The basement steps creak with each step, almost as if they're announcing Elton and Tiff's trespassing. Once at the top, the door to the basement is already open, leading into a large, but messy kitchen. Both teens and animal companions exit the basement into the kitchen.
Looking around, they can see the appliances or the decor haven't been updated since maybe the 80s, with dated equipment and faded yellow countertops.
"Looks like our kitchen from before I was born."
She laughs. "Looks like our kitchen now."
Still, it's a good idea to check for dust. For tracks. For something, some sign of a person being here. Some sign of magic.
She still isn't good at that last bit, she knows. That's more Darius's purview, or Drake's if he's feeling frisky and cooperative.
"So what now?" Elton looks up at one of the nearby cabinets. "Something tells me you have more experience with this kind of shit than I do. I've been in the house before, but only the living room or whatever the main family room is. I... Just... what next?"
"You want to know a secret?" A bittersweet smile crosses her lips. "I've never actually gotten to investigate a haunting before. Even with looking for Boris Covington, I've never..." She pauses to choose her words more clearly. "I've never really gotten to do the classic ghost investigation thing. It's always something else."
She pauses, shines her flashlight up at a layer of dust on the light fixture. It's worth elaborating on, she thinks, even with all the flies under the lightbulbs that she's seeing. Boris should really clean those out before he tries using this room, she thinks. She isn't sure how flammable they are, but she does know they're annoying.
Back to him, she keeps speaking. "It's not for lack of trying. I've been trying to get into our local strip club, because that stage is definitely haunted, but my aunt instructed everyone not to let me in and her friend agreed. So I mostly just stand outside and try to do readings while I'm choking on grapes."
Kepler perks up at the mention of grapes.
Tiff ignores his misguided optimism. "We could try to do some readings, but you don't have a Spiritbox— you were right, it was a good idea— and I didn't bring my EMF reader. I could make one, if I had the supplies, but I don't have anything I could use with me. For now, I think we just sweep the house and look for this guy I'm looking for."
He knew he should have brought the Spiritbox, dammit. "I wish we were doing this more prepared and at night, but it is what it is."
"It is what it is," she agrees.
"So you're looking for someone named Boris Covington, eh? Why is he so special?
Elton turns on his phone's flashlight and shines it around the kitchen. Bright white light mixes with Tiff's muted yellow-green. Thunder rumbles outside the large back windows; the rain pours down in sheets on overgrown plants. At least there's ambience.
She chuckles again, and crouches down to peek into one of the cabinets under the sink. "See, that's kind of one of those things I would want to explain later. He's, uh—"
Tiff picks up a bottle of something under the pipes and inspects it. "Yeah? What is he?"
"Shit, Elton. There's so much you don't know."
She needs to keep her cool. Tiff knows that— and she knows his type. She was him. Hell, she is him. Some sort of searcher; someone who isn't satisfied until they've seen everything and then some. They all have that drive, that edge. You have to get to the bottom of whatever macabre thing the world has in store for you, and you think ghosts are so fucking cool. Every answer leads to three more questions. You're never satisfied. It turns into a fascination with portals; it turns into a need to practice supernatural medicine because nobody else is doing it; it turns into saving the world over and over again because this is what your life is like now, when you really just wanted to find Bigfoot or research local fairy tales or step into a haunted house with a weird rat and his fucked-up American girl.
She has two options here: she can let him in on absolutely everything, or she can find a way to spin it. On a moral level, there isn't a way she's going to be able to keep the truth about Chip Winger from him when he inevitably comes up, like she knows he will if she tries to explain.
Tiff closes the cabinet. All she found down there were rusted pipes and a half-empty box of baking soda. The bottle was just hydrogen peroxide, long since turned to water. Jesus watch out; there are no ghosts in the creaking faucet.
Like this is the most casual thing she has ever done, Tiff hoists herself up onto the tiled counter and takes a seat. "Boris Covington isn't here. In this kitchen, I mean."
She doesn't say anything for a second. Obviously he isn't here. Duh.
"So— there's a lot that I could explain. What do you know about Chip Winger? You heard he died, right?"
Elton watches her struggle internally with the question; he can see her gears turning. He wants to know whatever it is that she's hiding, and he can imagine now that she has been hiding quite a bit. Whether or not it's intentional remains to be seen. Though she can't be more than a year or two older than him, Tiff looks like she has experience well beyond her years. There's something about the way she carries herself that tells Elton he knows nothing. Sure, he has his YouTube show, and he has caught many EVPs, but what does he actually know about the unseen world of the paranormal?
Well, there's also Dingus. That was his true debut when it came to things beyond belief.
He looks down to Dingus, who has been sniffing the kitchen for the past few minutes and smiles. That's his secret to keep.
