TIMING: february, not long after theo arrived in wicked's rest. LOCATION: a bar. PARTIES: @theo-wallace & @vengeancedemon SUMMARY: emilio takes an empty seat in a bar. it just happens to be the one next to theo. CONTENT WARNINGS: past sibling death.
Theo tapped his fingers on the bar as he glanced around, bringing his drink of choice (a simple local beer) up to his lips as he took in the bar. It was…fine. A local bar was a local bar; it wasn’t anything special. Theo had seen in Sam’s notes that there was apparently a hunter bar somewhere, but he almost felt like that was a step too far right now. It was best to keep himself under the radar for as long as possible, and walking into a hunter bar was a great way to get the spotlight turned on him. He kept his shoulders loose, even though he could feel glances being thrown his way. This didn’t feel like a situation where showing tension would play well in his favor. Theo needed to appear like any other visitor. He had tried to talk to the bartender, attempting to suss out if they had any knowledge of the supernatural happenings in the town, but all he got in return was a wary smile and a comment about how Wicked was just weird.
Theo sighed, eyes falling on the oak of the bar top. The notes that Sam had left behind hadn’t been all that helpful in nailing down an itinerary of how he had spent his last days. Information about the blackout in general was still pretty spotty. When he had poked around a bit, he had been rewarded with stares that shifted to someone looking into the past, but not a lot of words. He folded the napkin in his hand over and over before smoothing it out, fiddling with one of the corners. Movement to his right caught his attention, and Theo glanced over at the new person taking a seat next to him. “Hey.” Theo offered as a greeting,
—
Emilio spent a lot of time in bars. He didn’t used to, of course. Back in Mexico, when he’d had a wife at home and a kid to take care of, he hadn’t had much time to spend in bars, had only gone when Edgar or Rosa or Rhett had dragged him or when Juliana decided the night out she wanted included darts and pool. But after, when all he’d had waiting for him at home was an empty apartment, bars had felt comfortable. They’d felt like a place where he could go and sit and drink and maybe find a quick fuck or a meaningless fight without caring much about how the night ended. Of course, dying in a bar had put a little bit of a complication there, but old habits seemed to die even harder than he had.
This particular bar was one he’d been to a few times, if only because he’d been to every bar in Wicked’s Rest a few times. It was a decent one in that it didn’t tend to have an abundance of supernatural bullshit happening between its walls; it tended to attract more humans than other things, which Emilio preferred despite his own empty chest and pulseless throat. It also didn’t tend to be crowded, which he liked. He slipped over to the bar, taking a seat on an empty stool and waving the bartender down to order a whiskey. The guy next to him — late twenties, maybe, held himself in a way that said he was always aware of his surroundings the same way Emilio himself tended to be — turned towards him with a greeting, and Emilio nodded in return. “Hey,” he replied, glancing up at the bartender. The bartender raised a brow in response, looking towards the guy with a shrug. Must have had a conversation of some kind. Curiosity thrummed absently in the fury’s gut. “Been here long?”
—
Theo hummed quietly, taking another sip of his beer. “Not long.” It was true for both his time in the bar and Wicked itself. His gaze shifted towards the other, taking him in more closely. Theo didn’t get tourist vibes from him. There was a certain amount of darkness that seemed to emanate from the other, not quite dangerous but not safe either. However, he also got the sense that he had been around the block a few times, which meant he could have information that could be helpful. “Theo.” He motioned to himself as he set his glass back on the counter.
“Figured it was time to start stopping by the more local bars rather than the tourist traps if I was going to be sticking around for a while.” Theo added with a wry grin, eyes flicking over to the bartender, who quickly shifted his attention from their conversation to the glass he had been half-heartedly cleaning. You could learn a lot from tourists about how much of what was going on had permeated the general population outside of town. So far, the only comments Theo had heard were about how Wicked seemed to forget that Halloween was supposed to be a fall holiday, not a year-round deal.
