Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s a bit weird when the box shows up, but honestly, Warlock’s so bloody bored that he’ll take what he can get. They’re in London for the summer, and his mum’s off on another Find Yourself! kind of retreat, and it’s just so bloody dull in their flat. He’s been forbidden from using the car, just as he’s been forbidden from getting a summer job, and it isn’t like he knows anybody in London, so Warlock’s been amusing himself playing Avengers 3: Return Of Stark on the Playstation 40 and starting fights on Twitter about whether or not sharks are smooth. (His rant about gorillas and nests still remains his top tweet.)

It’s from Adam, which is nice, at least. Technically Warlock barely knows Adam, but since Warlock barely knows anybody, Adam counts as a friend. He and his mum spent a number of summers in Tadfield after her spectacular break with his dad, and Adam’s crew had just pulled him right back in every summer like nothing had happened. (Technically he and his mum now live in a manor out in the English countryside somewhere, overlooking a rocky beach, where his mum can act out this next stage in her ‘recovery’; Warlock wishes she would just decide to be a lesbian and get it all over with. Anyway. The manor’s close enough to Tadfield that when Warlock’s allowed to escape his private tutoring and sports classes, he can usually get the driver to take him to Adam’s for a weekend.)

So, yeah. Adam’s never sent him anything before, so maybe it’s a bit weird, but Warlock’s so goddamned excited to have something to do that he decides it’s awesome instead.

Warlock’s been working on building up a Twitch-2.0 following - in theory because he’s really good at Avengers 3 but in reality because he needs to talk to people sometimes or he’s going to go insane and blow up the sandwich shop across the street - so Warlock of course signs in to live-stream opening whatever Adam sent him.

“Dear Warlock,” he reads out loud as people start signing in to his channel. At sixteen, Warlock’s still got the face of a twelve-year-old but has managed to grow his hair down to his shoulder blades, which he considers pretty cool anyway. But people think he’s funny, and he’s been able to raise some decent money for charity by streaming some weird shit, so it works, really. “Wow, Adam’s handwriting’s gone down the shitter. It was never good, but like, this looks like he wrote it with his toes.”

He skims the letter to make sure he isn’t spilling Adam’s secrets onto the internet - he’s not an asshole - and then continues. “I need someone to keep these recordings safe, and you’re far enough away. Do whatever you want, just don’t throw them out. Be careful — Christ, Adam, I can’t even read this sentence.” Warlock turns the paper around for the viewers and gets a couple people laughing into his chat. “Be careful - if you - if you watch them? Be careful? Young, if you sent me porn, I’m going to end you in your sleep.”

Warlock paws through the box. There are a few CDs, all marked with dates in Adam’s horrible handwriting. A number of USB sticks, each with numbers on it that may or may not be dates. There’s also a little handheld digital recorder in there with a couple of memory cards taped to it - “Taped, Young, have some respect” - and what actually looks like it might be a fucking VHS. Warlock holds it up to the camera and says, “Who knows what this is?”, well aware that he himself was born in 2008, and the only reason he knows the VHS is because of his father’s penchant for showing old home movies of his stupid uncles. They probably still have a VCR somewhere. Apparently most of his chat is also Gen Z, with parents who also forced them to watch videos. Cool.

“Well,” Warlock says. “Let’s pop one of these in and take a look, shall we? If it’s interesting, I’ll stream myself watching some more, but I kind of want to screen it and make sure it isn’t, like, Adam’s love confession to my mum, right? But Adam’s particular, he wouldn’t have sent anything too private. I dunno.” He paws through the box until he finds a USB labeled 7. “Seven, great place to start, right? Magical number, that. My nanny always used to say.”

Warlock’s followers love the shit his nanny used to say. (The American ones love that he had a nanny in the first place.) The chat’s rolling quickly as Warlock pops the drive in, scans it, and then quickly scrubs through it to make sure it isn’t anything indecent. He’s mostly sure Adam wouldn’t send anything inappropriate, but he doesn’t want to accidentally dong his followers. That’s just rude.

Once it’s playing, Warlock shares his screen in addition to his webcam, so that they can watch him watch this. He leans back in his chair and kicks his feet up onto the desk. “Wish I had popcorn,” he tells his chat. “No, GodIsGay, I have no idea what this is. Got it in the post from a friend today.”

His American followers mock his use of the word post. The video’s just of the woods, so far; Adam seems to be out for a ramble, filming with his phone as Dog scampers through the trees. “No, there’s no sound,” Warlock tells the chat. “I have it turned up, yes. No audio. Oh, fuck you, DuckLover49, I know how to stream a movie.”

For a while it’s just Adam walking through the woods. No sound. Dog galloping away and coming back. Warlock tells the chat he has no fucking clue what’s going on, tells them about how Dog just fucking showed up on Adam’s birthday one year, and then his speakers nearly tip his chair over as they emit a couple bursts of static, forceful like a punch, and then a long electronic whine that fades off into nothing.

“What the fuck!” Warlock yells, to hide the fact that the sudden noise scared the piss out of him like a jump scare and his heart is pounding. “Sorry, sorry y’all, I figured there wasn’t any sound here, fuck.” He immediately drops the video volume both in the stream and to his own speakers. “Young, you’re a twat.”

He glances down into the chat and sees a series of confusing messages.

> Brad508 Did yall see that at 08:17???????

> DuckLover49 I NEARLY SHAT MYSELF WHATS THAT

> Cracken zlkdjflakdjgklsdg the souND

> MyFriendsCat FUCK

> Brad508 FUCKKKKK

> BiltonsBitch Warlock what wAS THAT THING

“What was what?” Warlock asks, pausing. The chat floods with people bitching at him about the sounds - “Jesus, assholes, I didn’t know” - and yelling about something in the trees. Warlock dutifully rewinds the video, and hits play.

Adam’s filming Dog as he vanishes behind a log. And then there, in the background, Warlock catches the outline of —

He pauses it.

