daemon irrepit callidus — a. sauveterre

[Roo Hopland]

Day Twenty-Three of Elspeth Being Gone
standing outside a bar, past midnight.

The lit cigarette paused halfway to his mouth.

Behind him, there was a dumpster. Behind that, a rat was putting up a valiant fight against a cat, valiant and—sna-p—futile. He didn’t turn around. He couldn’t without risking his own life.

A demon stood across the road from him.

Its hair was long and dark and hung as if wet; and its arms were dwarfed by the sleeves of the sweater it wore; and its trousers hung off its frame, the ends trailing limply against the ground. The smell of damp earth and something acrid curled at the back of his throat. A faint cracking echoed, like joints grinding together and then apart, out of place, on a brittle sound that shouldn’t have carried.

Why couldn’t he see its face?

“Roo—oh.”

Someone was calling his name.

Chin twisted at its hinge, over his shoulder, too quickly. A friend stood at the entrance to the bar, resting their weight against the doorframe. The seedy lighting from inside followed them out, spilling into the darkness. The look on their face was knowing, laughing, as it stitched itself together.

“That second dose hitting?”

Panic burst. His head snapped forward.

The demon was gone.

[Anneliesse Sauveterre]

Second Winter Full Moon
the london townhouse residence of the chaucer head of family, midday.

She rubbed the strand against her teeth, then frowned.

A hissing in her ears. Anna looked over sharply and the housecat stood angled in the doorway, arched, tail overthick. It drew its twin fangs out again and let out something guttural, a spitting. Anneliesse stomped once, and it started back. Once more, moving forward, and it scampered down the hall.

Her jaw set, and Anna returned to her strand of pearls.

There was something about teeth when you tested them. Anna couldn't remember what it was. She could not hear through her teeth, could not taste could not feel. Her teeth were tools, but not the right sort.

Her fingernails were dirty.

Rather than try her teeth again, she slipped the pearls between her lips, and brought them into her mouth delicately, one-by-one, just a few, seven or eight. Anna closed her eyes.

Yes. Salt and the musk of sea, the tidal stink that lingered when the lip of the waves was far. No sunshine, no air, no breath. Just the rocking of the water in the clamshell bed they grew up in.

Anneliesse pulled the pearls unceremoniously from her mouth and shoved them down the front of her shirt.

A moment later she had ventured down into the foyer, hand on the doorknob, and the cat was staring at her from an opposite vantage, yellow eyes narrowed.

Anna bared her teeth, but made no noise. It didn't flinch this time.

No matter. She had things to do. Places to be.

And she'd find him again tonight. It was her destiny.

[Roo Hopland]

Day Eighty-Seven
oudh perfumers, diagon alley, late afternoon.

When he stepped into the shop, the woman behind the till looked up at him, surprised, a quick startled glance over another customer’s shoulder that he nearly missed. He didn’t, in that moment, give the look any thought. He didn’t usually, because he received many looks over the course of his day, but in this case, it hadn’t occurred to him that something could go wrong in a routine so familiar. So, without thinking, he stepped into line and waited.

When it was his turn, the shop assistant started with, “Was there something wrong with your order, sir?”

“That’s what I’m here for, innit,” he said, fingers curling blindly around the coins in his coat pocket.

The woman frowned, glancing back at the ledger beside the till. Her finger came down on the left page, opened to that day’s date, and trailed over a line twice. From where he stood, he could see the slant of his last name twined between what he assumed were the details of his order.

“It’s just—well, you were here this morning.”

“I wasn’t,” he answered shortly.

She made no move towards the display of orderly vials just beyond the bend of the counter, and the furrow that often made a home between his eyebrows resurfaced. He could feel himself start to get annoyed.

“You were, I remember.” The shop assistant’s words had turned careful, measured, a cadence that felt practiced. Like she was speaking to a child. “Picked up the same as always,” she prattled off, “bergamot, nutmeg flower, cedarwood, and leather.” And looked up at him, hesitant. “But if it’s off, we can make it again.”

The words landed between them strangely. In their wake, a boundary had etched itself into the counter, one that neither of them moved towards. She knew she was right. As did he. Deep in his coat pocket his fingers had stilled.

“That wasn’t me,” came out sharper.

