Who: Zipporah Bakst and Thomas Walker What: A midnight meeting, a ghostly encounter Where: the site of the last murder When: 10 October, 1888 [Backdated] Rating: PG
Zipporah needed to do a tricky bit of casting before the crime scene got too cold, in order to see if she could pick up on some sort of magical signature. Different witches had their own flourishes, and while she wasn’t necessarily sure entirely what had happened, it felt like a casting of some sort -- a powerful bit of necromancy, to be more specific.
She knew it wasn’t necessarily the wisest move, that there was a rather toxic atmosphere in her neighborhood at the moment -- one that’d taken a nasty turn when the police and newspapers had fingered one of her people as the killer (a man they’d then released). But this was her territory, her neighborhood, and she needed to know what was happening in it.
So she went out after dark to the alleyway across from the cultural center, Ach in tow, and once she had a moment of privacy, she began to close her eyes and pray, leaning down to touch the cobblestones.
Thomas knew that this whole thing was more complicated than just a monster of sorts that preyed on women and killed them. Serial killers happened all the time. This was different, but he just didn't quite understand what the difference was. Each new crime scene left a trace of something supernatural that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Not just that, but there was an sense of death about the area in general, not just when a woman died. Tonight was no different. A sense of dread meant barely any sleep, and it was his turn to actively watch the crime scene to make sure the perp didn't come back to it, or that no one messed it up in general.
Everything seemed quiet for the most part, until he happened to spot a woman in the alleyway who had her eyes closed. He leaned up against the wall, regarding her for a moment.
"You should probably be doing that in the middle of the day, miss."
Zipporah finished the last few words of her prayer, the initial magic curling around her, and then stood, brushing her skirts, looking at the man. Her eyes flickered to Ach, who was unbothered and still -- the man was no immediate threat.
He was wearing an odd sort of mask, one that covered one of his eyes, but the eye she could see was a sharply intelligent one.
She tipped her head. “I was praying for the dead,” she said, which wasn’t entirely untrue, her face the picture of innocence. “I did not wish for to be disturbed. My brother…” she pointed with her chin, “he keeps me safe.”
Thomas turned his head and gazed over at the large man. It almost looked like he hadn’t even seen him until now, but it’s hard to tell with the mask some of his facial expressions. Like he doesn’t have a whole lot of them any more. He nodded his head slightly, words on his lips came out slow and easy with pausing in between. Another side effect of the mask.
“I hope that you’re right.. It’s not .. safe around these parts,” he stated. “Did you know… the deceased?”
“I did not, no,” Zipporah replied, raising an eyebrow, “but I do live around the corner, and have for several years.” She shrugged. “It may not be safe, but it is my home, and I would do what I can for to make sure the women who died are at peace, and what happened does not happen again.”
Her eyes flashed a little. “I do not take kindly to the sort of villain who would come here, and do this thing where I live,” she said, simply. “And you?” She asked, giving him a once-over. “What are you doing here? Did you know them?”
She was being a little impertinent, she knew, and more than a little challenging, but a strange man walking up to a woman in this neighborhood and talking of danger deserved a hint of skepticism tossed his way.
Usually he wasn’t suspicious of everyone he met, but he hadn’t come across a killer who was this ruthless and horrible. He’d learned long ago, that he couldn’t say for certain that women couldn’t do horrible things, they absolutely could. He knew that some killers came back to their crime scenes, so he tended to wander Whitechapel, hoping to find some kind of new clue.
Her words sounded nice, but he had no truth-seeking power. He shook his head and moved his waist coat so that she could see his badge. “I’m looking for the killer,” he said simply. Skepticism seemed to go both ways. “Wish.. we could have more.. Men on the street.. At night.. But we are woefully.. Under staffed.” That was putting it mildly. If she wanted to see the badge more closely, to make sure, he would show her. For all he knew, the killer was posing as someone of authority.
“Have you seen anything suspicious? Besides me.. I mean.”
She paused at the sight of the badge.
