Chapter Text
“Hold on,” Jenny says, blinking. She’s got no clue what she’s feeling at the moment besides what the fuck? and didn’t I say I didn’t want to get involved in any of your shit? The concept of surprise isn’t enough to encapsulate what she’s feeling. Bewildered doesn’t encompass her distaste for the situation. Shock is good, a nice word, succinct, sharp, but it can’t capture the absurdity of everything in front of her.
She’s dumbfounded, maybe, with a side of no thanks and a heaping of what did I just hear? and the barest, tiniest smidgen of genuine, heartfelt wow, can’t believe they actually thought of me for this.
“You want me to do what?” she asks. She stares at Crystal and Niko and Edwin and Charles, four teenagers who do the dumbest things, and maybe save a few lives—or afterlives—in the meantime. Jenny never knows what to think, when it comes to the four of them. (Certainly not pride. Certainly not.)
Charles, grinning, flashes her a thumbs up. “It’ll be brills,” he promises.
Edwin is as stoic as he usually is in front of her, hands held behind his back, posture impeccable. Jenny wants to ask who hurt him so badly to turn him into this but she never has. He’s dead, after all. She doesn’t want to know the hows and the whys of it. (Crystal and Niko assure her he’s different in private, but he hasn’t seemed to open up to her just yet. Jenny doesn’t know how to feel about that either. There’s a lot of that going around with these four: uncertainty. Especially with Charles and Edwin. Who are dead. Dead teenagers. God, what is her life?) He gives a tiny nod of assent, as if to assure her she heard correctly, and nothing more.
Crystal gives Jenny a small grimace and a half-hearted shrug, as if to say, yeah, sure, it’s a little insane, but what isn’t these days? you learn to live with it. God, you have to, don’t you? Otherwise you become like Charles and Edwin: dead. Dead teenagers. God her chest lurches everytime she looks at them, makes her feel like a failure no matter that she wasn’t—never could have been—involved with their deaths.
(Bittersweet. That’s the word for befriending teenage ghosts who’ll never get to grow old.)
Niko, last but certainly not least, bounces on her feet as Jenny’s gaze moves to her. She lets out a squeal, and Jenny knows she’s been holding it in since the idea was laid out by Crystal, who’d probably been chosen to break it to her gently. The little girl (she’s sixteen, sixteen, sixteen, Jenny’s inner thoughts remind her constantly, remembering when Niko had been sixteen and dead, knowing that she got a second chance Charles and Edwin never will, knowing that she’s thirty-five, and it shouldn’t be old but she feels it, looking at the four of them) bounds over to her side, latches onto her arm.
Jenny doesn’t stiffen up, because she’s learned better by now, and Niko hangs off of her like a leech—or like a little sloth baby, with fingers that tighten and grip and squeeze and don’t ever let go, can’t let go, because the last time they let go Niko… Well. Like a leech. That’s a better metaphor. Sucking her dry, aren’t they, these four?
“I always wanted a cool aunt!” Niko says, happy, happy, happy, barely keeping herself from squealing again, still bouncing even as she clings, looking up at Jenny all wide-eyed and adoring, as if Jenny’s done anything to deserve it.
Something in Jenny’s heart pangs at Niko calling her cool, something heartfelt and gratified and delighted, a tiny part of her nearly euphoric at the word, which is stupid, because Jenny’s been trying to cultivate that cool aesthetic since before she was sixteen herself and a sixteen year old calling her cool at thirty-five doesn’t actually mean anything. What does it matter, if a couple of kids think she’s cool? (At some point, she’d stopped trying and simply been, because this is who she is, but it’s okay to like the way you look. Jenny doesn’t always, but she likes the looks she gives herself on top of the body she was born with, the black and the tattoos, the tightly pulled back hair and the take no shit attitude she manages to project with her expression.)
