Ghost of a Chance

[Emilie]

It started with the whispers.

The bottom floor flat heard them first, but the occupants wrote them off as a malfunctioning heater, steadfastly refusing to believe they were actual words. So the whispers infected the building upward leading to arguments between the husband and wife upstairs. By the time the third floor heard the whispers there was a shadowy figure appearing on the first floor, quietly keening whenever you least expected it. The roommates promptly broke their lease and moved out, claiming a horrific ghost was haunting them.

The landlord, Mr. Greene, wondered if they'd found out about the murder of a previous renter and were making up a story. By the time the second floor flat ran screaming from the building, yelling about a haunted kitchen, he was resigned to losing yet another crop of renters.

He dialed a number, one a "sensitive" friend had left him when she'd heard about his haunted building. Ridiculous, really, but with Halloween around the corner perhaps it wouldn't hurt to have someone out to take care of the problem. Or perhaps he could get the ghost tour to stop by, and make some money off the situation. Mr. Greene hesitated with the phone, unsure of his course of action.

[Jack Bradley]

It had been about half an hour since Jack had pulled up on the street opposite the flat. He'd edged his car into a space on the pavement on the opposite side of the street and since then had been sitting in the drivers seat of the VW Golf, with his hands still on the steering wheel. In the half an hour that he'd been sitting there, afternoon had given way to evening and darkness was creeping into the terraced street. Taking a deep breath, Jack closed his eyes for a moment – and immediately regretted what he saw (http://sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?22959-Out-of-the-Dark).

“Fuck sake,” he breathed, eyes snapping open as he braced his palms against the wheel. “Come on.”

Rolling his shoulders to shake off the chill that threatened to wash over him, he shoved the car door open and – not looking twice – crossed the road, towards a battered looking 'TO LET' sign. The flat didn't look much from the outside and given the price they were asking, it couldn't have been much on the inside either – but cheap was what he needed. Cheap and quick. Somewhere, anywhere, that wasn't the place he'd shared with Sean.

Stepping up to the front door, he'd barely even touched the doorbell when someone answered.

“Uh.. I've come for the viewing.”

[Emilie]

Mr. Greene smiled as widely as he could, which had the unfortunate affect of making him look a bit like a frog. "Yes, yes! Come in. We were just about done - but yes, here's the flat, just in here. You have a kitchen, two bedrooms, living room. One bathroom, just here..." Jack was pulled through into the flat and given a whirlwind tour. "It comes furnished, but we can remove the things if you have your own."

The landlord took a breath, leaning against the side of the sofa, and blinked expectantly at the young man who was looking around himself. "It's been recently updated, very nice for the price we're asking."

[Jack Bradley]

The tour was brief, but there wasn't a lot to see. It put Jack in mind of an Ikea show room, right down to the art on the walls. It didn't look lived in, not when you first took it in, but it was rough around the edges. Too many footsteps on the carpets had worn them down and where the walls met the high ceilings there was a dab of paint whiter than the rest, where there'd undoubtedly been some damp covered up. When the viewing brought them back to the living room, Jack stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at the blank screen of the television.

It didn't look anything like the flat he'd shared with Sean and that was what he needed.

“How soon's it available?”

[Emilie]

"N-now, actually." Mr. Greene smiled that too wide smile again. "It's available now." He paused, as if he were about to say something, and then didn't, so the silence stretched on a bit.

"Well then," he said, pushing off from the wall with a lurch. "I have some paperwork already written up, we'd just need to fill in the dates. How long of a lease are you looking for? Six months? And there would be a small deposit, half a month's rent. Since this is mid month your first actual rent payment would be less than usual, if you were to move in immediately." Please, please move in immediately. His expression wasn't very good at hiding what he was thinking.

[Jack Bradley]

Jack blinked. When he looked at Mr. Greene, he didn't see the face of a man desperate to fill a vacancy or hear the edge to his voice, that uncertainty that said he probably would have waived the deposit if he'd been pushed. “Where do I sign?”

