Chapter Text
Edwin slammed the book in his hands shut, sighing in defeat. He should have known this round of research would lead him to yet another dead end, as if the dozen other avenues he’d already attempted weren’t enough to draw that conclusion. The only alternatives that still remained were to inform Charles of his predicament or to continue hiding the truth, which was becoming increasingly difficult.
For Edwin, the choice was relatively easy. Their agency was finally beginning to gain regular business, the news of their exploits having spread among the spirits of London during their brief stint in Port Townsend. Requests for assistance from the Dead Boy Detectives had been non-stop since returning from America, and as much as Edwin wanted to share this burden with Charles, he simply wasn’t willing to pile any more stress onto his partner’s shoulders.
Edwin’s posture crumpled as another burst of white-hot pain stabbed through his temple, causing the edges of his vision to darken. The resounding ache spread quickly down his shoulders and spine, branching out into his upper arms and hips. He steadied himself on the sides of his desk, any remaining confidence in his ability to stay upright suddenly evaporating. Accompanying Charles on a case in this state was certainly not ideal, but he couldn’t envision another acceptable option. He would not allow this bout of pain to prevent him from doing the job he loved.
Before Edwin had been strapped to Esther’s torture table and very rudely used as a magical battery, he had been under the impression that the use of iron was the only way to inflict pain upon ghosts in the mortal realm. Iron had not been a necessary tool in Hell, of course, but Hell existed to torture the dead. If he had not been able to feel the torment inflicted upon him, then the entire point of Hell would have been completely moot.
However, because he was Edwin Payne and the universe seemed intent on making him pay for his ridiculously on-the-nose surname for all of eternity, those rules apparently did not apply to him. Ever since he and Charles had escaped Esther’s clutches, his spectral form had seemed… off, somehow. More vulnerable, and certainly more temperamental.
At first, the changes had come in the form of small bursts of pain that radiated throughout his entire body. The pain had been aching and dull, a poor imitation of the agony he had suffered while attached to Esther’s machine, which made it manageable—though no less unsettling. He had only considered it a minor annoyance up until the pain transformed into something acutely intense, stabbing through the front of his skull like a red-hot iron spike. The pain was often so staggering that it forced Edwin to keep one eye closed, with the heel of his hand pressed against the offending socket in an attempt at some relief.
Just as he was beginning to grow accustomed to the sudden increase in his daily pain levels, there was another shift. His astral body began to feel unusually weak, often phasing through material items without his permission. He could only fall through his own desk chair so many times before ‘I was simply far too absorbed in this book to pay attention, Charles’ would no longer be an acceptable excuse. Luckily, Charles was the muscle of their operation for a reason. Edwin would never consider him stupid by any means, but Charles’s high level of distractibility meant that he likely had some time to figure out a solution before his partner truly realized something was amiss.
Edwin rubbed his temples, willing the dense fog surrounding his thoughts to dissipate. This process would certainly be much easier if he could think properly, but his ability to string two thoughts together lately had been temperamental at best. Even Crystal had begun to notice his lack of focus, though he doubted she had yet to ascertain the full extent of his mental haziness.
Edwin’s eyes widened, a fully-coherent thought finally forming in his pain-addled brain. As much as he hated the idea of disclosing any sort of weakness to Crystal, she was an admittedly well-practiced medium with a wide berth of arcane knowledge. Ever since she had discovered the psychic link between her powers and her similarly gifted ancestors, her collection of knowledge surrounding magical maladies and their matching remedies had grown rapidly. The folk knowledge she gained from her ancestral line was a helpful complement to Edwin’s tireless intellectual studies, often filling in the gaps where Edwin’s expertise ended. Perhaps she would know of a path forward that his research had somehow missed.
Edwin let out a satisfied hum and grabbed his notepad off of the desk, heading towards their office mirror to begin his search for a doorway to Crystal’s flat. At the very least, he had a promising direction to move in.
“So,” Crystal said slowly, staring at Edwin in disbelief. “Let me see if I have this right. You’ve not only been in pain since we rescued you from that crazy fucking witch, but you also thought that hiding it from us would be the ‘most logical course of action’?”
Edwin winced at his own words being thrown back in his face. It didn’t sound quite so reasonable when it came from another person’s mouth.
“Edwin, that was like, three months ago!” she exclaimed, her hands settling defiantly on her hips. “If Charles or I hid something like this from you, there would be absolute fucking Hell to pay and you know it. I don’t know why you thought it would be any different for you. “
She stopped short and winced, retracing her words. “Sorry, that slipped out. My bad.”
