3300/The First Day of the Rest of Your Madness

The First Day of the Rest of Your Madness
Date of Scene:	09 September 2020
Location:	Hudson River
Synopsis:	No description
Cast of Characters:	Zatanna Zatara, John Constantine

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Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Nazir Karima Iyimide, a 25-year-old student, is a YA sensation writing about her experiences as a person of colour in the US. Eager social media coverage of the Nigerian student at New York University asks questions when her prolific feed simply stops. News of her latest book in its last chapters earns endless interest, but now there's nothing new to report. Followers stir themselves with concern.

That's the hazard when Ms. Iyimide lies facedown in the swampy reaches of the Hudson River, her waterlogged tunic floating brightly in the pollution-blasted reeds like saffron in a dingy pan.

The police haven't shown up in the pre-dawn but two mystics have, but that's just a matter of time. Last breath blown into the murky water surrounding her face, the writer doesn't show a clear sense of terror or fear. Easy, considering her body is strangely hollow, deprived of the animating stamp of life that should be there even in the first phases of death. Worse, in some ways, considering the shell isn't even bluish or very rigid yet, all those necessities and unpleasantries of death still proceeding apace. But it's like finding an empty pop can with no trace of ever having pop inside it. Somehow, that's just wrong.

Explaining, then, why Zatanna hovers back a few steps and shields her eyes against the first beams of dawn breaking the horizon into a patchwork of fretted gold and bloody clouds.

The death of an author is a sad thing, but this one has other elements unanswered. Why an expiring woman of 98 gasped out the unfinished title of Ms. Iyimide's highly anticipated novel and clutched limply at the nurse, begging them angrily in a weak voice. 'No, no, not in this old hag. It wasn't supposed to be here, not like this' before going limp on the table.

Two strange deaths, connected by a ribbon of wrongness.

John Constantine has posed:
"Bugger me. Y'know the Hudson's worse than the Thames? I wouldn't step a toe in the Thames for a thousand quid, and Londoners got that properly cleaned a century ago. Can't believe people let their kids splash around in the shallows."

John's crude observation is quite at odds to the solemn pre-dawn reverence one might assign the deceased. Flames are cupped in his palm and John stokes a cigarette to life. Cheeks hollow and flutter and cinder creeps a red line along the paper wrapping his tobacco. A *click* snaps off the fingertip of flame and the battered old zippo is tucked into his coat pocket.

"Orright luv, let's have a look at ya," John says, and hunkers down next to the body. Her purse is recovered and John digs in it for an ID. "Yeahp-- 's here. Ms. Iyimide," he confirms. "NYU student ID, resident license..." He looks over at Zatanna, and hands the purse to her. "Take a look inside luv, an' be thorough eh? See what you can find besides bus tokens and meal vouchers."

John puts a hand under her shoulder and rolls Karima over with a grunt. Her waxy featuers have already started to bloat from the water, gone deathly pale. John looks her over with a critical eye, still puffing away, then gets to his feet.

"You sure this is the bird, yeah?" The blonde fellow looks over a slouching shoulder at Zatanna. "Plenty of kids die in this town. Plenty of aspiring artists, too. And old grannies. Just not seeing an immediate connection between the late author here and Nanny Natale over at St. Luke's General." A thumb gestures vaguely in the direction of the hospital. "How would a gel like this even know how to set up a soul jump, let alone be dumb enough to... drown in a puddle of water right after setting one up?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Zatanna shakes her head slightly, blinking back into the present. Those descents from flying into places unseen on invisible wings always make for a bit of an impact when the flesh wraps around the soul. Pinching her shoulders back strains the boning and steel of her monochromatic damask corset, forcing good posture after leaving herself tethered only lightly to the riverside.

She wrinkles her nose. "The smell doesn't win any points, but the Hudson and the East Rivers still count as open sewers. Don't credit the Thames cleanup so highly, either. Five thousand minimum to drink below Canary Wharf." Dark lips approach a frown as John lights that cigarette, but a lost cause even trying to remind him of the lethal qualities of the habit. Different rules, different problems. Instead, willing hands take the dead woman's purse from him and move through the detritus of a life. A good inch of water floats in the bottom, and this is why gloves never go out of style. Thumbing through a few soggy receipts and candy wrappers brings up a small plastic hardshell case, flipped open. Sharps gleam from their package along with a small device with buttons. "Diabetic, by the looks of it."

Further investigation through the wallet and pockets takes her some time, during which a duck waddle past and quacks irritably at the damned mage in hopes he might have something in his pockets. Or maybe they both share a corkscrew path to damnation, either way. "Ms Iyimide signed a seven figure deal with a major publishing house, and there's no doubt movie rights to be bargained away, John. You tell me whether there is any motive behind that, and reason for her to jump bodies or town. She hasn't anything to besmirch a reputation as a nice girl in here." A nod to the bright tunic and the hijab floating in the muck, giving some protection. "Fame as a good young woman offering a view on our ruinous society and her struggles to fit in. Why would you end it all here?" She pulls out a few mucky plastic cards. "A consummate book buyer if she has a membership card, a reference to the Strand, and family photographs. Sisters, I'm guessing." Held up to the light, three beautifully happy faces grin to the camera, dark and joyous in every way. Karima's in the middle, the younger ones flanking her.

Blowing water off of it, Zee uses the back of her hand where the glove remains dry to pat away any remaining moisture. Not helpful, perhaps, but it's a small token for the deceased. "Nanny had no reason to expect an intrusion. A hollow shell makes for convenient possession, but why would someone this young go into someone terminal even /after/ possession?"

The water stirs through the reeds, the duck expectant as it paddles around in a deeper patch. Orange webbed feet tread at the murky liquid barely worthy of being called water. More liquified soil. "Math isn't adding up for me."

John Constantine has posed:
"No, see-- you got to be thinking furthur ahead," John says. His hand rolls through the air in a 'come along' gesture. Both feet stay planted in the muck, indifferent to the sludge slurping at well-worn but well-loved oxfords. The mage seems equally indifferent to the detritus as well. Then again, his standards for cleanliness aren't quite where Zatanna's are.

