Chapter Text
Edwin is not surprised when Charles makes the decision to escort Crystal back to London. He is merely disappointed. He hides that though, or at least conceals it the very best that he can as he extends his hand for Crystal to shake. Her grasp is firm and her eyes have a strange sheen of apology in them that he neither understands nor wants. It is perhaps Charles that owes him an apology. He’d just decided that he was going to London with Crystal and he had not bothered to ask Edwin’s opinion on it or offer for Edwin to come along. And he had only announced his unilateral decision the moment that Crystal had finished packing and made for the stairs.
The whole of it makes Edwin feel as though his throat is being gripped by a fist. He wonders if Charles is taking a ferry and three flights to escort their decidedly not-helpless psychic friend just to avoid him. Edwin had thought that everything would be better now that it’s all out in the open but he can’t help but wonder if Charles has been uncharacteristically strategic in this choice. The irony of that would be quite terrible.
Charles claps him in a friendly way on the back as he passes.
“See you tomorrow, mate.”
“Yes. Safe travels.” This he directs mostly at Crystal because it is suddenly difficult to look into Charles’ eyes.
Jenny clears her throat and crosses her arms. “Yeah. Call me when you get in.”
“Goodbye!” Niko says again as Charles holds the door open for Crystal. The bell above the door chimes cheerfully. “Try not to crash over the Atlantic ocean!”
Edwin watches, heartsore, as Charles shakes his head with a smile and follows Crystal out onto the street. The bell chimes again. Less cheerful now.
Jenny sighs. “I need to run to the store. You coming, Niko?”
Edwin blinks as Niko turns to him with the expression of a child seeking guidance. He realizes that she’s reluctant to leave him alone and the weight in his heart lifts just a touch. His smile is small but genuine when he nods.
“Yes,” Niko says. Her eyes linger. But she trusts him─unlike Charles and Crystal, who second guess him on everything but particularly on matters relating to his own wellbeing. “I want Edwin to try pocky.”
“I will not be able to taste it,” Edwin warns her.
“I don’t think Grocery Outlet has pocky, Niko.” Jenny’s already moving past them to lock up and turn the sign.
“Ohh, but Safeway does!” Niko says. She clasps her hands together like she’s praying to God. “Please, Jenny?”
Jenny groans. “That’s halfway across town.”
“Please please please?”
“Fine! Jesus. But in that case we’re stopping by the bank, too. And Home Depot.”
“Oh!” Niko is delighted. “That’s perfect!”
“Why is that perfect?” Jenny asks with suspicion.
“I’ve been thinking about painting an accent wall. Home Depot has paint swatches!”
Jenny groans, then pushes past them again to head through the back. Niko follows but pauses on the threshold to turn and lob another smile and a little wave at Edwin.
“Be back soon! Or. Maybe not soon. But soonish. If you get bored you can use my laptop. That’s what we watched Scooby Doo on. My password is ‘crunchyroll’. Unless you want to come with us?”
Edwin stares at her. “What?” He shakes his head. “I will be fine. Thank you, Niko.”
“Alright.” Still she loiters, eyes sad. But when she opens her mouth to say something else─something Edwin is oddly certain he doesn’t want to hear based on the pity that crinkles her brow─Jenny barks for her. “Okay. Goodbye! See you soon!”
The white banner of her hair shines as she darts into the back. Edwin listens for the slamming of the door and then he exhales slowly. The Tongue and Tail is abruptly very quiet. He is unsure of what to do with himself despite his assurances to Niko, so he simply stands in the middle of the shop and looks around without really seeing much of anything. Once he would have welcomed this stillness. Now it tugs at the festering sore inside of him.
Charles will mirror-hop on the return trip and then they will finish up the handful of cases still on their whiteboard. And then they will go home, too. Perhaps Charles will manage to convince Crystal to ‘stick around’ or perhaps that handshake is the last that Edwin will have ever seen of her. Edwin looks at the ceiling and wonders which outcome he would prefer. He wants things to go back to how they were before all of this mess, but he has grown fond of Crystal. She is clever, and eager to help, and she makes Charles happy in ways that Edwin clearly cannot.
Tomorrow. He will not see Charles until tomorrow because Charles and Crystal will stop in New York City for the night. Unavoidable, Charles had said, because of the way the flights lined up. Had it sounded like a lie? Or perhaps a light skirting of the truth? Edwin closes his eyes. He pointedly does not picture Charles and Crystal alone in a hotel room. Or whatever the bloody hell an ‘air bee and bee’ is.
There’s a sound from the back of the shop. Edwin sighs and opens his eyes.
“Niko?” he calls, confused at the slow clacking of her heels. Normally Niko skitters or skips. This sounds like a stalking walk. And it is not Jenny because she wears combat boots. “Did you forget something?”
Edwin’s phantom heart stutters when Esther Finch breezes in from the back. The clear plastic swooshes as she pushes through.
“Oh, sorry to surprise you,” she says with a wide smile. “I’m here for a pick-up. The sign said ‘closed’ so I thought I’d circle around the back.”
She does not have her iron cane with her, and that is a relief, but instead she is carrying a glass box that looks rather like a miniature greenhouse. It has a chain that is looped around her neck but it is very clearly not just a gaudy piece of jewelry. Her palm supports it from below. Her free hand lifts to tease the lid but keeps just shy of opening it.
Edwin is very certain that he does not want her to open it.
“At first I thought, ‘what a pity’. Because I’d planned this whole, you know, going out with a bang party for your shrew.”