Tiff's question brings Elton back to their current reality. He blinked. "What? Winger?"
"Not Winger. Not Kip Winger."
"I didn't say Kip Winger. Why would I say Kip Winger?"
"Chip Winger. The wrestler." She nods. "Yeah. The wrestler. Chip Winger."
"He actually came through here and ate at the Big Beaver three years ago. My aunt is a massive fan. I know he was Lake Wonder's mayor and he was caught doing some shady shit, but... dead? No, I didn't. Why?"
She breathes in, deep and sharp. "I'm about to say so much insane shit. Prepare yourself."
Before she can say anything, Kepler pats her leg gently and she reaches down to pick him up in the way he wants. She doesn't want to hold him when she knows she's going to gesticulate and reference bits of her notebook for proof, but it's good to have him there. Rat hands scramble on tile while he plays with the sink and an absolutely ancient sponge someone left there. So much for support.
"So— I moved to Lake Wonder in August 2020, when he was the mayor. Unbeknownst to me at the time, and unbeknownst to everyone including his... fuck, does Ant use nephew or nibling? He was my friend Ant's uncle, okay? It tracks. And I'm on track— we were fighting an elf, and he was of great help to us because wrestling and fitness icon Chip Winger was also, surprise surprise, a wizard with a lair in his basement that he invited a bunch of teenagers to sit near so they could project their consciousnesses into a different realm. A dream realm! A realm of dreams! We fought Oneiron and Lewis Ferrier died, and we just kind of left him there, and I'm not sure what Chip did to him because—" Tiff winces. "They're clones. Of each other. That's not relevant."
Sitting actually isn't working, so she hops down from the counter so she can pace back and forth on this carpeted kitchen floor (and tries not to say anything about Zlob, who likes that their kitchen is carpeted, for some reason).
"Unfortunately, he was also evil, so, you know, the next year, while I was still reeling from half my friends leaving and also watching a different wizard fall to his death, he tried to summon an extradimensional being into the world— it's a real bitch, by the way, and wouldn't let me leave— and used its shadow spawn to warp the people around him and also try to kill me. Boris Covington is a necromancer who used to work for the American government, so I'm only here because, in a weird perversion of my family's whole shitass deal, I'm weirdly skilled at fighting wizards and nightmares? And they worked together, in some capacity."
Still pacing, she flips to a relevant page in her notebook— not on Boris Covington, since she knows next to nothing, but Chip Winger. His face, painted the way it was on the night of April 1st, stares back at her from the graph-lined pages; she tries not to look. She bookmarks the pages on the Mop Wizard, and the pages on necromancy and its aftereffects. There's nothing wrong with necromancy, she doesn't think. The issue isn't with the effect. It's all in the execution.
"Listen— I know it's weird to ramble about Chip Winger, but it tracks in my head even if Boris has nothing to do with the Order of the Way Through and everything to do with the Black Robes Division, because— Fuck, I don't know. I can't explain it." She thrusts the notebook at him, expecting he'll take it. "There's more to it. There's a lot more. He's secretly my friend's dad; he was camp director when my... friend went to camp at his camp in the 1980s and he slept while the counselors did weird supernatural shit, apparently; he killed himself in front of me after I kicked one of his teeth out; he's the one who tried to free Oneiron in the first place; he tried to kill me at that same summer camp. But— the basics of 'evil wizard who tried to end the world' suffices. Fuck— I can't even get into the Time Gnome."
Elton finds his way to the counter and jumps up to sit on it while Tiff paces back and forth, ranting about wizards, wizard orders, the U.S. government, and so much more unhinged shit. At each new thing she mentions, Elton knows he's diving into the deep end. "The Time Gnome? What the fuck is the Time Gnome?"
"He's relevant and I can't get into him. There's an entire structure of the universe that this fits into that I can't even explain because there's so much— also, it probably isn't relevant. My point being— if Boris Covington resembles Chip Winger even a little, and I think he probably does, given some quote-unquote incidents, it spells disaster if we don't figure out what's going on. Whatever it is. And if we don't find him, wherever he is."
Once she finishes, he takes a deep breath and exhales. "Wow. Holy shit. Absolutely fucking holy shit."
Dingus tugs on his leash while he sniffs around the carpeted kitchen, looking for whatever it is that dogs look for. Elton runs a hand through his messy hair and just watches him.
After a second in the dim, rainy quiet, he breathes, "So, that was a lot, Tiff."
"I know."
"That was so much more than I had ever guessed you were hiding."
"I know."
"Jesus. Okay, Boris Covington is a necromancer and we need to figure out what he's up to. Got it. Cool. Sounds like just another day for you."
"It's really... not..." She doesn't sound sure about that. She kind of isn't.
