Who: JJ Monroe, Uma Brightstar, some Auror NPCs + JJ's lawyer What: The Aurors have brought in a Legilimancy expert to question JJ When: Wednesday, August 21, 2019 | morning Where: Auror offices in Billings Warnings: Minor language; non-explicit medical emergency; a little blood
It was rare that Miles got assignments in another territory, but today was a special case and he was glad that his Director had decided having him along was a good idea—because Miles probably would have insisted as soon as he found out anyway. He looked sideways at his partner, trying to gauge her mood going into this specialty interrogation. Looking into someone's thoughts was always a delicate business, and especially so for her. Given the circumstances of the accusations against this young witch, there was a certain level of inherent risk in even allowing a mind probe like this, but the Billings team had reached the end of their other resources. That was where the duo from New York came in. "Ready?" They were meeting at least one local Auror here, but it was largely for observational purposes. Sal was the real star here. Miles was just there to facilitate and be a back-up in case something went wrong. "Are you planning to jump straight in, or do you want me to warm her up a little first?"
On the whole, perhaps asking the barista at her usual haunt for twice the number of shots as normal was a bit of a mistake. It always made portkey travel that much more unpleasant. But a rough night's sleep the evening before had dictated her caffeine consumption that morning, and now she had to live with the consequences. Right now that took the form of being completely unable to stop moving. Aware of how obnoxious that could be, she tried to limit her jitters to the hands stuffed deep in her magically deep pockets. "Warm up, please," Sal all but chirped. "Maybe that way she'll already be on the right brain track. I hate when they start spinning out into, like, tangential childhood crap. It'll be cool to get in there, though, if she's telling the truth. I'm gonna be pissed if it's a bunch of bullshit, and she's just a really good actress."
Miles shot an amused glance toward her. "You know you've jinxed it now, right? She's almost guaranteed to be a good actress now." He couldn't help thinking about the details of the case, though, and the fact that the suspect's only claims were that she didn't remember—and that was very different from claiming innocence. "I'll get her to start with a little about herself, then jump straight to the hard questions to see if we can get an honest internal reaction, even if she tries to turn her thoughts to other things."
Winding their way through the Auror offices, it was easy enough with a few fingers pointed in the right direction to find where they were expected. Outside the assigned interrogation room, there was already a woman waiting for them. The local Auror, he presumed. "Good morning," he said, holding out his hand to her. "Miles Hastings, New York branch. This is—" He hesitated for a brief second and opted for the easiest name for introductions. "This is Sal, also NYC branch, Legilimens as requested. Are the suspect and her lawyer already waiting for us?"
“Uma Brightstar,” Uma said as she returning the handshake with Auror Hastings and then offered her hand to… Sal. “Nice to meet you both. Thank you for coming. Our suspect has a good lawyer with her, so we need all the help we can get to figure out what’s going on,” she said about appreciating them coming in. The only other Legilimens she knew… well he was a witness in the case, and couldn’t have been used without fear of bias. “Miss Monroe is a bit of a celebrity from her musical career, so we need to know everything we can find out before the press finds out about her arrest.”
After shaking the gorgeous auror's hand, Sal nodded once. Her hair kind of bounced with it, piled as it was on the top of her head. She probably didn't exactly exude the most professional of vibes, but everyone in her department knew her worth and were more than willing to put up with her quirks because of it. "Caroline! Yes, she's great, even if she winds up on the other side of us most of the time. I mean, I have to admire her dedication to her clients at least." Especially if she believed in their innocence. That was a thought that Sal had to dismiss right away. She gave Auror Brightstar an understanding frown. "It's no fun when the press starts to descend in earnest. I'm not saying they're vultures, buuuuut…"
She glanced back at Miles as her shoulders squared. Her hand strayed to her pocket, where a small glass sound tinkled as a couple of vials gently collided. "Let's do this."
Inside, JJ's lawyer was just standing as the aurors came in, having been leaned against the edge of the table as she gave her client some last minute advice. Caroline took a step back and gazed at Sal and Miles and Uma in turn, giving them an impassive nod. "My client has been briefed on this interview and is willing to submit to the Legilimens. It's our hope that this willingness to cooperate will be reflected in the department's decision in how to proceed with the case against her."
Miles returned Caroline's nod as he stepped into the room and got his first look at their suspect. Whatever the files had said about this witch, the visual of this downtrodden young woman was still a surprise. So many criminals were cocky about what they thought they were pulling over on the Aurors, or angry at being accused at all, and those who were entirely innocent tended to appear scared rather than beaten. Appearances were deceiving, but if she was trying for an act, she wasn't doing a particularly good job being consistent about it.
"Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Monroe," he said as he sat down at the table across from her. "I'm sure Ms. Davis has already explained all of the details of this process to you, but stop us if you have any concerns. I'd like to start by asking you some questions, if that's okay?"
Another day, another string of questions. It was exhausting, but she was honestly glad for the break up to the monotony of the nothing that filled her day. The truth was that she was really starting to feel deprived of human interaction; it was a nightmare for an extrovert like her. JJ gave this new auror a nod, taking in the way he seemed to be scrutinizing her right down to her soul. It was still easier to take than looking at Auror Brightstar, knowing what she did about her attack on the witch—and the fact that she'd owed her own injuries to the witch. "Yes, I consent to any and all questions and will answer to the best of my knowledge and abilities."
Miles nodded at her and then at Sal to indicate that she could take her potion. He folded his hands on the table in a posture that was as relaxed as he could manage in this setting. Nothing so far told him that he needed to be anything other than good cop. "I understand that you started at the Brightstar Reserve back in January this year. Can you tell me a little about what brought you there?"
As JJ watched, the witch with the bright hair unstoppered a vial of something that sparkled and tossed it back. She was distracted from the pained expression that crossed her face by Ms. Davis easing into her line of sight along the wall. The lawyer nodded at her to tell the wizard everything. "I'd walked away from my music career early in 2018, before I ever heard about the training opportunity at Brightstar. That wasn't until November. I'd been tryin' to get my head right again. My healer at a time called it nervous exhaustion. I think y'all have a copy of that. Anyway, I got the interview for the reserve program then, in November. I'd always like workin' with creatures while I was at HAHA. Creature Care was an elective, and it was always in the back of my head that it might be somethin' I could do, if music didn't pan out. But we see how that's worked out. Now I'm not really sure which direction was the right one. I—I never wanted to hurt anyone."
The young woman's memories and the sincerity behind them flowed through Sal's mind. Images of faces she didn't know and snatches of conversations that JJ had been either witness to or a party in bobbed to the surface of her mind before sinking again in that natural way that thoughts had. Other minds were near her, of course: the undercurrent of wild that was Miles, the focus of Caroline's as she reviewed JJ's brief on a loop, and Uma's doubts about JJ's continued professed ignorance. She filtered them out with some effort and dove deeper, past those surface thoughts. Her memory had drifted to this time when JJ was getting ready for a show, sitting in front of a mirror lined with bulb lighting as a makeup artist applied a few finishing touches. She had smiled at herself, ready to go out and give the audience a good time.
And then she was backstage, getting all kinds of congratulations for a great set, feeling her heart pounding like it did when she'd just gotten off the stage. Except the whole night was a blank. She was confused and scared, but everyone was acting like nothing was wrong, like she'd been amazing. Maybe she'd been in the zone? But so zoned out that the entire night was a blank? It didn't make any sense, but her manager was sure it was fine. So she'd just gone on like nothing had happened. Sal's fingers found and curved into the fabric of Miles's suit jacket hem, using it to ground her further, to hold her to what was real and not just in everyone's minds. She gave him a subtle nod to continue.
"And how has your time with the Reserve been so far?" Miles asked, keeping himself carefully composed despite those fingers around his jacket. He knew that he tended to be more cautious than necessary where Sal's abilities were concerned, but that was only because he'd seen just how much damage uncontrolled Legilimency could do to a person. "Any particular highlights? Moments that stand out to you as best or worst?" This line of questioning always sounded a little bit like a job interview to him, no matter how he worded it, but it was important to get the suspect's thoughts going different directions, opening up sections of her head that she might not otherwise expose.
The question immediately brought a dozen or more instances of recent events to the young witch's mind, as she gave Miles a rundown of her highs and lows. She'd had a number of mishaps during her months there, but even then most of them were colored with something positive, like meeting and getting to know two of the reported victims: Felix Strand-Weissman and Alexander "Derry" Ackerly. Their pictures had been a part of the Monroe casefile, making them easily identifiable. As she went on, the memories flitted faster and faster: being out by one of the enclosures as she played her guitar and sang; dancing amid a dizzying array of dresses and masks and fancy suits; the sharp, bitter tang of worry as a boy stared from his phone to her in obvious panic; the fading embarrassment of getting a call from her family while she'd been with her boyfriend, and how he'd held her right up until her phone lit up again and everything went dark.