“My what?” Edwin asks. He is confused but more importantly he is trying to stall for time. He needs a moment to think. He should take a few large steps backwards and phase through the windowed walls of the Tongue and Tail and run but─blast it, his limbs have locked up on him again. His brain feels soft and curdled in the bowl of his skull. He is facing down a powerful witch that should still be trapped in another dimension and Charles is not here.
“But then I saw her leave with your boyfriend and I thought well it isn’t like I actually need the both of you.” Esther sighs. Her nails clack as loud as pistol shots as she drums them on the glass box. “It would have been fun for us to have an audience but you are the star of this show, honey.”
Edwin tells his legs to move. They do not.
Esther’s smile grows. “Maybe it’s better this way. I do love to put on a performance but sometimes you can do a thing just for its own sake, wouldn’t you say?”
She advances a step on him. She is between the counters displaying meat now and he is still in the middle of the room. Still his legs do not unlock.
“They say that the best art is done that way. For its own sake. I guess we’ll just have to put that to the test.”
Edwin’s hands twitch and claw. He sucks in a little breath. He is going to turn and run. And then he is going to find Niko and Jenny. And they will help him call Crystal. She and Charles are surely not at the ferry yet.
Esther does not take another step forward. Edwin is strangely certain that she does not need to. He thinks of Charles and Crystal chatting, smiling, holding hands as they wait for the ferry. He thinks of Jenny and Niko browsing the colorful aisle of a grocery store and bickering about snacks. He watches as Esther murmurs something beneath her breath and lifts the lid on the glass box.
There is a rising ringing sound. There is a great flashing of light. And then Edwin is swept away.
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Being inside the glass greenhouse is like being swaddled by heat and light and a gentle, drifting fog. He feels a rocking motion. He hears a murmuring voice that sounds very pleased with him. He is aware of shadows shifting across the world outside. But all of it is opaque. It is as if he’s sunk in a glass of warm milk. There is no reason to struggle against it because it does not hurt and it is not frightening. It is merely strange. But it is also very lonely. He cannot help but feel as though something─someone─is missing. But even that thought is murky. He sinks into the warmth. He drifts.
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Edwin does not know precisely when or how or why he is released from the box. One moment he is formless and swimming and blissfully free of any particular thought at all but the next moment he is being hauled up off of the floor by a pair of strong hands with sharp nails. He draws in a breath. He doesn’t need it. It’s merely a habit. It’s also strange to have a body again. How long had he been in the glass house? Ten minutes? Ten hours? Ten days? His vision is slimy. There is a veil of oil between him and the world. And it’s lifting─slowly but surely. But the hands pinch and claw and corral him and then he is gasping as he’s laid flat on his back and pain bites at his left wrist. He tries to lift his head. The fog lifts a little instead. He realizes from the dimness and the quiet that he is inside a house─a real one, not a glass one─and then his right wrist is stinging with a cold-hot burn too. He blinks mist from his eyes and finds himself staring at a ceiling. He lifts his head a little and watches in a daze as Esther Finch stalks around him.
He sucks air between his teeth as pain encircles his right ankle.
“Oh, hush.”
He hisses when his left ankle twinges with a scorching band too. Iron. He lifts his head higher and tries to tug his limbs free but he only receives a four-fold burn for his trouble. He swallows a groan and drops his head down. He still feels like there’s fuzzy cotton between his ears
“There,” Esther says. One of her hands lands on his calf and squeezes. He can feel it. He is corporeal because of where the iron is gnawing into his wrists and ankles. He realizes that he has started to pant shallowly. He eyes the iron fangs hanging above his torso. She catches him looking. “Oh! Don’t mind those, darling. We’re not there yet.”
Edwin chews on his lip. The pain from the iron restraints is already dimming─it’s nothing compared to what he’d endured in Hell and if he holds still and does not jostle them they can almost be ignored. He watches, non-existent heart pumping, as Esther leans down. There’s a strange sound like grinding metal as she adjusts something under the table. Edwin tries to crane his neck.
He jumps when a loud “caw!” calls from another room.
Esther mutters under her breath and does not stop her fiddling.
“Monty,” Edwin says in breathless realization. He is in Esther Finch’s house stuck in a strange device seemingly made to hold ghosts and Monty is one room over.
He remembers that a crow had landed on the roof last night. It had cawed at them and taken flight. It had been Monty. He had known it then, or at least strongly suspected, because crows did not usually fly about after dark but─he’d thought maybe Monty had been checking up on him out of concern. How foolish. How utterly foolish that he had not thought that Monty would be keeping tabs on him in order to set the next trap.
Esther straightens. She smiles at him and there is a wild light in her eyes. It is not unlike the way that the Cat King sometimes looks at Edwin. With hunger. Edwin flinches when one of Esther’s hands lands on his lower belly. His eyes nervously track her fingers as they drag up his stomach and rake over his chest. He is breathing very fast now. If he were alive he would be at risk of hyperventilating. Her hand encircles his throat and her fingernails dig in to gouge the back of his neck.
“Oh, don’t worry about him yet. It’s just you and me right now, sweetheart.” Esther’s voice sounds wet with saliva. She has the look of a dog descending on a juicy piece of meat. “At least until your little friend comes looking for you. But don’t you fret, I’ll be sure to have a nice welcome ready for him too. Because you know what they say─misery loves company.”
Monty cackles loudly from the kitchen.
A gasp of pain escapes Edwin. It has nothing to do with the iron. “He left. He’s not coming back.”
“We’ll see,” Esther says. “In the meantime… I think it’s about time that we made a little music together, don’t you?”
For a moment Edwin doesn’t know what she means. But then she waves her hand and the machine turns on with a low hum. He chokes down the first scream of pain but he believes her when she laughs and says, “oh, don’t worry, it’s going to get much, much worse.”