Chương 198: 187. Peter's return

Filip and Marvin moved Sarah into the van, trying to get the gunk off her, while Rey explained to Josh what was going on. I, on the other hand, checked out the black tar. It was a carrier for some sort of mental curse. Curses carried by artifacts and substances were a nasty trick, but also had downsides. For artifacts, protections against counter-cursing could be added, but for substances, such protections were nearly impossible to achieve, so their use yielded mixed results.

I concentrated and tried to attune to the remains of the liquid, trying to sense the curse and its caster. The spell was simple, but that didn't give me anything, as the caster didn't resonate. It meant they were either dead or out of this plane of existence. I would bet that if I took that substance to an alchemist, it would turn out to be the blood of a curse demon or something along those lines. Curses delivered that way were far weaker, but their strength lay in how annoying they could be.

The tar would sink into the pores, stay in the hair, and work on the woman slowly if not cleaned properly. Would the SID have the means? I guessed I would find out soon. This case was getting me interested, though. I then approached the corpse and gave it another look without touching anything. It had been a person used as a vessel for a lesser demon or spirit, with the entity originally housed in a necklace that was still around the dead creature's neck.

Individually, those things could happen by coincidence, such as someone coming into contact with a small inheritance left by a demonologist. But together with the magic circle by the back door, it meant someone here knew what they were doing.

"Fuck." Loud swearing from Sarah broke my train of thought. Looking at her, I could see she was putting down the phone with an unpleasant expression on her face.

"What is it?" Filip asked the almost-clean woman.

"The guy just died in the cell."

"What?" Josh and Filip asked, surprised.

"We don't know why. He just fell over dead," she hissed in irritation.

"I have to go back. I have to deal with this. I have to—""You'll have to come with me first," Marvin cut in.

"What?"

"We don't know what that substance is. It could be something slow-acting. We have to get you to our bureau and check."

"I'm not—" she began, but then he showed her something from his wallet alongside the badge.

"Do I have to pull rank?" Marvin asked. Sarah looked like she was about to punch him, but relented in the end. We waited another good few minutes for the normal FBI assault team, consisting of a few men carrying automatic rifles. The team cleared the house relatively quickly and found little aside from a workstation. The sight of it assured me it wasn't the man who had done all of the magic work, and certainly not here.

The papers, drawings, and scribblings barely made sense and were more a record of growing madness than evidence of an understanding of the arcane. But I was curious about something.

"Can you trace where the guy went? Like trace his phone?" I asked Filip.

"It might be hard, but not entirely impossible. Why?"

"This doesn't look like his main workshop," I explained while adding in my mind, 'Or a place where he got his magic.' Filip nodded.

"I'll see what we can find."

"Also," I started, thinking about how to broach the subject, "do I get to attend the autopsy?" I asked.

"Why? You can get a report," Filip said.

"Right. So then do I get to pick someone I trust to do the autopsy and the report?"

"You have a trusted surgeon?" Filip asked, confused.

"Yes," I said, nodding.

"Myself."

"You're a surgeon?"

"Not entirely, but I did stab a few people," I said with a smile. The entire FBI crew looked at me.

"Just a joke. Goddamn, it's like talking to cats," I grumbled.

"No." Filip shook his head.

"Why do you want to be at the autopsy?"

"Just in case. I don't want to lose my promised FBI intel, and the killer was quite taken with the concept of a disease. There are a couple of spells I'm aware of that might… activate upon death. So I'd suggest a trained professional present for the procedure, one with experience in—""Dark magic?" Filip asked.

"Exactly," I replied with a smile.

"Think of it as payback for saving your people's asses back there." The man thought for a few seconds before exhaling slowly.

"I'll see what I can do." Afterward, there was a whole boring procedure we had to go through. Thankfully, as Sarah seemed to be getting a worsening headache, Marvin figured the tar wasn't just foul-smelling vomit but something dangerous and cut the talking and questioning short to drive us back. The car was relatively silent until the FBI liaison spoke.

"It got on my hands," he said absently.

"Huh?" Rey asked.

"It got on my hands, the goo. Is it dangerous?" he asked, looking in my direction.

"More or less. The SID will deal with it, I'm sure," I lied.

"Right," he said, nodding lightly.

"So was that a demon?"

"More or less."

"Do they always look like that?"

"More or less," I answered. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. The man went silent for a few seconds before fully turning in the driver's seat to look at Rey and me.

"Are you two like some sort of secret agents from the church? Like Vatican ninjas or something? I won't tell Elias, I promise." We both looked at one another. Sadly, before I could confirm my identity as a super-secret Vatican ninja, Rey shook his head, explaining we both simply had previous experience.

We got back to the building, and after a quick check with Elias and a promise to write an extensive report later—a promise made after I suggested that I would be going either through the door or the wall if they wanted me to fill out stacks of paperwork—I was free to go. I spent the rest of the day in the storage room as usual, waiting for a call from the FBI once they finished their paperwork. But as I was about to go back home for the night, a knock on the door caught my attention.

I was expecting to hear the watchman whine about my late-night squatting in the place, but instead Peter's voice sounded from the other side.

"Can I come in?" he asked. Half expecting an illusion or an attack, I cracked open the door. But the boy was there in his own pain-riddled flesh. He looked rather strange. There was a tiredness in him, but not the simple physical kind, more like the tiredness of an athlete approaching the finish line.

"Hello," I greeted.

"You're ready, I take it?" He nodded, and I moved to the side, letting him in.

"Why not call me?" I asked.

"I tried. Then the, um, cat," he said, still slightly awkward about talking animals, "said that if you're not picking up, you're most likely in the storage room." I checked my phone. Sure enough, an entire series of missed calls. The books did have that effect on me.

