“My god, Kokoro. It’s been such a long time…” said Darius as Kokoro stepped through the front door of the Sleepy Town Pub. Water droplets from the downpour outside rolled off of her black coat in the subdued lighting. She kept her coat hood raised. The pub was empty, save for Darius, with most of the chairs flipped up on the tables, save for those at the bar itself. She had come at such an off hour for a reason. Salvos of rain droplets pelted the large glass window in the front, filling the air with a constant percussive rumble.
Darius was a great tree of a man, looking more like muscle for a night club than the proprietor of an easygoing bar. Of course, in a previous life he had been just that. So large was he that even pint glasses looked to be shot glasses in his thick, gnarly hands. “I heard about Kumar. It’s just awful, awful business.”
Kokoro just stared at the man from the entrance, watching as he wiped the bar top by force of habit. He was trying too hard to act casual, she thought. Maybe she was onto something.
“Koko? Are you alright? Do you want to talk about it?” Darius said, pausing in his work.
“Did he come here?” She said coldly.
Darius seemed puzzled at first, then shook his head, turning his dark eyes back to the bar. “Of course not, Koko.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I swear, Kokoro, I haven’t seen him in here for the better part of a year. Ever since that big fight you two had, he hasn’t set foot in here” said Darius, looking back to her, then waving a hand in dismissal.
Kokoro’s eyes narrowed. Her voice tense as she did her best to control herself. “Kumar came here every Friday night for 24 years. Do you expect me to believe he didn’t even sneak back here for a pint in all that time?”
“I don’t know how many times I can tell you the same thing. God’s honest truth, Koko. Come on, it’s me.” The man lifted his burly arms in a sign of surrender, looking around in an exaggerated gesture made all the more ridiculous by his size. “Why would I lie to you? You were here with him most of those 24 years. I’ve got no reason to lie.”
“You would if you were involved, or trying to cover for him. Did he meet someone here? Was someone trying to get to him? Any one with a grudge?” Kokoro said. She took a step closer to the bar, with a hand at the ready in her pocket. She knew he wasn’t telling her the whole truth, maybe not lying, but there was something he wasn’t saying. The way he kept breaking eye contact told her as much.
Darius took a step back behind the old, time-worn wooden bar. “Koko, do you really think I’d be involved in something like that? I’m just as surprised as you are. Kumar paid his tab on time, always bought the house a round on pay day, knew pretty much everyone who came here, even gave them free counseling. What was there not to like about the guy?”
“You know what I’ve learned in all the time I’ve known you?” Darius’s eyebrows raised at the question. “There is no one you don’t know in this town, and not a thing happens that you don’t know about. It has always been your gift.”
Darius smirked, twisting his charcoal-colored mustache. “Is that so? Where did you say you came from before you moved to town again?”
“I—” Kokoro sighed. “I didn’t.”
“See? Sorry to break it to you, but there’s a lot I don’t know, even if I’m pretty decent at acting like I do. There’s been a lot going on in this town recently that I haven’t got a clue about.” Darius said, lowering his hands as he went back to work cleaning the bar. “Stories about impossible things, rumors of angry ghosts… it’s just like the old tales.”
Kokoro took another step forward. This was something she had only heard in hushed whispers. If she could learn more… “What stories? What have you heard?”
“Just stories, sweetheart. Nothing worth repeating. Likely just a bunch of mumbo jumbo to cover something else up.” He looked back to her, that jovial twinkle in his eyes gone. “You know better than I do that there are some things better left unknown.”
“Ignorance is bliss, huh?” Kokoro scoffed.
Darius shrugged. “Bliss. Ignorance. Relative terms. I just don’t want to see you end up the way he did.”
Kokoro’s eyes narrowed even further, anger building quickly. “Is that a threat?”
“You know I don’t do threats anymore, sweetheart. Those days are way past me. Just an old friend who doesn’t want to see another friend’s name in the wrong part of the newspaper.” He said before walking back to the storeroom.
“He wasn’t just a friend to me…” Kokoro said as she turned around, and stepped through the entrance. A curtain of rain greeted her back to a waterlogged, vacuous street. It was impossible to tell the time of day through the stormy gloom, but the empty parking spots, and lack of cars going to and fro on the street was enough to judge that it was late morning. People would start to show up around noon for a bite to eat, or a liquid lunch, but there was still probably an hour before that.
She sighed, and started walking down the sidewalk aimlessly. Kokoro hadn’t thought she would learn much of anything from Darius, but she hoped that he would have at least known something. She’d already exhausted all of her old contacts from when she wore a badge. She’d even knocked on a few doors of the types she’d never have dared to if she hadn’t been grasping at straws, but that hadn’t been any help either.