“You wouldn’t happen to be interested in discussing the town, would you? You could totally be unnamed; just labeled as a ‘resident of the town’ if you want.” Theo asked before laughing quietly, “Sorry, that probably sounds weird out of context. I’m a journalist.”
—
He tried to determine whether the guy had the look of someone who’d been in this town — or this bar — for a particularly long time. It was simple to tell sometimes. People who had a certain light behind their eyes typically lost it sooner rather than later in Wicked’s Rest, with a few notable exceptions. (Jade always managed to hold onto her spark, somehow; Emilio had never quite understood how.) This guy didn’t seem bright and bubbly, but that could have just been his personality. He didn’t seem particularly drunk, either, which might have just meant he was the ‘nurse a single drink all night’ type. “Emilio,” he offered his name, brow furrowing a little in familiarity. Theo. Hadn’t he heard that somewhere before?
Emilio snorted at the thought of some of Wicked’s Rest’s tourist trap bars, shaking his head. “Better drinks in places like this,” he offered. “Better prices, too. And the people are a little less annoying.” Tourists got irritating rather quickly, even when you weren’t a lifelong local of whatever city you lived in. “You passing through, or sticking around?” The fact that he was transitioning into local spots seemed to suggest the latter, but it was hard to tell, sometimes. Hell, Theo might not even know for certain himself. Sometimes, Emilio thought, this town had a way of making your mind up for you.
The question caught him off guard. He tensed a little, the uncertainty churning into paranoia in his gut, though it eased a bit when Theo offered context. Emilio let out a small huff of air that was almost a laugh, shrugging a shoulder. “Not sure my thoughts are the kind that would do you much good,” he admitted. “Are you writing some kind of piece on the town?”
—
Theo nodded at the other’s introduction, filing the name away for later. He laughed quietly at the description of the tourist bars. “Exactly. Though it can be interesting to hear about the reasoning of why someone might come here.” He had run into a group of girls who had decided to come to Wicked as part of a bachelorette party; apparently spurred by the fact that the bride was really into ‘weirdness’ as one severely drunk bridesmaid had told him. He wondered if that bride had gotten what she was looking for, or if it had been too much for even her. Judging by her zoning out while her friend had been talking to him, Theo wondered if it wasn’t a mix of the two.
He wondered how many people who were simply tourists went missing every year in Wicked? It would probably be hard to find exact statistics, with them not typically being separated from the residents who went missing. Especially if they really did vanish, and their body (or them alive, if they were lucky, he supposed) wasn’t found. Theo placed those questions in the box in his mind of when he needed something else to research; when he simply couldn’t stand another moment of looking over Sam’s notes.
“Sticking around, for now at least,” Theo explained. “Figuring some things out and all that kind of thing, but I don’t plan to stay here forever,” he joked before quickly shaking his head when Emilio said his thoughts wouldn’t be any good. “No! There’s no such thing as a negative quote.” Theo grinned, turning his body to face the other more. “Yeah! I’m a freelancer; and the…” Theo gestured in the air, “General weirdness of the town over the last couple of months caught someone's attention; so here I am.” He left out the part where he had turned up without any job lined up and instead resorted to emailing his past employers until one of them took the bait. “I’m still mostly researching things, though, so it’s more of an outline than anything else right now.”
—
Emilio had never done much communicating with tourists beyond the occasional job for one who might find reason to hire a PI while in town. And by that point, of course, they had usually lost the starry-eyed look most tourists carried when exploring the town. He was glad for that, mostly. Not that people lost that feeling of wonder, but that he didn’t have to deal with them while they still held onto it. Emilio was not an optimist. He never had been, and he certainly wouldn’t fall into it at this point in his life. Being around people full of rampant positivity was an exhausting thing, something that often made him feel as though he needed a long break and a cigarette.
“Yeah? What reasoning do they usually give you?” He was a little curious, though he had some guesses. People probably came here for the same shit that got them killed, in the end; the romanticized idea that the world that existed beneath the surface was something magical instead of something deadly. This was exactly why Eve did what she did, he thought — to keep people from falling into the glue trap that was this town. Not everyone was willing to gnaw a leg off to get free.