She’s always thought of herself as mostly self-satisfied. A loner, sure, and she could get lonely besides. Jaded, definitely, but what was there to be really joyful about anyway? But satisfied with her lot in life, knowing it was all she was ever going to have, knowing it was good enough for her. Satisfied with the work, route and routine and regular, cut-and-dry as she sliced meat of all sorts, and maybe mixed it up here and there with a rare cut but that was all the excitement she needed. A glass of wine at the end of a tough day, a few cheap renters here and there because she had the space and could always use the money.
I always wanted a cool aunt! Niko tells her, and Jenny had never wanted anything more than what she’d had in Port Townsend while she’d had it because she knew that wanting only brought trouble, but now she has more and she can’t stop thinking about it.
Carefully, gently—with a scowl on her face—she extracts Niko from her side. The girl accepts Jenny’s hand on hers, accepts Jenny reaching over and prying up her fingertips, the touch of their hands against each other, Niko’s warmth pressed to her side, more contact than she’d have after a year in Port Townsend. Jenny peels Niko off her, and Niko lets her, still happy, still fidgeting with joy and excitement that Jenny has only once managed to squash. (Events better left forgotten.)
“I don’t have any siblings,” she says, flat out, not harsh but stern, fierce, resolute and hardened, and then, in case that isn’t enough to dissuade them from their insane plan, “And I never wanted kids.” True, so true, but why, then, does she have four of them anyway?
“Jenny!” Niko says, plaintive, whining, annoying—because she’s a child. Because she’s just a kid who wants something she’s been denied. (A kid who sacrificed her life for her friend, not knowing she’d eventually walk away from it. What has Jenny ever done, compared to that? It’s not a competition, and Niko would never want it to be one, but she feels it anyway, face to face with these kids: inadequacy. Not a one of them would ever resign themselves to a life because they felt like it was the best the world had to offer them, and they couldn’t expect to find any better.)
Jenny turns away, still scowling, still frustrated. “You know, it’s not as easy as you guys seem to think it is, running a store all on my own,” she says, not quite a snap but still stern, letting her annoyance seep into her tone, infuse her, rolling her eyes even if she’s turned away and they can’t quite see it. “I can’t just up and leave whenever you guys want.”
“The engagement is at seven this evening,” Edwin says, in his crisp, polished, perfect tones. “Your establishment will be closed.” There’s nothing expectant there, and no recrimination either, merely a simple statement of fact. She’s still not sure if he even likes her. (It shouldn’t matter whether or not he does. She shouldn’t be wondering after the approval of a teenager.)
Jenny stops at the door. She closes her eyes. She takes a deep breath. What the fuck are you doing, Jenny Green? she asks herself. She opens her eyes. She turns back around. “And you think the work stops when the doors close?” she asks, dry, sardonic, as if any sixteen year old as rich as Edwin probably was (was, was, was, because he’s dead) would know how much is involved with running your own business.
“If it is bookkeeping and other similar tasks that require your attention, I would be happy to assist at the conclusion of the case,” Edwin simply says.
The thing is, he probably could. Jenny keeps herself out of the supernatural things these four are involved in, best she can, but she’s seen enough, heard enough—listened to enough of Crystal’s complaints—to know that Edwin is a fastidious record keeper, with exceedingly neat penmanship and an eye for detail. (Crystal had not necessarily described these things in a positive light.)
Crystal’s already rolling her eyes. “She doesn’t need you to do that, Edwin,” she says, fond annoyance in her tone, a hint of a grin on her lips. “She told me and Niko last week that her new hire’s actually been really helpful.”
Drat, she had, hadn’t she: spent the night complaining about how the first time she’d ever hired someone she’d hit the nail on the head and she couldn’t even scold the thirty-two year old Beverly Clark because the woman did everything right on the first try. Half the appeal in hiring someone had been the chance to scold them for not following her instructions and now here she is developing a competence kink instead. So annoying. (She hadn’t told the kids that last part, of course. There were some things thirty-five year old women shouldn’t share with the sixteen and seventeen year old kids they were gossiping with.)
“I know nothing about parenting,” she says, changing tracks, another denial, another reason for her not to get involved in this case.