The shape’s tall, elongated, like a person but too skinny to really exist. Their arms are really long. It’s like a shadow, somehow, except against the leaves it’s somehow also like a silhouette. Warlock stares at it, and something uneasy flips over in his gut.

But then he comes back to himself, reads the chat, and starts laughing. “No, no, look, this has to be - okay, so this guy, he and his group of friends do these movies, right, they make up these fantastic stories and play them out all the time. This has gotta be one of those. I bet that’s Brian, with Wensleydale on his shoulders. No, no, that’s Pepper with Brian on her shoulders. Fuck, that’s good though. Real creepy-like.”

The chat rolls through a series of questions from Are you sure that’s fake? To What’s a Wensleydale?, and Warlock answers as best he can for a while.

“Alright, look, no, I don’t know how they did it. Are we going to watch the end of this or no?”

The chat votes yes, but shortly after the figure was spotted, the video ends in static.

———

Warlock’s on the fifth video from this USB. He’s been through two USBs already. He stopped the stream - too curious to bother with it - but promised to come back when he found something else. He’s found plenty else.

He was right in that Adam and his crew have been making a movie. He was wrong in thinking the man in the background is one (or two) of them in a costume.

It’s really well done. He has no idea how they managed it. It has to be a mannequin of some kind; probably a frame they made to be shaped like a slender long human. In some scenes Warlock can just make out that it’s wearing a suit. He can’t see its face.

There’s a long shot where Pepper’s schooling Brian on his lines for whatever script they’re working off of and he didn’t even see the man until it turned its head, slowly, its gaze moving from Pepper to the camera in a too-smooth, otherworldly way. It’s really creepy. Warlock loves it.

———

He starts throwing bits up on the stream, mostly so that he isn’t watching this shit alone. There’s an entry where Adam’s telling the camera about their idea; he’s a bit all over, sure, but Adam gets excited sometimes. Warlock lets it play in the background while he goes through footage on his other monitor. This particular USB drive seems to be Adam sleeping. It’s weird; Warlock has no idea what this has to do with their play. He puts the video on triple speed and watches as Adam and Dog toss and turn and nothing happens. Why is Adam filming himself sleeping?

———

It’s 4am and Warlock’s drinking a Monster. He will never sleep again.

Not after the video where Adam’s sleeping as usual and the shadow of the tall man appears, as if he’s standing in Adam’s doorway with light behind him. Except that Adam seems genuinely asleep, and he sleeps with his door closed - they’ve had enough sleepovers; Warlock knows - and the man lifts up a long skinny arm with long skinny finger-shadows that look like claws, and then there’s a burst of static on the tape and the shadow is gone. Adam sleeps through it; Dog glances at the door and then rolls over.

Maybe this is part of the script? They do weird things sometimes, Adam’s crew. Maybe they’re trying to write a movie where Adam’s actually haunted?

———

Warlock has been awake all night. That’s fine, he’ll have a nap, it isn’t like he’s fucking doing anything here anyway.

“Last bit,” he tells his chat. His stream has been surprisingly full; people have been sending it to their friends. His American and Australian followers are getting in on it now, too. Warlock hasn’t shared any of the ones of Adam sleeping - that seems weird - but he’s separated out a clip where Adam’s playing on his phone and the tall man just sort of slowly appears in the foliage, watching him. Again, it’s really well done. Wensleydale must have had some classes in video editing or whatever.

This vid is spitting static, too, short bursts of sound and the salt-and-pepper of a damaged video flashing sporadically. There’s a big burst, and then the shadow man thing is reaching out to touch Adam on the shoulder, and then — the video stops.

“What do you all think?” Warlock asks his watchers.

> endlessMelody this is really well done

> endlessMelody im pissing myself every time it comes on

> MyFriendsCat man what if he really is actually haunted

> cecilcan-getit no way bro its a robot or something

> frankfurter wait go back to the big static thing please??

> Gremlin40 yeah I saw it too frank

Warlock frowns, but scrubs the video back to the big burst of static right before it ends. “Saw what? It’s static?”

> frankfurter there’s like a word or a sentence in there it just flashed for a second

> endlessMelody ur really creeping me out

> Gremlin40 just look around there warlock I swear I saw the word red

Warlock carefully scrubs the video through the burst of static and — they’re right.

The very beginning of the static reads, RED.

He scrolls forward very carefully; each word only appears for, like, a fraction of a second of the video. SHADOW.

Then STRETCH.

He scrolls right to the end of the video and there, a split second before the end, very faintly spelled out in the black-and-white of the static: ADAM.

> frankfurter what the fuck what the fuck what the fu

> MyFriendsCat is this like a game theyre playing or ?

> forest-angel did he send u a puzzle?

“I don’t fucking know,” Warlock tells them. He feels very, very unsettled, and it isn’t just the Monster. “Look, I’ll call him later today, see what this is.” And then, cause he’s into pretty blatant and shameless self-promotion - look who his father is - he says, “Come back tonight, 9pm London time, and I’ll have more for you.”

Warlock ends the stream and flings himself into his bed. He’d regret the all-nighter if he had anything to fucking do, but he doesn’t. He has a mystery to solve. He likes that Adam sent him the tapes — that Adam wants Warlock to be a part of this, even if it’s just watching. It’s nice to be remembered, sometimes.

Except that their special effects are a bit too good. It takes Warlock a long time to finally doze off, because he keeps opening his eyes to check that his door is closed and no one is standing there in his doorway, reaching long creepy fingers out to touch him.

Chapter Text

Warlock texts Adam that afternoon, but gets no response. That isn’t weird; Adam’s probably off directing his crew, or maybe using his mobile to record. But when night rolls around and there’s still no answer, Warlock gets curious. Adam may be easily distracted, but he’s still pretty dependable. Maybe his mobile broke?