He raised a brow as Theo claimed he had no intention of staying here forever. Emilio had certainly heard that one before. Most people he met in town were people who’d been ‘just passing through’ for years. Himself included. Wicked’s Rest had a way of giving people a reason to stay, whether they wanted it or not. But Theo would figure that out on his own, he figured. There was no reason for Emilio to tell him now. “You say this,” he joked, “but you haven’t heard my quotes. I’m not so good in English.” And… generally not a very agreeable person, which could make his ‘quotes’ all the worse. He shifted a little as Theo continued, saying the weirdness of this town had caught someone’s eye. Should someone warn Eve about this? Someone writing a newspaper story on the strangeness of Wicked’s Rest was exactly the kind of thing she wanted to avoid. “Not sure that’s worth a story,” Emilio commented casually. “Most of it is just made up shit to pull in tourists. Or rumors taking on lives of their own.”
—
“Ah, you know, bachelorette parties, honeymoons, the occasional anniversary present.” Theo counted each one off with his fingers, “Sometimes they randomly chose Wicked when they were just trying to be in Maine; sometimes it’s Canadians who wanted to cross the border for a quick trip, a lot of time it’s nature enthusiasts,” Theo explained before he picked up his glass again. “The number one reason, though?” Theo asked, voice lowered ever so slightly, “The rumors that swirl about this town.” He said, taking another sip of his drink.
“Ah, there’s no such thing as a bad quote! You just have to know where to fit it in.” Theo explained with a small smile. That being said, if the quote didn’t fit the story, then it was probably getting left in his notes. However, that wasn’t what you told someone who you were trying to get something from. He shrugged at the comment about things not being worth a story or being made up, “Maybe! Probably. That’s why I’m here, you know? To get to whatever the truth is,” Theo said with a wink.
He fishes out one of his cards. It’s a simple white card with his name, Theodore Wallace, written in blue ink, with Investigative Journalist typed out underneath it, and his work cell listed next to it. “If you do decide that you have a quote for me, feel free to call or text the number listed.” Theo explained as he finished his drink and pulled out a couple of dollars for his drink. “Or, if you know anyone who might be wanting to share their thoughts or feelings, feel free to pass my number along.”
—
None of those things seemed like what Emilio would assume someone might travel to Wicked’s Rest for. Who wanted to have a bachelorette party in a place where the drinks might warp your mind into something you didn’t recognize? Who wanted to honeymoon somewhere where a hike through the woods might turn you into a widow? Or have your anniversary in a place where monsters roamed freely in the streets? He could understand those who wound up here purely by accident, with no real understanding of the town, but the others struck him as idiots. Sipping on his drink, he hummed thoughtfully. “They must not be hearing the right rumors,” he commented. “The ones I know ought to make them run the other way.” He wouldn’t say much more than that, of course. For all he knew, this guy was a normal human.
He huffed a half-laugh as Theo insisted again that there was no such thing as a bad quote, because he knew the guy was just humoring him. Of course there were bad quotes, even if he might not describe them in such simple terms. Papers didn’t print every quote they were given, did they? “Well, the truth is usually the most obvious thing,” he replied with a shrug. “The monsters people talk about are just wild animals, or people, sometimes. But people like to turn it into something more than that, I guess. Make it into something bigger so that they don’t have to feel embarrassed about being afraid.” He knew it wasn’t true, but he couldn’t go around sharing the secret of the supernatural with a stranger. He didn’t do that sort of thing anymore.
Absently, he took the business card. At first, he barely glanced at the name; but when the surname caught his eye, he did a double take. It was common enough, really, but… there was familiarity there, too. He’d known a hunter with the same last name, one who’d been something of a friend. They’d lost him in the last surge; Emilio remembered hearing about it, had been extended an invitation to the 3 Daggers that he’d known he couldn’t accept. It didn’t ache as much as it used to — you got used to hearing about hunters dying before you were out of your teen years, really — but it didn’t feel good, either. He stared at the card for a moment, trying to remember if Sam had ever mentioned a Theo. “Hey, uh… Long shot, but did you know a guy named Sam?”