"No way this was a suicide, like y'said. Personal effects in pockets. Bus fare, ID, that sort of thing. Doesn't fit the profile. Most people wouldn't toss themselves in a nasty shallow river, either." He squints upwards overhead. "Fall from that height into shallow mud isn't likely to break your neck, especially if the tide's in. For women, it's... poisons or hanging, or firearms, pretty even. Blokes, almost entirely firearms."

"So not a suicide, and this is a nasty patch of land away from her usual haunts, so it's not likely she just blundered out here and drowned." A hovering thumb counts off the ideas, but freezes in midair while he thinks aloud. "Right, so not suicide, probably not misadventure. So that suggests either she was killed, or she triggered a soul jump she'd set up but buggered up the landing."

"Can't whistle up the soul for a chat since it's--" A swallow's flight is indicated with his hand and a swooping whistle. "Buggered off."

John looks back at Zatanna, specualtively. "How's your psychometry these days? Think you can read off anything she's got with her?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"Surprisingly, John, I may have drawn several of those conclusions." The dry reminder holds a modicum of levity, but Zee sets the purse aside on a clump of reeds looking stiffer than some of the other snarled, sickened greenery. "She doesn't belong here, which leads me to wonder whether any vacancies came willingly. Under forced circumstances, did she act on desperation herself or was it an eviction?"

Gesturing around them both, she says, "There ought to be marks here if anyone came by, isn't there? No smell of crocodiles and hippos this time, nor are we up to our thighs against a sentient goo like that fatberg with all the horrid false teeth in Merseyside." The memory sends a violent shudder through her. Cleanliness standards for any living being are probably repulsed by such things. The shit people flush is horrifying.

Still, she licks her lips and tries to banish the taste of rot in her mouth. "I know it's early, but tell me you have some kind of rotgut stored in your pocket? Yes, I can do it, but you aren't the one about to taste the river. A kiss of truth will not give us anything when her aura is that blank." The inevitable rush of earth and unwelcome flavours goes part and parcel with the worst aspects of psychometry, but she steels herself to do it, kneeling beside the student and smoothing out the edges of the tunic. A hopeless task, but a sign of care all the same.

"She is known for being a practicing Sunni Muslim. That cuts down on problems but opens a few options on our side of affairs. Let's hold off on calling up an efrit to ask, but any of your contacts talking about one of them stirring by? The realms invisible have been turbulent of late," she murmurs, glancing up at John with the same speculative look he shot her. Already the blue light's starting to weave around her fingers, saturating the air over where a soul's stain normally would be. Touch is inevitable, but the backwards chanting hasn't quite begun yet.

John Constantine has posed:
John's browse rise at the request for liquor, but his surprise is acquiescene rather than disbelief. One of his old flasks emerges from a pocket. It's uncapped, he takes a swig, and passes it to Zatanna with the narrow mouth still full of malt-scented blackness.

"You're halfway there, love, but I'm saying there's more to it," John explains. "Look, only a few kinds of people who set up soul jumps, right? The dying, the criminal, or the insane. You've got to be desperate enough to not care where it lands you, criminal enough to guarantee there's a fresh corpse waiting for it, or simply enough of a nutter to not give a shite either way."

"I'm not just saying that this was unplanned, I'm asking-- why the hell would a bloody college writer even know how to set up a soul jump on contingency? Why would someone /teach/ her that, and not bother to add on 'oh and make sure you've got a convenient receptacle on standby when you toss it in'?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Malted flavours will do. The bottle is taken. "Under consideration. We've left out one option for setting up a soul jump; the coerced. Someone who wouldn't do it unless they had to. Death isn't the only choice. Hang the right thing over someone's head and they will act, even if it harms them. Everyone has their price, I suppose." Her eyes shine with that electrified hue, drowning out the violet end of the spectrum with something closer to cyan, and drinking in the details. "Far be it from me to prod at the sensitive questions. There could be a price being exacted here. A university-aged writer might be on the desperate side, otherwise. A breakup, a harsh campaign online that pushed her this far? All possibilities if she wanted a new start, but that neglects the wherewithal. Not many of us know how to do it clean, and in a place like -this-? That river is hardly a pure stream of rebirth, and unless she practiced voudoun or some particularly filthy traditions, we're back to malevolent and criminal." Her lips part slightly to allow in a breath that circles around, fading back again. "None of it adds up, truly it doesn't. She wasn't just discarding herself. But she'd need a prepared vessel unless that part of the equation was missing. If we have a teacher somewhere lacking that, they need a kick in the pants and a good right hook."

Either way, she speculates no more, closing her eyes and pulling off her glove. It's held with the liquor, which will soon enough be drank... after, though. Putting her fingertips to the corpse's brow, she murmurs, "wohS em eht dlrow uoy hguorht ruoy gnivil seye dna seiromem."

So it begins, a symmetry of selves.

John Constantine has posed:
John watches the playback. It's quite surreal. A little hazy blue overlay of... everything. A little slice of simulated reality following a transparent, and temporarily alive, Karina as she walks along the beach. The travel takes some time. Fitful starts, stops. Looking around. Wandering in circles. Checking her phone.

"Bloody hell, was she on a stakeout or is she just trying to bore us to death?" The comment arrives after ten minutes, but John clearly makes it more of a rhetorical statment than a question.

The deceased's final moments play on, ticking away. Then in the recollection Karina turns on her heel as if responding to some noise or motion. Hands rise in a universal expression of 'surrender' at a blurry entity slightly out-of-frame. A gloved hand rises. Karina's words, garbled by death and echoing, are barely intelligible.

And then a blinding flash of blue light flashes from that hand. John reflexively ducks away from the murderous force unleashed, shielding his eyes and cursing under his breath.

When he looks back, the recollection of the young author collapses atop her own much more tangible corpse.