Their last fight echoed in her mind again. She had been just so angry at the time. Thinking back now, there wasn’t a single word of it she didn’t regret. She was just confused, and felt left in the dark after Kumar had stopped talking to her. Her last words to him, in particular, stung all the more with the twisted benefit of hindsight: “If you are so intent on shutting me out, then just get out of my life!” It was strange how often words she didn’t really mean to say ended up coming true. It was a lesson she could never seem to learn.
She slipped a little as the incline on the sidewalk increased. A miniature waterfall, flushed into life by a gushing gutter downspout and the flow of water from uphill, made the walkway even more hazardous as her boots flooded with storm water. Kokoro frowned in disgust. As usual, when it rained, it poured. Carefully she got up the hill, and around the corner to a stretch less treacherous. She looked next to her, and saw a heavy metal door with a sign with big red letters that read “EMPLOYEE ENTRANCE ONLY.” Of course she’d stop next to a door.
Kokoro knew what she had to do. She had been trying to avoid it for the past three weeks. But she was out of options. Every dead lead she had dug up since his death had just made it all the more clear that the one thing she said she’d never do was the only choice she had left. If she really wanted to know what happened, there was only one way to find out.
She hooked a finger around the leather cord around her neck and pulled out what looked to be an old wrought iron key that hung from the cord under her blouse. Kokoro sighed, staring at the dull metal as a coating of rain drops developed on the hammered surface.
Cursing to herself, she brought the cord over her head, and then turned to the door. She touched the key to the keyhole. It was much too large for the lock, yet as the tip made contact, the archaic key sunk into the brushed metal lock face till she had it about halfway buried. Kokoro turned the key, felt that once familiar click, and twisted the door handle.
That sweet floral breeze breathed out as she opened the door to a field of pink and purple flowers. It was a sharp contrast to what one might expect from what seemed to be a dreary concrete warehouse. She stepped through the doorway, pulling her key out as she did, and the door quickly closed itself behind her. She looked back and saw the familiar stone archway that had stood in this field for millenia, and the image of the door she had used faded into open air under the archway.
“Well, well, well. Not every day I have a Recused step through my door.” Kokoro’s skin crawled as she heard the man’s too smooth voice. She turned to see Warren Ramirez sitting at a table just a few steps to the left of the door. He wore his typical black pinstripe suit, with an overcoat draped about the back of his chair. He took a sip from a tea cup. She could smell the sharp sting of his favored spice tea cut through the aroma of the flowers of the field. The sun was setting off in the horizon, scattering golden light across The Lake, and the rolling grassy hills.
Kokoro walked over next to the open chair he obviously had left waiting for her, but did not sit. “Let me guess, you’ve been waiting for me?”
Warren smirked, though his cold hazel eyes told a different story, as usual. “As always.”
The two shared a look for a moment. Then she rolled her eyes and sat down in the chair. More than a decade away, and he was still just as infuriating.
“Well, then, it truly is just like old times, is it not?” Warren said, an annoyingly pleased look twisting his statuesque features. His eyes, though, never lost that dull, ambivalent feel to them. They never failed to send a chill down her spine.
“I know you know why I am here,” She started.
Warren nodded. “Of course, it is part of my job to know.”
“So, it was a Scourge, wasn’t it?
“Honestly, given the burned out eyes, I’m surprised that you wasted time treating your husband’s death as a normal homicide. Though, I suppose the stab wound in the heart is more than enough for a Latent.” He took a sip of tea. “You sure have been quite busy, haven’t you? Are you sure you shook every tree you could before coming to me?”
Kokoro growled in frustration. He could still get under her skin as effortlessly as breathing, even though it had been more than a decade since they had last seen each other. Well, since she had seen him, at least. “You know why I didn’t want to come, why I wanted to be wrong. Besides, you know as well as I do that their hunting behavior isn’t all that different from that of a serial killer. It wouldn’t be the first time a Scourge wreaked havoc on the Latent. Just look at the Ripper.”
“Of course, the Latent never did find him, unlike us,” Warren laughed, those mirthless eyes all the more unsettling. “Oh, I know exactly why you didn’t want to come. I remember every word you said back then when you Recused yourself from this life. Do you remember what I told you then?”
Embarrassed, she looked down at her lap. They had had plenty of arguments over the years they had worked together, but worst of all was what she had always assumed would be their final conversation. Well, conversation was being generous for what was largely a ferocious tirade on her part followed by a single sentence from Warren as she walked away. She grudgingly repeated it now, “You’ll be back, and you’ll need my help.”
That smirk was back. “And here you are, and, behold, you need my help.”
“Can you?”
“Always, but there will be a price, of course,” Warren said
Kokoro closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. She didn’t have a choice. “Name it.”
Warren smiled wide, those lifeless eyes gleaming in the slowly waning sunlight.
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