"Well, for the future, I'm not always in the storage if I'm not picking up," I said.

"Yeeeah." The boy suddenly became awkward. I looked at him, prompting him to continue.

"Well," he began hesitantly, "the cat said you're either in the storage or committing crimes against humanity." I looked at him flatly, then sighed, ignoring his slightly questioning look.

"So, did you resolve your feelings about it?" I asked, motioning him toward a chair after moving a few tomes off it.

"Yeah."

"And what's the verdict?" Peter took a deep breath before answering.

"I'm a murderer," he said. I looked at him, tilting my head to the side.

"Well, that's rather harsh."

"I'm a murderer," he repeated.

"But that doesn't excuse my father, or the souls that attached to me. We are all guilty in a way. I know you don't think so, but I can't bury the feeling that I played my own part in the tragedy."

"Good," I nodded, getting ready to brew him the tea for the ritual.

"My mother didn't take it well. She was afraid it would, you know… make me ask you to kill me. So, I don't think she told me what she really felt. I think she blames me a bit. My boyfriend, on the other hand, took it rather well. His sister is also supportive, but we couldn't really tell her," he began rattling off once I opened the floodgates. This continued for some time until he suddenly stopped as I was halfway through drawing the magical circle.

"You don't really care, do you?" he asked. I paused and looked at him.

"About you? I do… in a way. About your relationship with your family? Well… insofar as it affects the ritual." He looked at me awkwardly for a few seconds.

"You can continue. I don't mind. It's just that if you expect a pat on the back, you're barking up the wrong tree."

"Right," he said, chuckling.

"You don't care if I'm a murderer either."

"Nope," I said, putting the finishing touches on the circle and getting up.

"So, you ready?" He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a second.

"I think I am. Although… I came here right after resolving things with my mother, kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. I think I'm tired."

"Good," I said.

"Easier to enter a trance. Your decision, though." He hesitated for just a few seconds before taking a deep breath.

"Let's do it, then." We sat down on the floor inside the circle, and once everything was prepared, the ritual began in the dead of night. Just like before, I could see him enter a rhythm, swaying from side to side gently until he raised his hand and hit his own solar plexus. I pushed my own spirit out of my body and observed. Once again, his arms and legs began to dislodge. But it was the chest, the core, that was the problem. And like before, it dragged.

I could see one hand pop out on one side, only for the other to slip back in, as before. I could see him begin to struggle. His face twisted in a grimace. The same scenes as before replayed, and I started preparing to repossess my own body to bring him out of the trance. Just then, he slowed down and began moving as if through molasses, and for the first time, I could see his own head pop out beyond the outline of his flesh. He dragged the spirit through his own body inch by inch, second by second.

His face became visible, but the place where the spark would be was still within the flesh. I looked at his face. The material one was calm, in a sleep-like, ritualistic state. The spiritual one was the exact opposite, with his teeth gritted, an expression of great struggle etched on the ethereal being. And then it happened. He dislodged the spark. But to my surprise, it didn't ease things that much. His soul still dragged through the body, although his expression of struggle lessened.

The process took much longer than I would have thought, but finally, as I was beginning to think he would be unable to make it… the spirit popped out. He floated over his own body for a few seconds. He tried to move, but thankfully remembered my advice to float in the darkness and then come back. And so he floated, his face relaxing, first forgetting the struggle, then the pain, as an expression of almost disbelief appeared. But by then, I wasn't paying attention to his expressions.

Instead, my senses were focused on the mana around him. To my surprise, it was trickling into his soul. Slowly, very slowly, but the movement was there, as if he were materializing like a ghost. I looked closer, trying to sense what was going on as theories about what it might be swirled in my head. After a few seconds, I felt a change and noticed he was pulling back into his own body. The thought of trying to stop him entered my mind, but it soon dissipated. It would be dangerous, to say the least.

I pulled myself back, only to be met with a wide smile of excitement in front of my face.

"I did it. I—I really did," he said, his previous tiredness washed away by excitement.

"I—I can live like this," he finally whispered to himself.

"Was the pain completely gone?" I asked, and he nodded.

"How about now?"

"It's still gone, but I can feel it slowly coming back."

"That's expected."

"I can't stay outside my body for long, can I?" he asked, rather sad.

"I…" I had to think about the answer for some time before just saying, "don't really know."

"You said—""I know what I said. But it seems that after the merging, your soul retained its ability to gather mana within it, like a ghost. Spiritual entities use mana to create a shell for the spirit, unlike us, who use flesh."

"So can I create my own body?"

"Not sure. Then the opposite would become a problem. Flesh isn't supposed to hold souls that already have a shell of mana. When a spirit with a shell like that possesses a body, it deteriorates and tries to match the shape of the spirit, so possessed people grow horns, additional eyes, and so on."

"I'll mutate again?" he asked.

"Don't know, honestly. Flesh could be changed to become a vessel for a ghost, but… I'll have to do more research. For now, push your soul out of your body if the pain becomes unbearable, but no more than twice a day. Any more often, and you might injure your spirit. We'll see if we can turn your soul into something that can function outside the body." Peter nodded while I was still looking him over, curious.

"So, um, I'll be going back. I have to call—""Go?" I cut in as an idea struck me.

"You performed a successful astral projection. This calls for a celebration. I'll take you to a bar, show you the wider magical world."

"I can't drink yet." I rolled my eyes.

"Goddamn dwarves your age drink by the barrel. You can get a lemonade." And after I said it, I began calling my associates. He would most likely be joining the magical world rather soon, so no harm in some introductions. Aside from that, I did want Q'Shar to get a feel for the kid. He might come in handy in the near future.