It’d been a while since Isobel had done a perimeter sweep of Oxford. She liked to keep herself apprised of any changes in the town. Didn’t matter that she’d only been in town a few months at most. A good hunter knew to stay wise to the lay of the land. Even if that just meant noticing that Mrs. Jones had planted new rosebushes, thereby making one rouse of escape a bit more difficult to traverse.
Plus, Isobel was loathe to admit it, but taking a long, looping walk about town was—soothing. She wasn’t much of one to linger too much within her own mind, of course. It was a terrible place. She wouldn’t suggest anyone spend much time there. Especially not when it was already so well occupied by the one ghost she still had yet to shake.
The girl let out a sigh as she rounded the corner of her block and shoved her hands deep into the brown military-style jacket that had become one of her trademarks. Jacob had said it suited her once…
"Och, Leave it." Isobel muttered. What had she just been saying to herself but a moment ago? Leave the dead to the dead. What good was she doing, hoarding a dead man in the corners of her mind?
It wouldn’t bring him back.
As Isobel walked up the steps to her front door, the girl froze in place. It couldn’t be—It wasn’t possible. And yet, here she stood, awash in the scent of the one person whose smell she could never forget: Jacob Claymore. It—It was almost as if someone had bottled him and maliciously sprayed his scent all over her front door. It was practically painted on, and spilling out of the crevices.
With a practiced hand, Isobel slipped her revolver out from the inside pocket of her jacket, hiding the gun from the view of prying eyes along the street as she screwed on the silencer. She casually unlocked the door with her free hand, only the stiffness of her spine giving away that Isobel was on high alert. And even then, you had to be very practiced at observation to even begin to think anything was amiss with the young woman.
The moment the door closed behind her, though, Isobel was on high alert. She lifted the gun to eye level, finger ready on the trigger to fire two quick shots to the head. It was the most effective and cleanly way to dispatch someone. After all, Isobel had only just rented this place a month ago, she really didn’t feel like paying someone off to clean up a bunch of blood without asking questions.
The scent of Jacob crashing over her like a wave over and over again was of no help either. It made her arm less steady, her usually silent steps faltering every so often. Seemed as if even now, Isobel couldn’t quite give up the ghost of the one person who had ever really understood her, even without really knowing her.
But as she rounded the corner to her living room—where the scent was strongest, of course, and also where Izzie could feel body heat emanating from, making it the most obvious place her intruder was lurking—she could never have prepared herself for seeing a dead man walking.
"J-Jacob." Isobel breathed, pupils dilating and lips quivering ever so slightly as she took in the sight of the man she had left for dead over a year ago. He was talking, yes, but she was reeling inside. Perhaps her face showed no emotion, no change, because that was what she had been trained to do. Show nothing. Emote nothing. Feel nothing.
But how could she not when the man she loved more than all the money in the world—whom she had all but watched bleed to death with her knife in his back—was standing right in front of her?
This must be a trick. Some strange trick of the mind, playing with her fears of what she really was meant to be doing in this small town so far from home. Fears that she would make the same mistake again, get herself attached to someone here and be forced to kill them too. Jacob was a ghost. He was always a ghost. He’d visited her in her dreams before, much like this. Screaming and cursing her, demanding answers. So why… why could she smell him this time?
And yet when he advanced towards her, she still took a step back, flinching ever so slightly as he raised his voice. As she always did in her dreams. Because she couldn’t kill him. No matter what he ordered her to do. She couldn’t go through with it. Not again.
"Yee’re alive." She said finally after he was quite finished. Though it was said quite matter-of-factly, there was something of a question there. She’d had waking dreams of him before. He was her ghost, after all. Maybe he had followed her across the waters to haunt her here as well. Wouldn’t put it past him.
"And even if yah are, I don’t quite see why ye’d ask me to kill yah again, seeing as I apparently did such a shoddy job the last time. What makes ye think this time will be any better?" She kept the gun trained on him, though, instinct and training still running the show as her emotions roiled just under the stony surface of her skin, leaving Isobel at their mercy.
"Besides, why would ye ask me to anyway… When ye know damn well I would have done so five minutes ago if I really meant ta do so." Isobel said very quietly, re-wrapping her hands around the gun as she swallowed a lump in her throat and stared right back.
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