“Well, no, not you. But she seemed certain.”

She?

The shop assistant latched onto the opening in his gaze. “Young thing. Dark hair. Said you had sent her to pick it up. Didn’t even have to check the notes, she knew your order by heart.”

He heard, rather than felt, the breath rattle in his ribs. It echoed in his throat. And then, there it was again—the cracking that had haunted him for weeks. Closer now, louder, it eclipsed the sound of his breathing and coiled in his ears like a thing alive, two brittle bones rolling against one another in the dark. A phantom touch prickled at his nape, the exposed skin swelling beneath the weight of something—someone—watching him.

“Oh,” he heard himself say. “Right. Must’ve slipped my mind.” With forced lightness, he jerked his chin toward the vials behind her. “Might as well take another of Scent Eight, since I’m here.”

The shop assistant smiled at last, relieved, and the boundary between them evaporated. He counted out the coins with careful fingers, face still.

By the time he stepped back onto the street, the cracking had stopped and his ribs ached.

[Anneliesse Sauveterre]

Third Winter Waning Gibbous Moon
diagon alley. early morning.

The galoshes she wore over her oxfords were several times too big. They ka-lumphed as she walked, rubbing against her bare shins, her knees pink from the cold.

It had been raining. Anna did not wear a slicker jacket. The large wool sweater would have come down past her fingertips had she not rolled the sleeves up, its hem hanging down over her skirt, nearly halfway down her thighs.

The man at the bakery would give her a coffee if she gave him a coin. If she gave him two, he would do as she asked.

The door jingled when she entered.

The man who was the baker looked at her warily as she approached the counter, his red hair plastered against his head, spectacles pressed up into his face. Anna stared at him. A moment passed.

"Miss?"

Anneliesse lifted her huge sweater with one hand, up over the waistband of her skirt, and the baker man took a step back. She snuck a hand into the crossbody pouch she carried there, and took out two coins.

"A coffee." said Anna. "Please."

"And-- you also want--"

"Yes."

She slapped the coins down on the counter, letting her sweater fall back down to her thighs. The baker man knew very well what she wanted, and the coin spoke loudly for that.

"You are to give him whatever he wishes when he comes in again. Or else."

"Miss, again, a sickle is a good deal more than--"

"I say whatever he wants."

The baker man rose his two large hands in a whatever you say gesture, and turned to fill a cup from the silver carafe he kept behind the counter.

He slid it over the counter to her, while keeping a pronounced distance, as though she might fly at him. Anna took it, sniffing, and turned.

"I've got change for you, you know-- from last time," the man stammered. Anna's head snapped back. "And the time before that--"

"I do not want your change, baker man," she spat. "You know he is to have whatever he wishes. Or else."

Anna did not wait for his sputtering. She marched right out of the establishment and onto the street, her coffee sloshing.

The heels of her rubber boots dragged a little as she walked. The coffee tasted burnt, the bitterness blooming up into her teeth, and she grimaced.

She would need to find a rain slicker before the downpour began again. If she was lucky, it would be yellow.

[Roo Hopland]

Day One Hundred Forty-Nine
his apartment, earlier in the evening than usual.

He unlocked his apartment with the key he kept tucked, mostly out of sight, on the ledge above the door frame. A key, not an Alohomora, because he lived amongst Muggles and he wasn’t the type to pull his wand out for small things. When he said this to those who asked—what’s with the key, someone always asked—he stuck to that script, keeping from them the truth: the feeling of being watched never went away.

Not when he closed his blinds at night or changed the order of his morning routine or opted for a different pub every weekend, driving his friends insane.

He was going insane.

But like every other emotion that didn’t fit neatly into his big three—anger, adrenaline, lust—he ignored it. Either it would resolve itself or it would come to a head, both inevitable. Until then, his role was meaningless.

The cracking had stopped, at least. One day with no lead-up, he had stepped through his doorway, and though he’d heard the faint hiss of his fireplace and overhead Muggle lights flicker on at his presence, the echo of something two steps behind had gone quiet. It settled into a silence that stretched, endless.

Tossing the key onto the small clamshell holder beside the door, Roo stepped into that same silence now.

Silence and darkness.

Darkness.

Where were his—

The lights flickered on.

