(no subject)
Title: With a Little Luck
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairing: American Cursebreakers.
Rating: PG-13 (they are now dropping the f-bomb much more, ladies and gents)
Word count: 8,858 -- you read that right
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. (JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Scholastic, et al.) No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended. Nor do I own the song "With a Little Bit of Luck," from which I stole the title -- that's Paul McCartney's.
Summary: A study in luck. "You pay your debts in one form or another. There's no dodging it." He smiled. "Instant karma's gonna get you."
Note: A sequel to a much shorter, more casual Cursebreaker fic which you should read before you read this. This got much deeper, plotty and characterization-focused than I ever thought it would. This is also my longest one-shot to date. Go me.
If Vince Sasso actually had any sort of life remaining after Cursebreaker training, he would definitely be going on dates on Saturday nights. He would be dating hot girls who wore miniskirts and high heels (or whatever it was that hot girls wore) and they would all be very impressed by a Cursebreaker (and his wallet), enough for him to get laid. The catch about being a Cursebreaker was the life, a life of adventure, travel and sights rarely seen, but also a life that demanded most of your time. Whatever life you managed to hold onto after school generally vanished by the time you completed three years of Cursebreaker training. You lived and usually died with your work, on the field or in the office, without much of a life outside it.
What this really meant was that Vince spent his Saturday nights at his teammate Kennedy Phillips's apartment watching whatever movie she'd sent for through Netflix.
"It lies to her," the creepy old lady rasped through Kennedy's great surround-sound system. "It tells her things only a child can understand. It's been using her to restrain the others. To her, it simply is another child. To us, it is The Beast."
"Well if we're talking about eighties' TV programming, then that's not too far off," Vince said wryly, shifting for the thousandth time. Kennedy's couch was uncomfortable in a way that you had to admire. The second you thought you found a place without a lump, there were actually two more to replace the one you'd managed to escape. Besides, Kennedy was hogging the damn thing.
Kennedy socked him in the arm and kept her eye on Poltergeist on her TV screen. "Come on, I thought you might enjoy this one," she protested. "You know how many studies there've been on this damned movie? Six. Six published studies on one movie. That never happens! Usually it's the big topics and nothing that's actually comprehensible by a civilian. The Institute actually gets to publish articles in mainstream magazines just because they're writing about a curse around a movie set, when does that happen?"
Vince shifted. Again. And then again. "We're off work right now. Do we have to talk about this? ... And would it kill you to buy a new couch? Really? I mean it. How are you so comfortable? It's like your couch is dying a slow death by bubonic plague."
"Oh, don't pull the 'I'm so cool and have a life outside of work' thing on me," Kennedy said, eyeroll, fingerquotes and all. "You're just as bad as me. Look at your apartment. It looks like a hotel room. You've been living there for five years and you still haven't unpacked your boxes."
"I don't have to unpack the boxes! They're perfect storage," Vince argued. "Why should I unpack my dishes when they fit so well in that box?"
Kennedy brandished her finger right in his face. "This? This is why you don't have a girlfriend. Or a girl. Or a friend. You haven't moved into your apartment after five years because you don't think it matters! You just spend every waking moment either in my apartment or at work!" She grabbed a handful of popcorn and stuffed it into her mouth. "Oh, and I keep the couch so you won't try to crash here."
Vince gave her a strange look and looked around at her beat-up, smoky, overall cheap apartment. "Why would I want to crash here?"
"Why are you here?" Kennedy shot back rhetorically, and sat up with a start as her cell began buzzing against the table. She snatched it up and flipped it open, covering the speaker before hissing at Vince, "Turn it down! Pause it!"
Vince raised the remote but gave her an incredulous look. "Pause it? It's not like you don't know how it ends."
Kennedy grabbed the universal remote out of his hand and turned off the surround-sound, then paused the movie, glowering at him. "Phillips," she said calmly into the phone.
"Phillips. Did I hear Sasso there with you?"
Fuck, it was Turner. Bossman. Well, bosswoman. "Yeah," Kennedy said, a shade defensively. "We're just -- what's the deal?" Somehow she didn't want to own up to meeting up outside of work to the bosswoman.
Who is it? Vince mouthed, meanwhile taking the time to steal more couch space while Kennedy was distracted.
Turner, Kennedy mouthed back, and grabbed a handful of popcorn only to throw it at him.
Vince's eyebrows shot up but he said nothing, being that he was too busy picking greasy popcorn from his shirt.
Turner sighed into the phone, taking her sweet time to talk, Kennedy thought, but it was an inane thought considering what came out of the bosswoman's mouth next. "Allister Totolos had a heart attack."
Kennedy couldn't get anything out besides a "What?" and thrust the phone into Vince's hands immediately as though to put the responsibility of a good reaction entirely on him. He gave her a pointed look but she shook her head, so he lifted the phone to his ear.
"Hello, Ms. Turner," Vince said, all cordiality and business.
Turner seemed unfazed by the switch of conversation partners. "You may want to consider buying a cell phone or getting your phone line turned back on at home, Sasso, I meant to contact you first."
Vince didn't get it, honestly. He just didn't get it. "My phone was turned off? That's why you called? I'm not over here that often -- "
"Sasso," Turner said, in that severe tone that was kind of hot in a way. Either way it got his attention. "Allister Totolos had a heart attack and it's not looking good, which I meant to tell your teammate before she handed me off to you."
"What do you mean, it's not looking so good? What happened? You goin' to tell me what happened or do I have to guess?" Vince pressed, unrelenting, because this was bad. This was not good at all. "Come on, Ms. Turner."
"I've e-mailed and mailed the information to everyone already, but if you get a pen and paper I'll read it to you right now so you can be the first visitors," Turner spoke quickly. "The point is, I've already hired a temporary replacement."
"She's got a temp already," Vince hissed to Kennedy.
"I heard that," Turner said, unimpressed. "And he's not a temp. He'll be in tomorrow since you've got two on your hands this week and it's that time of the year, okay, so let's just get this over with, sound good?"
Vince scrambled for paper and pen. "Sounds good. Who's the temp, who'd you steal him from?"
"England. Why?"
"No reason," he said. "Shoot, Ms. Turner."
Kennedy watched Vince write down an address and a few phone numbers, and then turned off the TV and DVD player the second he hung up. "Are we going now?"
He held out the information to her after a moment. "Yeah. But I'm driving."
"Whatever." Kennedy Summoned her coat, ignoring its inevitable collision course with Vince's face.
Vince sighed and grabbed the coat before she could get her hands on it, handing it to her. "I'll get the car warmed up."
Working one case without Toto was just going to be weird, Kennedy knew, but two cases during holiday season could go past weird into impossible. He'd been working at the USDoM for thirty whole years now, and he'd worked for the Hellenic government for thirty years before that, and who knew what he'd been doing before that because the stories just tended to change according to Toto's moods. There was a lot of talk about the Russians and the Balkans and private business deals, and no one really cared to press him for exact details.
Kennedy was starting to wish she'd paid attention to all the stories, though. The old man didn't look good, but that was what happened when you were well into your first century and living in America. Supposedly in Europe wizards lasted longer --- well, that was what Europeans said, anyway, they said it was their food and their superior culture and all that crap, at least that was Kennedy bet they would say.
Either way, their European was fading. One of the most experienced Cursebreakers in the USDoM was either on his way out or nearing it. God bless America, really, except it really wore down the legends quick with fast food, corporate greed, recessions and general suckiness.
Kennedy broke off a piece of her Pop-Tart and waited at her desk for either Vince to show up or some news from Turner. Technically you were advised not to eat at your desk, mostly because there were computers there, but she'd been breaking the rules for so long that she'd actually forgotten the rule even existed until a year ago when she'd bothered to look at the signs.
She tugged down her sleeve to look at her watch and chewed with sort of a vengeance. Vince was late.
"Phillips!" Kennedy snapped to attention at the sound of Turner's voice and shoved her Pop-Tart under some paperwork, only then turning to greet her boss. It was a rare thing to see the bureaucrat outside of her own office, and Kennedy could've sworn that Turner'd been wearing the exact same sleek suit and professional hairdo a week and a half ago, the last time she'd emerged.
"Here," she said belatedly, and wondered idly if Turner just lived there.
Turner hesitated and didn't speak immediately, as though searching for the exact right phrase. "How did he look?"
Maybe Turner really did live at the office, Kennedy thought. Her suits were always really nicely pressed, though, but maybe she kept an iron there. Wouldn't that be a fire hazard? Wait, the bosswoman was talking. "What? Who?" Kennedy asked, glancing up.
"Toto," Turner said, wearily.
Kennedy considered that, then shrugged. "He's alive," she said.
Turner sighed. "Over here," she called to someone behind her with an impatient gesture. "I'd like you to meet your new temporary team member, Simon Griffiths."
Kennedy watched with fascination as a stringy, younger man just barely stopped in time not to spill a cup of water on Turner. Oh, this had to be Griffiths. "I'm sorry, I just couldn't get that -- water bottle to work," he apologized immediately. Yeah. He was British all right.
"The coffee's better," Kennedy chimed in. "I don't remember the last time we replaced that water bottle."
"She's joking," Turner said to Griffiths as he glanced down into his paper cup. "Mr Griffiths, this is Kennedy Phillips."
"Charmed," Griffiths said, if dubiously.
"Bad pun," Kennedy answered, glancing at Turner in hopes of -- yes! -- getting that long-suffering, one day my life will cease to have these people in it look. "And you're Toto's replacement?"
Griffiths was about to enter the cubicle but paused at that, verbally disarmed at the lack of a proper introduction. "Ah well, I suppose. Phillips, is it?" he tried.
Kennedy leaned on the back of her desk chair and stuck her hand out. "Kennedy Phillips."
He gave it a good firm shake. "Simon Griffiths."
"Any particular reason we're having the British Invasion?" she asked him directly, releasing his hand.
"Because he's good," Turner said; Kennedy had entirely forgotten she was there. "And we're known for having the best. Brief Mr. Griffiths on the cases and get to work. Have you seen Sasso?"
"Not since last night," Kennedy answered honestly, and was starting to hope that Griffiths didn't intend to keep looking at her like he was for his whole time here. "He'll show."
Turner smoothed her hair, agitated. "He'd better," she said, and bid Griffiths good luck before she went.
Kennedy and Griffiths looked at each other for a moment, indecisive and awkward, not certain what to do next. "Now what?" he finally asked.
Kennedy snapped out of it, just like that. Weird times. And suddenly, she was back. She gestured to the chair in the corner of her cubicle, and, as he sat, broke off a piece of Poptart and chewed. Only then did she answer. "Okay, I don't know how you do it over there in England but we have three on a team, varying up the specialties, just enough to break a casting point, ending point, and source, et cetera, et cetera."
"Fairly standard." Griffiths shrugged that off, apparently just too curious about everything else to talk about work. "Who is it I'm replacing?"
Kennedy snorted, not even bothering to be polite at this rate. "Oh you're not replacing anyone," she said. "You're going to be covering for Toto until he gets back, this is definitely not permanent."
"And Toto is..." Griffiths prompted.
"Allister Totolos. Yeah," Kennedy said pointedly, upon spotting the spark of recognition in Griffiths's eye. "That Totolos. He's been with us for thirty years."
Griffiths made a scoffing sound, startled again as Kennedy gave him a slight glare. "Well, he hasn't been with you personally for thirty years, I mean," he said. "With the American government, I suppose?"
"Yeah, with us, Vince and me." Where the hell was Vince? Kennedy hated dealing with people. "For the past couple of years anyway. He's out for a bit but he'll be back," she added with certainty.
And like Underdog come to save the day or something, just as awkward silence was about to fall, she heard Vince say "Fuck" and scrambled out of her chair. "One minute," she said to Griffiths, and ran to greet Vince.
Vince stared at Kennedy and lowered his Starbucks coffee as she ran to him. "Hey," he said. "What cup are you on, three?"
Kennedy shook her head, answered the question as always, but there were bigger things. "Two cups today, not the point," she said. "The temp is here."
Oh. One of those situations. "Okay, I'm coming, I'm coming," Vince assured her, pulling off his gloves as they walked to her cubicle. "Any warnings?"
