It started out like most days. I woke up late, made breakfast, eggs, sunny side up, couple of slices of bacon, made toast with grape jam, and enjoyed some daytime t.v. with my mum. My dad had already left for work, a broker on Wall Street. A few hours later, around two o'clock, my mum followed suit and left for her job, a hostess at one of the various upscale dining locales. I can never remember which one it is. I don't like fancy food.
I would follow suit around four thirty, drive my way down to the local pizza joint near The City College of New York, and work there until around midnight and come home. Or so my parents thought.
What would actually happen, would be I'd go there around four thirty, work the dinner rush, and then leave around eight o'clock. From there, I'd head to the college campus and borrow the computer lab, and stuff myself in the corner with a bottle of Coke and a bag of Cheetos. I did my honest best to look studious as I set up a couple of proxies and checked my personal e-mail. Nothing interesting. Some spam, a couple of offers for credit cards, and a letter from a friend of mine who was back home in Arizona, visiting family for the summer. I sent a general, boring reply, giving him the not much is going on here, sent him a link to a hilarious video I'd found, and farted around on the internet for an hour before I got to work.
My actual job is a hell of a lot less legal and infinitely more interesting than a part time pizza maker. I'm an information broker. A secret keeper. I sell information to the highest bidder. Things like that. I'm a smart girl that does her research, and I make a pretty penny doing it. I'm also very careful with my finances to avoid suspicion with banks and the like. I wiped my cheese powered hand on my black butt shorts, you know, the tight jean type that most fashionable types wear (guilty pleasure, fashion is), and a second time, scanned the room.
There was the tech at the desk, but other than that, the room was mine for the last hour it was open. I cracked my neck, then my knuckles, and logged in to my work e-mail. I kept it mostly empty, other than basic conversations----never anything regarding actual business----I preferred other methods of contact. E-mails are waaay too easy to trace. I had a few new e-mails, one from a regular customer, one of the local gangs, The Fangs, asking about an incoming shipment of cocaine that their rivals, Garra de la Heirda were getting. Before you give me any funny looks about that, I never said I was a straight shooter; my job isn't always sunshine and puppy dogs, and I don't always do business with the nicest of people.
I do grimace sometimes, like when I do jobs for The Fangs, I know that they're kind of a nasty gang, lots of violence, pretty unchecked, but, as a broker, I always have the right to negotiate price and simply say the info's too hot. I'm too good to say I couldn't get the goods, my pride gets in the way of that. I digress, though. Second e-mail was from a customer, whom will remain nameless, determining a drop off point for payment for a job well done. The third e-mail, though...that was what got my attention. I took a moment to lean back in my chair and inhale the last of my Cheetos as I read it, chuckling at the sheer, well, ridiculousness of the request. It read as such:
Dear Knight,
I'd like to make use of your services. I have tried to find the information on my own, but I really couldn't sift through fact or fiction myself. That is why I want you to gather the information for me. I would like to arrange for a meeting, if possible, and am willing to pay handsomely for it. Money isn't an issue. The subject I'm looking for information on is ghosts, hauntings, and spirits attached to a location, object, or person.
If you could send a reply when able, I'd really appreciate it.
Sincerely, A. Hawthorne
I really, really took my sweet time to reply to this, it wasn't that I needed a break or something, it was just. Man. At the time, this e-mail struck as so crock full of crazy person who had managed to figure out my existence, that I just spent five minutes laughing. It sounded so serious, so official. If it was one of those cult freaks, I wouldn't have been surprised. I stopped to ponder my empty bag of Cheetos, and rose, walking to the trash can to toss it. The tech gave me a grin, he was a sort of geeky looking guy, thin body, blue polo, jeans, sandals, shaggy brown hair, blue eyes, tall, but hunched over, and said, "Funny e-mail?"
I half grinned back, surprised, "How'd you guess?"
"No one laughs when they're doing papers or homework." I tilted my head and nodded, the guess was pretty reasonable. I stuck my hands in my pockets and made the walk back to the chair and flopped into it. I sat and thought, and opened up the reply box, deciding as I was writing, to reply in the affirmative. I set up a meeting for two days later, figuring I could use a good laugh, and if nothing else, set this Hawthorne in the direction of a good therapist I knew.
I closed out the e-mail, got rid of the proxies, got rid of the evidence that I had been on the computers at all, and wiped the keyboard with my white zip up hoodie, getting rid of fingerprints, and waved to the tech as I left, planning on having myself a good Thursday night.
I had no idea what sort of shit I would be dragging myself into.
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