Page 8 of Hallow Hill at Halloween: Part Two

CHAPTER FOUR Will the Real Jeff Please Stand up?

“What’s happened?” Jeff asked.

Jeff was bent over a clipboard resting on a shelf. He turned his head toward Esme, but didn’t stand fully upright. Not yet. “What’s happened?”

Esme could tell by the change in his looks and demeanor that he’d read her correctly. Yeah. Something was wrong. He saw it all over Esme’s aura and, by the gods, had been in Hallow Hill long enough to care about the people and what happened there. Perhaps not smart, but there it was.

“Will we have privacy here?” she asked, looking around the large kitchen. “This is between the two of us.”

He set the clipboard aside as he stood. “Back in one.”

Jeff walked out into the pub where he found Molly engaged in conversation with a patron at the bar. “I’m away for a bit,” he told her. She nodded.

When he re-entered the kitchen, he was removing his apron. “This way,” was all he said, but she noticed he bagged a couple of fresh marmalade scones on the way.

Esme followed him to the back of the kitchen, through the stores and the delivery door. Jeff unlocked a nearby door that revealed a staircase leading up to the apartment where he lived above the pub.

“This is convenient,” Esme said.

“That’s the idea,” Jeff replied.

Jeff’s home was humble, but well-organized, clean, and neat as a pin. He pointed to an overdone velvet sofa in a gesture that invited her to sit while continuing to the kitchen at the end of the living area.

He lit the flame under the teapot wordlessly. That was alright with Esme. She wasn’t the sort that felt awkward if the air wasn’t full of freshly spoken words.

In time he joined her with a surprisingly elegant silver tea service complete with china that looked old and priceless.

“Tea?” he said as he sat in a leather chair across from her.

“Since you’ve gone to the trouble.” She poured her own tea, appreciating his choice of green jasmine. Most Brits go for British Breakfast or Earl Grey. He’d also set the scones out with small plates and orange butter. “Thank you.”

He nodded once before saying, “What brings you here?”

“It’s Rita,” Esme said, setting her cup down in its saucer. “She’s fallen into a coma. At least, that’s what we’re calling it for lack of a better word.” She paused, but Jeff was, apparently waiting to hear what this had to do with him.

She obliged by telling as much as she knew about Medusa escaping her prison and going on a nightmare form of rampage in the human world. Jeff connected the threads when he learned that the Greeks had put the cleanup off onto the Bureau.

“Lazy buggers,” Jeff said.

“Indeed.” Esme agreed. “I don’t know exactly how these two things are related. I’m not even a hundred percent sure they are.”

“It’s a hunch.”

“By any name.”

“But it’s too much of a coincidence. The Greeks have made Rita the scapegoat for sentencing her which makes the Bureau responsible for enforcing her ruling.”

“Precisely.”

“And why are you telling me?” Esme doesn’t answer verbally, but her stare told him that she saw him. The real him. His hiding game was good enough to fool the fae world, but Esme was something else. For one thing, she wasn’ttotallyabsorbed in herself. After a period of silence that would’ve been uncomfortable for humans, Jeff simply nodded.

The Lorcan and the witch understood each other. So be it. Esme counted her neighborly relationship with Jeff as one of her most significant bits of fortune because he was a resource unlike any other.

Jeff’s real name was Megalezhef Lorqunam, the Sanctioned, although few would know him by it, and certainly no one in Hallow Hill. He was Lorcan, one of an almost extinct species of magic kind who go mad at the end of their lives when they’re no longer able to hold a single form at will. They become a danger to others as well as themselves.

In ancient times, they had collectively decided the best way to resolve the issue was to deal with it themselves. In each generation they would identify a single Lorcan with a particular talent set, one who most closely fit the profile they’d devised as ideal. That one Lorcan would become responsible for dispatching the unfortunate elder whenever it was his or her time.

Jeff came of age at a time when his predecessor was nearing his own end. Without mentor, manual, or any instruction, he was assigned the task of figuring out how to assassinate a fellow Lorcan in the fastest, kindest way. He didn’t ask for the job and would’ve turned it down if that had been an option.

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