"Blimey, she was murdered," John remarks. "And... by a proper death spell. That was a bleedin' professional, Zee, I'm not sure I could hit somoene with a necromantic injunction like that if I shot from the hip. Give me a day of prep and a little extra whiskey in my Wheaties, maybe, but..." His head shakes, pondering this new information.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
The precious flask almost slips from Zee's fingers. She sinks onto her haunches in the melody of the spellcraft flowing through her, lips moving subtly to the words impressed by a memory plucked from the body and the earth itself lending impressions. Naturally few of those sounds actually turn audible until Karima herself starts to speak with the sing-song cadences of Yoruba and some of the Niger Delta's beautiful tones. It would almost be lovely to hear, except that they come in a whisper and smudged by frequency. Fingers splay open wider when the spell bites deep, rushing through the veins, using the woman more as a channel as inspiration seizes an artist. No amount of shaking free will stop the torrent, but it guides it, painting the shapes into revelation.

The flash doesn't cause her to flinch because the rising orb of magic from her open palm serves as a wellspring and protective aegis both. The flask slides to her hip and drops, landing bottom first in the muck, held up by the sheer stickiness of the soil logged by a season of mud. The recollection crashes down, but not the suspended spell-energy, that which the young woman probably /couldn't/ see but someone of Zatanna's lineage couldn't turn off if she tried.

The water shudders in concentric rings near the corpse. It lilts and flows. "No. Couldn't?" A rill of that foul water runs out from her nostril, coursing over her chin, pulling up deeper resonances with the difficulty of a pearl diver submerging herself and hoping this shell contains anything worthwhile, that one might have enough to feed on. Tiny morsels of wisdom, even as the Hudson tries to drown her in its weight. "Two. One's there, the other stayed back in the water. Boat?" Of course it's a boat, because no one sodding swims in the freaking Hudson. "Would have seen the boat. Knew the person on the boat, not the necromancer. Anger, fear, moment-- hope? It feels like it. Then crushed out and she's thrown out. Figure someone could earn money being her, steering her?"

The confounded look is promptly followed up with her doubling up, turning her head to spit out a metric quart of water, retching violently in the process.

It's a poisoned river. So too are its impressions.

John Constantine has posed:
"Easy, easy gel." John's calluses are hard-hewn and there's years of stains from smoke, whiskey, and more nefarious things on his hands. But his grip is gentle on Zatanna's biceps, first steadying her before she totters over and then, quickly helping get those raven tresses out of the path of the bile she's so forcibly ejecting. "There's a gel, just get it all out."

John's focus politely finds the riverbank again while Zee gathers her dignity about her again. There's just no polite way to vomit and certainly nothing about it a person likes to do in front of another human. "You always overdo it," John chivvies her. The comment reads as a bit snide, a little sharp-- but only an outsider would miss the undercurrents of concern in it. "Throwing yourself into your work like that, it's bad for the heart. Not to mention your dignity. Or my stomach contents."

The flasks's been knocked over; John grimaces at it, wipes it off, and tucks it in a pocket. A different flask comes up and he waves it under Zatanna's nose until it's noticed. "That's laced with essence of pyrium. Don't go breathing heavily around open flames for a bit, yeah?"

John clasps his hands together, rubs them briskly to ward off the cold. "Okay. We're too far from the deeps for a proper commercial boat. No legitimate operation's going to run commercial shipping or sailing this time of night. No fishermen. Harbor control tracks every boat that putters out the Hudson from here to the bleedin' Catskills. So small skiff, late at night, it must have come from a local marina. Even killers aren't daft enough to take a skiff into shallow waters at night, good way to bash your hull in. Harbormaster might have something for us, if we find the right bloke to armtwist."

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Nothing elegant about throwing up, even if it's mostly water. Mostly. Sediment in there too, a bit of organic matter in line with what the shallows of the Hudson contains. Metaphoric ectoplasm this is not, and it's a good thing Zee only drank tea and a single biscuit in the last few hours. She grimaces as another twinge runs through her, building into a hiccup that sounds ridiculously girlish instead of drunken or disgusted.

Wiping her sleeve against her mouth would be worse than not, so she just takes several moments of breathing to settle in. Teary eyes shut, the rebellion of her body settling in. "Tasted something else. Oily, almonds. It's on the back of her tongue. Check those candies."

I gives John something to do other than flutter around her, though she isn't shaking him off. Not stupid, no. The flask of liquor gets a look and she tips her head back. Mouth open to receive the aqua vitae, albeit this time, it's really fiery shadows to take the brackish flavour away. Two gulps and a third sip follow in sequence, only minimal sputtering needed to manage it all.

"Terrible, but don't dispute it is the least invasive method to her." Impressive to actually down that much liquor without being, you know, him. She isn't swaying on her feet as she hoists herself back up, using the mage as a prop as need be. Fingers curl into his coat as she settles. "Wasn't a kayak, didn't have a motor. Otherwise she would have heard it. Ugh, I almost understand why Yaya still bothers with smoke cigarettes. At least I'm not being a Cheval for anything. There should be some kind of launch down the way. Have your phone? What do we do about her in the meantime? Might recover the soul and put her back but... That's never clean."

John Constantine has posed:
"Ah-- no, luv, I'm a proper bastard but I wouldn't do that to the gel. She kicked off her old body, dropped into a new one. Neither contender is going to be much fun for her to slip into, and I get a bit..." John grimaces, head moving back and forth. "Well, squicky when it comes to wrangling up the hereafter. We could try whistling up her ghost but I've a feeling anyone with this sort of necromantic talent is going to find a way to hold that up."

Zatanna's swaying brings her into his proximity, and John catches her with one hand around the waist. "Zee, uh..." They're face to face for a few beats before Constantine jars his train of thought into motion. "Ah, listen, the body-- the dead body, let's leave her for the cops. Make sure we didn't leave any evidence behind, and call this one in to the constabulary. They'll deal with the body, we don't need any other evidence from it. Then we can start looking around for a dock the boat would have been tied up on; no motor narrows the search field quite a bit. So, uh--" He releases Zatanna and steps back, tilting his head towards the stairs up to the quay. "C'mon shake one of those legs love, it's time for a little old-fashioned footwork on this caper."

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"New body or none at all." Zatanna brushes the back of her hand against her mouth again, having done the best she can to remove the residue of death and the fluvial sediment from her mouth. She runs her tongue over her lips and turns away, shoving off towards the bank as the muck sucks at the soles of her boots. "I wager whoever did this came with their own purpose and no, just showing them up won't do much on our behalf. Get an angry necromancer in our wake more likely than not." She shrugs her shoulders as he pulls her in.