After a moment of consideration, Kennedy decisively said, "He's British and I'm pretty sure he's a moron."
"I can hear you, you know," Griffiths called from one cubicle away.
Vince elbowed Kennedy, splashed coffee on himself as he did, made a face and just walked into the cubicle. "Hey," he said to Griffiths, stuffing his gloves into his pocket before taking off his winter jacket. "I see you met our resident absent-minded Cursebreaker?"
"Fuck you," Kennedy said sweetly, leaning against the entrance to the cubicle.
"She's a misanthrope," Vince explained, taking a seat backwards on Kennedy's chair and making a face back as she made a face at him for doing so. He looked to Griffiths. "Don't take it personally."
Griffiths paused, and stalled by taking a sip of water. "I wasn't," he said, though it was a very clear lie.
"Good," Kennedy said. "It's not that you suck. I mean, Turner doesn't hire people who suck. You're just not Toto."
"Shut up," Vince advised Kennedy, and stuck his hand out to Griffiths. "Vince Sasso."
He returned the same firm handshake. "Simon Griffiths."
Kennedy figured she might as well satisfy her curiosity while they were doing all this introductory crap. "You never answered, why are you here, exactly?" she asked Griffiths.
There was a distinct moment of awkwardness that stretched on just a little too long, and Vince grabbed the case files, holding them out to Kennedy until she took them. "Go make copies."
"I'm not a secretary," Kennedy protested, holding the papers back out to Vince.
Ha, secretary? Like they could trust her for a second with a phone. "Just do it," Vince said wearily, and glanced at Griffiths as soon as she was gone. "So... why are you here?"
Griffiths sent Vince a grim smile. "So long as we break some curses," he said, "does it matter?"
Well, Vince guessed it didn't. "All right. Welcome to New York," he said.
Simon Griffiths supposed that he was grateful the first case they had decided to take on was actually in New York City. He hadn't had a very good look at the place yet, as it was, and it was supposed to be a remarkable city full of things you were practically contractually bound to see upon setting foot in the city, when you weren't afraid of getting run over by a taxicab or mobbed by homeless people. That wasn't to say he wanted to go sight-see, exactly, but it might be a fortunate side-effect to going into the city, he figured.
He was wrong. Entirely wrong. There was nothing to see, as upon getting their bearings with the case, they Apparated directly into the subway and boarded, and now he was clinging to a pole that was sticky with ... something. He chose not to question it and hoped he didn't look as green as he felt.
Also, Sasso and Phillips were whispering like a married couple who was trying not to catch their child's attention and failing miserably.
This was almost an insult, Griffiths thought. One of the British Ministry's best former Cursebreakers entering the service of the American government, of all places, and then being snubbed by American Cursebreakers. No, that was definitely an insult. He was too good to be ignored like this as though he was new to the process, certainly.
So, he spoke up. He had to. "Is there something wrong?" he asked, casually and yet firmly enough to gain an answer.
There was no answer, or even a sign of recognition.
He then cleared his throat.
There was still no answer.
Americans don't hear about anything British besides terror attacks, Turner had said, and I don't think they watch the scandal pages; so unless someone more mainstream chooses to write about the unfortunate state of events surrounding your release, American Cursebreakers will treat you just like anyone else. Well, the madwoman hadn't been joking, but her ironic tone suddenly made a great deal more sense.
"Excuse me," Griffiths said next, as pointedly as he could.
Phillips was the one who noticed, surprisingly. He had counted her as the unobservant one. She looked back at him, leaning back and close to him. Uncomfortable, he leaned back that very instant as well, swinging back on the pole, away from her very blue eyes. "What do you want?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
He wiped his hand on his trousers. "I'd like to know what it is you're talking about," he said.
"The case," Sasso said, looking past Phillips. "Sorry, it's just this is the third case in a row we've had that's going to turn out to be a bust or really fucking hard."
"The 27 Club was a valid phenomenon back in the seventies," Phillips said firmly. "Four rockstars dying at the age of 27, that's a curse pattern if I've ever seen one. Ever since Kurt Cobain people are superstitious but by then the curse should've been well and dead."
"Four different studies declared the 27 Club to be an urban myth," Griffiths said, now quite unimpressed with the Americans.
The Americans, in turn, shared a look. "Four different studies where?" Sasso asked, skeptically.
"At universities." Phillips stuck her hand into her pocket and looked critically at Griffiths. "A senior thesis, a master's thesis, and two published undergraduate articles."
Griffiths almost thought being at home would be better than this. "Oh, I suppose you don't believe anything unless it comes right from SAI."
"Wait now," Sasso cut in. "Wait a second -- "
"The SAI has the best Arithmantic minds in the world," Phillips argued.
"There's more to curses than Arithmantic proof!" Griffiths argued back.
Sasso grabbed Phillips by the shoulder. "Come on, we're at our fucking stop."
"Idiot," Phillips said openly, looking right at Griffiths before she turned to go.
Griffiths hated the eyeroll that Sasso gave him. If it wasn't for breach of contract, he would walk away. He followed.
There was one good thing about this stupid, stupid case, Vince thought, and it was that Kennedy and Griffiths both absolutely loathed the subject, even more than they hated each other. He didn't mind the guy so much, but he was used to the smell of patchouli, weed and body odor -- just like anyone else, he'd once dated a girl who preferred patchouli to showers.
"You're an idiot," Kennedy said to the musician.
"You just going to let her talk to me like that?" the musician asked Vince.
"It's not the opinion of the US Department of Magic that you're an idiot, Mr. Bloodgood," Vince answered.
"Call me Tommy, man," Bloodgood said with a yellow-toothed grin. "You're cool. Who's the quiet dude?"
"That's Mr. Griffiths." Vince glanced back at Griffiths again. He didn't look happy to be working with them. Then again, neither did Toto, at the start.
"Simon," Griffiths spoke up. "If we're keeping a casual feel to this whole thing."
"Sorry if we're not classy enough for you, Tony Blair," Kennedy said darkly.
"You need to mellow out, babe," Bloodgood said, and tossed a small bag at Kennedy, which she immediately tossed back out of disgust. "Come on!"
"Let's go over the facts again," Vince said slowly, "because I think we got a bit off track."
"You're an idiot. You can't be in the 27 Club, I've never even heard of you," Kennedy berated. "You have to be famous to be in the 27 Club."
"That's bullshit, lady," Bloodgood said, eyebrows raised.
"Yeah, shut up," Kennedy said, sticking her hands in her pockets.
"Your twenty-seventh birthday is tomorrow and you're concerned you're going to die," Vince said, reading off of his notes.
Bloodgood gave him a thumbsup. "Got it in one, man. It's a fucking bust, just when I'm getting famous."
"You're not famous!" Kennedy snapped at him.
Griffiths stepped forward and considered Bloodgood for a moment, then turned back to his partners. "We should check."
"I thought you said the 27 Club was an urban myth," Kennedy said, eyeing him.
"Let's find out." Griffiths gave her what must have been his version of a smirk.
"It's not a myth! It took Jimi and Janis and Jim!" Bloodgood argued.
"Don't forget Jones," Kennedy added. "Brian Jones was the first one -- "
"Oh don't start with that rot," Griffiths said wearily.
"You're the one who said we should check him," Kennedy said, rolling her eyes.
"Are you famous? I've never heard of you," Griffiths asked the musician, ignoring her.
Bloodgood stared at Griffiths, then sniggered and nudged Vince. "I'm only the best guitarist in this town, man," he told Griffiths, then added to Vince, "they don't know good music when they hear it, right?"
"We only taught you how to play rock and roll just like we taught you everything else," Griffiths said, more amused than anything else. "Guitar? Is there any chance you'd be willing to perform for such a small audience?"
"This is stupid," Kennedy interrupted. "Let's get to work."
Griffiths turned back to her and sniped, "Trust me."
"Why should I?" Kennedy snapped. "England didn't want you anymore and we don't want you here."
"Mellow out, babe," Bloodgood repeated. "You sure you don't want -- "
Kennedy turned on Bloodgood and put her wand to his forehead. "No! Stop offering me pot, I'm a government official on the clock! I swear to God!"
"Mr. Bloodgood," Griffiths said with a grim little smile, "I think we'll need you to get your guitar."
Bloodgood's eyes were still on the tip of Kennedy's wand. "Uh. Can you -- "
Vince put his hand on Kennedy's shoulder. "Down, girl," he suggested, tugging her away.
Kennedy glared back at him and withdrew her wand. "Fine. Fine. We'll listen to the stupid guitar."
Griffiths watched Bloodgood fetch his guitar, and glanced back at Kennedy, his gaze even. "Stop being so closed-mind and just follow my lead," he said. "I'm not one of the best in England because I read lots of undergraduate studies."
Bloodgood lit a cigarette, tuned his guitar, then blew a smoke ring in Kennedy's direction. "Any requests?"
The trio of blank looks he got answered that question.
"Got it," he muttered, and began to play.
Much to Kennedy's surprise, the idiot wasn't too bad. It wasn't like she listened to too much music, but she considered herself to have a good musical ear, considering that her parents were stuck up bastards who went to ballets, operas, choral concerts, things like that. It was genetic, right? Anyway, he seemed to know what he was doing with the thing, and the weird bit was how his hands seemed to move just too fast and how it almost sounded like two people were playing, and that he had managed to make the three of them go silent.
Kennedy had never seen a Cursebreaker team go silent. It was uncharacteristic.
She swallowed hard and looked over at Griffiths. His head was tilted to the side and his wand was out. She stared but didn't say anything, continuing to watch his wand movements, the twist of his wrist. She caught the movement of his lips and hated him, really hated him for keeping his little smug British trade secrets. What was he doing?
Suddenly one of the strings lit up, neon blue, and the light scattered like splashed water as he plucked the string, then each string lit in turn, and Kennedy's breath caught in her throat as the light splashed into the air until the final strum, when Bloodgood's fingers stopped their waltz over the strings and he opened his eyes. He almost immediately dropped his guitar. "What the fuck, man?" he exclaimed.
"Where'd you get the guitar?" Griffiths asked.
"Where did you learn that?" Kennedy interrupted. "I've never seen anyone do that like that and you can't just -- "
"Shut up, Kennedy," Vince snapped. "Where'd you get the guitar, Mr. Bloodgood?"
Bloodgood looked very much like he wanted to escape as soon as humanly possible. "Uh. Why?"
"Do you know what curse experts say about the curse of the 27 Club, Mr. Bloodgood?" Griffiths reached over and took the guitar by the neck.
Bloodgood just stared at his guitar. "What?"
"Phillips, you know what it says. Go on, tell the man," Griffiths said.
"You don't get to order me," Kennedy argued. Smug bastard.
"Kennedy," Vince said tensely. "Stop being so argumentative."
Fine, if Vince was going to be a bastard and agree with the smug British fuck, Kennedy didn't care. "The 27 Club is a curse that falls on musicians of legendary status -- depending on a level of legendary... legendariness, I guess -- that'll strike them dead at some point between when they turn 27 and when they turn 28. Usually it's a suicide or an accidental murder, but that's because musicians are morons. It usually hits rock and roll musicians, not opera singers or classical instrumentalists," she added wryly.
"Convenient, I always thought," Griffiths said in much a similar tone. "And you're about to turn 27, so you're concerned, am I right, Mr. Bloodgood?"
"Yeah," Bloodgood said. He was still staring at the guitar. "What did you do to it?"
Griffiths ignored his question. "Did you steal this? What did you to do to get this? If this was illegally obtained -- "
"It was made for me," Bloodgood snapped, for the first time. "Fucking cat's out of the bag, let's just fucking talk straight, all right?"
Kennedy and Vince exchanged a look. "Let me guess," Kennedy said, deadpan. "You sold your soul for a guitar that would make you a great musician."
"I am a great musician," Bloodgood protested.
"A better one, then," Vince said, crossing his arms over his chest.
"What does this have to do with the curse?" Bloodgood asked, sulking back.
