Chapter One
A crow, furrowed and feathery, landed on a fence in the town of Barrow’s End. He hooked his feet around the old wrought iron fence and puffed his feathers up, carefully balancing a letter in his beak. The houses were crooked here, and the sky was heavy. The crow, Silas, had read enough Gothic literature to know those physical signs were bad omens.
The house in front of Silas was a little less crooked, but still crooked enough. It’s a nice place, he thought, and he looked through the window and saw a man grading papers and pushing his glasses back up his nose. That’s not who I’m here for, he thought, and he looked closer at the house, hoping to see just who it was he was looking for exactly. Those undead hags owe me, he thought. I have much better things to do with my time. In fact, he didn’t really have much better things to do, and would have probably just sat around all day picking through books and eating snacks, he thought as he scanned each window. He saw a boy playing with cards that were laced with fine images of magical beasts and heroes, from warlocks to noble knights, and he sighed because even that wasn’t who he was looking for exactly.
Short, brown hair, blues eyes, will probably be writing something, and sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong.
The crow looked next door and saw an overweight man watering his plants. The man was running his hands through his hair and was doing his best to hide the fact that he had tiny little horns protruding from his hairline. The demons never drew much attention, the crow thought, but, boy, were they vain. Just then he saw her. There she was sitting behind some bushes with her notebook in hand and a pair of cheap binoculars that were probably extremely unreliable and blurry. Her father was a teacher after all.
She had brown hair, blue eyes, fair skin, and she appeared to be extremely nosy.
Ada Odbodkin, I’ve found you, Silas thought and took flight. As the dark clouds crowded overhead, he reached a reasonable height and dropped the letter from his beak, which floated down, down, down—gracefully—and to a soft spot on the grass next to the girl who was busy scribbling away in her book. It only took her a moment, but she looked at it and picked it up curiously.
Silas smiled in his own crow way and flew back home to the witch’s lair where he lived and breathed and was ordered around on the daily.
Ada, meanwhile, opened the letter, and read:
Ada,
This is your aunt Blanche. I hope this finds you well. I sent that old bird Silas, because he’s trustworthy, but his eyesight isn’t what it used to be…and neither is his temperament. You should be receiving this as if it was dropped from the sky, which it was, but I just wanted you to know it was by crow mail.
Anyway, your mother contacted me from the Veil and said that there’s somebody you can help on this side. He’s a lost ghost…at least…he thinks he’s lost. You will probably need your brother’s help, even if he’s a warlock in denial. Please come see me if you have any questions or you get lost looking for the spirit. Heck, he might even come to find you.
Take care of yourself.
Blanche
Ada smiled because she’d been looking for a case to work on as of late. “The Strange Case of the Unkempt Neighbor” hadn’t panned out even though she was positive he was a demon. She collected herself and started to walk back home. This should be amusing, she thought. I finally get to pursue a case worth my salt. Then she thought about her brother. Pete better go along with this, and he better not chicken out!