—
Theo hummed at the other’s comment about how people should be fleeing from the rumors, rather than rushing towards them. He didn’t disagree. He was pretty sure his job would be a lot easier if humans and supernaturals stayed as far away from each other as possible. Unfortunately, the two worlds had melded together long ago. Theo sometimes wondered what had caused the first hunter to pick up its weapon. Had it been a vampire, drinking someone’s loved one dry without an ounce of remorse? A feral beast destroying a town? Or a fae promise-binding someone into a worse life than they could imagine? The farther you went back in the barely legible records, the harder it got to parse out a clear answer. Had there ever been a time when there had been a sense of harmony between the two worlds? Or had it forever been coated in the blood of battles fought in the shadows?
He grinned at Emilio’s answers, nodding his head. “Probably! People hate the obvious stuff, though. Conspiracy theories are way more fun. However, they get a whole lot less fun when an article goes through them and rips apart all the fake evidence.” Theo explained. “Will it satisfy everyone who clicks on it? Probably not, but you know, it’s better than the shitty click-bait articles and YouTube videos that don’t actually have any sustenance.” Those were the things that really bothered Theo. It was one thing for someone to fully believe in something; it was another for someone to make a thumbnail with a blurry picture, big red arrows, and a shocked face, where the video contained at least two brand deals and someone reading through a Wikipedia article. “Journalist integrity and all that.”
At the mention of Sam, Theo froze; half turned towards the door. Whatever pseudo-warmth the beer had been providing his body, it was replaced in an instant with the feeling of ice running through his veins. He simply stared at the other for a moment, lips parted. The carefully constructed journalist mask dropped away for a fraction of a second before it clicked back into place between one blink and the next. Theo cleared his throat, nodding quickly, “Y-Yeah. Sam’s my brother.” His fingers curled around the back of the seat that he had just vacated. “Do you-I mean, did you know him?”
—
Secrecy hadn’t really been important to Emilio until he’d met Eve. Even now, he upkept the secret of the supernatural more out of respect for her than out of any real belief that it ought to be a secret. He’d always thought it more useful to warn people, to let them know what was out there. How could anyone be expected to protect themselves from a world they knew nothing about? There wasn’t always going to be a hunter around to take care of a problem before it ever found its way to a human at all, wouldn’t always be a protector to destroy the monster before it could act. If more humans knew the value of a wooden stake and holy water, wouldn’t vampires have a harder time draining people dry? Wouldn’t it be easier to breathe knowing that every moment you spent without a weapon in your hand meant another splash of blood on your hands because you hadn’t acted quickly enough?
But, of course, there were people like Jenny. There were idiots who knew about the supernatural and, rather than developing a healthy fear of what it could mean for them, longed to be a part of it. Perhaps knowing Jenny would have communicated some of the importance of keeping the supernatural hidden even if Emilio hadn’t befriended Eve. He wasn’t sure now, didn’t know entirely. “People are stupid,” he replied, because at least that was something he was certain of. “Doesn’t… turning the truth into a lie kind of go against integrity?” He’d never quite found the balance for himself. At what point did a lie become necessary? At what point was the truth more harm than good?
Given the way Theo stiffened at the mention of Sam’s name, Emilio wondered if this was a situation in which the truth was better left unsaid. He felt a surge of guilt that only burned hotter when Theo replied that Sam had been his brother. It was hard for Emilio not to think of his own siblings at that, hard not to remember Victor and Rosa and Edgar. He swallowed, looking at the bar so he didn’t have to look at Theo. “I’m sorry,” he offered. “Know it doesn’t mean shit, but I am. I knew him, yeah. Worked with him, sometimes. He was a good guy.” Let Theo glean from that what he would. If Emilio didn’t say he was a hunter directly, it didn’t count as a lie. Right?