Three days later, he had discovered that all his worldly possessions – at least the ones that he could stand to keep – barely filled the back-seat and boot of the Golf. He'd lugged the boxes and bags into the hall, just inside the front door, but hadn't gotten a lot further than that. Even his toothbrush wasn't unpacked. Instead, he'd stopped by a 24-hour Tesco Express nearby and bought a new one, along with a 12-pack of Heineken, a loaf of bread and a 'family sized' pack of crisps. So far, everything but the Heineken was untouched.

Jack slouched into the sofa, staring into the still dark screen of the television as he took a long swig of his second beer.

“Happy house-warming, Bradley,” he said to the silence in the flat, lifting the beer bottle in a mock toast.

[Emilie]

Ssssssssss

A faint sound drifted through from the kitchen, as if something was leaking air. Just when Jack began to notice it, the sound stopped. Then, after a few moments...

Ssssssshelp messsssss

The hissing noise stopped again, then started and stopped.

[Jack Bradley]

Beer still in hand, Jack got to his feet and paced out of the living room. He stood in the darkness of the hall, listening. It's an old building, the landlord had said, and like so many houses of its time it's quite.. vocal. The grumble of the boiler, the rattle of the windows, the creak and sigh of the joints and floorboards settling. But a hiss? Jack sniffed. The air in the flat still didn't smell like 'home' but it didn't smell like a gas leak either. He padded barefoot into the kitchen where the sound seemed to be coming from and checked the cooker, confirming that he hadn't left the gas on.

With a mental shrug, he knocked back the last of his beer, added the empty to the collection on the kitchen counter and pulled open the fridge, the light inside spilling out into the darkness of the kitchen. Save for the Heineken's, the only thing inside was a tub of butter and jar of something that had been left behind by the previous residents which looked like jam; Jack hadn't mustered the effort to get rid of it yet.

[Emilie]

As Jack turned from the fridge, he caught sight of something in the corner of his eye, like a scarf floating upward on a breeze. The wind outside the flat moaned like it was mid-winter rather than summer, rattling the kitchen window and back door.

It took him a moment to realize that there was no wind outside.

[Jack Bradley]

It was an odd thing, getting used to a new home. Had he just imagined the movement outside? It seemed unlikely that there'd be birds flapping about the place at this time of night.

Jack checked the latches on the windows then paced to the back door, thumbing the latch open and leaning out into the cool night air. The back door and yard clearly hadn't been part of Mr Greene's refurbishment. The door was fitted with a cat flap which had been gaffer taped shut; the back yard was empty save for a wheelie bin and half a dozen ceramic plant pots contained yellow grasses and wilting flowers. In the moonlight, Jack could see the glistening trail left by a snail meandering away from the back door and towards the stone stairs that lead to the upstairs flat.

He stood, silent, in the doorway feeling somehow... not alone. Somewhere outside of the redbrick walled yard, he could hear music and the murmur of a television coming from elsewhere in the street, but – that wasn't it.

He frowned at the shadows.

“...'lo?”

[Emilie]

"Hello." The voice was clear, and accented, and came from behind him, in the kitchen.

[Jack Bradley]

The last thing he'd expected was a reply. Panic shot up his spine and jerked his hand upward as he snapped around, the now empty bottle of Heineken poised to glass whoever had gotten into the flat.

“Who the fu-”

[Emilie]

The kitchen was empty.

Right at Jack's ear a voice breathed in a soft French accent, "You are different than the others...somehow..."

[Jack Bradley]

The bottle slipped from his fingertips, green glass shattering against the kitchen floor. Jack swore again, eyes dipping for only an instant before he was glaring accusations into every shadow. He slapped at the wall behind him, the heel of his palm catching the light-switch. Even with every corner of the room illuminated, there was no one to be found.

“Look – I don't know where you think you are – but this is my flat now, y'hear?” he yelled, at no one and nothing. He could hear Sean in his voice: the bravado, the brash courage in the face of who knows what. “So clear out before I throw you out.”