He puts up a couple of benign clips on his stream that night and then plays Avengers 3 for three hours instead. The chat is half about his ridiculous Hawkeye build and half about the videos, but that’s fine — he’s gained like thirty subscribers from this. Thanks, Adam.

The next day Warlock phones Adam. The call rings out, and Warlock hangs up halfway through Adam’s voicemail: This is Adam Young, you know what to do. He’s probably just being annoying, but he really wants to ask Adam about the tapes, so he punches in 4 0 6 triple 6 and phones up the Young’s landline.

“Hello?” Adam’s mum is pretty delightful. “Deirdre Young, here?”

“Hey, Mrs. Young,” Warlock says politely. “This is Warlock - Warlock Dowling - I’m looking for Adam?”

“Oh, hello, Warlock,” Mrs. Young croons. Warlock remembers the cookies she’d made them last time he came in for a weekend; they nearly drowned in chocolate chips. “How are you doing, dear?”

“Well enough.” Warlock’s gotten good at doing stupid small talk with adults. “We’re in London for the summer, now.”

“Oh, that must be delightful,” she says. There’s a clanging in the background; it sounds like pots and pans. “Nice posh summer in the city. Are you driving yet?”

“As much as I can,” Warlock says with a grin. “Hey, is Adam around?”

“He — isn’t,” Mrs. Young says, and something in her voice changes. “Adam’s not …here right now.”

“Is he out with his friends?”

“Must be,” she replies. “Feels like I haven’t seen him in weeks, you know!” The laugh that follows is also strange, somehow, a bit too forced.

“I just thought — he isn’t answering his mobile,” Warlock tells her.

Mrs. Young sighs over the phone. Her voice is dreamy when she says, “Oh, that’s just Adam, he’s off… being Adam.”

This is a very bizarre conversation. Warlock wonders if Mrs. Young has been dipping into the scotch early today or something. To be fair, Warlock doesn’t expect a mum to know the exact location of her teenaged son at every moment of the day; on the other hand, though, this is just a weird fucking conversation.

“Do you know when he’ll be back?” That, at least, should be a fair question. “Should I ring back after dinner?”

“He’s not coming back,” says Mrs. Young in a voice that absolutely isn’t hers: flat, toneless, emotionless.

Warlock swallows, frowns, and shakes his phone a bit; is the call breaking up, interfering with someone else’s call? “Pardon?”

“Oh,” Adam’s mum says, and this is more like her voice indeed. “I don’t know when he’ll be back, dear, but I’ll tell him you called. So nice of you, phoning from London.”

“Thanks,” Warlock says, because he doesn’t really know what else to say. “Good-bye, Mrs. Young.”

“Toodles,” she replies, and the little giggle that follows is just as unnerving as the rest of the call.

———

Warlock considers while making himself a sandwich. Mums can be weird. Look at his mum, really: she’s just plain old bonkers. Off at some retreat where they do yoga and eat raw cinnamon and Satan knows what. Just off her fucking rocker. Maybe Mrs. Young was just distracted? He could have called at a bad time.

Warlock picks up his mobile, then, and opens up the ChatMe app where their group text lives. Brian had set it up for them maybe two years ago, and they chatter here and there about school projects, current events, and Wensleydale’s favorite memes. Warlock’s very careful with the group chat, to be perfectly honest; he’s well aware that he’s the odd one out, that they’re being generous by including him in a chat anyway, and so he tries not to initiate things too much, or overwhelm the chat with his own shit. But this is becoming a mystery, and so he opens up The Them Room and sends:

> hey guys I got your videos? pretty cool stuff, how did u do it with the arms and everything? adam are u alive, I called your house and I think your mum had one of your pot brownies or something. anyway ive been watching them, really creepy, what are u guys gonna do with it?

He doesn’t want to come off as too lonely or too needy, definitely. But Adam sent him the videos, there must be a reason for it?

It takes about a half an hour for him to get a response, and to his surprise, it’s very short:

Pepper: call me.

———

Warlock calls Adam’s mobile again, just to check. It rings out to voicemail again, and Warlock takes a breath, prepared to just leave a long rant on Adam’s phone as a message, but —

This is Adam Young, bbssssssshshshsshht— and the message ends in high-pitched whining static.

Warlock looks down at his mobile. Is it his service that’s all fucked up today?

———

Finally, after some deliberation, three snickerdoodles, and a glass of his mum’s wine - what? She isn’t here to stop him - Warlock rings up Pepper.

“Alright, what on earth do you mean you have our videos?” Pepper’s voice greets him and Warlock suddenly, weirdly, feels better about everything.

“Hallo, Pepper,” he says, making it as American as he can. “Nice to hear from you, too.”

“Warlock,” she tells him, no-nonsense as always, “We have a problem. Adam’s gone.”

Warlock blinks and then puts her on speaker. “The fuck do you mean, Adam’s gone?”

———

They’re on Zoom, now; Pepper’s sat in her room with Brian and Wensleydale leaning over her shoulders, and Warlock’s back in his room with the box of stuff. “It’s all videos as far as I can tell,” Warlock tells them, holding things up to the camera. “Who the fuck still uses DVDs, by the way?”

“Wensleydale,” Brian says accusingly. Pepper rolls her eyes.

“So Adam put those in the post to you the …last? Day we saw him?” She glances over her shoulder for confirmation; the two boys nod. “It’s like … something’s going on, because it’s a bit hard to remember. I wasn’t really paying attention,” Pepper adds, a bit sulkily.

“Actually,” Wensleydale says, “it’s like no one else realizes Adam is …missing.”

“I phoned his mum,” Warlock tells them. “It was like she was possessed or something. I finally just hung up.”

“No one else in town knows either.” Pepper is actually wringing her hands, and something settles in Warlock’s gut; this is real. There’s something strange going on. Adam wouldn’t pull something like this, not for this long, and not with Pepper this worried. “It’s like everyone’s just … not listening.”