Edwin is already frowning down at her, had been since Crystal had made it clear all her words were just excuses. He looks displeased. Jenny shouldn’t be trying to please him—he’s sixteen, sixteen, sixteen, and Jenny has to keep reminding herself that, because he doesn’t act it, because he’s also one hundred and twenty four because he’s dead—but she feels a little sliver of guilt in her gut anyway. God, beholden to four teenagers. What is she saying, she doesn’t know anything about parenting? Hasn’t she spent the past year making sure Crystal doesn’t get herself killed? Jenny wouldn’t say that qualifies or anything, but it’s not nothing.
“If you truly cannot help us,” Edwin says, in a way that tickles that sliver of guilt into a full on worm, wriggling around in her gut, “then we can make do.” He turns away, already dismissing her. “If Charles pairs with Niko instead, we can still use the excuse of an aunt—or in his case, an uncle.”
“Yeah,” Crystal says practically, with a pointed glance at Jenny, “but then we don’t have anyone scoping the rest of the place out while we do the interviews.”
Edwin purses his lips. He doesn’t look at Jenny, as if she’s already been forgotten, and Jenny doesn’t know why that bothers her. She got what she wanted, didn’t she? She turned them down, Edwin accepted the rejection, and he’s moved on (even if Crystal and Niko haven’t, from the looks of them (she’s not sure about Charles, he’s much harder to read)).
“How would that even work?” she asks, deflecting rather than agreeing to the insane plan, but it doesn’t matter. Crystal and Niko, at the very least, know that her even asking the question is capitulation enough. She doesn’t get involved in their cases—except for the instances where she does.
Edwin casts an inquisitive, judgmental look her way, perhaps the only one not understanding that her question means she’s given in. Niko bounces again, grin breaking out. Crystal smiles again, with a knowing look.
Charles straightens, also beaming. “That’s right!” he says. “You haven’t seen our disguises.” He dives his hand into his infinite backpack, the one that Jenny tries not to look at or think about before it breaks her brain—or she goes mad with jealousy.
“They’re so cool,” Niko agrees, and she thinks Jenny’s cool, so who the hell knows what that means.
“Resigning yourself to parenthood already?” Crystal asks.
“Very funny,” Jenny deadpans back, but it isn’t funny, not really, not when Crystal’s called her at two in the morning, crying, home after a function with her parents and torn up over the way they still treat her like a showpiece. Not when she gave Crystal a gift on her birthday—a few bottles of nail polish she knew the other girl would like, a crockpot for her kitchen so she could stop stealing Jenny’s leftovers—and Crystal had burst into tears that she’d remembered the day at all.
She isn’t anyone’s parent. She doesn’t want to be. She’s never wanted to be. But she could do a damn sight better than Crystal’s parents (has done so, maybe, but maybe that’s wishful thinking, maybe she’s thinking too highly of herself). She casts a gaze over Edwin and Charles, Charles still digging through his bag with a look of concentration on his face.
She doesn’t ask about ghosts, and how they expect people to see them. That’s… that’s too much for her. She doesn’t want to know how all this works. But… “Neither of you is old enough to pass as someone’s uncle,” she says, which isn’t true, because plenty of people have a sibling a decade or so older than them, but what she means is if they need an adult to be in charge of a teen, neither of them fit the bill.
“That’s what the disguises are for!” Charles says brightly. His hand emerges from his backpack with a pair of glasses. He frowns at them, hands them to Edwin, who takes them without a word, and dives back in. “Blast it,” he mutters, more to himself than them. “Shouldn’t have made them separately.”
“Edwin’s going to pretend to be my mom,” Crystal says plainly, as if that statement isn’t batshit insane. “Then either you or Charles are going to be Niko’s aunt or uncle. If you come with us” —and she stresses the if, even though they both know the truth of things at this point— “then that’ll leave Charles free to scope out the place.”