—
“They really are.” Theo said with a sigh. His work would be a whole lot easier if people thought about their actions for maybe two additional seconds before they acted. “Mmm, I think the normal guidelines when it comes to honesty aren’t always the ones you need to be following. Especially when it comes to safety and everything” Theo added with a shrug. That wasn’t to say that there hadn’t been times when he struggled to look himself in the mirror after turning a story in. In his journey to keep the general population safe, it means he’s not giving them the proper instructions on what they need to do to keep themselves safe. It’s a delicate dance.
Theo’s eyebrows shot up when Emilio said he knew Sam. It was the first real, concrete connection to his brother that he had found so far. “Thanks,” Theo says; the words coming out as more of a reflex than anything else. There are only so many different things you can say to someone giving their condolences. “He was.” Theo bit the inside of his cheek as he gave a small nod. He has so many questions, but this isn’t the right place to ask the majority of them. “You two worked together?” So this guy was probably a hunter then. Or at least hunter adjacent.
“I’m in…a similar field as him.” Theo tapped his fingers on the back of the chair. Sure, he could just say he’s a hunter without getting too many odd looks for a bar in Maine, but he still had to be careful. He didn’t know who else was listening. “Do you happen to know Eve Farrow? We, uh, have worked together before.” Theo said, suddenly desperate to have a link that the other could recognize. A buried body only offered so much of a connection.
—
There was really no ‘right’ answer on secrecy, despite what Eve insisted. Emilio knew that. Eve knew that, too. When you covered things up, you got people killed. When you didn’t cover things up, you got people killed, too. It was an impossible choice but, then, weren’t they all? Every decision a hunter made was a life or death thing; every move you made could end with someone’s death. Every move you made could end with your death, if you weren’t careful. Emilio figured Theo was well aware of that. It was the kind of thing hunters learned before they got out of their teens, in most cases. “Guess that’s fair enough. Nobody makes guidelines for that kind of thing,” he replied, shaking his head.
Nobody made guidelines for the other stuff, either. The stuff like learning the guy who sat next to you at the bar was the brother of a guy you’d known and liked who’d died just a short time before, whose funeral you had to skip out on because a few of the other people at that funeral might have killed you if you’d shown up. Emilio never knew what to say to someone in a situation like this. He didn’t think there was anything to say, really. It was what it was. There was no making it anything better. “Yeah,” he agreed, ignoring the bitter taste of guilt in the back of his throat. It wasn’t a lie. It just felt like one. “From time to time. You know how it is. You run into something outside your scope, you call in someone who knows it better. I called him sometimes. He called me sometimes.” And sometimes, neither of them called the other at all, because that was how hunters were. You only called in reinforcements when you knew you couldn’t handle things alone.
He nodded as Theo confirmed that he was a hunter, too. He clearly wasn’t a slayer, given the fact that he’d made no comment on Emilio’s undead state. “Same as his, or a little different?” Some hunter families were mixed between more than one hunter type, he knew. The Cortezes had been slayers, but Flora could have just as easily come out a ranger with Juliana as her mother. If they’d had another kid, Emilio figured it might have been a ranger. He tried not to think about it much. Glancing back to Theo, recognition sparked behind his eyes. “I know Eve, yeah. Pretty well, actually. You do her kind of work?”
—
“I feel like it’s more accurate to say that everyone has different guidelines. There’s not one set for everyone to follow.” Theo countered. “But that makes things just as complicated.” He had been raised following rules that his family had learned from ancestors before them, passed down by the survivors of battles that were never recorded. The Whistlers had their own set of rules that members were supposed to follow. Between those two influences and running into situations on his own; it meant that his own list of guidelines was a mash-up of everything he had learned. He had lines he wouldn’t cross; ones he knew that other hunters would breeze past; just as he was sure he crossed lines that would cause others to gasp.
Theo nodded at the explanation for how the two knew each other. “Right, of course.” That made sense. Sam wasn’t the type of hunter to only work solo. In fact, Theo had memories of when they had been at camp together, where Sam had been scolded for working in pairs too often. Theo had never gotten the chance to do a hunt with him, just the two of them. The timing had just never worked out. “Did you-I mean, were you with him when it happened?” Theo was almost terrified of Emilio’s answer. If he had, then Theo would ask to be told. He had come to Wicked to learn that exact information, but there was a small, cowardly part of him that almost wished he had never found out. Once he knew, he knew what he would need to do.