Silence falls on the Zoom call. Warlock paws through the box, idly, looking for something to fill the silence.

“Have you watched it all?” Brian asks.

Warlock snorts. “No way, man, there’s tons of stuff in here. I started with the USB sticks, watched a couple of those, skimmed through some on high speed. Why did he film himself sleeping?”

Pepper glances at Wensleydale, then at Brian. “Sleeping? I have no idea why he would record himself sleeping.”

“We didn’t tape any of that,” Brian says. “If there’s stuff in the woods, yeah, that’s us. We were trying to make a ghost story movie.”

“It’s creepy enough,” Warlock says, real enthusiasm in his voice. “The guy in the background. How did you do that?”

Again, the three friends look at each other with concern, then turn back to Warlock. “What guy?”

———

Warlock’s back on Twitch 2.0 but this time his room’s private and he still has Zoom open on his other monitor. “Here,” he says, popping in USB drive number 7. “This is the first one I watched. I didn’t even see it at first, my streamers pointed it out.” He fast-forwards until he’s about 8 minutes in, and then says, “Here, watch.”

The tall man isn’t any less unsettling this time. More, really, because Pepper looks horrified, Brian looks ill, and Wensleydale is frowning. “What the fuck,” Warlock says, suddenly a bit alarmed. “What the fuck, guys, I thought that was part of your movie.”

“I saw him,” Wensleydale says suddenly. “Remember, I told you, and you told me I was imagining things? That’s it. That’s what I saw back in Hogsback.”

“I thought you made it up,” says Brian.

“That's actually because Pepper told me there’s no such thing as — creepy tall men that appear in the woods!” Wensleydale is as upset as Warlock’s ever seen him.

“Well, I didn’t know it was a thing!” Pepper shouts. “I thought you were just getting in the mood! Character acting!”

“Hey,” Warlock says, using his mum’s do-shut-up-now voice. They shut up.

“We all agree that something’s going on, right?” He waits for them to nod, and then holds up the box. “Why don’t I try to get mum’s car and I’ll drive out this weekend. We can go through the videos and see if we can find some clues.”

“Good idea,” Pepper says, nodding as if it were hers.

Brian bites his lip. “What do we do if we see him again?”

Warlock shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s fake - like somebody pulling a prank on you - or maybe it’s some creepy hobo. We have no idea. Just ignore it, maybe?”

Pepper purses her lips, and shrugs back. “Alright. Stay in touch, Warlock. We’ll see you this weekend.”

Chapter Text

It isn’t actually hard to get mum’s permission to get the car. Warlock uses all of the key phrases: My friends in Tadfield, and Adam’s parents said I was welcome, and of course I’ll drive the speed limit, mother. (He never drives the speed limit, unless she’s in the car; he grew up with his Nanny’s driving, and then his crazy maths tutor after. Warlock believes in speed. But she doesn’t have to know that.) He manages to guilt her just enough that she lets him have the car, but not so much that she comes home from her soul-searching to do something like take him for ice cream. That doesn’t do a whole lot, these days.

(It isn’t like he hasn’t done it before. Warlock drives from the manor to London every time they make the trip, so that mum can get some beauty sleep in the passenger seat. He doesn’t mind chauffeuring her because it means he gets to drive.)

She even gives him permission to take the credit card. Warlock had planned on taking it anyway, but it’s way easier when he has permission up front. It’s his - dad opened it for him when he turned fifteen - but he really does try not to take advantage. That being said, it’s good to know he has all of his resources available to him for this trip.

So Warlock packs up a duffel bag, packs his laptop and most of his gear and the mysterious box of tapes, dims the lights in the flat, and heads downstairs. He dutifully signs out the key from the concierge and lugs all of his things down to the garage. It’s one of those small SUVs, the ones that will never be sexy no matter how hard they try, but his mother has standards, so it’s as sexy as an SUV can get. Warlock loads up the back, gets his mobile to connect to the speakers for music, and makes his way out of London.

———

It’s about an hour into the drive when Warlock sees it for the first time.

He’s coming around a curve, belting out the Stones at the top of his lungs, doing a very respectable 75 miles per hour, and his eyes land on a figure on the side of the road: dark, tall, too tall, too long, his eyes are trying to place the thing in the context of the woods around him and it’s wearing a suit but it has no face, nothing at all, it’s just screaming white—

Warlock blinks, and it’s gone.

“Fuck,” he says, out loud. His heart’s pounding. It’s just his imagination - boring drives are like this - don’t think about it. Don’t think about his rabbiting heart rate. Take a deep breath. Change the music, maybe.

———

It happens again, about a half-hour later. Warlock’s breezing down a straight segment, now howling with Jethro Tull, and as the giant sixteen-wheeler in the other lane shoots past him, he catches a shape out of the corner of his eye: tall, dark, too-long arms reaching out as if they’re waving, a greeting from a no-mouth face—

But there’s nothing, and he’s swerving from his lane.

Obviously, he’s just thinking about it too much. He’s seen it in the video, and now he’s imagining it on the drive. His brain is putting together shapes and shadows to make it look like the man in the video. There’s nothing out there.

Warlock drops the cruise control a bit, just in case.

———

He gets off at a rest stop to have a piss and maybe buy a soda, except that as he pulls his car into the parking space it’s definitely standing like right in front of him, taller than should be possible, long arms akimbo as if they’ve been pulled from their sockets. It’s swaying in the breeze as it watches him, as if it isn’t entirely solid, and that flat no-face stares at him through the windscreen.

Warlock’s suddenly holding his breath, not moving a single solitary muscle, because he doesn’t want to know what happens as it starts to lurch towards him —

No, it’s just swaying, and watching. As Warlock gapes through the windscreen, it tilts its flat white head to the side, far past the point where a normal human’s neck might crack, until it’s far past the shoulder. It has no eyes. It has no fucking mouth.