Sal's hand clenched tightly around the bit of fabric in her hand as she dragged that memory back toward her, distancing herself from the stream of JJ's continuing thoughts. There was something there, something very wrong.
There was the signal he'd needed, and Miles seized on it, though he was careful to let JJ finish her sentence, and even more careful to not give any visual indication that anything had changed in the tone of the questioning. "I imagine it's difficult being so far away from home, and especially in a new career. Are you in contact with many people outside of the Reserve and the adjacent town? People from your old life, maybe, or new ones who simply don't live nearby?"
"Mostly just my family, back home," was JJ's honest reply, which touched off a myriad of thoughts on her mom and dad and brother and sister and most especially her great-aunt. But swirling amidst those were times when her phone would ding or buzz in her hand or flash on her nightstand, and then she would be somewhere else. Sometimes with people, but usually in her room or somewhere by herself in a part of the Reserve where she was supposed to be but couldn't remember getting there. Her mind touched on a couple of times when she'd felt a particular muscle group start to protest some movement she couldn't remember making, or she had tiny odd bruises or abrasions that she chalked up from just being on the grounds all day. It had been so common place, these blank spots that were sometimes seconds or minutes, that her mind just began to dismiss them as just being her reality now. The longer periods still freaked her out, but she'd also gotten used to ignoring them. The brain had this built in capacity to willfully ignore the things that tried to damage it, a demented sense of self-preservation against something that was grossly wrong.
All of this had gone through her head as she'd issued her short statement, and Sal tugged hard at Miles' jacket before she scooted her chair back and stood. "Will you excuse us a moment, Miss Monroe? Aurors, Ms. Davis, I'd like to have a quick word over here," she said, nodding to the corner of the room.
Miles was a little surprised that the interrogation had reached a head so quickly. He trusted Sal's judgement implicitly, but that didn't stop his momentary pause at her statement. Just after, though, he was following her to the requested place. "Verdict?" he said quietly, just loud enough for their small group to hear.
Uma had been standing back and watching the whole time. She knew she couldn’t see a lot of what was really going on, but Hastings was a calm interrogator. That wasn’t usually Uma’s best job as she was the one more about sneaking around and finding out information, or just arresting people.
When Sal had slid back, Uma adjusted so she wasn’t leaning against the wall anymore and reached for her wand in case something was wrong. She nodded at the instructions and moved into the corner to huddle with the other. “Is she lying or not?”
"She's definitely missing time. And not in a memory modification kind of way. Thoughts tend to go hazy when it comes from a spell. Kinda wobbly around the edges." Sal glanced at the three assembled around her and frowned. Their thoughts still flowed into her mind, but she'd gotten better about separating them from her own. "This isn't that. This is just the memories stopping. Not like they've been altered, just like they're not there at all. It's possible that this is something she'd done to herself, but it would be really advanced magic."
Her eyes went wide, and then narrowed again as she looked at Miles. "If she's being controlled, what does this remind you of?"
When the question came, it was more Sal's tone and expression than the actual words that came from her mouth that made the connection for him. Miles cursed, low and long, because there was only one possible answer to that question, and it was tied to one of their most intense cases. He caught her eye, and he knew they were thinking the same thing. "We had a case a couple of years back involving a variant of the Imperius curse. Untraceable by spell, and the lack of memories was very...distinct. You might recognize her name from the Most Wanted list: Brigid Playfer."
Sal froze right as JJ spoke up from where she was still sitting at the table. "Playfer?" Almost as one, both Caroline and Sal spun around to stare. A smirk tugged at the edge of her mouth as she looked right back. Malevolence danced in her eyes. "Oh, hon, no. That bitch is dead."
It was the absolute certainty in the statement that stole the air from Sal's lungs. Her chest tightened painfully, and then it was like her head exploded. Her hands went to her head as she bit down on the cry tried to claw its way out of her throat. At the same time, JJ's eyes rolled back until just the whites of her eyes could be seen, and she pitched hard toward the floor. Sal couldn't make any sense of what was going through her head in that moment, except that it seemed to be a highlight reel of every bad thing that JJ had been accused of doing.
Curses flowed from the end of the wand in her hand without a hint of remorse or malice—like it was just the price of doing business. She slipped into places where she didn't belong, and lied easily if she was caught. Information was gathered and marching orders received, but her contact was clever and only contacted her from an unknown number. And it stretched months back, to a night in the middle of the tour, when she woke up to find a figure in her dressing room. Sal got the impression of an indistinct smile and lips that moved with words that refused to stick.