Jenny closes her eyes. None of that helps matters any. She’s pretty sure she’s getting about an eighth of the plan and she’s really not sure if she wants to learn anything more. Maybe it would just be enough to live with this tiny tidbit of knowledge, go along with the plan, and keep her sanity. She pinches the bridge of her nose. She means to ask something practical—maybe, why can’t Edwin and Charles scope it out without you? or why do you both need parental chaperones? or even, could one of you please just tell me the whole fucking plan before any of you seem even more insane than I already think you are?
What comes out of her mouth isn’t any of those things. “Your fucking mom?” she asks, skeptical and flabbergasted all at once, because there’s a million things wrong with this picture but of course that’s what she gets hung up on. What the fuck kind of disguises do they have that’ll pass Edwin off as Crystal’s mom? Are ghosts shapeshifters now? Is that a fucking thing? Good lord, please don’t let that be a thing.
Crystal snorts and gives Edwin a look. “Yeah, don’t harp on it too much. Niko called you before I could.”
Edwin sniffs, though he doesn’t really look offended. “Here,” he says simply, and puts on the glasses Charles gave him even while his partner is still digging through his bag, arm in up to his shoulder. (Jenny is pointedly not looking at that. It’s just sleight of hand, is all, nothing weird about it.)
In a microsecond, Edwin is transformed. Gone is the stoic, proper, professional teenage ghost boy. In his place is a woman, older than her, stern, blond. She has just as many layers on as Edwin had, all tightly buttoned up in neutral colors, and the expression on her face is just as placid, just as discerning, but otherwise she looks nothing like him.
“I already got to pretend Edwin was my aunt once,” Niko says, also plainly, still grinning, also as if that statement isn’t just as batshit as insane as Crystal’s had been, nevermind the evidence in front of them all. “It’s Crystal’s turn.”
“Two unknown teenagers appearing from nowhere with guardian aunts looking out for them who already seem to know each other might not arouse too much suspicion,” Edwin says, and it both does and doesn’t sound like him, because it’s not his voice at all that comes out of the woman’s mouth but it certainly is his tone, “but we thought it best not to take the chance. I will be posing as Crystal’s mother instead, and she will use a false name.”
Crystal rolls her eyes. “Edwin thought it best not to take the chance,” she corrects.
“And you all agreed,” Edwin—the woman—says sternly. He—she?—moves her hand to her face, though he isn’t visibly wearing the glasses he’d donned as a disguise.
“Wait!” Charles says, finally pulling his hand (and his whole arm) from his bag. “Got mine!”
He’s grinning. Edwin gives him an exasperated eyeroll and taps his foot impatiently once but lowers his hand. Charles’ grin widens, pleased, then he dons his own pair of glasses. He, too, transforms, this time into a middle aged man, balding a little, mousy. He’s also fucking white, so, that’s a thing. He threads his arm through Edwin’s—through the woman’s—and Jenny gets treated to the very odd sight of this stern little man beaming at her with Charles’ smile.
She has so many questions. She doesn’t voice any of them—she really, really does not want to know. (She’s already been aware, sort of, that magic was a thing. Hell, if ghosts and demons are, why not? But that’s the extent of her knowledge, and she’s happy to keep it that way.)
She pinches the bridge of her nose again. “Take it back a step,” she tells all four of them. “Why do you need parental chaperones?”
Charles and Crystal and Niko immediately begin to speak over each other.
“—going to a school—”
“—open house—”
“—Edwin needs to be the one—”
Not for the first time, Jenny really, really wishes she could just, like, whistle really loudly or something, but then Edwin—disguise removed—clears his throat. Charles shuts up immediately, thank god. Crystal and Niko trail off a little slower.
“It is for a case,” Edwin says, once silence has fallen, ignoring the daggers Crystal is sending his way with her eyes (and the chummy, pleased grin on Charles’ face as he takes off his own disguise). “How much information do you wish to be privy to?”
God. Maybe Jenny has made it too obvious, how deeply she doesn’t want to be involved in these things. Why is it that Edwin feels like the most mature person in the room at the moment, offering her an out as if she’s the petulant child throwing a tantrum? (Hasn’t she been, shoving aside their explanations, turning a blind eye at every available opportunity?) She resists the urge to snap back that if she’s going to be involved she damn well better know all of it.