Warlock guns the engine, hits reverse, and gets back on the highway. His heart is racing; pounding. It’s wearing a suit and it’s the thing in Adam’s videos and it isn’t at all cool.

———

The thing is — the thing is.

Warlock has Queen playing in the background, now, because Nanny always said Queen was good music to rule the world to, and maybe Warlock needs a bit of a pick-me-up at the moment. He hasn’t seen the thing since he got back on the highway - and he’s only twenty minutes out of Tadfield - but it’s, well. But.

Warlock Dowling is well aware that he grew up very differently than most people. Not just in the way that he had a Nanny, and a gardener that babysat when the Nanny was off, and two aloof assholes for parents — but he’s seen things, and it sticks in the back of his head, like a splinter you can ignore until you bend a certain way.

It isn’t that far of a stretch for Warlock to consider that this might be something … otherworldly. Supernatural? Occult? Ethereal? These words pop up in his head sometimes as if they’re real labels. The words don’t matter. The fact is, Warlock’s ready to admit that whatever is going on here is not the usual normal non-magical human experience.

Does he dare say that? To someone like Pepper, for fuck’s sake?

Warlock takes the turnoff to Tadfield, deliberately looking only at the lines on the road, and bites his lip.

Chapter Text

“So,” says Pepper, as Warlock settles in, “we do have to explain something to you, a little bit.”

“You have a lot of things to explain to me,” Warlock tells her. He pulls his laptop out of his bag, sets it up on the table, passing the plug to Brian. “Go ahead and start.”

“Well,” Pepper says, her voice a bit reluctant. “Adam is … well, he was … I don’t really know how to say this, Warlock, but Adam was the Antichrist.”

They’re all looking at him as if this is going to produce some kind of reaction. “Yeah,” Warlock says. “I was too, for a while, trust me. It must be a British thing, I guess, cause my parents were real confused, but I had a nanny like that too.”

He carefully removes the second monitor from its case and also sets it up on the table, then digs out the wires to connect it to his laptop. When he looks up, Pepper and Wensleydale and Brian are all kind of staring at him as if he’s said something off.

“What?” Warlock glances between the three of them. “I mean, that’s how you raise kids here, innit? Americans have, like, all these books and shit, and y’all have …that.”

“You know what,” Pepper says; it’s a bit under her breath, but it isn’t like she means to keep it from Warlock: it’s more like she’s talking to herself. “Honestly, I’ll take that, that’s easy enough to deal with.”

“Look, you guys,” Warlock says. “I saw that thing three times on the way up here. I thought it was a figment of my imagination until it, like, fucking astral projected in front of my car.” He finally gets his setup the way he likes it and turns the laptop on. “If you think you have to convince me that there’s weird fucking shit here in Britain, you really don’t.” He pauses, and then grins. “You should’ve met my nanny, for fuck’s sake.”

“Actually, it’s still weird that you had a nanny,” Wensleydale says.

“I’m going to punch you in your sleep,” Warlock tells him, but with a smile.

———

Pepper’s managed to nick her mum’s DVD-to-USB drive, and they’re going through whatever Adam had burnt to disc. “This is ridiculous,” Brian had said, after they’d watched two nights of Adam and Dog sleeping, featuring the silhouette of the tall man in the shadows somewhere every time. “This has to be someone’s prank. You think Greasy Johnson and his boys are up to it?”

“Not his boys,” Pepper corrects absentmindedly, adding something to her notebook. “Shane’s going by they and them, now.”

“His crew,” Brian amends. “I’m just saying.” There had been a video with Adam peacefully asleep for four hours, until a long skinny arm had emerged from the shadows, reaching out towards the bed. At the last second - before it had touched Adam - Dog had woken up and started barking, furiously. The shadow-arm had withdrawn, but slowly enough that they could all see multi-jointed fingers with claws at the end.

None of them had liked seeing that.

“Who the fuck is Greasy Johnson?”

Pepper snorts. “Some kid at school. He and Adam have the same birthday, and when they were really little, Johnson tried to fight Adam about it. Their gang fights ours, sometimes.” She puffs up, and Warlock watches as her face settles into the expression you make right before you punch someone. Honestly, it’s a good look on her.

“I’m just saying,” says Brian, “this is too good not to be, like, somebody fucking with him. I mean, you don’t actually believe that—”

There’s a hiss of static, and then Warlock’s laptop goes dead, with the faint hiss of noise filling the room. His screen is black-and-white confetti.

“Actually, you jinxed it, didn’t you,” says Wensleydale.

———

Twenty minutes later, Warlock still hasn’t figured out what’s wrong with his laptop, but he has managed to restart it so that they can watch the next video. He has also ordered pizza for all of them, because what’s the point of having rich terrible parents if you won’t take advantage of them sometimes? He even ordered a special pie for Pepper’s moms, as a thank-you for letting him sleep on the couch in the basement.

“Okay, Adam starred this disc,” Pepper announces, handing it to Warlock to insert into the drive. “Must be something special.”

Warlock opens it. Three video files. He sorts by date and opens up the earliest one. It’s Adam in bed, again; Warlock sighs.

“So you all really didn’t know he was doing this at all?”

Brian shrugs, and Pepper’s shoulders slump. “Not this bit,” says Brian. “We were making a movie, yeah, that’s all the other footage, but Adam recording himself sleep? Fuck no.”

The Adam on the screen suddenly sits up in bed, pulls himself out from under the covers, and stands up.

The screen splits with a hiss of static and interference. Warlock swears. The fuck is up with all his appliances lately?

In that brief flash, Adam on the video has moved to the other side of his room. His back is up against his bookshelves, and his arms are wrapped around himself, like he’s trying to protect himself.

There’s another burst of static, so bright that it seems like the basement lights flicker. Warlock assumes it’s just a visual anomaly, an artifact of watching the screen — until Pepper grabs his arm, turns to him, her eyes wide.