"Everything," Griffiths said shortly. "All of the wizarding musicians who suffered the supposed curse of the 27 Club were killed by the backlash luck of their specially charmed instruments."
Oh, Kennedy couldn't have that. "Prove it," she said, stepping past Vince and making a grab for the guitar. "Let me see it. I want to take apart this charm."
"No!" Bloodgood shouted. "You can't!"
Griffiths brandished the guitar at Kennedy. "Have a good time," he said, with a smile that was more of a sneer. She really hated him.
"I don't want to die," Bloodgood protested. "You're supposed to help me!"
Kennedy shifted the guitar into her arms and began to clumsily play a few chords, surprised when they rang out well. "Aha." She placed the guitar on the floor, knelt in front of it, and began to toy with the charms on it.
"Don't -- don't fuck it up," Bloodgood demanded, reaching for it.
Vince stopped him. "Move it now and you might fuck it up yourself. She knows what she's doing."
"So what are you doing?" Griffiths asked, squatting next to her.
"I'll tell you when you tell me how you did a curse trail on an object," she answered, manipulating the charms expertly, and looked up at the guitarist. "So everything you try works. Everything, every little trick. That's what it is. You're not that good." What a fucking fraud.
"It's just help," Bloodgood said, now half-begging. "It helps, that's all it is. Just let me have it back. No one knows any better."
"Who made it for you?" Griffiths interrupted.
"Does it matter? The music is good, does it matter how it's made?" Bloodgood asked heatedly.
"It might kill you, so I think so," Griffiths said acidly. "Who made it for you?"
Bloodgood swallowed, obviously having finally got the point. "Total babe named Katie Dell. I have her card if you want it."
Vince stepped forward to grab his wallet. "In here?" he asked the guitarist.
"Yeah," Bloodgood said, hesitant and watching.
"Oh relax, we're not going to bust you for pot," Kennedy said, irritated at him and all sorts of things. She hated people. She hated musicians. She hated that Griffiths had figured it out and with such stupid British mysterious flair.
Vince pulled out the card. "Anything else?" he asked Griffiths.
Griffiths considered that, then straightened. "Can I sit?" he asked Bloodgood, gesturing to the couch.
Bloodgood moved the amp off of the couch and watched Griffiths warily as he sat. "You're going to break the curse?" he asked.
"In a manner of speaking, I might." Griffiths looked to Kennedy. "Do you have a rubber band?"
"You're asking because I'm a woman," Kennedy said flatly. "No, I don't have any hairties."
Griffiths rolled his eyes. "I'm asking because you're the kind of person who might be prepared, don't get your knickers in a twist, Phillips. Sasso?"
Vince dug into his pocket and tossed Griffiths a rubberband, and pointedly made a face at Kennedy.
Griffiths immediately turned to Bloodgood. "Let me explain how this is going to work," he said, stretching the rubberband between two fingers to test it.
"What do you have a rubber band for?" Kennedy hissed to Vince.
"Why not?" Vince whispered back, shrugging, and listened to Griffiths talk.
Griffiths spoke wryly, with that particular sense of deadpan irony reserved for the British. "So you're toying with luck. Ever heard of karma, Mr. Bloodgood?"
Bloodgood shrugged. "Well, yeah, man, who hasn't?"
"Karma says that what energy you put into the world is the kind of energy you get back," Griffiths went on. "If you're a good person, you get good things back. If you're a bad person, you get bad things back. Well, luck is much the same way, for most people." He stretched the rubberband between his first two fingers again, just enough to stretch it but not taut. "Luck is like a rubberband."
Kennedy raised an eyebrow at Vince. "Since when?" she whispered.
"Just listen," Vince mouthed back.
"How?" Bloodgood asked, more than a little confused.
"All right. Most people are lucky like this." Griffiths gestured with the rubber band. "This is their luck. They either don't get lucky, or their luck really has nothing to do with them. It's a series of coincidences otherwise. Then you get the people who toy with their luck -- their actual luck, Mr. Bloodgood, literal metaphysical forces of luck -- and that's a whole other ball of wax."
"Like me," Bloodgood said, now staring at the rubber band.
"Like you," Griffiths agreed. "People like you -- they don't take things as they are. They want more." He reached his index finger between the two strands of rubber and tugged on the one closest to him, not releasing it. "They push their luck once, twice..." He kept tugging. "And, well, that doesn't fail to have an effect in the universe. And luck is not nearly as nice as karma, which is a boomerang that you can catch." He released the rubberband with a loud SNAP, and Bloodgood jumped. "It's like messing about with organized crime," Griffiths concluded. "You pay your debts in one form or another. There's no dodging it." He smiled. "Instant karma's gonna get you."
"Nice," Vince said at regular volume, admiring. Kennedy shot him a poisonous look. "What?" he protested. "I'm not going to hate him just because you do."
Griffiths's smile turned into a smirk at Vince's words but he didn't say anything in response, focusing on a very pale Bloodgood. "Do you understand my point?"
"That's what happened to the 27 Club?" Bloodgood's voice was faint.
"Most of them," Griffiths said, at the same time that Kennedy said, "No." Bloodgood looked between them.
"Just know that the more you mess about with all this, the more likely you are to die," Griffiths instructed him.
"If you get rid of it and you're not as good, that'll stop the curse," Kennedy interrupted, "but it's not luck tampering that caused all the 27 Club curse deaths -- "
"Stop bickering." Vince sighed. "If you stopped and thought you might have realized that he can save himself if he just doesn't become a legend."
Griffiths snorted. "They're trying to say fame is going to kill you," he said to Bloodgood.
"I can't become famous?" Bloodgood said, incredulous. "That was the whole reason I got the fucking thing!"
"You'll be even more famous when you're dead," Kennedy said with brightly tinted sarcasm.
"Shit," Bloodgood swore loudly.
Vince spoke up again. "We can't break that one. At least, not just for you. We'll talk when -- "
" -- when it's considered a valid phenomenon -- " Griffiths muttered.
" -- when we can actively take curses off of Muggles with their knowledge without tampering with their memories," Vince went on, sending Griffiths an irritated look.
Kennedy reached into her pocket and flicked a business card at him. "If you want to try, though, we can give it a shot. Some other time. When you're not fucking with your variables. I wondered why his numbers were all off," she added to Vince.
"I figured a musician with the wherewithal to file a suit with the USDoM had to be pretty fucking lucky," Vince agreed. "Anyway, we have another case today, so thank you for your help, Mr. Bloodgood, and we hope to be hearing from you once you've gone through the proper steps and channels."
Bloodgood nodded, shifting away from Griffiths, who was pocketing his wand as he stood. "Let's get out of here," Griffiths said to his other two team members. "Where's the next one?"
"Upper East Side, best if we Apparate," Vince answered promptly.
"Hate the Upper East Side," Kennedy muttered.
"Is there anyone you don't hate?" Griffiths asked her.
"Hm," Kennedy said, mockingly thoughtful, "well, I hate you."
Vince gave them his best glare which surprisingly struck them silent for a long moment. "Good. Good. I hate to ask this, but can we do this on the way out?"
"Yeah, fine." Kennedy stalked out.
"What the hell is going on?" Vince demanded of Griffiths.
Griffiths shrugged. "We both take our work seriously, I suppose. I'm going to just work, if you don't mind." He followed Kennedy down the stairs.
Vince was left alone in the apartment with Bloodgood. "They're insane," he said to the musician.
"You don't have to tell me that, man, I knew that from the minute you guys walked in," Bloodgood said, with a grim, yellow grin.
Vince smiled in return, much the same, and went to the door. "Good luck," he said, particularly proud of the irony, and left.
Simon Griffiths couldn't help but admire the Upper East Side. It was classy. It was better than anywhere he had ever lived, and he wasn't exactly low-class himself. The Upper East Side, however, seemed to just make Sasso slouch more than usual and was practically giving Phillips some sort of violent psychological fit that she was barely containing. By now, though, that seemed to be a given.
Finally they found the exact address -- it seemed some secretary had failed to do the Apparation maths correctly, what a shock -- and they walked up a set of stairs to the porch and the door.
"I smell like patchouli," Sasso realized, then sniffed his clothes. "I smell like patchouli."
"Bet Griffiths is covered in it, he even sat on the couch," Phillips said, smirking.
"You knelt on the floor where he probably tipped his bong over," Griffiths replied absently, knocking on the door.
"The name is Wilde," Sasso reminded them. "And they're trying to pass as Muggle so don't wave your wands around near a window."
"I don't usually," Phillips said, "but I'll keep that in mind."
Griffiths eyed the doorknocker. "No, you just pull it on harmless musicians?" he asked Phillips.
"You were so polite when we met you," Phillips sniped back. "Where did that go?"
"I'm doing my job. That's it." Griffiths put his hands up. "Let me do my job." He knocked on the door using the doorknocker, next.
"You're doing our job for us, too. It's a three-person job," Phillips argued.
So sorry that you're incompetent and stubborn, Griffiths so badly wanted to say, but he imagined that might have been pushing the envelope even in America. Perhaps especially in America. "Terribly sorry," he said, insincerely.
"You are such an asshole," Phillips shouted at him.
"Kennedy we're on the Upper East Side and representing the fucking US Department of Magic," Sasso hissed, "one more time and I'm Silencioing you."
Phillips glared at him and was saved by the door opening. She opened her mouth to speak, but Sasso spoke first at the sight of the old woman. "Hello, ma'am, are you Ann Wilde?"
"I am," Mrs. Wilde said, smiling. "And who are you?"
Griffiths saw her going for her wand. "We're Cursebreakers with the United States Department of Magic," he said calmly. "You can put your wand down." So much for pass as Muggle.
Mrs. Wilde sent him a smile that didn't seem entirely innocent, and Griffiths took mental note of that. "Come inside," she told them, opening the door wide and watching each of them enter.
"I'm Kennedy Phillips," Phillips said, stepping in, "and this is Vince Sasso and Simon Griffiths."
Sasso was actually astonished when he looked at the file again. "You have yet to live in a house for a week without it starting on fire?" he asked her, incredulous. Phillips elbowed him.
"A week," Mrs. Wilde said mournfully, leading them to a sitting room. Griffiths didn't particularly want to go much further into the house, but he was going to let the Americans do their jobs. Americans, always complaining about people would take less pay and do the jobs better "stealing" jobs. How did one steal a job, anyhow?
"How long have you been living here?" Phillips asked, not even looking around at the luxury a bit. That was curious, Griffiths thought.
"Six days," Mrs. Wilde said after a moment of thought. "I think."
Oh, that was cold comfort, and something about this was bothering him, but he would let them do what they needed to do. And once he was right and their method had failed, they would see.
Hopefully.
"We're going to take a look around, if you don't mind," Sasso said, rather politely. "Are there any things that came with the house? We'll need to just check specific things that are yours, and we don't need any red herrings."
"No, everything here is mine." Mrs. Wilde smiled. "Go on and look all you need to. Thank you so much for coming. I'll be in the kitchen if you need me." She departed through a door on the opposite side of the sitting room.
"What now?" Griffiths asked, patient as anything.
"Show me some cursed items," Phillips said, taking out her wand and imitating the wand movements he'd made earlier. She was smarter than he'd figured. Or at least more observant. "I know you can do it."
"I can't just do it on the house," Griffiths explained calmly.
"Show her how to do it, maybe then you two can stop acting like kids," Sasso said. "I'm going to check the master bedroom for cursed jewelry."
Phillips eyed him, as Sasso left the room. "Show me," she said. "Show me how you do it."
"It's nonverbal," Griffiths sighed. "It's tough."
"It's not silent, I saw you saying something," Phillips argued.
Oh hell. Had he? "That was nothing," he said. "Let me show you." He glanced around the room. "The vase, we'll start with the vase."
"You're not fucking with me, are you?" she challenged.
"I am not fucking with you," he said, with as much dignity as he could gather.
"Good. Show me," Phillips commanded.
Griffiths decided to give the spoiled little brat what she wanted. "Fine," he said. "Hope you're a quick study."
"Quickest you'll meet," Phillips said with a smirk. He decided he didn't like her smirk at all.
He rolled up his sleeves. "Let's go."