Edwin offered a half shrug, relatively unphased. Mentions of Hell hardly registered with him anymore, unless he considered the sudden sharp ache at the base of his spine to be related. The painful twinge forced him to shift his stance uncomfortably, which earned him a slightly concerned look from Crystal. He fiddled with the buttons on his cuffs awkwardly, unwilling to meet her gaze. The last thing he needed was sympathy from Crystal, of all people.
Crystal sighed, closing her eyes briefly. “Look, I’m glad you came to me, and I’ll definitely help you. It’s just that asking me to keep this from Charles puts me in a really weird position, and I’m not sure why you want to keep it from him anyway. It sounds like something he should probably know about.”
“If you are uncomfortable hiding my malady from Charles, then I will continue to search for a solution on my own,” Edwin said shortly, leaving no room for argument. “I am afraid my terms are non-negotiable.”
“Alright, alright, fine,” Crystal relented, flipping through one of her handwritten dream journals. “I won’t say anything. But I keep this secret under extreme protest.”
Edwin suppressed an uncharacteristic snort, taking a haphazard stack of meditation notes off of Crystal’s desk. “Duly noted.”
“You said your body goes incorporeal on its own, right?” Crystal asked for the hundredth time, typing absent-mindedly on her computer. The dream journals and meditation notes had turned up very little useful information, so her next step was to consult a number of suspicious-looking New Age websites she had found on her Internet. Each one claimed to hold various cures for all ills, but they also claimed that every ‘enlightened’ human being on Earth had once originated from an ascended colony located within the Orion star system. All in all, Edwin wasn’t exactly holding out hope for accurate results.
“Yes,” Edwin replied, also for the hundredth time. “It initially felt like a dull echo of the pain caused by Esther’s machine, which I was content to deal with, but the acute headaches and my inability to remain corporeal have begun to interfere with our work.”
“Jesus, Edwin," Crystal scoffed. "You being in pain should have been enough of a reason to start looking into this. Your ability to solve cases isn’t the only thing that matters; your well being is also an important factor here.”
Edwin continued to flip through one of Crystal’s books, refusing to look up. The book, titled Energy Centers: The Blueprint of Organic Life , was very difficult for Edwin’s foggy mind to make sense of. The contents were long-winded and sketchy at best, but it provided an excuse to avoid Crystal’s judgemental gaze, which made it the most useful piece of literature in her apartment by far.
“I suppose we will have to agree to disagree on that matter,” Edwin replied, his clipped tone heavy with warning. He was not in the mood for an argument, not when his useless brain was busy moonlighting as a pile of wet rags.
Crystal slapped her laptop shut and leaned her elbows in her desk, eyes boring holes into the side of Edwin’s head. “Seriously, what is the matter with you two? I know you’re dead, but that doesn’t mean you can just treat yourselves like you’re disposable. You guys are always on my case about sleeping and shit, but self care isn’t just a thing for the living.”
She slowly stood from her desk and stretched her arms with a groan, before settling on the floor next to Edwin. “Between Charles’s self-sacrificial behavior and your insane obsession with solving cases, it’s like you two want to work yourselves into a second death. I’ve never seen two teenage boys so intent on burning themselves out in my goddamn life.”
“Don’t be so overly dramatic, Crystal,” Edwin replied, rolling his eyes. “Charles takes his role as ‘the brawn’ very seriously, and I simply like to keep busy. There is no need to blow this out of proportion.”
Edwin waited for Crystal’s retort, his antagonistic comment obviously designed to trigger a round of verbal sparring, but no response came. After a few moments of silence, Edwin glanced towards her curiously.
Crystal’s face was set in an unreadable expression, though Edwin could tell it wasn’t one of anger or frustration. It seemed… sad, perhaps, though he couldn’t imagine why she would feel the need to be upset on his behalf. He and Charles had been best friends for over thirty years before she came into the picture, and despite her dogged insistence that they were both hopeless in an emotionally challenging situation, they managed just fine. There was no need to change their arrangement now, or ever, for that matter.
“You really believe that, don’t you?” Crystal asked quietly. Edwin wasn’t quite sure what to make of the fragile tone her voice took on, so he simply turned his attention back to the book in his lap.
Once it was obvious that he wasn’t going to answer her question, Crystal shuffled closer to Edwin so that she could read over his shoulder.
“Find anything interesting?” She asked.
“I cannot say I have much experience with energy centers or energy healing, but would it be possible for you to do an aura reading of some kind?” Edwin questioned, handing her the book. “It may even be easier than conducting a reading on a living person, given that ghosts are constructed purely of energy.”