“Did that just…?” Brian asks, and Pepper nods slowly, glancing around the basement. The lights flicker again.

Warlock puts a hand over hers and turns back to the screen. Adam’s now standing in front of the camera. He’s staring at it, his face blank and lax, no hint of Adam in it at all. And his eyes… his eyes are white. Entirely white. Just white. No pupil, no iris, no anything — just pale, dead white.

Wensleydale gasps.

The sound on the video - a low hiss of ambient noise, nothing important - suddenly distorts, growling lower and lower until it’s like someone took the peaceful sounds of a night in Tadfield, grabbed them, and pulled. The screen of Warlock’s laptop collapses, suddenly, flashing black streaked through with the default bright blue of a computer meltdown and the sale-and-pepper of static. Warlock grabs the laptop, banging away at the keys and the touchscreen to try and get out of it, and then—

— the lights in Pepper’s basement die.

The only thing lighting the scene is the flashing screen of Warlock’s laptop; the room is full with the hiss of static noise. Warlock reaches out, fumbles with his hand, grabs Pepper’s; grabs Brian on the other side.

The lights flash; there’s a crackling like thunder, and then Wensleydale shrieks, a high sharp note and a fumbling hand pointing to the corner—

There’s someone there.

The body is wrong, even in these brief glimpses: all angles and edges, sharp, elongated past the point of reference. It’s bent in on itself at least twice, sharp angles from the hips up, as if the spine were built like a staircase. The legs are triple-jointed at least: a high knee, a back knee, and some kind of ankle leading down into a foot that’s wearing a fucking wingtip. The arms are — the arms are long and limp, like clay rolled out too long against a dry surface; the wrists are limp, and the fingers almost as long as half a forearm, all crooked and broken.

“What the fuck!” Warlock hollers, because his only other choice is to flee up the stairs, and he wasn’t raised like that. “Jesus fuck—”

In the random flashing light flickering intermittently through the basement, Warlock watches the dark figure raise one broken arm. It’s wearing a suit, Warlock realizes, completely apropos of nothing; it’s wearing a sleek suit fitted to its unreasonably slender body, dark lapels and cuffs popped as its arm reaches out, suddenly and weirdly immediately close; the fingers look rotten, with at least four knuckles, all bent in different directions.

It has no face. Just white, gaping, empty, maybe a bit of a shadow where eye sockets and a horribly open mouth might go, but there is no face, it has no face it has no face—

The laptop suddenly blares one long even tone, like some kind of weird emergency siren, and the screen flickers to just solid white across it. Whatever was in the corner is gone. The lights in the basement flicker back on, and the tone starts to shift and shake, like a note hitting interference. The static hisses and buzzes, and then some low messy ringing note is emitted from the speakers as a modulated, electronic voice says, STRETCH. DETACH. PULL. ADAM.

Warlock really can’t do anything much for a long moment with that deep dark hiss growing in his brain, and then — he reaches a shaking hand out, shuts the computer down, and then they’re all just sitting there gasping in the light, basement light no longer flickering; the laptop is dark, quiet, and the lights are on, and they all glance around at each other like this is the first time they’ve ever met.

———

“So,” Pepper says, after they’ve stuffed themselves with warm cheese and pepperoni and made forts out of the couches in the basement. The Moonchild-Sterling household contains a ridiculous number of recliners, couches, and beanbags; it’s actually a great place to have a sleepover, much better than the Youngs’, if Warlock were going to make a judgment. He and Brian have pushed two couches up against each other and then piled a number of pillows to act as pillars at the edges of what they’re calling a pirate ship. Across the room, Wensleydale and Pepper have built a nest of cushions that actually looks pretty cool.

“So what the fuck was that,” Brian says, and Warlock’s pretty glad Brian said it first so he didn’t have to.

“Look,” says Pepper, and Warlock’s so glad her voice is entirely calm. “This is completely outside our abilities. We need to outsource.”

“The witch might know,” Brian says.

“We’ll talk to Anathema tomorrow,” Wensleydale declares, and they all settle down into the bedding. Warlock doesn’t want to note that the lights are still on, because that might bring the other thing back, so he simply turns his face into the pillow and tries not to think.

Chapter Text

“Oh,” says Anathema, when they give her a general explanation of what has happened, without any of the details — she doesn’t seem to need them. “Oh, kids. Your Adam attracted a Slenderman.”

Warlock blinks, and as he looks around, it looks like the rest of The Them - which Warlock has finally started using for them in his head - is equally confused, so he says, “What?”

“It’s okay,” says Anathema. Warlock is meeting her for the first time, and he finds he really likes her: her bluntness and American-ness and the magazines she keeps in the corner. She’s snarky, and subtle with it; she’ll say things that Warlock only picks up on three minutes later once the joke has passed. He kind of wants to hire her as his new nanny, or tutor, or whatever his parents might pay her for.

“Stay here,” she tells them. “Have some coffee cake. I have to go through the records. You can go in the backyard, if you like.”

When they all tromp out to the backyard, lemonades and coffee cake in hand, they find a gentleman underneath what might be the ugliest car Warlock has ever seen. Warlock watches as he pulls himself out from under it. He’s middling tall, probably hasn’t shaved in a few days, and is waving a wrench like it’s a weapon to win back the kingdom of God.

“This is Newt,” Pepper says, dragging Warlock forward.

“Actually, he can break anything,” says Wensleydale. “That’s his superpower.”

“Excuse you,” says Newt, standing up. “I’m fixing Dick Turpin, thanks very much.”

“What the hell is a Dick Turpin,” Warlock asks.

Pepper snorts. “You really don’t want to know.”

Warlock leans in, over the engine, the front hood propped open. “Your coolant isn’t even attached,” he tells this Newt. He isn’t stupid; Warlock learnt the piping of cars as a six-year-old, peering into Nanny’s vintage car and reciting after her as she pointed to electrodes and tubing.