Vince didn't get it. Curses like this didn't go with jewelry but old lady curses went with jewelry, more often than not, and that was not a stereotype, it was statistically true. He pulled out his copies of the case files -- he would bet anything that Kennedy and Griffiths weren't even looking twice at the files -- because then he could get a timeline. You couldn't trust the testimony of the actual victims of a curse, because they thought they had a curse on them, and were likely to start blaming anything they could think of that was remotely unfortunate or unlucky on being cursed. It could entirely throw a timeline off. No, you had to have them sitting down doing paperwork. Then they'd think.
He sat down at her vanity mirror and began to write into his notebook. By all indications the curse had started three months ago, which made for twelve houses in all. That was a lot of houses. Who the fuck wouldn't report this after the third or fourth house? Usually people erred towards thinking of a curse by that point.
This was getting weird. The old lady was too nice -- okay, she wasn't a native New Yorker, but either way -- and she was just suspicious. Something was going on.
Vince flipped to the numbers now. How the numbers changed from one year to the next was particularly telling. Her luck numbers had only taken a turn for the worst in this year.
He really hoped they weren't looking at what he thought they were looking at.
"Sasso!" Griffiths called from downstairs, muffled by the distance.
"HA," Vince heard Kennedy shout, clear as day, and then he stuffed his notes into his pockets and ran downstairs.
"Yeah?" he asked casually, surveying the scene. Kennedy was squinting at a nearby mirror and casting a silent spell on it while Griffiths was, surprise surprise, checking the notes.
"Did you do a timeline?" Griffiths asked.
"Yeah, just now." Vince held it out before he even asked.
Griffiths considered it. "This looks familiar." He shook his head. "No. It feels familiar. It feels familiar. I can't explain it."
"Don't bother, we know what you mean," Kennedy said idly, then cast the spell again. "I got it!"
"I told you it'd help," Vince said offhand to Griffiths.
Griffiths shrugged. "I'm going to walk around. See what sets off the spideysenses, you know."
Kennedy snorted. "Comics nerd? You?"
"Don't start," Griffiths said, without turning around. "Stan Lee's a bloody genius."
"I prefer DC," Kennedy called after him, then looked to Vince. "He's still a bastard," she added.
"Yeah, sure," Vince said. This little rivalry was starting to look more and more like flirting, but who was he to talk? He mocked Kennedy about sixteen times a day on a slow day.
Kennedy stared him down. "I'm serious."
He didn't even think about his response and ended up repeating himself exactly. "Yeah, sure."
"You just said that."
"Right."
"Stop that."
"Don't we have work?"
Kennedy did the wand movement again. "Lemme show you how to do this."
Vince didn't even have time to go for his wand before he heard Griffiths's voice. "PHILLIPS. SASSO." Griffiths's panicked voice. If the panic of a smug British bastard wasn't scary, he didn't know what was.
"That was fast," Kennedy remarked, obviously just as shaken by the tone of voice and half-shout.
Vince ignored that and followed his gut on where Griffiths was, ducking through a couple of halls and finding him upstairs staring at a creepy as hell painting of a kid.
"Dude," Kennedy said inarticulately from behind him. "I know that painting."
"Who's the best in maths here?" Griffiths asked faintly. "It's important."
Kennedy snorted. "Maths? Did you just say -- "
Even Vince had to stop and mock that. "Is there an extra u in there?"
Griffiths released a slow breath, not answering, and said, "This isn't a joke, who's the better arithmancer here?"
"Me," Vince and Kennedy said at once, then looked at each other. "No fucking way you're better than me," they went on in near unison.
"Stop it," Griffiths said, tense. "I'm serious, this needs to be done and fast."
"Kennedy," Vince said shortly.
Kennedy was surprised and couldn't hide it. "Yeah, okay, what?"
"Case file. There should be rough times and dates on when they moved into the houses and when they burned down. I -- we need an average and how long she's been living here."
There was a tense, frightened moment with only Kennedy scribbling. "That's the Crying Boy," Vince said slowly.
"It is." Griffiths was still staring at it.
Vince shook his head. "That's an urban myth."
Griffiths raked his hand through his hair. "Sure it is. You want to bet your life on that?"
"Point taken. Kennedy?"
"GIVE ME A SECOND," she demanded.
"Take your time, the house might only burn down with us in it," Griffiths said casually.
"You want me to do this right? Shut up," Kennedy snapped.
Vince shrugged when Griffiths looked at him. "I don't get why anyone would want this painting anyway. It's fucking creepy," he went on.
Griffiths shook his head. "You know why she wanted it just as much as I do."
"You really think?" Vince hated to think that anyone could be that bad, let alone little old ladies who seemed perfectly nice otherwise.
"Holy shit. Almost exact," Kennedy said, staring down at her paper. "It's almost exact with the margin of error with information I don't have."
"And how much time do we have?" Griffiths asked with forced calm.
Kennedy winced. "Twenty minutes. With margin for error."
"Fuck goodbyes. I'm getting out of here," Vince said openly, sticking his wand in his belt and leaving.
Kennedy and Griffiths exchanged a look, both went to leave and nearly ran into each other. Finally Kennedy just stalked away again without a word or a single look.
Vince looked at Kennedy for a moment as she descended the stairs to meet him at the sidewalk. "Where's Griffiths?" he asked.
She looked back at the door. "... I thought he was following me."
He sighed. "Shit. We can't leave without him."
"He's probably just slow," she pointed out.
The door opened and Griffiths emerged with the painting in his arms, inelegantly stumbling down the steps as best he could with the unwieldy print. He glared at them as they looked at him, amused.
"Souvenir?" Kennedy asked brightly.
"Art theft?" Vince guessed, just as brightly.
"Evidence," Griffiths said, gruffly in contrast. "She's long gone."
"Probably hoped the house would burn down with us in it, we'd all die or nearly, and she'd just call it an accident," Vince said.
"You think she planted the Crying Boy in her houses to get insurance money?" Kennedy asked, amused.
"Not funny," Griffiths said flatly. "It makes houses burn down, that's not funny. Even worse, she might have caused deaths that wouldn't happen otherwise."
"Fuck, little old ladies are not supposed to be homicidal bitches." Vince still couldn't believe it.
"Have you not seen Arsenic and Old Lace?" Kennedy demanded.
"Oh, look, she has culture," Griffiths cracked, and nearly dropped the picture. "Some help, please?"
Because he said please, Vince helped. "This should be fun. Filing crime paperwork, haven't done that in years."
"Arson by curse, well at least she's creative," Kennedy said with a sigh. "Where are we putting this thing?"
"Well, we have a week to torch it, wherever it goes. Fiendfyre works wonders," Griffiths said, apparently very satisfied at the idea of torching the painting.
"Personal grudge?" Vince guessed, smirking at Griffiths.
Griffiths gave his grim smile. "I don't like it. It's creepy, it causes trouble, and it comes up far too much."
"It's not that great a painting, either," Kennedy pointed out. "But let's go before people think we just robbed Old Lady Wilde."
Vince shrugged at Griffiths again and said, "On three. One, two -- three."
They Disapparated and dumped the painting onto the floor of the office immediately, hands stung by the transportation by Apparation. "Stupid," Vince swore. "Stupid, stupid -- "
Griffiths rubbed his hands. "Where's Phillips?"
"At Starbucks, where do you think?" Kennedy answered from behind him.
He glanced back. "I should've figured," he said wearily.
Kennedy smacked him on the back of the head and went on to her cubicle. "Work to do, boys."
"Sasso! Vince Sasso!" a voice shouted from the back of the office.
"That has never been a good sign," Vince said to Griffiths, who smirked.
"Sasso?"
Oh, it was Turner's secretary Martha. "Over here," he called back. "What's she want me for now?"
"Oh good you're back -- she wanted to see you and Phillips." Martha eyed Griffiths. "I don't think we've met!"
"Have fun," Vince mouthed to Griffiths, who was eyeing Martha's skirt -- little did he know she was the strictest Catholic since Hispanic grandmothers. He dragged Kennedy from her cubicle and to Turner's office, not heeding her protests. Vince wanted this, the paperwork, and the day over with so he could go sleep.
Meeting with Turner were never as bad as Vince thought they were, Kennedy thought, but whatever. The weird thing today was that Turner's door was open. Turner's door was never open. It was like walking into Fort Knox except that you didn't really want to go in. Kennedy rolled her eyes at Vince's hesitation and marched in, glad that he at least followed.
"Close the door behind you," Turner said without any inflection whatsoever, somehow.
"Do you live here?" Kennedy suddenly found herself saying.
"What?" Turner asked, surprised.
"What?" Vince repeated and gave Kennedy his best what the fuck? look.
"You just always wear the same suits and -- you don't leave much!" Kennedy paused, not feeling stupid so much as not really wanting to push the topic. "Whatever, what do you want?"
Turner stared at Kennedy, then just went on. "How did it go with Griffiths?"
There was an awkward pause, then Vince and Kennedy looked at each other. "He's good," Kennedy admitted freely.
"He's got tricks we don't," Vince agreed.
"He assesses situations quick," Kennedy said, and steeled herself for that look from Turner again before she added, "and he's a smug bastard. A complete smug bastard."
Turner took the moment to reach over to her desk zen garden and rake the sand just once before she responded to that. "Good. You need someone to temper you, Phillips."
Vince snorted and covered his mouth, and looked at Turner for the glare only to see a hint of a smile.
"Thanks," Kennedy said, not half as impressed with the joke.
"You can both work with him and he can work with you?" Turner went on.
"Yeah," Kennedy and Vince answered, her wearily, him casually.
"Good. He's yours, then. And the cases?"
Shit. Kennedy didn't want him around, but whatever. Toto would be back soon. "Both were busts. Griffiths thinks the fire case was someone doing insurance fraud a la Crying Boy curse. We're torching her copy later, got any Fiendfyre on hand?"
"Or marshmallows?" Vince asked brightly, unable to resist.
Turner stared at them again. "I'll talk to him. Later. Do your reports before you leave. Sasso, you're dismissed -- from the office, go back to work. Phillips, we have to talk."
Vince looked at Kennedy with utter surprise and Kennedy looked back before protesting to Turner, "I didn't do anything!"
"You didn't," Turner said, heaving a long-suffering sigh. "Just sit."
Those were two words that were never good. She sat and watched Vince go, closing the door behind him, dreading looking back at Turner. "What?" she finally asked.
"You know we regularly do the numbers on our own staff," Turner said slowly.
"Yeah?"
"Yes. We've noticed a spike of activity in the numbers on our Cursebreakers."
Kennedy shrugged. "It happens."
Turner lowered her head and was silent for a moment before she spoke. "The last spike happened to Allister Totolos. The last three Cursebreakers with this spike have landed in the hospital."
Kennedy felt instantly winded and stared at the edge of Turner's desk. "You think he's cursed."
"No. The curse has passed him. We did his numbers after the heart attack." She put a printout in front of Kennedy, and even by the edge of the paper, Kennedy knew what it was. She grabbed it just to check, but there it fucking was.
"Shit."
"Yes."
"I'm taking care of this shit," Kennedy swore, staring at her name at the top of the page before she crumpled it up in her fist. "I'm doing it. They fucked with Toto and you don't get to fuck with Toto and fuck with me."
"Go on," Turner said easily.
Kennedy paused, then looked up, eyebrows raised. "What?"
Turner shrugged. "Go on. I'm giving you permission. Look into it."
"You never give me permission!"
"This is different. Go. Do it." Turner went back to her computer. "You're dismissed."
"Fine," Kennedy said rebelliously, and shoved the ball of paper into her pocket. She marched back to her cubicle, where Vince was cramped into a corner and Griffiths had managed to fit a third chair, both working diligently on paperwork.
"What was it?" Vince asked at the sight of her.
"What was what?" Griffiths asked.
"Nothing," Kennedy said pointedly, grabbing her coffee from her desk and falling into her chair.
"I think she got told off," Vince said to Griffiths.
"Lucky to get out alive, I imagine," Griffiths answered without looking up.
Kennedy shook her head and reached for the paperwork Vince had abandoned. "You have no idea," she said, and immersed herself in work, for now.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairing: American Cursebreakers.