“Apologies, Detective,” she said, looking over at Ach, who stood, complacent and unbothered. She looked back at the man. “I did not mean for to be accusatory. Times like these…” she shrugged.
His question gave her pause.
She had seen ghosts wandering, unmoored, and had felt as if the world had tilted a little on its axis the day after the latest killing, but that wasn’t something she was about to say to a member of Scotland Yard.
“I have not seen any persons who were suspicious,” she said, tilting her chin.
It was also reasonably close to the truth.
There was a slight nod of his head in recognition. “It’s….. Understandable.” Sometimes the problem was that bigger words were harder to get out. He wiped at the corner of his mouth with his sleeve. No one had seen anything suspicious, that was half the problem. All signs were pointing to someone who looked rather nondescript, and with no real distinguishing features. Anyone who claims to have seen him gave a different account of the perpetrator.
He was making mental notes of her, in any case he had to come back and ask her some questions. “You’ve lived here.. A long time? No one you know.. Capable of things like this?” It might have seemed like he was being a bit classist but he was from the same kind of neighborhood. Thomas liked to think that he was just doing his job.
The look Zipporah gave him was a distinctly wary one.
She was friendly enough with Mr Eden, who was Night Watch -- that came along with certain assumptions of common understanding, and even then, she knew that had distinct limits. The healing work she did for the Sisterhood and other neighborhood gangs, for one, as was the work she did in the name of women’s health. Peter was another grey area.
Her life was a grey area.
And while Night Watch was one thing, Scotland Yard was another -- they’d recently gone after a Jewish butcher named Leather Apron, and had done so with a vengeance -- the press had been brutal, too.
“I have lived here for five years, detective,” she said. “I know many of my neighbors, and none would do this.”
No one he met had drawn a distinction between his role in Scotland Yard and the Night Watch, but Thomas wasn’t too concerned about it. Humans didn’t know about the Night Watch and supernaturals tended to just roll their eyes, the moment they tried to assert any authority over anything. He was sure people thought they were a joke, but Thomas paid it no mind. On the list of things people gave him grief about, it was on the bottom of the list.
Who trusted cops, after all?
“You think it is a foreigner then? Another neighborhood? Country?” he asked.
Zipporah raised an eyebrow. “Your Scotland Yard thinks of people like me as foreigners,” she said, flatly. “They tried for to blame one of my people, and he was innocent.” She shrugged. “You ask whether I think he is ‘foreign,’ ‘from another country,’ why would it be so difficult to imagine him as English? I think that is far more likely. Men, they come here from all over the city for the women. Rich men, poor men, but most? They are Englishmen.”
She bit her lip. “I am trying...” she sighed impatiently. “I am here for to pray,” she said, a little stubbornly. “I need for to… to…” she frowned. “It is important, for me.”
Thomas admittedly couldn’t quite tell out right what kind of person she was supposed to be, but he knew what Scotland Yard had done. All because of that statement written on one of the crime scenes. “Scotland Yard.. is not always right..” he said after a moment. “I only meant someone.. Not.. from this neighborhood… but admittedly, I used the wrong word.” That was putting it mildly.
He wouldn’t argue with the fact that it was mostly Englishmen. They were all around. They barely paid for anything. He was about to say that he wasn’t arguing with her about what she was doing, when something caught his eye. It was a ghost. He didn’t see a lot of them, since he wasn’t a full banshee, but just enough. He was clearly distracted though before turning back towards her.
“You can pray… all you want.”
Zipporah’s eyes were focused where the Detective’s had been -- the tell-tale shimmer of a ghost -- a ghost he might’ve also seen.
They’d been wandering a little more since the events at the end of September, but to have one drawn here, to the sight of the murder, made her shudder a little.
”Oh, mercy, mercy me,” the shade of a woman moaned piteously as she drifted. ”Oh, mercy.” She didn’t seem aware of her surroundings in the least -- she didn’t even look at Zipporah or the Detective -- but as she passed over the spot where the woman had been murdered, she let out a harsh cry that made Zipporah flinch.
Perhaps it was her imagination, but the detective appeared to flinch as well. It was hard to tell because of the mask.