[Emilie]

The lights flickered and the temperature dropped around him, and then she was there, across the kitchen table from him. Her hair and clothes floated as though she was underwater, and she was faint, transparent enough to see the stove behind her.

"Throw me out then, big boy," she said, her words somehow not fitting with her ghostly appearance. "Better men have tried." Her hand trailed against the top of the table - a different table of course, but in the same spot as always.

[Jack Bradley]

The full-body shiver that washed over Jack was nothing to do with the cool evening air at his back and everything to do with what his brain was struggling to process: a woman who had just appeared, and yet inexplicably, had not. There was nothing and then there was – what. She wasn't there, but she was. It was like an old, film camera had somehow processed two negatives onto the same print and the image of her had been faintly superimposed over the image of his new kitchen. Split second thoughts rattled and rebounded against the inside of Jack's skull, reactions and responses half-forming then evaporating into nothing in the same instant. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out, not even a breath.

He licked his lips, his brain defaulting to the only explanation that was plausible.

“This is a joke. Some kind of joke.”

[Emilie]

"You have connections," the apparition continued, as though he had not spoken. She was starting to look more real, her hair retaining it's floaty look even as it grew less transparent. Her clothes subtly shifted from ghostly cloth to a dull metallic armor over a ragged white tunic and pants, the breastplate crisscrossed with a barbed wire pattern that was continued down the bracers and greaves. Her exposed skin had bruising as if the design had hurt her, and there were arcane markings on her arms and a faint third eye drawn on her forehead.

"I need your help." She ran her fingertips across the table.

[Jack Bradley]

“Fuck. Fuck,” the word tumbled out faster the second time, and quicker still on the third.

“Fuck. This is.. fuck.”

The ground no longer felt level beneath his feet. Jack took a step backwards and felt himself wobble, his head swimming like he'd necked a bottle of something strong and just stood up for the first time to realise that he was irresponsibly drunk. It wasn't the drink, though, was it? He'd been hitting it pretty hard since Sean -

Something knotted and twisted in the pit of his stomach. Jack gasped for breath, lips pursed tightly shut as he looked up at the starless sky, trying to think about anything but Sean – but the more he tried, the harder it was. He didn't deserve to forget what he'd done – how he'd run away like a coward and left Sean lying there, a broken and bloody mess. Bile rose in his throat and Jack clamped a hand over his mouth as he sniffed a damp sniff.

Pressing his lips together tightly to keep them from trembling, Jack forced himself to look through the open doorway to the kitchen. He swallowed the lump in his throat.

“This is.. because of... Sean isn't it,” he managed in a whisper.

[Emilie]

She thought for a moment, the silence stretching on. "Yes." He seemed to wilt, and she continued, "And no.

"It has to do with Fetters. You will help me destroy one." Emilie stared at him, noting the clamminess of his skin. "You should sit."

[Jack Bradley]

Yes, she said, and Jack stopped listening because he knew that was the truth. What he was seeing – what he was feeling – was all because of Sean. There had been a time not too long ago when the most Jack Bradley and his cousin had faced together was a rough hangover. Then, quite out of the blue, a day had come when Sean had revealed something unexpected: a secret life that neither Jack nor any of the rest of their family knew about. Against all reason and sense, Jack had volunteered to become part of that life. Within a week, he'd witnessed his first kill. Sean was hunting vampires. Not just vampires, but other creatures too. Things that he said were hiding in plain sight all around them.

It was not the first time Jack had been face to face with death. Working as part of an ambulance crew had a way of ensuring he'd built up a certain level of – not tolerance, but readiness where viscera and violence was concerned. He didn't balk at the sight of blood, but there was nothing that could have made him ready for the past month, or.... this. He sank down onto the kitchen floor, shoving the back door shut as he went. Learning a shoulder against the side of a cupboard, he looked slowly back towards the woman standing over the kitchen table.

