Rosie’s Diner
Detroit, Michigan
Friday, November 4th, 2022 - 12:49 p.m.

Agent Nicholas Hunter stared into his cup of coffee as he considered the situation. His search for Phoebe Hood had not gone well, despite the information that the girl’s roommate had given him. Carrie Underwood was only able to tell him a bit about her habits, that she preferred to be called ‘Red’, and that she had a habit of wearing a red hoodie. Unfortunately, she knew nothing of where Phoebe might have gone and had not been contacted by her when he last spoke with her.

While Phoebe may have panicked and left some evidence when trying to obscure the facts of her grandmother’s death, she proved to be quite adept at covering her tracks since then. She was too smart to let herself be caught on camera, had left both her car and phone behind, and had left a false trail heading north up toward Canada. She hadn’t even used the phone to make any calls or internet searches that might provide clues as to her intentions.

Two weeks ago, he still had no clues to her location, so he had decided to put the case on the back burner for a while. If she really had been bitten by her grandmother, then something would come up during the next full moon. So, he had changed tracks and decided to start tracking that new Witch that had been recently awakened in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

After brutally killing her predecessor and inheriting the Witch’s power, Greta Heinrich had left a trail that a child could follow, but she was probably traumatized and in shock from her ordeal and not thinking clearly. He couldn’t blame her since evidence, including the remains of her brother and the murder weapon, had painted a very grim picture of what had happened there. He was willing to accept it as being self-defense and, given how many other half-eaten corpses of missing tourists had been found by the FBI team he had assigned to investigate, she had probably done a great service for the community of Hershey and the tourists passing through there.

Greta hadn’t thought to change vehicles or disguise herself, so her movements had been far easier to track than Phoebe Hood’s. She ended up in Detroit and was last seen in this area. When he had arrived two days ago to search the area for the new Witch, he had a strong feeling about why she had practically vanished soon after entering the city. She had found a Fae settlement.

He had known that there was one in the area and figured that he had found it once he felt inexplicable surges of fear whenever he glanced in a direction that he couldn’t seem to focus on for long. Those were Fairy spells and powerful ones at that, but he had grown up being trained to deal with mind tricks like that and kept his glances short and his thoughts under control when he looked in that direction. Blurry and indistinct satellite photos of the area seemed to confirm that there was something unnatural about that neighborhood.

The few Arcane within the current government knew that the settlement was somewhere in the area and let it be. Agent Hunter was inclined to agree since the land they had claimed was long-abandoned and, for the most part, they didn’t seem to be harming anyone outside their community. In fact, reports hinted that they were taking in other Arcane and getting them off the streets as well. Arcane like Greta Heinrich and, quite possibly, Phoebe Hood.

Now he had eyewitness accounts that both girls were likely now in that settlement, which was what had him staring dourly into his coffee. On Halloween night, two waitresses and several customers witnessed a series of odd events outside this very diner, which couldn’t quite be explained by kids in costumes. He was able to string together those various accounts and come up with a rough idea of what had transpired.

It began when a pair of customers heard someone shouting obscenities. When they turned to see what was happening as they passed by a pair of young women to enter the diner, they saw that the source of the yelling was a young woman roughly fitting Greta Heinrich’s description who was chasing an overweight man wearing a gray hoodie and sweatpants in the light of the street lamps. That wasn’t the strange part though. The two witnesses swore that neither Greta nor the man she was chasing were there when they briefly looked that way a moment earlier.

The answer was clear, they had come from the Fae settlement. A couple of minutes later, several witnesses mentioned a pink blob of something slamming into one of the two young women leaving the diner before oozing into the shape of yet another young woman and restraining the one that she had hit. The young woman who was hit and then restrained was wearing a leather motorcycle jacket and closely matched the description that he had been given of Phoebe Hood, except for the red hoodie that she tended to wear.

Greta then slipped on something and crashed into a pale blonde woman who seemed underdressed for a cold October night, causing them both to fall to the ground. What followed was a very loud shouting match between Greta Heinrich and the other blonde woman as they disentangled and got to their feet, their clothes wet despite the lack of any rain or puddles on the ground near the diner entrance. Several witnesses were able to pick out the words, ‘Witch’, ‘Werewolf’, and ‘magic’ during the argument, but after the heated exchange, the four seemed to put their differences aside and went off together in the direction where the man Greta had been chasing fled.

Nobody had gotten a good look at the man who was being chased, but if he too had come from the Fae settlement, then he was some sort of Arcane or at least the descendant of one. Only an Arcane would be able to ignore and pass through the powerful Fairy magic like that keeping the settlement hidden. This left Agent Hunter in a bind.

While he knew what to look for and had an enchanted totem that would allow him to pass through the barrier, if he didn’t give into the fear it summoned, he got the distinct feeling that the Fae who ruled there would become hostile at the appearance of a Huntsman in their community. There was a lot of bad blood between Huntsmen and certain Fae, especially those of the Winter Court. Yet it would seem that both of his current cases were hiding there among the Fae and other Arcane.

This could be a good thing or a very bad thing. If they had fallen in with the Summer Court, then whoever was in charge would likely see that the Witch was properly trained, even if it was only for their own safety. They might even help to keep Miss Hood contained on the full moons and help her learn to control herself or at least lock herself up somewhere secure if she truly had been turned by her grandmother. If they had come under the Winter Court’s sway though… well, he didn’t want to think about what they would do with a Werewolf and a potentially powerful Witch.