“Start at the beginning,” she says instead, too blunt, too rude, when he’s only trying to accommodate everything she’s ever said to him since she could see them. (For the first time, Jenny looks at this from his perspective: she’s helped him in the past, yes, but she’s also made it clear she wants little to do with ghosts, and, therefore, his very existence, in a manner of speaking. Shit, that’s really, really rude isn’t it?) She takes a deep breath to calm herself a little. He doesn’t know her, not even the way Crystal does (and how sad is it, that she thinks Crystal’s the person who knows her best in the world?). He doesn’t take all her blustering and irritation as the shield it is, just fact.
Edwin, of course, does as she asks, primly and properly and matter of fact, laying out the case before her. Charles interrupts on occasion, Crystal corrects a few snippets, and Niko just brightly interjects with her own flair, but Edwin gets the point across. A ghost came to them with a case, a friend of his who’d lost exactly half his memories. Due to said missing memories, the how of it all was a mystery—but the where of it all wasn’t. Said friend apparently haunted an old hospital that had been recently renovated into a school. Said new school was apparently holding an open house for prospective students.
The plan was, therefore, as Edwin told her, to have Niko and Crystal enter the school as said prospective students, with the appropriate guardians accompanying them. They’d chosen this method rather than blindly wandering in because Edwin felt it best—Charles agreed, Crystal was more skeptical and felt her own abilities were more than enough, Niko just seemed eager to go undercover—that they speak with the teachers, as it was likely one of them who had cast the spell to trap the memories. While they were conducting the interviews, Charles would investigate separately, and if he ran into trouble that would only give them more clues.
“Not that I plan on getting into trouble,” Charles told her easily. (Crystal rolled her eyes.) “It’s just, it’s not permanent, see? The memories are caught, not gone, just need to find them, from what we can tell. And if I lose half my memories, I’m still a detective, aren’t I? I’ll trust Edwin to tell me what’s what. If the girls lose half their memories, they get turned into little kids again. Plus, Edwin needs to be the one conducting the interviews. He knows to ask about the magic.” But he sends Edwin a look at the last statement that suggests there is more to it than that.
Edwin’s older, Jenny knows, in a manner of speaking, and he spent a lot of time in Hell before he met Charles, which she does her very best to never, ever think about. She wonders who he’d be, with half his memories missing.
She can’t picture anything pleasant.
Hell.
God.
She can’t think about it too long or she’ll puke. Charles hadn’t even mentioned the possibility of Edwin losing his memories but she isn’t able to avoid the thought. She wonders how much consideration Crystal and Niko had given the idea, wonders if they can really comprehend what it means, that kind of torture. She knows she can’t, and she’s heard less about it than the two of them.
“Okay, so, you want me to, what? Dress up as Niko’s aunt for the night and ask a bunch of public school teachers if they’re casting magic spells on their overtime?” It’s wacky, and bonkers, and still absolutely insane, but it’s better than thinking about Hell.
“You don’t have to ask about the magic if you don’t want to!” Niko assures her brightly. “Edwin and Crystal and I can do the interviewing part! I just need a guardian otherwise I can’t come along!”
That’s worse though. The idea that she was just being invited to tag along as an accessory, leaving the teenagers to do all the work was worse. Worse than that, even, is the casual way Niko says it. There’s no judgement there. They’re happy to let her ignore the very horrors they’re investigating, happy to enable her propensity to turn a blind eye. God, she really has set the worst sort of precedent with these kids, hasn’t she? She doesn’t want to be doing any of this, but the thought of them doing it without her—when it is just talking to adults, doesn’t even seem to have any threat of life or limb, isn’t really anything out of her wheelhouse the way witches and demons are, just non-permanent amnesia in the mix—feels slimy.
“What about that woman who works with you,” she finds herself asking, a little hurt, a little bothered, “the Night Nurse, or whatever?” She isn’t interested in just being an accessory, functioning as Niko’s disguise, in her own way, and nothing more. (Why not? It’s what they need, isn’t it, what they’re asking of her? Isn’t it enough, to give them what they want, and nothing more?)