“Oh,” says Newt. “Which one is that?”

———

A few hours later, Anathema calls them back inside Jasmine Cottage. They all settle around her dining room table mostly because it’s the only spot that will seat all of them. There are a number of weird books open to pages showing weirder things, and Warlock promptly decides Anathema is cool. This is the kind of shit he’s been interested in his entire life; he grew up wanting - thinking - that there were things like this out there. And here’s a fucking table full of books on it. Wow. He doesn’t even care if this is made up; it’s awesome.

“So, the Slenderman is an American myth, but it has ties back into Lovecraft, and even into the world of the fae. I don’t know why one’s here or how it caught Adam. Were you all… recording something?”

“Yes,” says Pepper. “We were trying to make a movie.”

Anathema sighs. “This kind of — well. I would have called it a demon, before,” and she waves her hand in the air at this. Pepper nods, as do Wensleydale and Brian; Warlock frowns. “Now I’m not sure what I’d call it. A ghost? A spirit? Either way, it’s a malevolent thing. They like to take people over and make them do… horrible things.” The pause after she says this is long, and ugly. “It’s attracted to - summoned by - electronic recordings. I haven’t heard of one in years, though.”

Warlock, despite how fucking creepy this is, is intrigued. So this shit is real, then?

Anathema’s lips purse into a frown. “It is odd that they focused on Adam, though, rather than one of you.”

“Oi,” says Brian, offended. “I’m a fine prize for a ghost, thanks.”

“Actually,” Wensleydale interrupts, “do you think it would be drawn by Adam’s…”

“Possibly,” Anathema replies.

“Adam’s what,” Warlock asks, a bit miffed. Is there some secret about Adam? Is this shit real?

“Well,” says Anathema, distracted, as she flips through a book. “Being the Antichrist, and all.”

“Oh, yeah,” says Warlock. “That whole British thing. Okay. But why is it different for Adam?”

Anathema finally looks up, and it’s like her eyes focus on him for the first time. “Oh,” she says. “Sorry. I’m so used to there being four of you that I didn’t really — oh.” She slides her glasses up into her hair, squints at him, and takes a very long second look.

“I’m sorry,” she says, very slowly, as her eyes unfocus somewhat. “I haven’t met you before.”

“Oooh,” says Brian. “How’s his aura?”

“Aura?” Warlock asks again. This is getting interesting now, although he’s still worried about Adam.

“Weird,” Anathema pronounces, “but there’s something else … familiar … about it. Just give me a second.” She closes her eyes, presses her palms over them, and then says a few words in some language Warlock absolutely doesn’t recognize. When she looks at him again, he shivers, but that might just be the dramatics of it.

“Wait,” she says. “You know … you know them.”

“Them who?” Warlock tries not to sound irritated.

“You know,” Anathema says, gesturing up towards the ceiling and then down to the ground. “The… yeah. Crowley and Aziraphale?”

“I have no idea who that is,” Warlock tells her. He’s gotten good with names because he had to - didn’t want to embarrass his dad and get yelled at again - and he doesn’t remember anyone even close.

“Hold on,” says Pepper authoritatively. She’s climbed into the seat next to Anathema, and is glancing between Warlock and Wensleydale hastily as if she’s trying to see what the difference is. “Anathema, you told me things like this don’t happen by coincidence. If we have some kind of demon — I mean spirit,” she corrects hastily, as if there’s something wrong with the d-word. “Anyway. We have a spirit drawn to Adam because of … that stuff … and then it involves somebody else who knows about That Stuff…”

Anathema’s already nodding. “You’re going to need to go to London. Just to be safe.”

“Yes!” Wensleydale pumps a hand in the air. “What? I love the bookshop.”

“What’s in London? Besides me?” Warlock is getting confused now. It really feels like there are two or three different conversations going on here, and he’s getting that feeling again, where he’s the odd man out, and he doesn’t really belong here.

Which is stupid. Of course he doesn’t belong here. He sees the Them over the summers, and chats with them occasionally. He shouldn’t be here, with these videos — but Adam shouldn’t be missing, either.

“They are,” says Anathema, with a note of finality. “Aziraphale and Crowley. They’ll sort you out, far better than I can. Should I — go with you?”

“Probably not,” says Pepper, sounding every bit as confident as ever. “There should be someone here to watch for the Slenderman while we’re gone, you know. Besides, it’s just the bookshop. We’ll be fine.”

“Okay, what the hell is going on,” Warlock asks, because he’s still confused.

“We’re coming to London next weekend,” says Brian.

“Actually,” Wensleydale adds, “is there room in your flat?”

———

Warlock doesn’t see it on the drive home, which is a good thing. When he gets back to the flat, there’s still daylight, and he checks every closet and behind every shower curtain before he lets himself relax. He wonders whether he should be more shocked by the fact that the supernatural is real - or some parts, at least - but it has just settled into him, like something he’s known since he was a baby. Or maybe he’s just tired.

He goes to bed that night with the lights off in his room, but leaves them on in the hallway. He tells himself it’s just in case his mother decides to come home that night. It sort-of works.

Warlock wakes up the next day fully dressed in jeans, a tee, a hoodie, and sneakers. He’s lying on his back on top of his bed - made up perfectly - and his pajama pants are on the floor. All over the floor, really; even without getting up Warlock can tell they’ve been ripped to shreds.

He shivers, and can’t stop shivering, and doesn’t actually get up off of the bed for a long time.

Chapter Text

Warlock sees it three times that week. Once, heading out to the grocery to pick up some frozen meals and stuff for nachos; he leaves the grocery and it’s standing across the street from him, too tall and too long, white head with no face, and it’s like Warlock’s vision locks onto it and goes into some kind of spiral. When he comes back to himself, he’s standing in his flat with the groceries, no memory of having walked there.

