Of Wicked Workings
22st of July 2006 A.D.
"Did something else happen?" Father Forthil asks as he takes the tape. He sounds worried, though to be fair that might be because the radio is changing on its own as the Wagon looks for a decent station. He probably thinks it's malfunctioning because of magic.
"I met someone who's involved in bad things, maybe not framing Harry, but a little girl god kidnapped to get her grandfather to do something. It would be
really good if you could get Harry out soon. "
He sighs and shakes his head, a few drops of the errant summer that had just passed rain flying off his shoulders. "Getting a judge to hear a request for bail before Monday is beyond all but perhaps the FBI agents themselves and even for them it would not be easy to arrange. Judges are... ornery about their free time. With the courts being as backed up as they are I can't say I blame them for all I wish they would make an exception in this case I don't think that's likely."
Bob it is then, not that you had expected something else. From what Clippy had been able to find about Cook County Jail it does not seem like the sort of place you walk out of easily, innocent or not.
After rolling past a McDonald Drivethrough to get a Big Mac and a particularly sad looking salad as well as one small burger each for Mouse and Mister to keep them from getting bored with their food if nothing else, you spend the drive to Harry's with one hand on the wheel that mostly moves itself while you text dad:
Found proof Harry was out of town, tape with Father F. It's spooky out there. Pls. get your stuff and meet me outside Harry's apartment
There that should be relatively innocuous even if the NSB people had bugged your phone and you had only shortened the message a little, much as it pains you to spell everything out like you are writing a letter in cursive. The last thing you need is a back and fourth chain of text explaining stuff. If reading through Wright's phone had taught you anything about snooping it's that context is king.
****
As Mister picks carefully at the meat inside the hamburger Mouse had already eaten his in one bite before leading you through the wards to the lab again. He's obviously happy that you had found something to help exonerate Harry though he's worried as you would expect at the thought of more dark wizards in town and as angry as you are at the thought of a little girl kidnapped. Hopefully Bob can help you unravel the mystery.
The eyes of the skull flare open as soon as Clippy's lantern hits him this time.. "Why hello there. Miss me already?" He tries for a husky voice, but the limitations of form being what they are, it comes out more like dry and clinking.
"Desperately," you deadpan. "Listen I met someone nasty and I bugged their car with a demon, it's not important..."
"Oh sure, sure I see acts of divine authority enacted upon servitor spirits all the time," he mimics your tone, then when you look at his startled he honest to goodness cackles. "The look on your face."
A reluctant smile creeps onto your face. "I would tell you to go into stand up comedy but you can't," you quip back. You wait for the clattering laugh to pass and continue. "They mentioned a person, I think it was: Capricorpus."
The laughter is gone from Bob in and instant, his eye flames dimming down to embers hiding in the deep sockets of the skull. "Oh no, no, no she is supposed to be dead, like for real dead though."
She you quickly learn had earned well the name Capricorpus, a body jumping necromancer and former apprentice of the departed and unregreted Big Bad himself, Kemmler. According to Bob the Corpsetaker had been around for the big showdown on Halloween where she had been able to change bodies with Warden Captain Lucio while mortally wounded and she would have gotten away with it as well it Harry hadn't noticed the chance and shot her. You are a bit vague on what a Warden Captain is, but from Bob's manner you guess it's a big deal,
"Wait a second, if Harry is supposed to have killed her did he fight off her death curse or is he still under it?" you ask, starting to get an inkling on what might have happened.
"Harry said he surprised her..." Bob starts but you cut him off.
"Maybe, or maybe the body-snatcher didn't have as narrow a view of life and death as the rest of us. I mean the only difference between projecting your Hun soul out of your body and
being a Hun soul ghost is that one has a astral chord and the other does not, well that and the ghost needs direct spiritual infusion to sustain themselves instead of being sustained by the Po soul bridging the soul-body divide, but that is the difference between running your oil lamp on whale oil or on kerosene, both make light they just smell different."
"You would have to be really bent to think that way as a mortal..." Bob trails off considering the implication. "So you think she didn't use her death curse because she did not think she was dying?"
"And because she had better uses for that power," you nod. "Revenge is nice, but survival is better because you can still have your revenge as a side-dish and still do other things once it's done." That felt like a very Usum sort of thought, but he had not spoken at all, you guess you have just learned to anticipate how the logic of something like the Corpsetaker would work.
"Ankou is probably hunting her, rider of the stolen steeds," Bob offers
"And Katrina is hunting him with the Corpsetaker as bait," you finish. "Trying to eat his power or something with a ritual, she called it the Black Feast..."
"That's... odd," the spirit says slowly and for the first time since you met him it is like he is struggling to remember something which for a spirit of intellect is odd in and off itself. "The Black Feast is a form of metaphagy, soul eating basically though that is not a good translation because souls aren't meat. You do not break them up for energy but co-opt them for knowledge. There has to be a level of mutual understanding and an equilibrium reached between he who consumes and that which is consumed."
Though the lecture you are nodding along, it all makes sense by your understanding of how souls work.
"Just one problem though," Bob continues. "As far as I know the Black Feast was designed in imitation of the way the Black Court feed, drinking more than their blood and it only works on mortals not elder fey."
"How sure are you of that?" you probe.
"I could show you the math for it, Harry never wants to see the math," Bob says, starting to sound a bit more chipper again.
"Maybe later, I'm on the clock right now," you demure. You are pretty sure you know what he means by 'the math' and it would take days or weeks to run though the heuristics and harmonies of ritual magic.
Also I probably should not be learning soul eating rituals, you remind yourself. It is surprisingly easy to forget that around Bob. "Cliff notes,
why doesn't it work on immortals like the Ankou?"
"Because the main stem of the magic is a shared understanding and shared fear of death, it is the only truly human thing the Black Court keept and since it was inspired from their feeding..."
"You might as well start from scratch and make a new ritual. That is still more than I knew when I came down here." you finish getting up to leave. "Thanks again Bob, you're a lifesaver maybe literally."
"Take care of yourself out there will you," he says and you are about to tell him not to worry when he adds. "It would be a waste in more ways than one if you died." And then he checks you out again.
"Never change Bob," you chuckle at the now silent skull.
Gain 2 Essence
Your dad hadn't arrived by the time you leave the apartment leaving you enough time to call Gard or use your Crown to figure out where Cindy is before he gets here. Meanwhile Katrina had long since left her own car parked.
What do you do next?
[] Call Gard, ask her if she has a sister with a sideline in kidnapping children and trying to eat retired death gods. You could use some backup even if it is gangsters
[] Search for Cindy with the Crown if you can get her out Katrina loses her leverage on Matthews
[] All this talk of old Welsh spirits turned winter's fixers make you think of Lydia and in particular her globetrotting father. This is probably not how Daniel anticipated introducing his girlfriend to dad, but needs must
[] Write in
OOC: Harry will have quite the... er... interesting reaction when he finds out what kind of magic Bob was talking to Molly about. 