“She is busy with other duties,” Edwin says.
“She turned us down,” Charles elaborates glumly, but in a fake, amused sort of way. “Said she wanted nothing to do with a bunch of new teenagers on top of us.”
Okay, Jenny can see that. She hasn’t even been thinking about that. A room full of teenagers—is it too late to back out just yet?
She tries to remember who she was at nearly eighteen. Bitter and angry at the world, mostly. What would teenager!her think of Charles and Edwin and Niko? (She’d get along with Crystal all too well, she already knows that.) Teenage her would love the idea of ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night, but Jenny doesn’t know if that would translate into handling things well. Honestly, she barely remembers who she was at that age.
“Okay,” she says, and then again, “okay,” as if to reassure herself, give herself a moment to get her thoughts in order. “So, Niko’s aunt. Fancy public school shit.” (Schools in England were so weird.) “I hope no one’s expecting me to wear a pantsuit.”
Edwin’s lips purse. Crystal just flat out laughs.
“You can wear whatever you want,” Charles reassures her easily. “Not like we actually need Niko and Crystal to get accepted to the place.”
Right. She wouldn’t have to actually impress anybody. It wouldn’t matter if she came across as an adequate guardian or not.
Jenny steels herself. She sucks in a breath and draws herself up tightly, tall and strong. Her gaze flickers across the four teenagers again. “Okay,” she says, a third time. “I’ll do it. But tell me what questions to ask. If you’re going to force me into this, I’m not going into it blind.”
Edwin frowns. “If you feel as though—”
“We’ll take it,” Crystal says, stepping forward to grab at Jenny’s arm, as if to lead her off somewhere.
Edwin rolls his eyes at her huffily.
“You and Charles head back to the office. Keep up your research on the memories or whatever. Niko and I will get Jenny ready.
When Edwin opens his mouth, Charles elbows him. “Sure thing, Crystal,” the cheerful ghost says easily. Edwin huffs, but follows Charles through the closest mirror without another word, turning sharply on his heel and striding off with practiced, careful movements that just scream condescension. Jenny’s not sure how he can pull that off with only a few steps, but he manages. (She carefully looks away just before they step through the mirror.)
“You know my lunch break isn’t that long,” she says, left alone with the girls.
“Bev’s got it.”
Jenny raises her eyes skyward. Bev. God. Why is Crystal around often enough to become overly familiar with her employee? Jenny doesn’t even call her Bev. (Should she? A question for another time.)
“If I let Edwin go on we’d be planning things right up until it was time to head out,” Crystal continues. “This way, you’ll actually get to go back to work for a bit.” And then, an aside, “If you want to.”
Want has nothing to do with it. She’s got bills to pay, no matter how much she enjoys the routine of slicing meat. But Crystal, on top of being a teenager, is also filthy rich. Not something she’d understand.
“I thought Charles said Edwin was the one who knew what to ask?”
“Edwin’s the one who can keep an ear out for the proper Latin stuff. Or maybe it was Celtic?” Crystal frowns thoughtfully, then dismisses the thought with a shrug. “He doesn’t know much about actually talking to people. At least not subtly.”
“He can be subtle!” Niko protests.
Crystal throws her a look.
“He can be!”
Jenny intercedes before they can argue. Teenagers. Honestly. “Look,” she says, mildly exasperated, because this has been A LOT, capitals well deserved. “Just tell me what I need to know so we can get this over with and I can forget all about this, okay?”
Crystal and Niko exchange looks. “You start,” Niko offers. Crystal nods.
“Right, so…”
At 6:15pm on the dot, back in the room above her shop, Edwin and Charles step out of the full-length mirror they’d forced her (heavily encouraged her) to include among her things.
“—go off on your own on this one, you know that,” Charles is saying, low and careful, a worried look in his eyes as he studies his self-proclaimed best friend.
“I am well aware of that, Charles,” Edwin snaps, “I was merely—” He draws himself upright, a blank expression shuttering over his face as he catches sight of Jenny waiting for them.