“Yeah, actually. That’s a great idea,” Crystal said, thumbing through the pages. “I need you to lay down, though. Couch or floor, you pick.”
Edwin ultimately decided to lay on the floor, his head supported by a garish throw pillow that Crystal had thrust upon him. He nervously played with its beaded tassels as Crystal read through the book in her hands, mapping out the best way to proceed. Edwin swallowed thickly, every magical malady he had ever researched running through his mind at once. His books covered an immense variety of awful ailments, yet none of them contained any information concerning his own. The thought of a condition yet untouched by the comforting realm of research and arcane science terrified him, causing the pain behind his eye to flare sharply.
“Relax,” Crystal instructed, eyeing him worriedly as he breathed through the pain. “This won’t hurt, I won’t even have to touch you. Just close your eyes and do some deep breathing or something while I put on some music.”
Crystal plugged her cell phone into a nearby speaker and settled on Nobody by Mitski, a song that Niko had shown them both before she… Well. It did no good to dwell on that now.
Edwin and Crystal both agreed that Niko was likely out there somewhere, but no matter where that place was, it was not with them. They felt her absence every day, and despite their best efforts with tracking spells and retrieval rituals, her gratingly upbeat music and worn-out Scooby Doo tapes were all they had left of her. Consuming the media she left behind provided them with a bittersweet feeling, the open wounds in their hearts aching and healing in tandem.
As devastating as it was, Niko’s disappearance had actually brought Edwin and Crystal closer together. Edwin would never say that Niko’s disappearance resulted in anything truly positive, but he supposed that every cloud did have a silver lining.
Edwin closed his eyes and tried to breathe as steadily as possibly. The act of it was comforting, the routine providing his tense spectral body with a familiar feeling to grasp onto. He fought back the urge to begin fidgeting again, lest he be scolded by an irritated Crystal.
After a few long minutes of nothing but the calming sounds of Mitski filling the room, Crystal let out a sharp gasp.
“What is it?” Edwin asked urgently. “Did you find something?”
“You…” Crystal stumbled over her words. “Edwin, your energy is completely out of whack. Like, totally overloaded. It must be because of that machine, your form is generating way more energy than it needs.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s producing more to try and protect itself from being harvested again? Or maybe part of the machine’s function was to force your body into creating as much energy as possible?”
Edwin felt a swell of panic begin to overtake him, his voice wavering slightly. “Well, what do I do about it?”
Crystal visibly cringed. “I… don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?!” Edwin cried out, sitting up abruptly.
“Hey, don’t yell at me! I didn’t even know this was possible until thirty seconds ago!”
Edwin opened his mouth to argue further, but stopped short when a familiar figure came barrelling through the surface of Crystal’s mirror. His wild hair was dusted with some manner of fine white powder, as was his black coat, chest heaving with exertion despite his lack of lungs.
“I really need to come up with some kind of ghost doorbell,” Crystal muttered to herself.
“Oi, Edwin, thank God mate,” Charles greeted him, brushing the white substance out of his brown curls. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
The pale dust from Charles’s hair rained down onto the floor, creating a powdery film over Crystal’s psychedelic-looking rug.
“You’re vacuuming that,” she said, smacking his leg lightly. The smile he gave her was half hearted, but still matched the brilliance of his usual boyish grin.
“Charles?” Edwin said, mind still reeling from his previous conversation with Crystal. “What are you…”
“Need your help,” he replied brightly. “Got a case today, remember?”
Edwin did not remember.
Charles turned towards Crystal and offered her a hand. “We could use your help too, actually. Gotta go back to the office first and regroup, but all hands on deck is probably best for today, yeah?”
“Yeah, sure,” Crystal said, grasping his hand and allowing herself to be pulled to her feet. “It’s not like I’ve got any other friends or anything else to do today anyway.”
Charles slung an arm around her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. “That’s the spirit!”
Edwin wracked his brain, attempting to recall any details regarding the case on their docket. A very vague image of a little girl covered in plaster dust came to mind, but it felt too far away and intangible to be real. As he tried and failed to remember, the room around him began to spin slightly, as if someone had suddenly placed him on a slow-moving carousel. He closed his eyes for a moment, only to find that the spinning increased.
Once again, Edwin was left with two options. Tell Charles about the terrifying new diagnosis Crystal had given him with potentially no viable treatment, or continue to act as if everything was perfectly fine.
There was only one of those options that he was willing to consider.