Elton hops down and gives the leash a little tug, bringing Dingus over to him while he walks to the threshold of the kitchen. "Guess we have to do some exploring, eh?"
"Yeah, I guess so. I don't see him here. Maybe he's not home right now."
"Oh," he recalls, like a change in subject, "I suppose you shared your secrets, so I'll share mine. Dingus isn't a dog at all. Not really, anyway."
"First of all, none of what I said is really a secret that I have. If I said I was a weird fucking demigod thing, or I work for a vampire, or I— fuck, okay, I'll finish the sentence— am married, those would be secrets. It's not— Chip Winger— I've told people what he did before. I think. We had to spin it. But—" She drops down to the floor and tries to look Dingus in the eyes and mouth, forgetting her second point (If he's not a dog, what is he?) entirely.
A big grin spreads across Elton's face as Tiff looks Dingus in the eyes. Dingus licks Tiff's face and wags his tail, seemingly oblivious to whatever Tiff is trying to do.
"Those would be secrets, absolutely."
"They're really not. I'm kind of an open book when you get to know me—"
"Wait!"
She touches the dog's bottom jaw so she can try to gently open it. Dingus obliges. "I'm waiting."
"Demigod?" He shakes his head and waves his own question off. "That can wait. Dingus is a dog, yes. Well, he prefers being a dog. Which makes it even more ridiculous that he got stuck. In reality, though, he's... I guess you'd call him a Hellhound. I guess?"
Dingus wags his tail even harder, pleased with himself for the simple act of being.
"Aww! Oh my god!" she coos. "I don't think I've ever seen one before! This is so neat!" She goes to touch the dog's teeth and thinks better of it. The last time she stuck her hand this close to a supernatural dog, it opened its face like a banana.
Dingus opens his mouth to show her normal dog teeth and closes it again when she pats the side of his snout gently. He licks her one more time before going to sit next to Elton.
Elton gives the pooch a scratch behind the ear and a pat on the side before looking back to the girl crouching on the ground.
"Yep. He saved my life. My uncle was a paranormal investigator and a medium. Dabbled in all sorts of occult shit, too. Mostly harmless stuff. Until it wasn't. I was visiting his house on the lake just a few hours from here last year and he had recently purchased a book called... oh what was it? Something about Devilry or Demonic shit. Either way, he was excited because it was apparently one of the rarest occult books out there. Cost him $300,000."
"That's too much money for a book."
"Anyway, long story short, he and his band of occult buddies did a ritual in the book and guess what? It opened a fucking portal to Hell." He knows this story sounds insane, but it was the truth. Unbelievable as it was, it was the absolute truth.
She only has one question. "Can I have the book?"
"What? No. He got rid of it after the incident."
"Where? I can be trusted. I like portals."
"It sounds like you can't be trusted."
"Because I like portals? Where's the book?"
"An associate of his, some European guy I only ever met once. He wasn't at the ritual."
"Oh, Iotrescu?" She stops scribbling in her notebook, the thrill of mystery lost once more. "I know him."
"Of course you do."
"Well, he's— he's the one I got the fucking books from." She shakes her wrist at him. There's no way for him to know what it means, but she knows it's just as related to portals as the conversation. "I can just ask him when I get back, I guess. I'll owe him a favor, or I'll pretend to break in like I always do. He's real weird about feet."
"I wouldn't fuck with that book, Tiff. An actual demon came through. Grotesque fucking thing."
"They tend to be. Or so I've heard."
"Yeah, my uncle did a fucking Satanic ritual with his teenage nephew sleeping in his bed. Well, he thought I was asleep. I followed him to his weird ritual cave and watched it. My mom was so pissed."
She pauses and gives him a sympathetic look. "That's kind of shit, that your uncle did that."
"Yeah. The thing killed one of my uncle's friends. Ripped him right in half. It would have done the same to me but my boy Dingus here came to my rescue." He reaches down to scratch the Hellhound behind the ears.
She chuckles, thinking about that other version of her that died at thirty-one. "That happened to me, once. She died."
There's a joke she could make there, about not being able to die, but she's pretty sure a demon could kill her. All the stardust in the world doesn't change the divinity-kills-divinity rule.
"You're a real weird fuck–"
A loud crash above them cuts Elton off mid-sentence.
"Perfect." Tiff looks up at Elton from the ground. "Where are the stairs?"
"I think they're on the other side of the house, but it's been a long time." He has only been in the family room once. When he was twelve. He does remember having seen stairs when he dared to go deeper in the house.
"Well, that's something we don't have much of, because the gnome isn't even fucking here." She doesn't stay to explain. She just takes off in the direction that feels right, launching out of her crouch to running.