“Yeah, yeah,” Charles goes on. He throws a glance her way but doesn’t seem nearly as bothered by the idea of Jenny overhearing them as Edwin does. “Public transportation is the bane of your existence. Just don’t go mentioning it to Crystal again, will you? That one’s growing a little tired.”
Edwin huffs and rolls his eyes, fondness tugging ever so slightly at the corner of his lips. Charles almost seems to morph at the sight of it, or maybe he’s just finally throwing on his mask, because his body loses its tension and he beams. It seems to be the end of the conversation, Edwin’s nonverbal response enough for the both of them, because Edwin turns to face her properly then.
“We were told the time of departure was 6:23,” he says distastefully.
A ghost who hates the bus. Or the Tube. Or whatever they’re taking. Jenny realizes, not for the first time, her life will never, ever be normal again. She will say this for London though: it’s nice not having a car to worry about, even if she understands the desire to detest public transportation.
“Crystal mapped the route,” she tells him, agreeing, and finds herself at a little bit of a loss. It’s easier to talk to these two with the buffer of the girls. “They’re not with you?”
Edwin looks at her more scornful than bemused. “The living cannot travel through mirrors.”
Right, of course. Like she should have known that, what with the psychic thing Crystal has going on and whatever’s up with Niko who might not qualify as strictly human anymore. She huffs and rolls her eyes herself, a lot more bitter than Edwin’s fond reaction to Charles had been. She jerks her head to the door. “They’ll be downstairs, then.”
It’s awkward, with these two, especially with Edwin, especially when all of Charles’ focus seems to be on Edwin, watching over him like a hawk. Teenagers, Jenny thinks irritably, grateful when they find Crystal and Niko already waiting for them at the bus stop. Edwin dons his disguise. Niko gives Jenny a hug she definitely didn’t ask for, but thankfully doesn’t hang on too long. From what she was told earlier, their cover includes the fact that Crystal and Niko are already friends, so when they get on the bus, unfortunately a bit full, it’s not that weird that Crystal and Niko take two seats for themselves and Jenny and Edwin are forced to take their own seats separately.
“You didn’t want to wait to put on the disguise?” Jenny finds herself asking, because you can say whatever you fucking want on the bus and most people will mind their own fucking business.
Edwin’s lips are pursed in distaste but he’d gestured for her to go into the seats first, letting her take the window and leaving himself against the aisle. Charles stands over his shoulder, invisible to most people, so it’s not like Edwin is leaving himself unprotected—not with Charles around—but she’d still thought he would have preferred her seat.
“The faculty may be watching us arrive,” Edwin says, shortly. It’s clear he’s in an ill mood. Jenny’s honestly not sure if that’s because of the people, because he’s visible for once, because he can’t just walk through a mirror, or because of what awaits them.
It’s awkward for another minute or so, until Charles starts to talk. Mostly people watching, mostly speculating about their fellow passengers. The corner of Edwin’s lips start to twitch, and then Jenny just straight up finds herself laughing at one far too accurate comment about the passenger stood in front of Charles—sure it’s a little mean, but it’s not like anyone’s ever going to know—that has Edwin, rather than sending her a disapproving look, laughing even more fully.
He turns her way. “That was not kind at all,” he says, and that is disapproving, but Jenny can hear the fondness in it too. She knows his words aren’t directed at her.
“Hey, he left the house like that,” Charles says.
“Keep it up,” Jenny says, pretending, too, like she’s talking to Edwin. “I wish all my trips came with running commentary.”
The mid-twentieth century hospital turned school looks it when they arrive, and for the first hour—because of course they showed up nearly fifteen minutes early to the open house, like overeager parents trying to make a good first impression—it is about the most normal, boring thing Jenny’s ever done. She doesn’t do normal. Even without the ghosts, and the psychics, and Niko, Jenny doesn’t do average. She doesn’t do nine-to-five office jobs and stay-at-home moms and book clubs and worrying about your kids.