[Anneliesse Sauveterre]

On the ceiling there were the sort of tiles that looked like they were made of lovely sculpted marble, but they actually were made of molded paper and glue. Anna had found this out by standing on a chair she'd pushed on top of the kitchen table, and poking her finger clean through an otherwise convincing fleur-de-lis motif.

There were four hundred and seventy seven tiles on the ceiling of Roo Hopland's apartment. They all pointed the same direction. Some of them were yellowish and speckled, especially in the kitchen. One of them had a hole in the fleur-de-lis.

Roo Hopland's bathtub had clawed feet. He used it every morning. It was big enough that Anna could scrunch down into an egg and not be seen at all.

But it was easy to not be seen by Roo Hopland. She was bored of it. It had been too many days of leaving him clues. Her Tilly knew to find her. She knew to look. Roo Hopland did not.

Perhaps it was because he was a boy. Boys did not see.

The white paperboard box on the coffee table was an offering of peace. It contained eleven doughnuts, assorted, from a shop she'd found in East London that morning. She had given them the requisite coins, and they had let her leave unscathed. There had been twelve, but Anna held one now, squeezing gently to lick the raspberry jam out.

On her back, she lay on the floor with her calves up on the tufted sofa, her oxfords tapping together at the toes, merino skirt riding down her thighs in a bunch of heather-gray fabric. Every now and then, her wand flicked, hand clacking it against the worn wood floors, and the lights went out.

The powdered sugar from her doughnut had created a fine powdery freckling on her face and chest as it fell onto her while she ate, dark hair fanned out around her on the floor.

She flicked the lights back on.

Clack.

Off.

It had been two hours plus three quarters.

The door clicked. Anna had taken a bite, and was chewing it solemnly, counting the tiles above the sitting area. There was a metallic clatter and a disorganized collection of footsteps, and Anna clacked her wand once more. The light flicked on.

She did not sit up.

"Roo Hopland," she said from the floor, only after she'd properly chewed and swallowed her bite. "You are out of milk."

She squeezed out another bit of raspberry jam, and licked it up.

[Roo Hopland]

“What the fuck?!”

His back slammed against the closed door, duffel bag twisting off his shoulder and falling to his feet at the force of it. The rising swell of panic latched onto that, for it was at the bottom of his bag that he kept his wand. The bag that had just fallen out of reach while someone was in his apartment.

Someone was in his apartment.

He heard but didn’t see them. In his entrance, the subtle noise of their presence had been swept over. It all came rushing to him now: the tap-tap of their shoes, the rustle of fabric, the not-quite breath. It drew his attention to the box on his coffee table first, then the legs beyond.

Scuffed shoes. Bare knees. Hitched skirt.

A woman. On the floor.

He couldn’t move; his brain was too busy galloping after his heart, the two colliding in his throat.

“How—”

Voice came out strangled. Throat bobbed.

“How the fuck did you get in here?!”

[Anneliesse Sauveterre]

Roo Hopland bleated like a lamb, dropped his things. Anna frowned as she listened, eyes pointed in the direction she knew that he was, though she couldn't see him, exactly. She swung her feet down off the sofa and clacked them down onto the floor, moving so as to sit up. Her head bobbed into sight as she came upright, and she pulled herself up to her knees to shoot Roo Hopland a withering look.

She brought the donut to her mouth and took a bite, chewing as she regarded him.

"I got into here by a key. Stupid question."

It hadn't been at all difficult to swipe the one off the doorframe, make a copy, and return the original to its hiding place before Roo Hopland had noticed it was gone.

Anna clambered to her feet and swiveled, skirt swinging down to her knees, pointing with her wand off to one side. The box on the table was creased, untidily closed.

"I brought a present." She said. "I waited very long. I became hungry."

She lifted the mostly-devoured donut as evidence of this. A moment passed in which there were no sounds except for breathing and chewing and passing traffic, and Anna watched him watch her. Pretty boy with his jaw and his mean eyes. Cedar and leather and something.

Anna swallowed, jabbed her wand in his direction.

"Roo Hopland," she said. "I think you have forgotten me."

It was insulting. Terribly. She took another bite, then shoved the rest of the donut into her mouth for good measure.

Anna chewed, scowling.