Not a woman. A thing.

“What are you?”

[Emilie]

It was going just about as well as could be expected...that is to say, not well. Emilie had never been patient; though the past ...six? years had passed with excruciating slowness she had always been in search of things to do. First it had been to learn all she could of this new life, unlife after death as it were. Then to become useful in her guild, and to find a place among the other warriors. She had learned arcanoi and how to cross the Shroud, though it was here, at her primary Fetter where the Shroud was weakest for her and she could manifest in the Skinlands most easily. She had other Fetters - ties to the Skinlands and the vapid French girl she had been in life, ties that kept her grounded and from Transcendence. But this one...

Her thumb traced a whorl on the table absently. "I am a wraith. A ghost." She smiled faintly. "I used to live here."

[Jack Bradley]

A ghost.

Jack gave a small nod. It was obvious, after all.

If vampires were a real, tangible thing that could be found in London of all places, then why not ghosts as well? The vampires that Sean had introduced him to – and to whom he had introduced a stake to the chest – had been, by and large, so normal in their appearance and their homes.

They seemed... human, and that was what made them so dangerous, Sean had been quick to point out. The media painted vampire's either as antiquated monsters, lurking in dusty old castle, or porcelain white supermodels, moping and brooding at the fringes of society. Neither neat stereotype would, as Gabriel Rodermark had done, own a kettle.

In a world where vampires were real and owned kettles, the possibility of a ghost appearing in Jack's kitchen, dressed like something out of the Crusades, became much more real.

“I'm sorry,” he said, apologising for – what? The fact that she was here at all, the fact that he was now living in her.. home. “I - didn't know.”

[Emilie]

She stared at him, and rolled her eyes. "Don't be daft. Of course you didn't know." She forced her hand away from the table, putting it on her sword hilt, which was not entirely just for show. It didn't exactly work in the Skinlands, though. "My name is Emilie. I need your help. I will keep bothering you until you say yes, so perhaps let's just get to that part and move on? If not, let me know and I can get straight to the more unpleasant things.

"Not to be completely cliché but my time is short."

[Jack Bradley]

“Cliché?” Disbelief was written in every line that wrinkled Jack's forehead.

“I... you tell me you're a ghost and just expect me to – what? Take it on the chin,” he scoffed. “Forgive me if I'm not-” His breath caught in his throat then came out sounding like laughter, only empty of any emotion. “Just – accepting this. That there's a.. fucking ghost in my kitchen.”

His head falling forward, Jack squeezed his eyes shut. “Look, whatever you need help with, I'm not your man. I'll.. only make it worse.”

[Emilie]

She leaned forward, planting her hands on the table, her blond hair wafting through the air as it slowly caught up with her movements. "Regardez ici, joli garçon, tout le monde s'enfuit. Vous êtes il. Excusez-moi but whatever problem it is you have you will get over it. Or you will die, like me, and work forever to get over it. To... move on."

Emilie bit out a laugh, and added bitterly, "Transcend your grief or give yourself to Oblivion. Better to do so now than wait." Her hands seemed to sink into the table, as though she were grabbing fistfuls of it's wooden innards. "You think your issues are special? You are the only one to feel like this?"

[Jack Bradley]

The string of what Jack guessed was French sailed right over his head, but her next words were like a slap to the face. She talked about death in the same matter-of-fact way as Sean had, like ending someone's life was as simple as flicking off a light switch. Slow, his limbs feeling like lead, he pulled himself up to his feet.

“Oblivion? Are you telling me to-” Jack cut himself off. That wasn't a line of thought that he wanted to go any further down.

“I never claimed what I'm feeling is special – but knowing that other people have felt like this sure as fuck doesn't make it any less painful. You don't know what I've been through, so whoever the fuck you are, you've,” he jabbed at finger at her, “got no right to judge me,” he finished, striking the same finger against his own chest.

