by an anonymous donor, and the company specializes in electronics and telecommunications, employing about four thousand people -”
“Four?” Allie asked, “Not forty?”
“Nope, four thousand, and this printout is from its own website.”
Allie’s eyebrows went up to a great height. “Somebody’s a liar,” she said, and settled back comfortably against my shoulder.
“Like I was saying, four thousand between two main branches, one devoted to telecommunications, the other to investments and marketing. They don’t make their own phones or carry their own coverage, it’s more of an… internet type of thing? I don’t know, it says that they diversified last year into ‘apps,’” I made air quotes, “whatever those are, and four G and anyway, that’s where they lost me.”
Allie nodded. “What else did you find out?”
“That someone has edited his Wikipedia page,” I replied, “Contradicting some of that information. For example, it says that he went to Harvard - with links to the university, which incidentally looks like the kind of place where your sister would just sink into the ivy and become one with the grounds - and that his company employs forty thousand people instead of four thousand. Incidentally, the list of companies that his has invested in on their official site doesn’t match the Wikipedia one. Only one company has been removed; a chain of pricy beauty salons named Esclava.”
“Well, there’s your coincidence.”
“Exactly what I thought,” I replied, tucking my hair behind the earpiece of my glasses, “These salons are owned by a Ms. Elena Lincoln, fifty-two, a divorced socialite who kept Mr. Lincoln’s name. Guess what one of their advertising slogans is? ‘Beauty truly is skin deep.’” Allie made a fake gagging sound, and I continued. “However, I found our second coincidence in this little tidbit; Elena and her ex-husband often attended or hosted charity functions along with Dr. Grace Trevelyan-Grey, and Carrick Grey: Christian’s adoptive mother and father.”
Allie closed her eyes for a minute. “Let me guess: Elena remained friends with the family after her divorce, while her husband did not.”
“Ding-ding, we have a winner! Elena and Grace are, in fact, involved in an event about two and a half weeks from now, on the eleventh of June. Yes, I’d say she kept in contact with the family.”
“Fascinating,” Allie yawned, “all that this tells us is that Grey comes from money, throws around money, and yet he claims to be a self-made man.”
I snorted gently. “If by self-made, you mean ‘makes up his own story as he goes along,’ then yes. It tells us something else: Grey’s salary is public record, and it’s outrageous. More than the company should be able to afford. And I looked at the price on his apartment. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in debt up to his eyebrows, and the company with him. I don’t know how badly Esclava needs the money invested by Grey’s ridiculously long and pretentious company Inc., but there’s a possibility that this is all about money.”
“Isn’t that cheerful,” Allie replied, before looking at the clock. “We should hit Esclava tomorrow, because I have a feeling we’re going to be here through dinner. I’ll go get take-out before I start gearing us up; what do you want?”
I considered it. “Oh great and mighty sorceress, summon me a szecheuan chicken,” I said.
Chapter 2: Illuminating Nothing[Notes]-------------
* I got my information about whether or not Kate is authorized to release the interview of Christian Grey here:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/releases/interview-and-property/
I am assuming that, once he had consented to the interview (as the CEO of a company he most likely would have had to sign a written release,) the contents of the interview, unless specified by him to be private, would have been a matter of public record, since they were to be published by a newspaper.
If you think I made a mistake, please correct me!
** Kate knows rather less about the extent of Ana’s interaction with Grey than we do, of course.