Just like the earlier thoughts, it had all tumbled into Sal's head in a second or two, but it had been so violent that her nose began to dribble with blood right away.
Before Uma could even comment on remembering the case from Salem… things shifted to a new level in the interview room. Uma looked at JJ, and there was that tone and look she remembered when she got into that fight with her after she was found. It really was like there were two sides of what was going on here.
And then JJ fell. “Shit,” Uma said pointing her wand so she could slow JJ’s fall to the floor, and cushion it before she hit it. With the lawyer there, they couldn’t show any sign of negligence. “We need a medic in here,” she said as she went over to check JJ’s vitals, and gave another wand to send a memo out to the rest of the staff.
"Shit," Miles echoed, his attention on his fellow Auror rather than on the suspect. This was why he was here—the locals took care of their own, and he took care of his. Right now, that meant making sure their expert Legilimens didn't end up a quivering mess after whatever she'd seen. Without waiting for any further indication than that bloody nose, he got his arms around her and one hand into her pocket to retrieve the second potion, the one that would allow her to block her abilities.
"Drink," he said as he held it up, guiding her out of the room as the medi-staff came in. He got her deposited in the nearest empty chair and then retrieved a couple of napkins from the coffee station in the corner. He had to draw the line at cleaning off the blood himself, but it was a near thing. He handed them to her before glancing toward the interrogation room. "What was that?"
"wasn't her," was mumbled around the pocket-warm, thin glass of the vial suddenly at her mouth. Sal tossed it back on reflex, and slumped in relief in her partner's hold as the chaos of his and Uma and Caroline and the medi-staff's thoughts were mercifully cut off. It still took a few seconds for her to come back to herself. She became aware that she was dabbing at her nose, and shot Miles a grateful look before vanishing the napkin for his benefit. Glancing over, she realized that Caroline was watching her closely.
The door to the interrogation room was still open, and she overheard the medi-staff say that JJ was unconscious and unresponsive. Sal frowned and sat upright, separating herself from Miles as she leaned away. "I saw her. She definitely did what she's been accused of, and more than that. But it wasn't of her own free will. Something, someone was definitely controlling her. Like an Imperius or the Salem curse, except so much deeper. She'd do the deed, and the memory went to a place so deep inside her that it might as well have just been gone." Her mouth twisted in disgust. "She's as much of a victim in this as anyone."
Uma frowned at this explanation, and looked to Caroline who clearly had her line of defense now right out of the mouth of the Aurors. “So the question is: if she is being controlled, who is doing it? And how do we find them?” Uma did have some doubt. She had her own experience to go off of, and she hadn’t seen what Sal had. It was easier to believe that this was all just JJ, but the real worry was that this was much bigger than they knew.
Miles looked up at the Auror from his place crouched by Sal's side, face creased in concern. "We take this back and do a careful summary of everything Sal saw and you can analyze that for new clues. It's not a perfect, airtight system, unfortunately." And it took a lot out of his partner, but that much had to be obvious. "I'm confident that we'll get something useful from this, though. It's very rare that it's so...intense." He glanced at Sal again. "Which means there is very much something to this."
Her head throbbed something fierce, but it wasn't so bad that she couldn't get to her feet and give Uma a grim smile. "Give me a couple of hours to unpack all this shit, and you'll have somewhere to start at least." Sal glanced into the interrogation room, and her mouth drew into a hard line as the medi-staff prepared JJ for a visit to the building's infirmary. She dragged her gaze back to the Auror taking point. "And I'll give you my number in case you've got any questions about the notes, or just if you wanna brainstorm ideas for whatever the hell is going on around here."
“Thank you,” Uma said looking between the New York Aurors, and the medics who were preparing JJ for transport to the infirmary. “I appreciate all the help. We got some answers though we have more questions now,” she admitted. She nodded about getting her number in case there was more or if Uma needed to speak to her again. “My brother, he’s a seer, and he was able to find Miss Monroe in the first place. It might not be the worst idea to try to find a way to make more sense of what he’s seen too,” Uma suggested though she wasn’t sure if that would even be helpful, but it was worth bringing up.
"If you've got a Seer with information he hasn't been able to pin down, then I agree, matching the two together for commonalities is a good approach." It was difficult for Miles not to throw himself full force into this case, because it was starting to seem like a fascinating one. He had to keep reminding himself that they were only consultants. And not even really him; Sal was the consultant, and he was simply her assistant. He checked his watch. "We'll meet you back here after lunch, say...one o'clock? Then we can walk through the details Sal is able to glean and hopefully help you figure out what's going on here."