[Roo Hopland]

There was movement. The shoes swept off his couch and then a dark head of hair and even darker eyebrows appeared, glowering, of all things, at him.

His bones began the slow glide back into place.

(He liked mean, dark-haired women, you see.)

A donut appeared out of nowhere. At that, he shot the cardboard box another glance, as if it had suddenly sprouted a logo. Were there more? Did he buy those? He watched her take a bite unscathed. The donut was harmless. The box was harmless. It didn’t smell as if it hid a rat’s carcass, at any rate. But just before she had sat up, he thought he heard the rattle of a wand against his floorboards, not his own. Masking the smell of a dead animal wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility yet.

She wasn’t lunging at him, at least. His grip eased next, flexing around the door handle.

“I got into here by a key. Stupid question.”

“Stupid question? Are you taking the piss?”

She rose to her feet unexpectedly, and the pulse beneath his jaw jumped.

“I brought a present. I waited very long. I became hungry.”

Oh.

Well, alright, then.

If she was hungry, he supposed that made sense—in a way where nothing made sense at all.

She jabbed her wand at him, and if his body had begun to peel away from the door, that progress was immediately reversed. He flattened himself again by nature of twitching out of the way.

“Roo Hopland. I think you have forgotten me.”

The rrr of his first name vibrated beneath his skin.

She was French. That explained the mental illness.

As he watched her shove the last of that donut in her mouth, a single thought ghosted through the air between them, floating into his left ear and out the other side of his head: he was going to die that night.

Roo made a run for it.

[Anneliesse Sauveterre]

Roo Hopland looked at her with his steely eyes, and Anna looked right back.

She chewed with aplomb, swallowed hugely, and took a breath to speak again.

Then, Roo Hopland ran away.

Anna didn't even think. She dashed after him.

Her oxfords, with their clackety wood heels, clattered against the floorboards as she flew in his direction. It wasn't a very big flat, with its one bathroom and its little kitchen and its wide tall walls. She wasn't even sure where he was trying to go.

"This is very bad manners, Roo Hopland!"

Idiot boy, forgetting her, not even showing her hospitality. Thinking he could outrun her. He'd clearly forgotten, also, that she was very fast.

And, oh! She had her wand.

Abruptly, she stopped. Anna pointed it at his broad, retreating back, unblinking.

"Incarcerus," she said. The ropes sprung out like so many snakes, streaking forward and coiling around him: first his arms and torso, then slithering down to bind his legs together. He tumbled to the ground unceremoniously, hitting the floor with a thump.

Anna moved to him, then crouched beside him, feet flat, and rested her chin on her hands, elbows perched on her knees.

"Stupid, stupid." she said under her breath, still scowling. She rolled him onto his back, then returned her hand to her chin, adopted a scolding air. "Would also you forget Tilly if she were gone as long? Your mind is small. Perhaps I was wrong to come to you."

Her wand was still clutched in one hand, enclosed in the fist not supporting her chin. Shifting, Anna moved it downward, poked him in the cheek with its tip. It dug gently in.

"You look like stupid mummy monster."

consent to magically manhandle mr. hopland enthusiastically given.

[Roo Hopland]

He didn’t make it very far.

The ropes snapped around his limbs like iron bands, the force of it knocking him straight off his feet. He hit the ground, caught, and for a heartbeat, perhaps two, he thought he lost consciousness. When he regained whatever had been lost, she was at his side, rolling him onto his back.

He let out a deep, pained groan as her feet, her knees, her face swam into view.

“Let… me go.”

Naturally, she did everything but: scolded him, calling him stupid yet again; said something about Tilly, then mocked him—stupid and small this time; pressed her wand tip to his cheek—gently, but the message was clear.

She was playing with him.

His skin burned where it writhed against the binds.

“You crazy fucking bitch—let me go.”

(She said something about Tilly.)

“Wait.”

Limbs stilled.

“Tilly sent you?”

What had she said?

“Nonono. I wouldn’t forget Tilly. I’ve not forgotten you either. Just—”

His right arm jerked against the binds, as if it meant to reach up towards her, as if it had forgotten how trapped it was. He dug deep, smothering the white-hot ember of his temper, and forced his lips upwards into a brittle, coaxing smile.

“I’m terrible with faces—but names I remember. Just give me your name, I swear it.”