Steps traced, steps withdrawn. Always back to Rome, always back to the same spot. The loop of his arm finds hers around his neck before long. Face to face, for such a short time. Close enough the entanglement of breath matches the ashen haze always expunged from those lungs, and her heliotrope eyes widen a little. "I tend not to be nostalgic, but you are asking us to fly away." Emphasis on are, to be clear. A beat stretches out into a succession of them until he lets her go, but is the same said for her? Fingers slide off his nape, skidding down his shoulder, catching his upper arm similar to how he found hers.

A turn back to look at the water, and she sighs. "Clean up the purse then. You know how. Snag some of the candies and let's be done. Coercing calm from a spirit isn't harder when we have an offering, anyway."

She releases him, perhaps, or he just moves and her grip can't hold.

John Constantine has posed:
The moment is a tender one. Almost sweet. And it's a testament to Johns' poker face that he matches Zatanna's fluttering, deep gaze with a knowing look and crooked grin equally all his own.

At least until she aims her breath the other direction, and John can look over his other shoulder and gulp down some slightly-less-corrupted oxygen with a pained expression.

The motion of hands and tension between them lessens like two dancers missing a handhold mid-beat, but by the time it's done it's done and they're standing apart again. John's solution: jamming his hands in his pockets and pretending he was going to from the get-go.

"Right, candies it is." John sorts through the purse, pulls her student ID and the candies. The he rolls her like a professional streetpad, jewelry and all. Fingers count up forty-some waterlogged dollars in her purse before he walks back up to Zatanna with the loot in hand.

Her look is not missed; he looks from her, to his loot, then to her, and handspreads in a shrug. "What? Blimey, Zee, have some faith. Some scav will come along and take the jewelry if I don't, and 'lest this way you can send the personal effects back to her mum or family or whomever. Plus--" he holds up the small fold of bills. "Doing this one pro bono, I don't think the deceased would mind buying me *lunch* at a minimum. Eh?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"sropaV fo eht sdnalremmuS." Zee's words unfold as the miasma bursts into mead and apples, plunging through the dirt around her boots and washing it away. Grime slides off, and the mana fueling her system cuts through the remaining signatures of the river. Serves him right; he tastes like an ashtray often enough.

A flick of her wrists sends a jolt of sparkles into the air, erasing the steps in her wake, filling them in with water and dirt. Buoyed up means erasing where they have been. Now where she goes is another matter altogether, kissing the air and receiving a sensation of the warmest season floating on her tongue. Mmm. Running the tip over her lips satisfies her lipstick into place with no need to actually use the little glass tube secreted away... well, somewhere. She flits a few steps forward, waiting on him. "Her wealth isn't secured yet. Hate to think of someone moulding her face or wearing it for their own purposes, come to think."

John Constantine has posed:
"Blimey, that's a good point," John mutters, keeping up pace with her. "What if someone's trying to..." He considers that angle, and shakes his head-- disagreeing with his own speculation, not her point. "No, I don't know if that'd fly quite yet. Even if she wanted to, her publisher isn't going to pay her in cash. Has to be banked, and banks don't like fat cash withdrawals in general. Not early enough for the banks to be open and most folks aren't rousted out of bed."

John invades Zatanna's personal space and pilfers her cell phone. "Borrow this for a tic love, I just got an idea," he mutters, and examines a credit card in her wallet. "5/4 Bank, right here in New York," he mutters. John dials the number on the back of the card and lifts the phone to his ear.

"Hello yes, this is Officer Smythe, 33rd Precinct." His Irish accent is pretty good. "I have a credit card here found on a murder victim. I want you to put a hold on all the accounts for Karina Iyimede until and unless a family members shows up with a subpoena to release the funds. Anyone tries to make a withdrawal from the account, please contact me immediately." He recites Zatanna's cell phone number. "You can try me at the station but this is my cell if I'm not in, so call me here. Okay? Thanks."

John hands it back to Zatanna. "There, if nothing else that will keep the killers from making a fast getaway with her bank account information. Even if they don't call us, they'll call the constabulary and maybe that'll tie things up long enough for homicide to get out here and process her into the system."

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
The workings of that mind are formidable enough for her to be concerned; troubling enough for Zee to follow with a tip of her head and those glossy lips pressed into a moue. "Unless they need to be her. Need that creative spark to fire up something else. I hate to think of her stuck in a pen or a hell globe, but would it be the first time the kindled lightning of the muse was bottled up? All they'd need is a plastic Coke bottle around here to hold something like that, at least for a time. Charm it against transposition or travel into the spirit realms, and voila. Crap way to go about it but it would work."

Just a notion thrown out there as she waits for him to duplicate the register of a cop, to make the moves and statements needed to bypass a bank's security and build a rapport. All that has to be more than a little concerning, but his work is what it is. She can spend a few moments tracing paths along the sorry excuse for a bike path threading along the Hudson, headed past the industrial sites being slowly reclaimed by gentrification, nibbled away by those apartments or those fancy low-rise buildings wrapped up in enough greenery to give the public the boot. "I'm saying be her. Not short term, longer term. Have an impression, steal a face. You've nicked the notion of an efrit, which would make sense given her background. I didn't taste any suggestion of darker spirits. Necromantic genius had to play a long game. No one was taking -her- body back. Or if it was, they got interrupted on the exchange. She shows up unexpectedly in an old woman, and from there, I don't know we have a good direction. What are we overlooking?"

No quick money then. It's time to call up the police, to ring 911 from somewhere or another. Her phone is traceable; moreover, /she/ is traceable. With that phone call, there's only one other choice to make. "I liked this one, you realize that? I'm going to have to turn it to sand and glass after this. Here, dial up the cops and let live. They'll know me, and while we are at it, keep walking. Nothing lacking here but the dog and the picket fence."

People see what they want to see. The only way to get faster moving in the dawn light is a rental bike to check in on a boat launch or a marina.

John Constantine has posed:
"Oh cor, right, with the-- tracing," John grumbles. It sounds almost apologetic. "Bugger, I forget they can do that. Sorry. Tell you what, if they come around asking-- I'll do a little mind-whammy on 'em, save you the trouble."