[Emilie]

"Yes, the pain of the living," she said, her tone sarcastic. "Please tell me how it hurts you to survive and endure your loss here in the world." The more she dwelt on her own life, the more pull the table had on her, a Fetter in more ways than one. She walked around it, her feet making no noise as she crossed to stand in front of Jack.

"You don't even know what pain is," she sneered, reaching for his shirt. He drew back, nearly tipping his chair over, and she halted, the dark emotions roiling inside her giving strength to her Shadow. Emilie bared her teeth at him, but her face transformed from anger to fear in a moment, and her corpus was jerked backward as if she was standing on a skateboard. The armor she wore melted into fog as she was slammed silently into the table, no better than a drone as she opened her mouth to scream. A strand of barbed wire snaked over her, tying her nude body to the table. The more frantic and furious she became the stronger the effect was, and for a moment she was completely given over to the reenactment of her death, blood pouring from a hundred wounds.

[Jack Bradley]

It all happened in the blink of an eye: one moment the girl in front of him, a bitter sneer curling into her lips, the next she was torn backwards and writhing about on the kitchen table. Jack's stomach processed it all before his brain did and cold nausea flooding through him, though he swallowed it down with a splutter of a cough.

“Stop! For fuck's sake just – stop!” He pressed a white-knuckled fist to his lips for an instant, choking down the taste of bile. “I don't know what you want from me.”

[Emilie]

It was like being there again, caught in that moment like a fly in a spider's web. The more the panicked the worse it got, and so she forced herself to relax. The imagined pain abated, the barbed wire melted into her skin and armor as it reappeared, leaving behind the scars and raised metalwork. After a moment she flickered out of sight.

Emilie cursed, drawing on her power to break through to the Skinlands again, stretching against the image of the kitchen in the Shadowlands and pulling herself through the Shroud into existence in the so-called Real World. Jack flinched as she appeared, standing within arms reach of him. She held out a hand, palm down, trying to soothe him. "Excusez-moi, that was... unpleasant for both of us."

She knelt down, looking up at him where he sat. "I need your assistance. And in exchange I will locate Sean and ensure his safety."

[Jack Bradley]

The back of a hand to his mouth, Jack stared with wide, red-rimmed eyes at the kitchen table. He took a long, shivering breath and tried to convince himself that he wasn't going to be sick. When the woman reached out to him, his gaze shifted to her hand and brought with it all the confusion and shock he'd been leveling at the table.

“You'll - but how?”

[Emilie]

Good, he was listening again. "He is newly born into ze world of ze Dead. A bébé dans les bois, an Enfant. Until he is Reaped Sean is helpless to protect himzelf -" she was losing Jack entirely with this explanation, his face only growing more confused and/or horrified as she spoke. "Oh, merde, vous ne comprenez pas de toute façon. He is like me. A ghost. I will find him in ze Shadowlands, ze ... purgatory for ze dead?" This was going terribly.

"I can protect him," Emilie said as plainly as she could. "You would not believe ze politics of ze underworld, Jack. An Enfant can become enslaved for hiz entire existence, before being discarded into Oblivion. Zis I would not wish on anyone, least of all your cousin."

[Jack Bradley]

There were so many words coming out of her dead mouth. Words that might have made sense in any other context, but right now? It was just noise. Enfant, reaped, shadowlands, oblivion. He pressed the heel of one hand into his eyes. There wasn't enough space in his brain to fit all of this in, not when his head was already so full up with grief.

"How.. how can I help him?"

[Emilie]

Her hair was starting to float again, and she was beginning to fade out. Strong as her connection to her apartment was, it was tiring to manifest for so long, and so fully. Emilie remained where she was, kneeling at his feet, but if he looked closely he could start to see the floor through her body. "You help Sean by helping me," she said softly. "I cannot stay in ze Skin- in your world for any length of time. Every ...ghost has what we call 'fetters' - zings in ze real world zat tie us here. Zis place is where I lived. Where I died."