“Different.” Theo confirmed, “You?” He didn’t really get ranger vibes from the guy, but he hadn’t been around him long enough to have a concrete guess yet. The knowledge that Emilio and Eve knew each other felt like a wave of relief. He had an in. He just had to hope that Emilio didn’t actually despise Eve. “Oh, great! You can totally verify with her, and I expect you to; but yes. We are part of the same organization.”
—
That was true enough, Emilio figured. Every hunter had their own guidelines for everything, which was the source of most of the conflict within the community. If Emilio handled things exactly like Eve, if Owen was more like Jade, if Daiyu were similar to Daniel, a lot of the issues they had amongst themselves wouldn’t exist. But, then, he couldn’t imagine a world in which all hunters were completely in sync with one another, on the same page at all times. He wasn’t even sure if a world like that would be a better one, necessarily, or a safer one. He figured it would depend on the guidelines they went with. “Guess nobody ever said this shit was easy,” he replied, shrugging a shoulder. It was an understatement. Easy was something from a different universe entirely.
Grimacing, Emilio shook his head. “No,” he replied. “I wasn’t with him.” He tried not to think about the surges, tried not to recall the way he felt when they hit. The rage, the complete and utter loss of control… the idea of another one happening terrified him more than anything else he could think of. He could only imagine how Sam must have felt in the end, when whatever did him in tore him to pieces. Dying was terrifying; Emilio would know. “When this shit hits, man, it’s like…” He trailed off, shaking his head again. “Whole world goes to shit. It’s fucking chaos. Yeah. You don’t have time to call anybody, get a team up going. You’re with who you’re with. I wasn’t with him. I don’t know if anyone was.” And it was better, of course, that Emilio hadn’t been with Sam at the time. If he had been, odds were it would have been Emilio who’d killed him, and he wasn’t sure he could stomach the thought of that. Killing a human had nearly destroyed him. Killing a hunter — a friend — would surely finish the job.
“Different,” Emilio confirmed. “Slayer.” Was it still a lie if there was no present tense involved? He didn’t say he was a slayer, still, so wasn’t it some kind of honesty? He’d been a slayer once; he’d been a slayer all his life, actually. It wasn’t a lie to say he’d been one, even if it was a lie to say he was one now. “You… I can guess. Warden. Right?” If he wasn’t a ranger, as Sam had been, that was the only option. A slayer would have clocked Emilio the moment he sat down, after all. “Ah. The, uh… Whistlers, right? How long have you been with them?”
—
Theo huffed in agreement. “That’s part of what makes it interesting, no?” He joked. An easy profession wasn’t one where you were raised from childhood to become an assassin. Where you had to hope you got to your target before it got to you. Where you saw more death notifications than most people could even consider. Even those who did turn away from the hunter lifestyle, the ones who did go to easy jobs, who sat in boardrooms and talked about optics and graphs, could stare at a pen and know where they would need to stab someone to have them bleed out in seconds. The teachings never quite left you.
“Ah, ok.” Theo frowned. It felt like another door being shut in his face. His frown deepened as Emilio spoke about the surges. “That sounds…awful.” He said carefully. “And there’s no like…warning signs, right? Other than knowing it’s happened before?” Perhaps that was the most terrifying part of it all. The fact that at any moment, the people around you, those that you had known for months or even years, could suddenly be unmasked as monsters who wanted to kill you. It was part of what bothered him the most; his detection ability being off meant that he was on the same playing field as any other human. “That makes sense, though. I’ll just…have to do more digging to figure out if he was with anyone.”