Her eyes flickered up to his good one, a question in her expression.
Again his eyes drifted over to the ghost, but tried not to linger too much. He’d heard stories from his mother about ghosts. Restless ones. Ones that meant harm. He hadn’t really come across any, but he was always on the look out. Thomas felt pity, though for someone who was stuck in between this world and the next.
He hadn’t expected her to cry out like that, and he did flinch. He cleared his throat and frowned, seemingly caught off guard. “I um…” he was about to say something, but he was looking at the ghost again.
“You see her?”
Zipporah raised an eyebrow.
“Yes,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Of course I do.” She turned back to the woman, raising her hands in appeal. “Do you require assistance?” She called out. “Do you want me for to help send you along?” She added. The ghost drifted, moaning, and then disappeared around the corner.
She gestured. “You see what I am dealing with?” She said, huffing a little.
She looked up at him.
He appeared to be a touch startled, but not to the extent she’d expect -- this wasn’t his first spirit.
She tipped her head carefully, considering, and then took a deep breath. “They are all over this neighborhood since the last murder, and am trying for to see what made them so restless.”
Of course she did. Maybe if Thomas was a different man, he would have rolled his eyes. Otherwise, he was content to just watch the woman talk to the ghost. It was a little outside of his jurisdiction. Hard or maybe easy enough to know when someone’s going to die, but once they were actually dead - that wasn’t something he had a lot of experience with.
Not a lot of them were very talkative, he noticed. Death like that had to be traumatic. “Could be worse,” he said with a shrug. It could have been combative. He didn’t know how to deal with a ghost that wanted to harm you, when you couldn’t kill it - again.
“It seems they’re connected.. Which means that the murders aren’t normal murders, but I guess.. We both realized that.. Maybe.. Necromancy?” he offered.
His use of the term, and the apparent familiarity he had with it, made her eyebrows raise.
“Perhaps,” she allowed. “The air, it smelt of death, and the energies, they seemed for to be similar. You are a witch?” She asked, curious. “I did not know Scotland Yard had witches working for them.”
He could agree with that, it definitely had a similar air to everything. “Someone is probably using.. All this death for something more than.. Just to get his rocks off..” At least it seemed like that, although he wasn’t an expert in the horrible things that men did. “Son of a banshee..,” Thomas finally answered. “I feel some of it.. Not as much as others. Just enough to know.”
Zipporah nodded. “I was coming here for to see if I might determine the signature, so I may recognize it if I encounter again, to see if I could trace what was cast before it got too old.” She paused. “I do not know what for, but I should hope to find out.”
She looked up at him, tilting her head, considering. “I do not want this in my place of living,” she said. “If it would be useful, I can share with you what I discover.”
Ah so she was up to something witchly. It was nice to get a confirmation. Sometimes he wished for more power than he had, but most of the time, he was grateful that he didn’t have to deal with such things that his mother did. “If you happen to find anything… even if it’s small and you think it doesn’t matter.. Would you come to the station and let me know?” he asked, because he had no way of doing such a thing. Maybe she could see traces of evidence that he could not.
“Just ask for DI Walker,” he added. “Or.. I’m always.. Around.. Walking..” Making sure that bad shit didn’t happen to people. He tended to be out at night more than the day. People didn’t pay him any mind at night, not like the looks he got during the day. “I would appreciate it,” he agreed.
The thought of going to Scotland Yard gave her pause (and given she was already associating with Mr Eden, that could lead to a reputation she wasn’t sure she wanted), but after a breath, she nodded.
“I shall,” she said. “And I thank you for your concern, detective, but I can take care of myself quite readily.” She grinned at that, tipping her head over to Ach.
Finally Thomas seemed to turn his head and acknowledge the large man in the area. Right. It was a wonder that no one assumed this was the RIpper, large as he was. He clearly wasn’t as agile maybe as the man who had done all the murdering. He hoped. “Hope he’s enough..” was all he said, giving a nod of his head and then heading off and leaving the young lady to do whatever it was she was doing.