She shrugged slightly, apologetic. "Which you saw, malheureusement. I can manifest only where my connection iz strongest, which means where my Fetters are." Emilie watched Jack's face for signs of understanding, and continued, "While you help me, I will help you, which means I need to be more mobile. Zere is a wraith in ze Shadowlands zat I must defeat. He was a powerful mage in life and a horrible person in death, and with your help I can stop him."

[Jack Bradley]

What Sean had told Jack about the supernatural would just about fill up the back of an underground ticket. The gist of it was, don't trust them. Put them in the ground when the opportunity presents itself. At no point had he said, work with them. Help them to defeat their enemies. But...

If there was even a small chance that this ghost, this woman, could make sure that Sean was at peace, wasn't that worth trying? There was every chance that if Sean had been alone that day, he would have made it out alive. If he hadn't been looking out for his rookie of a cousin.

Irritation crept into Jack's voice as he pushed his hand back through his hair, then met the ghost's translucent eyes with a pleading look.

"Christ, just tell me what to do. In plain English."

[Emilie]

She sighed, the sound filling the room like an eerie breeze. A paper fluttered off the counter and drifted toward his feet. "Go to Paris as soon as possible. To zis address." Emilie pointed an increasingly ghostly finger at the paper, tracing letters that glowed and then settled into what appeared to be black ink. "I will meet you zere."

[Jack Bradley]

"Paris?"

Incredulous, he fished the paper from the linoleum floor. His face wrinkled at the sight of it, as if somehow the idea of going to Paris was more ludicrous than the knowledge that a ghost was living in his kitchen table.

"I - don't know. I... need some sleep," he said, already swaying to his feet. He moved towards the kitchen door, but something halted him. Frowning, he turned and paced towards the back door, testing to make sure it was locked.

"I can't promise anything right now," he went on, head hanging low. The back door rattled as he gave the handle a firm tug; it was locked. Pushing the slip of paper into his back pocket, he turned to face the table once more.

[Emilie]

She was standing on the other side of the table, her form growing more and more transparent. "Bring somezing with you zat Sean would have a strong emotional connection to. Zis is very important!" Emilie's voice was fading, and she spoke louder to try to compensate, a shout that sounded to Jack a mere whisper. "I will bring him with me to zat address, but without ze object he will no' be able to manifest!"

Emilie felt the Shroud pulling closed around her, leaving her in her apartment in the Shadowlands. She sighed, raking her hand through her blond hair, nearly tearing it out with her hasty movements. Hopefully it had been enough to convince the Hunter. She would need to rest before she could go looking for Sean, and there was no time to spare.

[Jack Bradley]

A week later

The days had rolled by, just as the city rolled by now. The afternoon sun glanced against the windows of the Réseau Express Régional carriage. A cap pulled low on his forehead and a pair of sunglasses shading his eyes, Jack sat with shoulders hunched, low in his chair. Every minute or two, exhaustion pulled him down towards sleep – until light flashed against the window-pane or a jarring tone signaled the departure from another stop. In a half-sleeping state, he imagined that he could spend the rest of his life like this, never getting anywhere, just rolling around the same set of tracks, drifting in and out of awareness of the world. Once, someone sat down next to him, but he blinked and they were gone.

By the time he reached Mairie d'Ivry, he'd slept a total of twenty-five disjointed minutes. He shuffled out of the station, hefting the light backpack on his shoulder, the strap chaffing. A glance down and he shook the bracelet of his heavy-wrist watch. Sean's watch. It was mid-afternoon. Paris. What was he doing here?

He fumbled in his pocket for a piece of paper, a printed map. It was a quarter of an hour walk to the address Emilie had given him. From another pocket, he fished out his mobile phone. It warned him that he had five missed calls, labelled: Work. A series of text messages waited, unanswered, containing words like where and when and unauthorised. Jack flicked the notifications away, unable and unwilling to process them right now. Instead, he thumbed directions into his phone, plugged an earphone into one ear and let the dispassionate voice of the map app guide him towards the Rue Pasteur.