Rating: PG-13 (they are now dropping the f-bomb much more, ladies and gents)
Word count: 8,858 -- you read that right
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. (JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Scholastic, et al.) No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended. Nor do I own the song "With a Little Bit of Luck," from which I stole the title -- that's Paul McCartney's.
Summary: A study in luck. "You pay your debts in one form or another. There's no dodging it." He smiled. "Instant karma's gonna get you."
Note: A sequel to a much shorter, more casual Cursebreaker fic which you should read before you read this. This got much deeper, plotty and characterization-focused than I ever thought it would. This is also my longest one-shot to date. Go me.
If Vince Sasso actually had any sort of life remaining after Cursebreaker training, he would definitely be going on dates on Saturday nights. He would be dating hot girls who wore miniskirts and high heels (or whatever it was that hot girls wore) and they would all be very impressed by a Cursebreaker (and his wallet), enough for him to get laid. The catch about being a Cursebreaker was the life, a life of adventure, travel and sights rarely seen, but also a life that demanded most of your time. Whatever life you managed to hold onto after school generally vanished by the time you completed three years of Cursebreaker training. You lived and usually died with your work, on the field or in the office, without much of a life outside it.
What this really meant was that Vince spent his Saturday nights at his teammate Kennedy Phillips's apartment watching whatever movie she'd sent for through Netflix.
"It lies to her," the creepy old lady rasped through Kennedy's great surround-sound system. "It tells her things only a child can understand. It's been using her to restrain the others. To her, it simply is another child. To us, it is The Beast."
"Well if we're talking about eighties' TV programming, then that's not too far off," Vince said wryly, shifting for the thousandth time. Kennedy's couch was uncomfortable in a way that you had to admire. The second you thought you found a place without a lump, there were actually two more to replace the one you'd managed to escape. Besides, Kennedy was hogging the damn thing.
Kennedy socked him in the arm and kept her eye on Poltergeist on her TV screen. "Come on, I thought you might enjoy this one," she protested. "You know how many studies there've been on this damned movie? Six. Six published studies on one movie. That never happens! Usually it's the big topics and nothing that's actually comprehensible by a civilian. The Institute actually gets to publish articles in mainstream magazines just because they're writing about a curse around a movie set, when does that happen?"
Vince shifted. Again. And then again. "We're off work right now. Do we have to talk about this? ... And would it kill you to buy a new couch? Really? I mean it. How are you so comfortable? It's like your couch is dying a slow death by bubonic plague."
"Oh, don't pull the 'I'm so cool and have a life outside of work' thing on me," Kennedy said, eyeroll, fingerquotes and all. "You're just as bad as me. Look at your apartment. It looks like a hotel room. You've been living there for five years and you still haven't unpacked your boxes."
"I don't have to unpack the boxes! They're perfect storage," Vince argued. "Why should I unpack my dishes when they fit so well in that box?"
Kennedy brandished her finger right in his face. "This? This is why you don't have a girlfriend. Or a girl. Or a friend. You haven't moved into your apartment after five years because you don't think it matters! You just spend every waking moment either in my apartment or at work!" She grabbed a handful of popcorn and stuffed it into her mouth. "Oh, and I keep the couch so you won't try to crash here."
Vince gave her a strange look and looked around at her beat-up, smoky, overall cheap apartment. "Why would I want to crash here?"
"Why are you here?" Kennedy shot back rhetorically, and sat up with a start as her cell began buzzing against the table. She snatched it up and flipped it open, covering the speaker before hissing at Vince, "Turn it down! Pause it!"
Vince raised the remote but gave her an incredulous look. "Pause it? It's not like you don't know how it ends."
Kennedy grabbed the universal remote out of his hand and turned off the surround-sound, then paused the movie, glowering at him. "Phillips," she said calmly into the phone.
"Phillips. Did I hear Sasso there with you?"
Fuck, it was Turner. Bossman. Well, bosswoman. "Yeah," Kennedy said, a shade defensively. "We're just -- what's the deal?" Somehow she didn't want to own up to meeting up outside of work to the bosswoman.
Who is it? Vince mouthed, meanwhile taking the time to steal more couch space while Kennedy was distracted.
Turner, Kennedy mouthed back, and grabbed a handful of popcorn only to throw it at him.
Vince's eyebrows shot up but he said nothing, being that he was too busy picking greasy popcorn from his shirt.
Turner sighed into the phone, taking her sweet time to talk, Kennedy thought, but it was an inane thought considering what came out of the bosswoman's mouth next. "Allister Totolos had a heart attack."
Kennedy couldn't get anything out besides a "What?" and thrust the phone into Vince's hands immediately as though to put the responsibility of a good reaction entirely on him. He gave her a pointed look but she shook her head, so he lifted the phone to his ear.
"Hello, Ms. Turner," Vince said, all cordiality and business.
Turner seemed unfazed by the switch of conversation partners. "You may want to consider buying a cell phone or getting your phone line turned back on at home, Sasso, I meant to contact you first."
Vince didn't get it, honestly. He just didn't get it. "My phone was turned off? That's why you called? I'm not over here that often -- "
"Sasso," Turner said, in that severe tone that was kind of hot in a way. Either way it got his attention. "Allister Totolos had a heart attack and it's not looking good, which I meant to tell your teammate before she handed me off to you."
"What do you mean, it's not looking so good? What happened? You goin' to tell me what happened or do I have to guess?" Vince pressed, unrelenting, because this was bad. This was not good at all. "Come on, Ms. Turner."
"I've e-mailed and mailed the information to everyone already, but if you get a pen and paper I'll read it to you right now so you can be the first visitors," Turner spoke quickly. "The point is, I've already hired a temporary replacement."
"She's got a temp already," Vince hissed to Kennedy.
"I heard that," Turner said, unimpressed. "And he's not a temp. He'll be in tomorrow since you've got two on your hands this week and it's that time of the year, okay, so let's just get this over with, sound good?"
Vince scrambled for paper and pen. "Sounds good. Who's the temp, who'd you steal him from?"
"England. Why?"
"No reason," he said. "Shoot, Ms. Turner."
Kennedy watched Vince write down an address and a few phone numbers, and then turned off the TV and DVD player the second he hung up. "Are we going now?"
He held out the information to her after a moment. "Yeah. But I'm driving."
"Whatever." Kennedy Summoned her coat, ignoring its inevitable collision course with Vince's face.
Vince sighed and grabbed the coat before she could get her hands on it, handing it to her. "I'll get the car warmed up."
Working one case without Toto was just going to be weird, Kennedy knew, but two cases during holiday season could go past weird into impossible. He'd been working at the USDoM for thirty whole years now, and he'd worked for the Hellenic government for thirty years before that, and who knew what he'd been doing before that because the stories just tended to change according to Toto's moods. There was a lot of talk about the Russians and the Balkans and private business deals, and no one really cared to press him for exact details.
Kennedy was starting to wish she'd paid attention to all the stories, though. The old man didn't look good, but that was what happened when you were well into your first century and living in America. Supposedly in Europe wizards lasted longer --- well, that was what Europeans said, anyway, they said it was their food and their superior culture and all that crap, at least that was Kennedy bet they would say.
Either way, their European was fading. One of the most experienced Cursebreakers in the USDoM was either on his way out or nearing it. God bless America, really, except it really wore down the legends quick with fast food, corporate greed, recessions and general suckiness.
Kennedy broke off a piece of her Pop-Tart and waited at her desk for either Vince to show up or some news from Turner. Technically you were advised not to eat at your desk, mostly because there were computers there, but she'd been breaking the rules for so long that she'd actually forgotten the rule even existed until a year ago when she'd bothered to look at the signs.
She tugged down her sleeve to look at her watch and chewed with sort of a vengeance. Vince was late.
"Phillips!" Kennedy snapped to attention at the sound of Turner's voice and shoved her Pop-Tart under some paperwork, only then turning to greet her boss. It was a rare thing to see the bureaucrat outside of her own office, and Kennedy could've sworn that Turner'd been wearing the exact same sleek suit and professional hairdo a week and a half ago, the last time she'd emerged.
"Here," she said belatedly, and wondered idly if Turner just lived there.
Turner hesitated and didn't speak immediately, as though searching for the exact right phrase. "How did he look?"
Maybe Turner really did live at the office, Kennedy thought. Her suits were always really nicely pressed, though, but maybe she kept an iron there. Wouldn't that be a fire hazard? Wait, the bosswoman was talking. "What? Who?" Kennedy asked, glancing up.
"Toto," Turner said, wearily.
Kennedy considered that, then shrugged. "He's alive," she said.
Turner sighed. "Over here," she called to someone behind her with an impatient gesture. "I'd like you to meet your new temporary team member, Simon Griffiths."
Kennedy watched with fascination as a stringy, younger man just barely stopped in time not to spill a cup of water on Turner. Oh, this had to be Griffiths. "I'm sorry, I just couldn't get that -- water bottle to work," he apologized immediately. Yeah. He was British all right.
"The coffee's better," Kennedy chimed in. "I don't remember the last time we replaced that water bottle."
"She's joking," Turner said to Griffiths as he glanced down into his paper cup. "Mr Griffiths, this is Kennedy Phillips."
"Charmed," Griffiths said, if dubiously.
"Bad pun," Kennedy answered, glancing at Turner in hopes of -- yes! -- getting that long-suffering, one day my life will cease to have these people in it look. "And you're Toto's replacement?"
Griffiths was about to enter the cubicle but paused at that, verbally disarmed at the lack of a proper introduction. "Ah well, I suppose. Phillips, is it?" he tried.
Kennedy leaned on the back of her desk chair and stuck her hand out. "Kennedy Phillips."
He gave it a good firm shake. "Simon Griffiths."
"Any particular reason we're having the British Invasion?" she asked him directly, releasing his hand.
"Because he's good," Turner said; Kennedy had entirely forgotten she was there. "And we're known for having the best. Brief Mr. Griffiths on the cases and get to work. Have you seen Sasso?"
"Not since last night," Kennedy answered honestly, and was starting to hope that Griffiths didn't intend to keep looking at her like he was for his whole time here. "He'll show."
Turner smoothed her hair, agitated. "He'd better," she said, and bid Griffiths good luck before she went.
Kennedy and Griffiths looked at each other for a moment, indecisive and awkward, not certain what to do next. "Now what?" he finally asked.
Kennedy snapped out of it, just like that. Weird times. And suddenly, she was back. She gestured to the chair in the corner of her cubicle, and, as he sat, broke off a piece of Poptart and chewed. Only then did she answer. "Okay, I don't know how you do it over there in England but we have three on a team, varying up the specialties, just enough to break a casting point, ending point, and source, et cetera, et cetera."
"Fairly standard." Griffiths shrugged that off, apparently just too curious about everything else to talk about work. "Who is it I'm replacing?"
Kennedy snorted, not even bothering to be polite at this rate. "Oh you're not replacing anyone," she said. "You're going to be covering for Toto until he gets back, this is definitely not permanent."
"And Toto is..." Griffiths prompted.
"Allister Totolos. Yeah," Kennedy said pointedly, upon spotting the spark of recognition in Griffiths's eye. "That Totolos. He's been with us for thirty years."
Griffiths made a scoffing sound, startled again as Kennedy gave him a slight glare. "Well, he hasn't been with you personally for thirty years, I mean," he said. "With the American government, I suppose?"
"Yeah, with us, Vince and me." Where the hell was Vince? Kennedy hated dealing with people. "For the past couple of years anyway. He's out for a bit but he'll be back," she added with certainty.
And like Underdog come to save the day or something, just as awkward silence was about to fall, she heard Vince say "Fuck" and scrambled out of her chair. "One minute," she said to Griffiths, and ran to greet Vince.
Vince stared at Kennedy and lowered his Starbucks coffee as she ran to him. "Hey," he said. "What cup are you on, three?"
Kennedy shook her head, answered the question as always, but there were bigger things. "Two cups today, not the point," she said. "The temp is here."
Oh. One of those situations. "Okay, I'm coming, I'm coming," Vince assured her, pulling off his gloves as they walked to her cubicle. "Any warnings?"