She doesn’t do high school open houses and droning lectures, but here she is doing them anyway. She’s not the only one bored out of her skull, she can tell. Niko is excited, relishing the undercover, and Edwin is stiffly intent, gaze constantly roving when he isn’t paying attention to what’s being said, but she’s pretty sure the only reason Crystal hasn’t pulled out her phone is because Edwin’s sat right next to her the whole time.
One time, when they’re separated for a bit into groups to do five-minute tours of various classrooms and then meet up again in the library, Jenny actually forgets that Edwin’s in disguise and blinks at the strange woman standing next to Crystal for a moment before she remembers.
“Anything?” Crystal asks them under her breath, looking irritated and put out.
“Not yet,” Niko relays, not the least bit daunted by this.
“Yeah, me neither.”
Contrarily, Crystal looks very frustrated.
“You should refrain from using your abilities so often,” Edwin scolds, and if Jenny were standing at a distance, unable to hear the actual words, he might very well seem like a mother scolding her bored teenager. “People are beginning to take notice.”
Crystal rolls her eyes. “Yeah? Who?”
“There’s a Welsh teacher,” Jenny cuts in, so she doesn’t have to listen to another teenage argument about which of them knows best. “I mean, a teacher of Welsh, not a guy from Wales.” They’d said something vaguely about languages, hadn’t they?
“Hmm,” Edwin says, thoughtful. “While it is more likely we are looking for a speaker of the Scottish Gaelic tongue, Welsh is not improbable.”
Honestly, Jenny probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. A bit insensitive, maybe, but she’s mostly Italian anyway, and she can barely tell that from French anyway. (She’d taken Spanish in high school, and she doesn’t remember much of that either.)
“Where was the Welsh teacher’s room located?”
Jenny relays the information, and then it’s another ten minute lecture about the features of the school that stops their conversation. After that, is, thankfully, free time, with the children encouraged to talk with each other and make connections and the adults encouraged to roam. Jenny doesn’t know if that’s normal or not but she doesn’t much care. She and Edwin leave Crystal and Niko to chat up the other students and ask questions of the teachers without their parents in the room, and Jenny doesn’t even wait for Edwin to say anything, just strides straight in the opposite direction of most of the other parents.
In the empty stairwell at the end of the hall, she slumps against the wall and groans. “That’s more socializing than I’ve done in a year,” she exaggerates.
Edwin gives a nonverbal noise of agreement. She opens her eyes to see him standing stiff a few feet away, watching her. She almost asks if he needs her for this next part. She got Niko in, didn’t she, did her part. But he’s a teenager, she remembers, behind that disguise, a stressed, ill at ease teenager who probably has ten times the difficulty talking to people because they can’t normally see him and Jenny spends her days at a job that requires at least the bare minimum of customer service.
“Find anything?” Her irritation comes out in her tone. She hopes Edwin knows it’s not him she’s irritated with.
Edwin’s lips purse. “I believe so. On the third floor.”
Jenny looks up and groans again. She heaves herself off the wall. “Alright then,” she says. “Lead the way.”
Edwin hesitates. “Perhaps it would be best if you…”
She throws him a look, rolls her eyes, and starts climbing. She’s already here, isn’t she? Might as well see it through. After a beat, she can hear Edwin’s footsteps behind her. It doesn’t take him long to match her stride, walking at her side on the just wide enough staircase.
“What’s on the third floor?”
Edwin opens his mouth. Jenny holds up her hands.
“Not, I don’t need to know details about any witchy stuff,” she cuts in. “Just—”
“The teacher’s lounge,” Edwin tells her. “And other such rooms that students are generally restricted from.”
Right. Best place to hide… whatever it is that causes non-permanent amnesia of exactly half of one’s memories, apparently. Jenny’s sure there are more details than that—both about the amnesia and the rooms—but she doesn’t ask, just keeps climbing. It’s awkwardly silent again. Jenny’s not good with teenagers, let alone dead ones born over a century ago. But she’s not backing out of this now—she’s come all this way, to London, to this school, into their lives. It’s time she finally acknowledges that.