The phone call's made, the body reported, and John tosses the phone into the harbor at a point where no one will find it before barnacles bed on the thing.

A bike's borrowed; up and down and around they go, to no avail. Predictably, it's the very last stop where they get their clue: a pair of men, one burly and large, one short and of average build. Not much in the way of discernable features from either of them, but pulling threads and some charm(s) from the magicians produce physical evidence in the way of a license plate. It's a matter of mere moments for John to call a friend on the force and run the numbers.

"Right. Okay. Thanks Bill. Yeah, I'll-- yeah damn right you owe me, and don't forget it or I'll put the boggarts *back* in your crawlspace." John hangs up the phone in the marina shack and walks back out to rejoin Zatanna. "Van's registered to a 'Bryan Carrington'. No idea who the blighter is, but he lives in Jersey City. Bit of a drive there; there's a Way we can take. Portal's just down here a ways, short walk and we'll be in Jersey."

John turns and starts walking cigarette dangling between his lips. "Y'know Zee, what you're talking about-- I mean is this maybe a stretch?" he hedges. "I mean okay, necromancer with a itchy trigger finger, I can buy. But you're not just-- look, bottling up a living human soul is the kind of thing that the bloody *gods* get pissy about."

"Fuck. Okay, no, Occam's Razor, right? Keep it simple. We know the bird in the river got ganked. We know she got translocated into the old biddy in the hospital, and promptly expired. And she said, she said 'not this', something like that?" he hazards, and touches Zee's arm to prompt her attention. "What *exactly* did she say before she expired? Er, for the second time?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"She worships one. Girl writes about being an outsider, Islamic and brown or black in a city full of people who aren't all the same, don't know how to handle her. You tell me that isn't putting a mighty dark sign on work that she has popularized, a hard hit for something she did? She opened eyes to another's experiences, and not only that, built respect and rapport. That rubs some people awfully wrong," Zee says from her own bike, unless they're going to ride like some of the Italians do, with her perched on the seat or standing on the back. Yeah, not happening without a bit of modification. Besides, it might give John an aneurysm to be that active.

She rubs her fingertips against her brow, other hand on the handlebars regardless. "I'm not saying it lightly. But someone punting a soul from its body, as you pointed, is no minor magic. This was a /jump/. Further, it went to an unprepared vessel at time of death, which is about as deliberate as you can get. A promise or a curse sworn at expiring breath is old magic, Old Kingdom codified kind of old. The last thing I want to imagine is a Setite or rogue priest of Nephthys on the prowl. We're starting to get awfully esoteric. None of this reads as Mayan or Aztec, and breath-theft in the ancient Hebrew or Babylonian traditions means we're dealing with one of the Lilim. Or their cousins. I really rather not gather what a war band would be doing with this."

Her eyes squint against the rising sun, bringing them closer to the Way to travel with greater ease than just securing two points in space. "She said no, no, not in this old hag. It wasn't supposed to be here, not like this." She repeats the word with the shiver crawling up her back. "John, she didn't want to be /there/, in that woman. She knew where she was. I am certain she understood the body she was in, and rejected it. Dying breath transactions like that... when the soul leaves, the new one sticks. Sit up after a moment of disorientation in a fresh new dress. Why would it keel over on her again? The old soul's gone, moved on, so it should be a seamless transfer. I'm sure I have something in the library confirming that, but there's a reason unconscious bodies and comatose victims get into so much trouble. I've got stacks on rituals to guard them."

She glances over at him. "Not this old hag. Was there a different choice? Did she jump somewhere /else?/"

John Constantine has posed:
"Blimey." John stops cold in his tracks. The gears are clearly working in his head. "I'm such a right *fucking* idiot Zatanna, I don't know why you put up with me." His pace picks up and John rushes to a steel door. Runes are hastily chalked around the frame, he knocks on it three times, and pulls it open. Hot, heavy jungle air flows out from the portal, and evaporates into nothingness a few feet furthur away.

"Oh, uh, watch yourself, the Green and the Grey are currently squabbling over this area, so don't make any jokes about Swamp Thing," John says. With that he heads into the Fae Realms as casually as ducking into a convenience store.

"Okay. What if Iyimide wasn't Iyimide?" He looks at Zatanna. "I mean-- what if she was already dead? I've been trying to rack my skull for an idea of why some ... some /college prole/ from Nigeria is going to know something as potent as a soul jump? Or how she'd get tangled up with a necromancer who could hit her that hard?"

The ancient jungle-- antidiluvian not just in the figurative sense-- burbles, creaks, and croaks around them. Something the size of a hill rumbles around in the distant shadows at the edge of photoluminescent darkness, and settles down again. John ignores it all. "What if our gel was already dead? Or at least, bodyswapped? Maybe, a- a- changeling wearing her skinsuit, or some other bleedin' necromancer who was riding that poor girl's body around? Maybe we aren't on time for a murder, maybe we're *very* late for one that took place days or weeks ago?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"/Constantine/!"

How often is that shouted? In Zatanna's case, it's a low hiss as he jerks the bike to a halt and forget that, it's walking. She hastily stows the bike in midspace, apologetic to some unknown source because there must be -- well, something. Some way to return it to the stand. Her lips go flat to her teeth for a moment as she takes one last breath of the city and avoids yelling after him. This is life at speed. "You know precisely why, if you could ever say the words yourself."

Words, her stock in trade.

Words, what shaped the world from the Presence on down. Logos, the word. So began all that is, and ever was, a spark of that gift residing in their hands.

Days it sucks to be human? Many. Still, she reaches her hand into the space ahead of her and steps through, preparing for some kind of imbalance to pop and settle around her. The Summerland gift of the fae worlds already saturates her breath. Equilibrium comes plenty easy then. Just a soft inhale, and all seems right.

"Family. Debts, accrued problems. Nigerian delta is a hotbed for kidnapping, trafficking, smuggling. Animist beliefs at war with Christian and Islamic faiths. Could well be that she got swept up in something she never was intended to, or she didn't hold up her end of the deal."