After a moment of consideration, Kennedy decisively said, "He's British and I'm pretty sure he's a moron."
"I can hear you, you know," Griffiths called from one cubicle away.
Vince elbowed Kennedy, splashed coffee on himself as he did, made a face and just walked into the cubicle. "Hey," he said to Griffiths, stuffing his gloves into his pocket before taking off his winter jacket. "I see you met our resident absent-minded Cursebreaker?"
"Fuck you," Kennedy said sweetly, leaning against the entrance to the cubicle.
"She's a misanthrope," Vince explained, taking a seat backwards on Kennedy's chair and making a face back as she made a face at him for doing so. He looked to Griffiths. "Don't take it personally."
Griffiths paused, and stalled by taking a sip of water. "I wasn't," he said, though it was a very clear lie.
"Good," Kennedy said. "It's not that you suck. I mean, Turner doesn't hire people who suck. You're just not Toto."
"Shut up," Vince advised Kennedy, and stuck his hand out to Griffiths. "Vince Sasso."
He returned the same firm handshake. "Simon Griffiths."
Kennedy figured she might as well satisfy her curiosity while they were doing all this introductory crap. "You never answered, why are you here, exactly?" she asked Griffiths.
There was a distinct moment of awkwardness that stretched on just a little too long, and Vince grabbed the case files, holding them out to Kennedy until she took them. "Go make copies."
"I'm not a secretary," Kennedy protested, holding the papers back out to Vince.
Ha, secretary? Like they could trust her for a second with a phone. "Just do it," Vince said wearily, and glanced at Griffiths as soon as she was gone. "So... why are you here?"
Griffiths sent Vince a grim smile. "So long as we break some curses," he said, "does it matter?"
Well, Vince guessed it didn't. "All right. Welcome to New York," he said.
Simon Griffiths supposed that he was grateful the first case they had decided to take on was actually in New York City. He hadn't had a very good look at the place yet, as it was, and it was supposed to be a remarkable city full of things you were practically contractually bound to see upon setting foot in the city, when you weren't afraid of getting run over by a taxicab or mobbed by homeless people. That wasn't to say he wanted to go sight-see, exactly, but it might be a fortunate side-effect to going into the city, he figured.
He was wrong. Entirely wrong. There was nothing to see, as upon getting their bearings with the case, they Apparated directly into the subway and boarded, and now he was clinging to a pole that was sticky with ... something. He chose not to question it and hoped he didn't look as green as he felt.
Also, Sasso and Phillips were whispering like a married couple who was trying not to catch their child's attention and failing miserably.
This was almost an insult, Griffiths thought. One of the British Ministry's best former Cursebreakers entering the service of the American government, of all places, and then being snubbed by American Cursebreakers. No, that was definitely an insult. He was too good to be ignored like this as though he was new to the process, certainly.
So, he spoke up. He had to. "Is there something wrong?" he asked, casually and yet firmly enough to gain an answer.
There was no answer, or even a sign of recognition.
He then cleared his throat.
There was still no answer.
Americans don't hear about anything British besides terror attacks, Turner had said, and I don't think they watch the scandal pages; so unless someone more mainstream chooses to write about the unfortunate state of events surrounding your release, American Cursebreakers will treat you just like anyone else. Well, the madwoman hadn't been joking, but her ironic tone suddenly made a great deal more sense.
"Excuse me," Griffiths said next, as pointedly as he could.
Phillips was the one who noticed, surprisingly. He had counted her as the unobservant one. She looked back at him, leaning back and close to him. Uncomfortable, he leaned back that very instant as well, swinging back on the pole, away from her very blue eyes. "What do you want?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
He wiped his hand on his trousers. "I'd like to know what it is you're talking about," he said.
"The case," Sasso said, looking past Phillips. "Sorry, it's just this is the third case in a row we've had that's going to turn out to be a bust or really fucking hard."
"The 27 Club was a valid phenomenon back in the seventies," Phillips said firmly. "Four rockstars dying at the age of 27, that's a curse pattern if I've ever seen one. Ever since Kurt Cobain people are superstitious but by then the curse should've been well and dead."
"Four different studies declared the 27 Club to be an urban myth," Griffiths said, now quite unimpressed with the Americans.
The Americans, in turn, shared a look. "Four different studies where?" Sasso asked, skeptically.
"At universities." Phillips stuck her hand into her pocket and looked critically at Griffiths. "A senior thesis, a master's thesis, and two published undergraduate articles."
Griffiths almost thought being at home would be better than this. "Oh, I suppose you don't believe anything unless it comes right from SAI."
"Wait now," Sasso cut in. "Wait a second -- "
"The SAI has the best Arithmantic minds in the world," Phillips argued.
"There's more to curses than Arithmantic proof!" Griffiths argued back.
Sasso grabbed Phillips by the shoulder. "Come on, we're at our fucking stop."
"Idiot," Phillips said openly, looking right at Griffiths before she turned to go.
Griffiths hated the eyeroll that Sasso gave him. If it wasn't for breach of contract, he would walk away. He followed.
There was one good thing about this stupid, stupid case, Vince thought, and it was that Kennedy and Griffiths both absolutely loathed the subject, even more than they hated each other. He didn't mind the guy so much, but he was used to the smell of patchouli, weed and body odor -- just like anyone else, he'd once dated a girl who preferred patchouli to showers.
"You're an idiot," Kennedy said to the musician.
"You just going to let her talk to me like that?" the musician asked Vince.
"It's not the opinion of the US Department of Magic that you're an idiot, Mr. Bloodgood," Vince answered.
"Call me Tommy, man," Bloodgood said with a yellow-toothed grin. "You're cool. Who's the quiet dude?"
"That's Mr. Griffiths." Vince glanced back at Griffiths again. He didn't look happy to be working with them. Then again, neither did Toto, at the start.
"Simon," Griffiths spoke up. "If we're keeping a casual feel to this whole thing."
"Sorry if we're not classy enough for you, Tony Blair," Kennedy said darkly.
"You need to mellow out, babe," Bloodgood said, and tossed a small bag at Kennedy, which she immediately tossed back out of disgust. "Come on!"
"Let's go over the facts again," Vince said slowly, "because I think we got a bit off track."
"You're an idiot. You can't be in the 27 Club, I've never even heard of you," Kennedy berated. "You have to be famous to be in the 27 Club."
"That's bullshit, lady," Bloodgood said, eyebrows raised.
"Yeah, shut up," Kennedy said, sticking her hands in her pockets.
"Your twenty-seventh birthday is tomorrow and you're concerned you're going to die," Vince said, reading off of his notes.
Bloodgood gave him a thumbsup. "Got it in one, man. It's a fucking bust, just when I'm getting famous."
"You're not famous!" Kennedy snapped at him.
Griffiths stepped forward and considered Bloodgood for a moment, then turned back to his partners. "We should check."
"I thought you said the 27 Club was an urban myth," Kennedy said, eyeing him.
"Let's find out." Griffiths gave her what must have been his version of a smirk.
"It's not a myth! It took Jimi and Janis and Jim!" Bloodgood argued.
"Don't forget Jones," Kennedy added. "Brian Jones was the first one -- "
"Oh don't start with that rot," Griffiths said wearily.
"You're the one who said we should check him," Kennedy said, rolling her eyes.
"Are you famous? I've never heard of you," Griffiths asked the musician, ignoring her.
Bloodgood stared at Griffiths, then sniggered and nudged Vince. "I'm only the best guitarist in this town, man," he told Griffiths, then added to Vince, "they don't know good music when they hear it, right?"
"We only taught you how to play rock and roll just like we taught you everything else," Griffiths said, more amused than anything else. "Guitar? Is there any chance you'd be willing to perform for such a small audience?"
"This is stupid," Kennedy interrupted. "Let's get to work."
Griffiths turned back to her and sniped, "Trust me."
"Why should I?" Kennedy snapped. "England didn't want you anymore and we don't want you here."
"Mellow out, babe," Bloodgood repeated. "You sure you don't want -- "
Kennedy turned on Bloodgood and put her wand to his forehead. "No! Stop offering me pot, I'm a government official on the clock! I swear to God!"
"Mr. Bloodgood," Griffiths said with a grim little smile, "I think we'll need you to get your guitar."
Bloodgood's eyes were still on the tip of Kennedy's wand. "Uh. Can you -- "
Vince put his hand on Kennedy's shoulder. "Down, girl," he suggested, tugging her away.
Kennedy glared back at him and withdrew her wand. "Fine. Fine. We'll listen to the stupid guitar."
Griffiths watched Bloodgood fetch his guitar, and glanced back at Kennedy, his gaze even. "Stop being so closed-mind and just follow my lead," he said. "I'm not one of the best in England because I read lots of undergraduate studies."
Bloodgood lit a cigarette, tuned his guitar, then blew a smoke ring in Kennedy's direction. "Any requests?"
The trio of blank looks he got answered that question.
"Got it," he muttered, and began to play.
Much to Kennedy's surprise, the idiot wasn't too bad. It wasn't like she listened to too much music, but she considered herself to have a good musical ear, considering that her parents were stuck up bastards who went to ballets, operas, choral concerts, things like that. It was genetic, right? Anyway, he seemed to know what he was doing with the thing, and the weird bit was how his hands seemed to move just too fast and how it almost sounded like two people were playing, and that he had managed to make the three of them go silent.
Kennedy had never seen a Cursebreaker team go silent. It was uncharacteristic.
She swallowed hard and looked over at Griffiths. His head was tilted to the side and his wand was out. She stared but didn't say anything, continuing to watch his wand movements, the twist of his wrist. She caught the movement of his lips and hated him, really hated him for keeping his little smug British trade secrets. What was he doing?
Suddenly one of the strings lit up, neon blue, and the light scattered like splashed water as he plucked the string, then each string lit in turn, and Kennedy's breath caught in her throat as the light splashed into the air until the final strum, when Bloodgood's fingers stopped their waltz over the strings and he opened his eyes. He almost immediately dropped his guitar. "What the fuck, man?" he exclaimed.
"Where'd you get the guitar?" Griffiths asked.
"Where did you learn that?" Kennedy interrupted. "I've never seen anyone do that like that and you can't just -- "
"Shut up, Kennedy," Vince snapped. "Where'd you get the guitar, Mr. Bloodgood?"
Bloodgood looked very much like he wanted to escape as soon as humanly possible. "Uh. Why?"
"Do you know what curse experts say about the curse of the 27 Club, Mr. Bloodgood?" Griffiths reached over and took the guitar by the neck.
Bloodgood just stared at his guitar. "What?"
"Phillips, you know what it says. Go on, tell the man," Griffiths said.
"You don't get to order me," Kennedy argued. Smug bastard.
"Kennedy," Vince said tensely. "Stop being so argumentative."
Fine, if Vince was going to be a bastard and agree with the smug British fuck, Kennedy didn't care. "The 27 Club is a curse that falls on musicians of legendary status -- depending on a level of legendary... legendariness, I guess -- that'll strike them dead at some point between when they turn 27 and when they turn 28. Usually it's a suicide or an accidental murder, but that's because musicians are morons. It usually hits rock and roll musicians, not opera singers or classical instrumentalists," she added wryly.
"Convenient, I always thought," Griffiths said in much a similar tone. "And you're about to turn 27, so you're concerned, am I right, Mr. Bloodgood?"
"Yeah," Bloodgood said. He was still staring at the guitar. "What did you do to it?"
Griffiths ignored his question. "Did you steal this? What did you to do to get this? If this was illegally obtained -- "
"It was made for me," Bloodgood snapped, for the first time. "Fucking cat's out of the bag, let's just fucking talk straight, all right?"
Kennedy and Vince exchanged a look. "Let me guess," Kennedy said, deadpan. "You sold your soul for a guitar that would make you a great musician."
"I am a great musician," Bloodgood protested.
"A better one, then," Vince said, crossing his arms over his chest.
"What does this have to do with the curse?" Bloodgood asked, sulking back.
"Everything," Griffiths said shortly. "All of the wizarding musicians who suffered the supposed curse of the 27 Club were killed by the backlash luck of their specially charmed instruments."