At Emilio’s designation disclosure, Theo hummed in acknowledgement. That fit the vibe he had been getting from the other. “Yep!” He offered a small smile with the confirmation. Theo tilted his head slightly, fingers tapping on the back of the chair. “A few years at this point, probably like 3? Maybe 3 and a half?” Even with his family’s influence, Theo had largely attempted to skirt being associated with them as much as he could. Which meant that he had been largely focused on building his own reputation in the hunting community before he had been invited to join the Whistlers. The fact that his family wasn’t that of Warden’s made him feel more confident that he had been chosen for his own abilities, but he supposed he would never really know. “Eve and I have worked a few cases together, but this is my first time in Wicked.”
—-
“It’s definitely interesting,” Emilio agreed with a nod. “Nobody can deny that.” Interesting was probably the kindest way anyone could describe the hunter lifestyle. Those who lived it never tended to suffer from boredom for long, though that was a curse as much as it was a blessing. More so, even; there were days when Emilio almost longed for boredom, days when he wished he had nothing going on at all. But that wasn’t in the cards for him, even now. His empty chest meant he was no longer a hunter in a way most hunters would define one, but the building blocks were there all the same. He had suffered the kinds of losses hunters were expected to suffer; he had been forced into the kinds of fights hunters were expected to partake in. Theo doubtlessly understood both well, even without voicing it.
He wished he had more to tell Theo about his brother’s death, wished he could offer him some kind of answers. He knew, after all, what it was to lose someone and not fully understand why. Victor’s death had haunted him for decades now, and the massacre in Mexico was a noose he’d never been able to cut himself free from. Even his father, who was dead and buried before Emilio had a chance to form any solid memories of him at all, was something of a question mark he might have wanted to know more about. But that, too, was the plight of a hunter — you didn’t always get the decency of answers. “Closest we got to a warning sign was a lot of banshee screaming,” he replied. “Helped us prepare for the last one some, but… There’s no preparing for that kind of thing, really. All you can do is try to get through it.” And some people didn’t. Sam hadn’t. Emilio felt a surge of guilt at that, even if there was nothing he could have done. “Check the 3 Daggers, if you haven’t already,” he suggested. “Hunter bar. Might be someone there who knows something.”
There was some sense of quiet accomplishment at discovering he’d been right in his guess about Theo’s designation, and he allowed himself a grin despite the war taking place in his chest. He felt bad for having misled Theo, even if he had no intention of sharing the truth, either. Any hunter learning that there was an undead former slayer in town could be catastrophic. Emilio knew that. “How do you get into something like that?” He asked curiously. He knew a little about what had led Eve in that direction, though they’d never talked about how she’d landed with the Whistlers specifically. “She’s probably grateful for the extra help. Can be hard to keep things a secret around here.”
—
Theo breathed through his nose at the fact that there was essentially no warning sign. You’d typically like to get ahead of something before the banshees start screaming about the incoming wave of death. “Jesus. Right, of course.” It sounded like it was similar to hearing the wail of a tsunami or tornado siren. When you knew something was coming, and you knew it was bad, but you couldn’t stop it. Compounded by the fact that any normal human isn’t going to pay it any attention, it meant that you just had to sit with the fact that people were going to die. There hadn’t been any official totals listed anywhere, obviously, but Theo would bet money that with each blackout, the number of deaths had risen. Every death was a crack in the barrier that kept Wicked’s…weirdness…from the general public.
“Oh, yeah, I saw that name written down in Sam’s notes.” Theo explained. “I haven’t gotten the chance to check it out yet. I heard you had to like…be invited? Or something?” Maybe Emilio could put in a good word for him. “Ah, you know, you catch the right person’s attention, a bit of luck, and some convenient connections, and anything’s possible.” Theo smiled as he shrugged. “Oh, definitely. I’m glad I can lend her a hand. She’s really good at what she does, so I’m just happy that I can be useful.”
Theo picked up the card he had left on the bar and flipped it over as he fished a pen out of a pocket. He scribbled his personal number on it, before sliding it back over to Emilio. “I have to get out of here, but I’d love to keep in contact.” He ran a hand through his hair. “And the offer still stands to be used as a source under a pseudonym if you feel so inclined.” Theo winked at him before offering a small smile and a wave as he made his way out.