A frown lingers as she listens to the life growing around her, still and impossibly vibrant. The colours almost hurt if she was inclined to stare, rather than circle around John like some kind of panther in the dark. "What if she buys her way out? Plenty of money, plenty of promise. Someone kicks her out, someone riding her around and going through the motions. The necromancer she's upset shows up and blows the rider out, leaving us a dead body. Another mage out there, or a changeling, back in their own house as it were. And no accounting for where she is, except for sake of it all, there's no getting free."

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
A pause. Ten seconds of staring into the green and then she snaps her fingers. "John. Wait! Wait."

A brief pause and then the expression turns still, her body. "She was scraped clean like there was nothing inside. What if the /body/ isn't the real one? Could they have made the body instead, so hers is still alive somewhere? The changeling is the /figure/."

John Constantine has posed:
The answer to John's rhetorical self-criticism is missed. As is a fair amount of Zatanna's speculation and guesswork. Magic isn't a process that grants a lot of shortcuts, after all. Psychomancy doesn't provide all the answers, nor can magic simply suss one possibility out of many. It still takes detective work, looking at all the options and possibilities.

Until Zatanna calls his name out pointedly, and John pauses to look back at her.

"...Cor, that's a stretch, but it fits all the pieces." John scratches his jawline, nails raking over day-old stubble. "Would explain that sloppy soul jump. Why someone would risk killing a changeling in the middle of the city-- no death curse to contend with. But Iyimide, she's a writer. That sort of creativity isn't easy to trap and tap. She's alive somewhere then, yeah?"

"I'm going to be sorely disappointed if this turns out to be about money." The magus sighs and beckons Zatanna along. A giant old twisted gnarl looms in front of them. Footprints, some quite recent and some faded to near-invisibility, surround it. Chalk marks and a little push of willpower open the Way, shedding painfully bright city sunlight and the stink of motor oil. Out they go into Jersey City, and John immediately starts casting around for a reference point. "He's over in Bergen. Not a particularly nice part of town," John observes. "I think we're pretty close-- might need to walk a block or two over to him."

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Shortcuts belong elsewhere. No one ever did well by magic to simply assume a few shakes of a lamb's tail would solve for every trouble, when it cannot be further from the truth. Let fools assume an easier course, and perish for it.

"Might be a stretch, but so is someone roaming around in her body," Zatanna fires back at John. Crossing her arms over her chest for a moment, she considers him from within the ossified foliage drawn into whimsical structures, unseen troubles punctuating the silence with the odd rustle or crackle.

No telling where they come from. "Iyimide is an author, a student, a displaced young woman. Easy to be distracted, wrapped up on a single track. I've watched you in the same mode, John, driven by whatever case consumed you. Or a spell. It takes a certain degree of concentration."

A swift turn brings her to face him rather than the trees, languid wasting of time and space wrapped around them. Carefully she climbs over one of the roots, shielding her face with her hand. "Bergen as in Norway, one could only wish. Right?" Grim as the expanse may be, she admires it while moving in his wake. Let the man with the luck cut a path.

John Constantine has posed:
"I'll take a week in Aruba if we're wishing for things," John agrees.

It doesn't take long for them to track down the address in question-- an apartment building, a ghetto really, run down and decrepit. Not far from the tram, with honking traffic and weary-eyed residents either shuffling to work or despondent for their lack of payed labor.

They're positioned across the street from the building; the address is plainly visible. But John stays his motion forward, putting one arm across Zatanna's midsection to keep her from crossing the street towards the apartment. "Hang back a tic, luv, something's amiss." He furrows his brow at the red brick building.

"I could swear there are only five windows on the third floor. See?" He points. "Five on the second, five on the fourth and fifth floor, five on the... no, damnit, there, you see-- a sixth window?" He blinks, and his finger wavers from where it accuses the building of posession of illicit architecture.

"Or not. Something's giving me a headache luv, just staring at the thing. Am I going barmey?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
The black-haired mage laughs, but the sound holds a trace of the gallows. "Of all the people in the world, you wish for Aruba? Nothing stops us from opening a door and marching right through, in case those white-sand beaches and endlessly blue seas call to you. Though knowing you, you'd probably stave off a revolution and nearly be eaten by a shark."

Bergen in Norway is much nicer than Jersey, but everything is honestly nicer than Jersey City except other decrepit spots rotting on the map ever since Burr shot Hamilton on the bluffs overlooking the river close to the city they both loved, lost, and languished in. Weary residents coming and going know the malaise. They can't have much to say or think about Zee in his wake, following the Englishman with a purposeful stride.

Not an elegant building; not a pretty thing to lay eyes on. "I've had worse," she observes dryly, tilting back her head. Muddy impressions leap and swirl around the street. Here's a place drowned in pain, in suffering with the endless price of scraping out an existence. Where loss and fear go hand in hand, since the native atmosphere of these people is expecting their hard-earned gains wash away in the rain, with the next bill delivered, a pinch here on already lean times. "Blood and stones," she murmurs, taking it in. "The whole place reeks of..."

Something, thick and cloying on her tongue. "They've bent it. I should have a compact mirror with me." Part of the stock in trade. Pulling on those threads brings the little plastic disk that flicks open, displaying the interior. Something she needs in order to make any hope of it, anyway, focusing on shifting the mirror back and forth. Distorted reflections in an engraving of truth. "Six. It's not a window, it looks like an arch."

John Constantine has posed:
John crowds into Zee's space and looks into the mirror. "Bollocks. You're right." He exhales wearily, a motion that leads to a coughing fit. A coughing fit that's cured by a nip of the whiskey in his battered old silver flask.

"Okay." Another cigarette lights up, paper ashing and crinkling when exposed to the zippo's red tongue of fire. "Could go in the main, but then we're possibly contending with a threshold. Go in the archway, but that's a flashy entrance. Not to mention--" he gestures. "Much as I don't have any love for the fair citizens of Jersey City, that could make some narsty collateral damage. Got any thoughts, or should we just nab 'em when they pop out for a slice of pizza?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
The little mirror shows their faces, at least in a crescent. Not too impressive to behold, but pretty all the same, measured in silver and a pale blue. When he coughs, Zatanna snaps the mirror up and produces a handkerchief with a small flourish. Nothing too showy here.