Oh, Kennedy couldn't have that. "Prove it," she said, stepping past Vince and making a grab for the guitar. "Let me see it. I want to take apart this charm."
"No!" Bloodgood shouted. "You can't!"
Griffiths brandished the guitar at Kennedy. "Have a good time," he said, with a smile that was more of a sneer. She really hated him.
"I don't want to die," Bloodgood protested. "You're supposed to help me!"
Kennedy shifted the guitar into her arms and began to clumsily play a few chords, surprised when they rang out well. "Aha." She placed the guitar on the floor, knelt in front of it, and began to toy with the charms on it.
"Don't -- don't fuck it up," Bloodgood demanded, reaching for it.
Vince stopped him. "Move it now and you might fuck it up yourself. She knows what she's doing."
"So what are you doing?" Griffiths asked, squatting next to her.
"I'll tell you when you tell me how you did a curse trail on an object," she answered, manipulating the charms expertly, and looked up at the guitarist. "So everything you try works. Everything, every little trick. That's what it is. You're not that good." What a fucking fraud.
"It's just help," Bloodgood said, now half-begging. "It helps, that's all it is. Just let me have it back. No one knows any better."
"Who made it for you?" Griffiths interrupted.
"Does it matter? The music is good, does it matter how it's made?" Bloodgood asked heatedly.
"It might kill you, so I think so," Griffiths said acidly. "Who made it for you?"
Bloodgood swallowed, obviously having finally got the point. "Total babe named Katie Dell. I have her card if you want it."
Vince stepped forward to grab his wallet. "In here?" he asked the guitarist.
"Yeah," Bloodgood said, hesitant and watching.
"Oh relax, we're not going to bust you for pot," Kennedy said, irritated at him and all sorts of things. She hated people. She hated musicians. She hated that Griffiths had figured it out and with such stupid British mysterious flair.
Vince pulled out the card. "Anything else?" he asked Griffiths.
Griffiths considered that, then straightened. "Can I sit?" he asked Bloodgood, gesturing to the couch.
Bloodgood moved the amp off of the couch and watched Griffiths warily as he sat. "You're going to break the curse?" he asked.
"In a manner of speaking, I might." Griffiths looked to Kennedy. "Do you have a rubber band?"
"You're asking because I'm a woman," Kennedy said flatly. "No, I don't have any hairties."
Griffiths rolled his eyes. "I'm asking because you're the kind of person who might be prepared, don't get your knickers in a twist, Phillips. Sasso?"
Vince dug into his pocket and tossed Griffiths a rubberband, and pointedly made a face at Kennedy.
Griffiths immediately turned to Bloodgood. "Let me explain how this is going to work," he said, stretching the rubberband between two fingers to test it.
"What do you have a rubber band for?" Kennedy hissed to Vince.
"Why not?" Vince whispered back, shrugging, and listened to Griffiths talk.
Griffiths spoke wryly, with that particular sense of deadpan irony reserved for the British. "So you're toying with luck. Ever heard of karma, Mr. Bloodgood?"
Bloodgood shrugged. "Well, yeah, man, who hasn't?"
"Karma says that what energy you put into the world is the kind of energy you get back," Griffiths went on. "If you're a good person, you get good things back. If you're a bad person, you get bad things back. Well, luck is much the same way, for most people." He stretched the rubberband between his first two fingers again, just enough to stretch it but not taut. "Luck is like a rubberband."
Kennedy raised an eyebrow at Vince. "Since when?" she whispered.
"Just listen," Vince mouthed back.
"How?" Bloodgood asked, more than a little confused.
"All right. Most people are lucky like this." Griffiths gestured with the rubber band. "This is their luck. They either don't get lucky, or their luck really has nothing to do with them. It's a series of coincidences otherwise. Then you get the people who toy with their luck -- their actual luck, Mr. Bloodgood, literal metaphysical forces of luck -- and that's a whole other ball of wax."
"Like me," Bloodgood said, now staring at the rubber band.
"Like you," Griffiths agreed. "People like you -- they don't take things as they are. They want more." He reached his index finger between the two strands of rubber and tugged on the one closest to him, not releasing it. "They push their luck once, twice..." He kept tugging. "And, well, that doesn't fail to have an effect in the universe. And luck is not nearly as nice as karma, which is a boomerang that you can catch." He released the rubberband with a loud SNAP, and Bloodgood jumped. "It's like messing about with organized crime," Griffiths concluded. "You pay your debts in one form or another. There's no dodging it." He smiled. "Instant karma's gonna get you."
"Nice," Vince said at regular volume, admiring. Kennedy shot him a poisonous look. "What?" he protested. "I'm not going to hate him just because you do."
Griffiths's smile turned into a smirk at Vince's words but he didn't say anything in response, focusing on a very pale Bloodgood. "Do you understand my point?"
"That's what happened to the 27 Club?" Bloodgood's voice was faint.
"Most of them," Griffiths said, at the same time that Kennedy said, "No." Bloodgood looked between them.
"Just know that the more you mess about with all this, the more likely you are to die," Griffiths instructed him.
"If you get rid of it and you're not as good, that'll stop the curse," Kennedy interrupted, "but it's not luck tampering that caused all the 27 Club curse deaths -- "
"Stop bickering." Vince sighed. "If you stopped and thought you might have realized that he can save himself if he just doesn't become a legend."
Griffiths snorted. "They're trying to say fame is going to kill you," he said to Bloodgood.
"I can't become famous?" Bloodgood said, incredulous. "That was the whole reason I got the fucking thing!"
"You'll be even more famous when you're dead," Kennedy said with brightly tinted sarcasm.
"Shit," Bloodgood swore loudly.
Vince spoke up again. "We can't break that one. At least, not just for you. We'll talk when -- "
" -- when it's considered a valid phenomenon -- " Griffiths muttered.
" -- when we can actively take curses off of Muggles with their knowledge without tampering with their memories," Vince went on, sending Griffiths an irritated look.
Kennedy reached into her pocket and flicked a business card at him. "If you want to try, though, we can give it a shot. Some other time. When you're not fucking with your variables. I wondered why his numbers were all off," she added to Vince.
"I figured a musician with the wherewithal to file a suit with the USDoM had to be pretty fucking lucky," Vince agreed. "Anyway, we have another case today, so thank you for your help, Mr. Bloodgood, and we hope to be hearing from you once you've gone through the proper steps and channels."
Bloodgood nodded, shifting away from Griffiths, who was pocketing his wand as he stood. "Let's get out of here," Griffiths said to his other two team members. "Where's the next one?"
"Upper East Side, best if we Apparate," Vince answered promptly.
"Hate the Upper East Side," Kennedy muttered.
"Is there anyone you don't hate?" Griffiths asked her.
"Hm," Kennedy said, mockingly thoughtful, "well, I hate you."
Vince gave them his best glare which surprisingly struck them silent for a long moment. "Good. Good. I hate to ask this, but can we do this on the way out?"
"Yeah, fine." Kennedy stalked out.
"What the hell is going on?" Vince demanded of Griffiths.
Griffiths shrugged. "We both take our work seriously, I suppose. I'm going to just work, if you don't mind." He followed Kennedy down the stairs.
Vince was left alone in the apartment with Bloodgood. "They're insane," he said to the musician.
"You don't have to tell me that, man, I knew that from the minute you guys walked in," Bloodgood said, with a grim, yellow grin.
Vince smiled in return, much the same, and went to the door. "Good luck," he said, particularly proud of the irony, and left.
Simon Griffiths couldn't help but admire the Upper East Side. It was classy. It was better than anywhere he had ever lived, and he wasn't exactly low-class himself. The Upper East Side, however, seemed to just make Sasso slouch more than usual and was practically giving Phillips some sort of violent psychological fit that she was barely containing. By now, though, that seemed to be a given.
Finally they found the exact address -- it seemed some secretary had failed to do the Apparation maths correctly, what a shock -- and they walked up a set of stairs to the porch and the door.
"I smell like patchouli," Sasso realized, then sniffed his clothes. "I smell like patchouli."
"Bet Griffiths is covered in it, he even sat on the couch," Phillips said, smirking.
"You knelt on the floor where he probably tipped his bong over," Griffiths replied absently, knocking on the door.
"The name is Wilde," Sasso reminded them. "And they're trying to pass as Muggle so don't wave your wands around near a window."
"I don't usually," Phillips said, "but I'll keep that in mind."
Griffiths eyed the doorknocker. "No, you just pull it on harmless musicians?" he asked Phillips.
"You were so polite when we met you," Phillips sniped back. "Where did that go?"
"I'm doing my job. That's it." Griffiths put his hands up. "Let me do my job." He knocked on the door using the doorknocker, next.
"You're doing our job for us, too. It's a three-person job," Phillips argued.
So sorry that you're incompetent and stubborn, Griffiths so badly wanted to say, but he imagined that might have been pushing the envelope even in America. Perhaps especially in America. "Terribly sorry," he said, insincerely.
"You are such an asshole," Phillips shouted at him.
"Kennedy we're on the Upper East Side and representing the fucking US Department of Magic," Sasso hissed, "one more time and I'm Silencioing you."
Phillips glared at him and was saved by the door opening. She opened her mouth to speak, but Sasso spoke first at the sight of the old woman. "Hello, ma'am, are you Ann Wilde?"
"I am," Mrs. Wilde said, smiling. "And who are you?"
Griffiths saw her going for her wand. "We're Cursebreakers with the United States Department of Magic," he said calmly. "You can put your wand down." So much for pass as Muggle.
Mrs. Wilde sent him a smile that didn't seem entirely innocent, and Griffiths took mental note of that. "Come inside," she told them, opening the door wide and watching each of them enter.
"I'm Kennedy Phillips," Phillips said, stepping in, "and this is Vince Sasso and Simon Griffiths."
Sasso was actually astonished when he looked at the file again. "You have yet to live in a house for a week without it starting on fire?" he asked her, incredulous. Phillips elbowed him.
"A week," Mrs. Wilde said mournfully, leading them to a sitting room. Griffiths didn't particularly want to go much further into the house, but he was going to let the Americans do their jobs. Americans, always complaining about people would take less pay and do the jobs better "stealing" jobs. How did one steal a job, anyhow?
"How long have you been living here?" Phillips asked, not even looking around at the luxury a bit. That was curious, Griffiths thought.
"Six days," Mrs. Wilde said after a moment of thought. "I think."
Oh, that was cold comfort, and something about this was bothering him, but he would let them do what they needed to do. And once he was right and their method had failed, they would see.
Hopefully.
"We're going to take a look around, if you don't mind," Sasso said, rather politely. "Are there any things that came with the house? We'll need to just check specific things that are yours, and we don't need any red herrings."
"No, everything here is mine." Mrs. Wilde smiled. "Go on and look all you need to. Thank you so much for coming. I'll be in the kitchen if you need me." She departed through a door on the opposite side of the sitting room.
"What now?" Griffiths asked, patient as anything.
"Show me some cursed items," Phillips said, taking out her wand and imitating the wand movements he'd made earlier. She was smarter than he'd figured. Or at least more observant. "I know you can do it."
"I can't just do it on the house," Griffiths explained calmly.
"Show her how to do it, maybe then you two can stop acting like kids," Sasso said. "I'm going to check the master bedroom for cursed jewelry."
Phillips eyed him, as Sasso left the room. "Show me," she said. "Show me how you do it."
"It's nonverbal," Griffiths sighed. "It's tough."
"It's not silent, I saw you saying something," Phillips argued.
Oh hell. Had he? "That was nothing," he said. "Let me show you." He glanced around the room. "The vase, we'll start with the vase."
"You're not fucking with me, are you?" she challenged.
"I am not fucking with you," he said, with as much dignity as he could gather.
"Good. Show me," Phillips commanded.
Griffiths decided to give the spoiled little brat what she wanted. "Fine," he said. "Hope you're a quick study."
"Quickest you'll meet," Phillips said with a smirk. He decided he didn't like her smirk at all.
He rolled up his sleeves. "Let's go."