The other two with them that night at the diner needed to be considered as well. The pink one was likely a magical summon of some sort and would have likely vanished once her purpose was complete, this also indicated that Greta had gotten at least a small amount of training since awakening. The other blonde woman was a concern though. It sounded like she was Arcane as well, or at least in the know about them, but there were certain clues in the narrative that were a cause for great concern to him.

She was not dressed warmly enough for a cold autumn night, which had him concerned when combined with the unnatural paleness that witnesses had described and the display of strength when she had lifted the Witch off the ground. Every instinct screamed ‘Vampire’ at him, and he could only hope that she was in control of her bloodlust and that she wouldn’t feed on Miss Hood. A Vampire was bad enough, but an Elder Vampire could be arguably more dangerous than a werewolf. The possibility that those three girls might have fallen under the sway of the Winter Court sent shivers down his spine that his now cold coffee could do nothing to combat.

Agent Hunter sighed and put a twenty on the table, enough to cover his lunch and a tip, before getting up to leave. He would stay in the area to keep an eye on things until after the full moon, just in case Miss Hood turned and needed to be put down. As much as it irked him, there was nothing more that he could do for now, but watch, wait, and see how the situation played out. With a weary sigh, he headed outside to his car so he could find a good spot to keep an eye on things.

Witch’s Brew
Shadowtown
Monday, November 7th, 2022 - 1:30 p.m.

We spent most of the past week settling in, making our new house as cozy for us as possible. Thankfully, the Fairy Godmother hadn’t needed us for anything serious yet, and just showing up had been enough to settle the situation, so we were able to spend most of our time settling in. It was almost like a home now, though Goldie and I were still getting used to the quirks of our new housemates. For one thing, we had learned that during the rare times that Berry actually needed sleep, a bed wasn’t going to work out for her.

She had only needed to sleep once, for a few hours, since we had been living in our new home but that one time that she did, she turned into a puddle of pink goop that got all over the place while she was unconscious. It took her a good fifteen minutes to pull herself back together after that. With that in mind, we bought a small inflatable swimming pool and put it in her bed frame. As for her mattress, that was sadly a lost cause, but at least nothing else was damaged.

She and Goldie still seemed to be competing for my affection, but at least they weren’t at each other’s throats, and seeing Goldie just as flustered as me when the Slime-girl flirted with her was letting me see Goldie’s more shy and reserved side. Berry was also trying to learn more about us and take our personal comfort into account. For one thing, she wouldn’t eat around me and she wore the clothes we had gotten her to blend in better, and so we wouldn’t have to see whatever she was digesting.

Then there was Greta. After a week mostly spent in bed while recovering from mana exhaustion, she was looking a lot healthier and less tired this morning. She was feeling good enough that she was now at Witch’s Brew to receive her first formal lesson from Simone and scheduled to work her first shift as a waitress once that lesson was finished. She was currently in the back with the pub’s owner doing the former while the rest of us had an early (for us) breakfast.

While Berry disappeared somewhere to find some live rats or mice to eat, Goldie and I ordered our meal from Dierdre at the bar and sat there to keep the Baobhan Sith company since business was slow at the moment. The redheaded barkeep quickly produced a bottle of blood for my Vampire girlfriend and then took my order to the back for the cook, whose name I learned was Harry. Once she was back, she smiled and gave us that alluring smile of hers as she placed my orange juice and a cup of coffee on the bar in front of me.

“Yer all ‘ere a wee bit early today,” the stunning redhead said conversationally as she glanced at Goldie. “The sun’s still out.”

“Yeah, well, ummm… it’s that other time of the month and I have to go out of town for a few days,” I grumbled. I had been feeling irrationally irritated since I woke up, felt like my skin was about to crawl off, and had a hard time not snapping at the redhead behind the bar. I knew she didn’t deserve it, so I was trying hard to keep my temper in check.

“Yeah,” Goldie added while placing a hand reassuringly on mine. “it’s Red’s first full moon tonight since being bitten, and Berry and I wanted to be with her, for moral support at least. And… if things don’t go well, our strength might be needed to keep her from getting away and hurting someone. The Fairy Godmother suggested a nice out-of-the-way place where we can lock her up while the moon is up until something more permanent can be arranged, but we’ll need to leave Shadowtown after we’re done eating to get there before Moonrise. We were considering putting her in my demesne for the night so she wouldn’t be exposed to the moon, but there probably wouldn’t be enough air for her to last until the moon sets without suffocating.”

Dierdre gave me a sympathetic look as Goldie took a long sip from her bottle of blood, and I did the same with my coffee. “Oh, aye, well good luck then, Red. You be careful out there, lasses.”

I quickly quelled the flash of anger that I felt at her pity and snapped my mouth shut for fear of snapping at someone. The rest of our time there was spent somberly and quietly, the mood thick with a feeling of dread. I was angry and so fucking scared, and my stomach was so twisted in knots that I had to force myself to eat my breakfast and almost threw it back up again. Berry had returned from eating her own meal shortly before I finished mine so with no excuses to stay any longer, Goldie paid for both of our meals, we said our farewells to Dierdre, and the three of us left Witch’s Brew to hit the road.