"Take it." The monogram in the corner shows a slender, stooping bird and not a great deal more. Plumage shimmers in the fanned rainbow of spreading feathers, visible only against the pale. "Go in an archway and you're asking for trouble. We go in via roof," she nods to the building, "or a window. Fire escape has the right resonance, doesn't it? The place to run from, and where heroes scale to rescue those in need. A soul of your own begging for help? Assuming Miss Karima wasn't getting in trouble and failing to notice the young man on the boat was somehow a practicing soul-swallower or something worse by half."

John Constantine has posed:
"Fire escape. Fuck me sideways," John marvels, and cranes his neck at the thing. "Can't argue with that logic. You're a bloody marvel, Zee." He takes the kerchief absently, blows his nose into it, and stuffs it into a pocket without much ceremony. Ah well, it's the thought that counts.

Around to the back alley they go, looking this way and that for any interlopers. It takes John a few minutes to pull a dumpster and some pallets around for a very rickety platform. A few swings with some found rebar knocks the ladder loose and it comes rattling down.

"No magic until we're in place, orright?" John offers Zatanna a hand up onto the platform, holding the ladder steady. "They'll ignore someone larkin' about on the ladder but let's not give away our arrival." His chin uplifts at the third-floor access.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
The slow, sidelong look from behind dark lashes holds an intrepid purpose. Sometimes self-possession ought to reign. Sometimes not at all.

Appraisals of great masterworks by the greats have been done in less time by renowned employees of Sotheby's or the FBI crime unit, compared to how Constantine earns that measured regard while they slink into a darkened alley and he performs the fine exercise of urban renewal. Or building, like children do in parts of the UK, playing with whatever scraps they can find from the bin and it's considered to be a practical exercise rather than destitute playtime on a council property. Assemble a few bits of rebar, build it alarmingly high, and then say no magic after clambering up the thing into the corroded spaces where teenagers have always slunk to talk on their phones, escape abusive parents, neck like... well, teens.

"Then we better lark." His sentiment is held up easily as she stretches out her arms to balance and has to figure her way up to climbing the dumpster. "You know you ought to learn about ziplines. Shoot them from here to there, much faster for getting about." When it seems the dumpster will hold for her climbing up on it, standing there, she aims to get her hands on the ladder. It at least might weather another night. Though it's all fair to leave him behind as she starts climbing, and the lamentation of wearing nothing but fishnets is probably known to every shadow in that forgettable cleft between two equally dingy buildings.

On the other hand, she waits for him up on the squashed landing a floor up, if he doesn't overtake her. Then, exchanging places gets... squishy.

John Constantine has posed:
"The fuck am I gonna get a zipline, eh?"

John shimmies up the ladder behind Zatanna, and lest anyone accuse him of being a joyless fellow, he thoroughly enjoys the view ahead of him all the way up to the landing. It's the little things in life, after all.

Once on the second-floor landing John pauses Zatanna's path with a hand on her arm. He shimmies past her with a great deal of wholly un-necessary personal contact, and doesn't even bother to hide a grin on his face when he does. John creeps up the last steps as silently as possible and peeks up at the windows. "We're clear. Windows are covered." John brings Zatanna up, using the thin arch between the two windows for what little cover it offers.

"Can't get a feel if anyone's in there or not. There are burglar wards up. I can probably disarm them but we're going to be awfully exposed if they cop to it," he tells Zatanna. "You up for some spell-slinging?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Zee doesn't let him past too easily. Not without pressing Constantine back to the wall or the metal rail, which might well be normal except her father was -- is -- perhaps the greatest contortionist of the age, and she proves equally competent in her performances at getting out of darn near everything and anything.

One Englishman blocks up the whole system, as five hundred years of western history explains. Europe, Americas, India? All blockaded by a man with a cigarette. One that she considers plucking away, but doesn't, though perhaps the grin is the better when bisected by his favourite burning stick of cancerous death. Still until he peers up into the archway off the escape, she doesn't quite rush to follow. There is a view, after all.

Pursing her lips, she considers the architecture. "Bothersome wards. Pulling them down or going for invisibility is too unpleasant. Might be easier to rekey them to look for a different kind of burglar. You know, the police kind. Or raccoons." A smirk shows. "Nasty business, unless you had a mind of something else. You tear, I sling?"

John Constantine has posed:
"Just like Chicago. My brain, your brawn," John grins. He's already at work with a permanent marker of all things. It's a tricky bit of work, touching the edge of the warding runes without setting them off. The applied ink luminesces several times and John scribbles something in response and imbues it with his own power in turn to neutralize it.

"Fuck," he snarls, and writes faster. There seems to be a race, new cryptic letters appearing almost faster than he can write his. Rakish, foul-tempered, and frequently stinking of cheap liquor and cigarettes, one might make the fatal mistake of under-estimating John. Many have, in the past, and there is a reason there are a long string of enemy corpses in his wake.

Finally he sags back and takes a breath. Light flickers and all the ink goes back to a matte black. Sweat dampens his temples and John gestures at Zatanna to go ahead while he catches his breath.

"These buggers are no joke, Zee. Runes weren't just for an alarm. Keyed to explode. Would have taken out the while building."

A crooked grin is flashed in Zatanna's direction. "Luckily, yours truly knows a thing or two about a thing or two. Went ahead and disarmed 'em."

The corpses of many enemies, and for that cocksure approach, many friends, too.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Those wards ripple and flow with the persistent base beat of a faulty subwoofer. Thrum of the city caught up in the dwelling, shaking down into the floorboards. On the exterior plinth, the rickety old fire escape offers few options. Since the whole point is looking serious, and being serious, then so be it.

She leans forward and presses that handkerchief to the rakehell's brow, blowing a kiss after it. So many friends and enemies fallen to that cocky grin, never for long, never without consequence. The finest escape act of them all is the one who dodges the wrecking ball, the car accident averted with a swerve and a smile. Ink turned to a slurry on the brick and cheap mortar goes limpid where she gazes to the empty space of the arch, and draws the smooth curve with her fingertips.