Vince didn't get it. Curses like this didn't go with jewelry but old lady curses went with jewelry, more often than not, and that was not a stereotype, it was statistically true. He pulled out his copies of the case files -- he would bet anything that Kennedy and Griffiths weren't even looking twice at the files -- because then he could get a timeline. You couldn't trust the testimony of the actual victims of a curse, because they thought they had a curse on them, and were likely to start blaming anything they could think of that was remotely unfortunate or unlucky on being cursed. It could entirely throw a timeline off. No, you had to have them sitting down doing paperwork. Then they'd think.
He sat down at her vanity mirror and began to write into his notebook. By all indications the curse had started three months ago, which made for twelve houses in all. That was a lot of houses. Who the fuck wouldn't report this after the third or fourth house? Usually people erred towards thinking of a curse by that point.
This was getting weird. The old lady was too nice -- okay, she wasn't a native New Yorker, but either way -- and she was just suspicious. Something was going on.
Vince flipped to the numbers now. How the numbers changed from one year to the next was particularly telling. Her luck numbers had only taken a turn for the worst in this year.
He really hoped they weren't looking at what he thought they were looking at.
"Sasso!" Griffiths called from downstairs, muffled by the distance.
"HA," Vince heard Kennedy shout, clear as day, and then he stuffed his notes into his pockets and ran downstairs.
"Yeah?" he asked casually, surveying the scene. Kennedy was squinting at a nearby mirror and casting a silent spell on it while Griffiths was, surprise surprise, checking the notes.
"Did you do a timeline?" Griffiths asked.
"Yeah, just now." Vince held it out before he even asked.
Griffiths considered it. "This looks familiar." He shook his head. "No. It feels familiar. It feels familiar. I can't explain it."
"Don't bother, we know what you mean," Kennedy said idly, then cast the spell again. "I got it!"
"I told you it'd help," Vince said offhand to Griffiths.
Griffiths shrugged. "I'm going to walk around. See what sets off the spideysenses, you know."
Kennedy snorted. "Comics nerd? You?"
"Don't start," Griffiths said, without turning around. "Stan Lee's a bloody genius."
"I prefer DC," Kennedy called after him, then looked to Vince. "He's still a bastard," she added.
"Yeah, sure," Vince said. This little rivalry was starting to look more and more like flirting, but who was he to talk? He mocked Kennedy about sixteen times a day on a slow day.
Kennedy stared him down. "I'm serious."
He didn't even think about his response and ended up repeating himself exactly. "Yeah, sure."
"You just said that."
"Right."
"Stop that."
"Don't we have work?"
Kennedy did the wand movement again. "Lemme show you how to do this."
Vince didn't even have time to go for his wand before he heard Griffiths's voice. "PHILLIPS. SASSO." Griffiths's panicked voice. If the panic of a smug British bastard wasn't scary, he didn't know what was.
"That was fast," Kennedy remarked, obviously just as shaken by the tone of voice and half-shout.
Vince ignored that and followed his gut on where Griffiths was, ducking through a couple of halls and finding him upstairs staring at a creepy as hell painting of a kid.
"Dude," Kennedy said inarticulately from behind him. "I know that painting."
"Who's the best in maths here?" Griffiths asked faintly. "It's important."
Kennedy snorted. "Maths? Did you just say -- "
Even Vince had to stop and mock that. "Is there an extra u in there?"
Griffiths released a slow breath, not answering, and said, "This isn't a joke, who's the better arithmancer here?"
"Me," Vince and Kennedy said at once, then looked at each other. "No fucking way you're better than me," they went on in near unison.
"Stop it," Griffiths said, tense. "I'm serious, this needs to be done and fast."
"Kennedy," Vince said shortly.
Kennedy was surprised and couldn't hide it. "Yeah, okay, what?"
"Case file. There should be rough times and dates on when they moved into the houses and when they burned down. I -- we need an average and how long she's been living here."
There was a tense, frightened moment with only Kennedy scribbling. "That's the Crying Boy," Vince said slowly.
"It is." Griffiths was still staring at it.
Vince shook his head. "That's an urban myth."
Griffiths raked his hand through his hair. "Sure it is. You want to bet your life on that?"
"Point taken. Kennedy?"
"GIVE ME A SECOND," she demanded.
"Take your time, the house might only burn down with us in it," Griffiths said casually.
"You want me to do this right? Shut up," Kennedy snapped.
Vince shrugged when Griffiths looked at him. "I don't get why anyone would want this painting anyway. It's fucking creepy," he went on.
Griffiths shook his head. "You know why she wanted it just as much as I do."
"You really think?" Vince hated to think that anyone could be that bad, let alone little old ladies who seemed perfectly nice otherwise.
"Holy shit. Almost exact," Kennedy said, staring down at her paper. "It's almost exact with the margin of error with information I don't have."
"And how much time do we have?" Griffiths asked with forced calm.
Kennedy winced. "Twenty minutes. With margin for error."
"Fuck goodbyes. I'm getting out of here," Vince said openly, sticking his wand in his belt and leaving.
Kennedy and Griffiths exchanged a look, both went to leave and nearly ran into each other. Finally Kennedy just stalked away again without a word or a single look.
Vince looked at Kennedy for a moment as she descended the stairs to meet him at the sidewalk. "Where's Griffiths?" he asked.
She looked back at the door. "... I thought he was following me."
He sighed. "Shit. We can't leave without him."
"He's probably just slow," she pointed out.
The door opened and Griffiths emerged with the painting in his arms, inelegantly stumbling down the steps as best he could with the unwieldy print. He glared at them as they looked at him, amused.
"Souvenir?" Kennedy asked brightly.
"Art theft?" Vince guessed, just as brightly.
"Evidence," Griffiths said, gruffly in contrast. "She's long gone."
"Probably hoped the house would burn down with us in it, we'd all die or nearly, and she'd just call it an accident," Vince said.
"You think she planted the Crying Boy in her houses to get insurance money?" Kennedy asked, amused.
"Not funny," Griffiths said flatly. "It makes houses burn down, that's not funny. Even worse, she might have caused deaths that wouldn't happen otherwise."
"Fuck, little old ladies are not supposed to be homicidal bitches." Vince still couldn't believe it.
"Have you not seen Arsenic and Old Lace?" Kennedy demanded.
"Oh, look, she has culture," Griffiths cracked, and nearly dropped the picture. "Some help, please?"
Because he said please, Vince helped. "This should be fun. Filing crime paperwork, haven't done that in years."
"Arson by curse, well at least she's creative," Kennedy said with a sigh. "Where are we putting this thing?"
"Well, we have a week to torch it, wherever it goes. Fiendfyre works wonders," Griffiths said, apparently very satisfied at the idea of torching the painting.
"Personal grudge?" Vince guessed, smirking at Griffiths.
Griffiths gave his grim smile. "I don't like it. It's creepy, it causes trouble, and it comes up far too much."
"It's not that great a painting, either," Kennedy pointed out. "But let's go before people think we just robbed Old Lady Wilde."
Vince shrugged at Griffiths again and said, "On three. One, two -- three."
They Disapparated and dumped the painting onto the floor of the office immediately, hands stung by the transportation by Apparation. "Stupid," Vince swore. "Stupid, stupid -- "
Griffiths rubbed his hands. "Where's Phillips?"
"At Starbucks, where do you think?" Kennedy answered from behind him.
He glanced back. "I should've figured," he said wearily.
Kennedy smacked him on the back of the head and went on to her cubicle. "Work to do, boys."
"Sasso! Vince Sasso!" a voice shouted from the back of the office.
"That has never been a good sign," Vince said to Griffiths, who smirked.
"Sasso?"
Oh, it was Turner's secretary Martha. "Over here," he called back. "What's she want me for now?"
"Oh good you're back -- she wanted to see you and Phillips." Martha eyed Griffiths. "I don't think we've met!"
"Have fun," Vince mouthed to Griffiths, who was eyeing Martha's skirt -- little did he know she was the strictest Catholic since Hispanic grandmothers. He dragged Kennedy from her cubicle and to Turner's office, not heeding her protests. Vince wanted this, the paperwork, and the day over with so he could go sleep.
Meeting with Turner were never as bad as Vince thought they were, Kennedy thought, but whatever. The weird thing today was that Turner's door was open. Turner's door was never open. It was like walking into Fort Knox except that you didn't really want to go in. Kennedy rolled her eyes at Vince's hesitation and marched in, glad that he at least followed.
"Close the door behind you," Turner said without any inflection whatsoever, somehow.
"Do you live here?" Kennedy suddenly found herself saying.
"What?" Turner asked, surprised.
"What?" Vince repeated and gave Kennedy his best what the fuck? look.
"You just always wear the same suits and -- you don't leave much!" Kennedy paused, not feeling stupid so much as not really wanting to push the topic. "Whatever, what do you want?"
Turner stared at Kennedy, then just went on. "How did it go with Griffiths?"
There was an awkward pause, then Vince and Kennedy looked at each other. "He's good," Kennedy admitted freely.
"He's got tricks we don't," Vince agreed.
"He assesses situations quick," Kennedy said, and steeled herself for that look from Turner again before she added, "and he's a smug bastard. A complete smug bastard."
Turner took the moment to reach over to her desk zen garden and rake the sand just once before she responded to that. "Good. You need someone to temper you, Phillips."
Vince snorted and covered his mouth, and looked at Turner for the glare only to see a hint of a smile.
"Thanks," Kennedy said, not half as impressed with the joke.
"You can both work with him and he can work with you?" Turner went on.
"Yeah," Kennedy and Vince answered, her wearily, him casually.
"Good. He's yours, then. And the cases?"
Shit. Kennedy didn't want him around, but whatever. Toto would be back soon. "Both were busts. Griffiths thinks the fire case was someone doing insurance fraud a la Crying Boy curse. We're torching her copy later, got any Fiendfyre on hand?"
"Or marshmallows?" Vince asked brightly, unable to resist.
Turner stared at them again. "I'll talk to him. Later. Do your reports before you leave. Sasso, you're dismissed -- from the office, go back to work. Phillips, we have to talk."
Vince looked at Kennedy with utter surprise and Kennedy looked back before protesting to Turner, "I didn't do anything!"
"You didn't," Turner said, heaving a long-suffering sigh. "Just sit."
Those were two words that were never good. She sat and watched Vince go, closing the door behind him, dreading looking back at Turner. "What?" she finally asked.
"You know we regularly do the numbers on our own staff," Turner said slowly.
"Yeah?"
"Yes. We've noticed a spike of activity in the numbers on our Cursebreakers."
Kennedy shrugged. "It happens."
Turner lowered her head and was silent for a moment before she spoke. "The last spike happened to Allister Totolos. The last three Cursebreakers with this spike have landed in the hospital."
Kennedy felt instantly winded and stared at the edge of Turner's desk. "You think he's cursed."
"No. The curse has passed him. We did his numbers after the heart attack." She put a printout in front of Kennedy, and even by the edge of the paper, Kennedy knew what it was. She grabbed it just to check, but there it fucking was.
"Shit."
"Yes."
"I'm taking care of this shit," Kennedy swore, staring at her name at the top of the page before she crumpled it up in her fist. "I'm doing it. They fucked with Toto and you don't get to fuck with Toto and fuck with me."
"Go on," Turner said easily.
Kennedy paused, then looked up, eyebrows raised. "What?"
Turner shrugged. "Go on. I'm giving you permission. Look into it."
"You never give me permission!"
"This is different. Go. Do it." Turner went back to her computer. "You're dismissed."
"Fine," Kennedy said rebelliously, and shoved the ball of paper into her pocket. She marched back to her cubicle, where Vince was cramped into a corner and Griffiths had managed to fit a third chair, both working diligently on paperwork.
"What was it?" Vince asked at the sight of her.
"What was what?" Griffiths asked.
"Nothing," Kennedy said pointedly, grabbing her coffee from her desk and falling into her chair.
"I think she got told off," Vince said to Griffiths.
"Lucky to get out alive, I imagine," Griffiths answered without looking up.
Kennedy shook her head and reached for the paperwork Vince had abandoned. "You have no idea," she said, and immersed herself in work, for now.