He writes in ink. She uses lipgloss, a little tube of it in clear, the better to write on the keystone while standing on tiptoe: <<ecneliS.>>

A mercurial circle bisected by a V makes for a simple rune, and thus one to trust in when shutting her eyes to set the spell that becalms itself.

In, an act of shunting themselves to the brick, and then through a veil of cloth and what isn't glass anymore. Foil and plastic to seal a window that isn't a window.

John Constantine has posed:
John uses his most effective tool for breaking a window-- a brick from the landing. He's quite thorough about it, making sure all the sharp shards are clear, and then rolls through the window so his coat protects him from any jagged edges. Hands turn to offer Zee a path through also, ducking her head and giving her balance so the more lissome of the two can get inside without injuring herself.

Left and right along the hallway; either directions' good so John arbitrarily goes left. The magus finds a door that's runed and warded and once more destroys the spells with a little focus and a swift fingers, snipping apart the bundled knot of magic quite cleverly.

John cradles fire in his palm, close to his chest. A magus' loaded gun. It's deeply red and gives off hints of sulfur. His first element-- energy of destruction and creation. Potent and difficult to control, and easily underestimated by people who are too arrogant for how it burns.

The door swings open on a room not much bigger than a closet. A single bed, a single occupant, and tear-streaked features turn sharply towards John and Zatanna as he enters.

"Ms. Iyimide, I presume?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
No need to get deep lacerations from a careless window break. After all, if anyone ought to know how to lob a brick through glass, it's John Constantine, "the devils want my soul" man about town. Not a single sound of tinkling glass joins them, nor the squeal of metal when weight on the old metallic grid bolted into th ewall. Her spell holds, then, the runic invocation strengthening the broadcast rather than a simple chalking will do. Unless someone wipes off the lip gloss, but then they have bigger problems.

Snipped pieces of spell gossamer dance like spiderwebs on the heavy, choked air. Here everything carries an oily sheen like burnt cookery. The kind of warped stink you get from leaving a pot on the burner too long, compounded by fifty years of neglect, if not in the building than the neighbourhood. It's Jersey. Nothing here escapes the plague of Nega Jersey on the other side, the dark reflection of an already grim place.

Zee tugs the bottom of her corset to centre it a bit better, dusting her hands over her pants. Not just making herself look pretty for the blond mage; an act of scrubbing down clarifies her aura in the process, making it that much harder for any impressions on her to show up. The abjurative protection follows a murmured incantation, binding the air into preparation of hardening if need be.

A door opens.

And past a door, a cell.

No typewriter. No phone. That mattress is thin as a board, ghostly, and the chains linked around bleeding, scabbed ankles not entirely of a human make. No, the metal they're constructed of is far more impervious than that and disturbingly not of this plane or the one they left. It's almost watery, smelling like the slow-flowing Nile through its reedy delta. Karima coughs weakly, looking up at John when he says her name.

John Constantine has posed:
"Fuck me," John remarks. The profanity's more like a prayer than a curse. It's an ugly situation and an ugly view. No one deserves to be chained up like that, left in such abasement.

"I'm John Constantine," he tells her. His head tilts towards Zatanna. "This's Zatanna. We're not with... uh, whoever did this to you."

John looks at the manacles from a distance, then at Iyimide's tear-streaked face. Then to Zatanna. "Maybe you ought to handle this. You've got a bit of a finer touch than me. Plus, y'know--" a finger wiggles a s-shaped course from her brow to her sternum, at a distance. "Two gels, bonding time, y'know, all that woman stuff. She'll like you," John assures Zee, and moves to change places and guard the door. "Tell her a joke or something."

For all his glib demeanour, John's eyes are sharply alert and an ear's straining for the door. This is the touchy part of an extraction, after all-- with the quarry in hand, unknown predators possibly arriving, and a traumatized survivor needing escort out of a building.

"Maybe be quick about it, eh?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
No one deserves to be chained up at all. Bondage of the body or the soul doesn't stack up well. Ms. Iyimide has the look of someone fed but not feasting, ravaged to the depths of the soul or at least hauled away.

She parses the English, smooth face turned up. Those sunken eyes reflect some degree of intelligence, but she blinks and shakes her head. "I don't know the name. Should I?" The fluting trills of Nigerian English are flattened, dull as her lank hair.

Zatanna tilts her head to see that set of chains at an oblique angle and she sinks down. "Put the fire away, it's not helping anything unless you want to melt it. These are... well-made," she says flatly. "Too well made. Look at them, see? Not metal at all." No one appreciates any kind of analysis but it must be for an important purpose, which is only fair considerably the links are more hardened liquid than they are actually anything else.

John Constantine has posed:
"Best you don't know 'em," John admits. He glances at the fire in his palm and curls his fingers over it, making it evaporate without so much as a wisp of smoke. The magus moves over to Iyimede, looking over Zatanna's shoulder at the chains holding her back.

"Can't break them, but I can at least get you out of here," John tells the girl. He moves to the loop holding the chains to the bed and mumbles something that sounds vaguely Norwegian over them. A cool breath from his pursed lips freezes the loop, frosting over the lag bolts holding it in place. It turns frosty, then white, brittled by cold so intense it's palpable even at that short distance.

John leans back and gives the loop two stiff kicks; it shatters and breaks loose, frozen to the point of fragility.

"There's a gel, up you go," John soothes Iyimide. He gives Zatanna a look over the girl's head. It's hard to read-- but it suggests that John doesn't completely trust the woman they just liberated.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
The chains that bind are matters of marid-steel, silvery water and bindings of the purest depths of the ocean. Pressure holds them together, and in time make it very unpleasant to watch as more of the chain flows together, resisting the crackling energy. They grow back despite John's initial efforts, fed on tears running from the weepy writer, which might be disadvantageous to them in the long run.

"How did you end up here?" Zatanna asks gently but the best of intentions sometimes run off. Karima's eyes well up and she shakes her head, doing all she can to hold herself together.

"I... don't, don't touch. I can't..." She buckles in an effort to pull herself up, and then utters a little sound to collapse back on the ground, like her joints don't quite work the way they can be expected to.