The second time he just sees it out his own window; he’s been trying to avoid looking out the windows, but the movement of cars draws his eye and there it is: tucked into an alley, shadowed, but Warlock sees the ends of elongated arms, the way the white no-face in the shadows tilts to one side as if considering him. He sleeps with the lights on that night.

The third time he’s again out in the crowds and this time he feels a hand come down on his shoulder and knows: fingers too long, too oddly-jointed as they clutch, hard, digging unevenly into the muscle. Warlock whirls around, ready to scream, but no one’s there except a little old lady, who looks at him as if he’s lost his mind.

Perhaps he has. That night he wakes up standing in front of his own door, marker in hand, drawing circles and then X-ing them out. There are at last three dozen of the symbols on the back of his door, and some are a bit shaky, like he maybe wasn’t drawing them on his own. Luckily Google tells him how to get the marker off of his door without damaging the wood too much, but Warlock doesn’t like that shit at all.

All things considered, it’s a long and very sleepless week. His mother comes home for a few days, gushing about how fulfilling and healing this particular retreat has been, before leaving for another one. This new one apparently has them sleeping inside a room decked out like a crystal cave, amethyst all over the wall. Mum insists it’s going to purify her energy and she’ll be an entirely new person when she returns. The only upside Warlock can see to all of this is that she leaves so quickly there’s a chance the Slenderman hasn’t spotted her. Warlock knows his mother isn’t really a good person or a great mother, but she’s still his mum, and he doesn’t want to see her hurt.

Then Friday rolls around, and The Them dump their sleeping bags and backpacks into Warlock’s bedroom and drag him down to shove him into Pepper’s mum’s terrible old minivan.

———

“I saw it four times,” Pepper tells them as she weaves between traffic. Pepper drives like his nanny used to; he wonders whether she had the same maths tutor. “I yelled at it once. Nothing happened.”

“Cor, I saw it outside my house.” Brian shudders. “Didn’t come in, though.”

“I saw it too,” Warlock tells them. “Three times. Not in my house, but…” He shrugs. “Some weird stuff happened while I was asleep is all.”

“Actually, did you film it?” Wensleydale turns around in the front seat to look at Warlock.

He shakes his head. “Didn’t really think of it until too late, no. My mum didn’t say anything, though, so I don’t think it was in the flat.”

They pull into a spot right outside an old-looking bookshop: A. Z. Fell and Co, it reads above the door. “Where the hell are we?” Warlock asks.

“Soho,” says Pepper, as if it explains everything. Warlock shrugs again; it does, sort-of.

They exit the car. Next to them is this fucking gorgeous old Bentley - the kind of thing his nanny drove, sometimes - stretched out over two parking spots. “Who the fuck parked this?” Warlock yells. “Look at it. It’s all crooked. Somebody’s going to hit it, and ruin it. End of the fucking world.”

“Oh,” says Wensleydale with a small smile, “I don’t think anyone’s going to hit that Bentley.”

Pepper bangs on the door with a fist, despite the fact that the sign clearly reads Closed. “Aziraphale! It’s me, Pepper — it’s us! Open up!” There’s no response, so after a few seconds, Pepper bangs harder. “I know you’re in there, I see the bloody car. Something’s wrong, Adam’s gone missing, and we need your help, so open your door, you stupid a—”

The door swings open. The man standing behind it looks like he just stepped off the set of a Charles Dickens movie. He’s wearing this old-looking waistcoat, a bowtie, and those tiny round glasses Warlock thinks people only wear because they look nifty. His hair is the oddest pale blond, nearly white, and as he smiles at all of them, Warlock suddenly feels welcomed.

“Oh, dear,” the man says. “You’d better come in, then.”

Warlock can’t really look away from the man as he leads them into the shop, even though it seems like the shelves around him are full of wonderful and mysterious things. There’s something about him that reminds Warlock of his literature tutor when he was younger; there’s a sense of peace about him that seems familiar. The man also seems to know the Them, enough that he’s chattering with Wensleydale about something or other as he leads them into a back room.

There’s another man here, as odd-looking as the first. His hair’s a bright copper red, falling in tousled curls down to his shoulders, and he’s wearing this all-black thing that looks like he squeezed it on this morning and is still regretting that particular fashion choice. He has sunglasses on, inside, and Warlock wonders whether he really thinks he looks that cool. “What’s this, angel?” Ooh, well that explains some of it, at least.

“Look who I found on the doorstep,” the first man says, settling down on one side of a loveseat that looks like it crawled out of the 1600s and into this shop. “Something about Adam, I believe.”

The red-haired man grunts. “You. You. And you,” he says with a nod towards each of the Them; his gaze lands on Warlock, from behind those dark lenses. “This one I don’t know.”

“Oh, that’s Warlock,” says Pepper. “A friend of ours. Adam sent him the tapes.”

“Nice to meet you,” the first man is saying with a generous smile, but the second man takes a step towards them, frowning a bit.

“Warlock?” He interrupts. “Warlock Dowling?”

“Uh,” says Warlock. “Yeah?”

The two men exchange the kind of look only couples that know each other inside and out can exchange, the type where you just know they’re having a million conversations without saying a single word, and that every bit of it is understood between the two of them. It lasts maybe a second and Warlock still feels a bit like he’s been jolted out of his reality and into a new one.

The first man’s eyes widen. “Warlock,” he breathes, and the second man steps even closer, looking down at Warlock, his mouth softening into something like wonder.

“Do I know you?” Warlock asks, resisting the urge to back up, because he doesn’t want to look like he’s intimidated, but man, this is just another weird as fuck thing to put on the list of things that have been weird as fuck in the last week and a half of his life.

“Oh,” the red-haired man says, with a bit of a laugh that seems sadder than it should be. “Don’t you recognize us?”

Except that last bit, the don’t you recognize us bit, is said in Warlock’s nanny’s voice, and he knows it’s nanny’s voice because that voice imprinted itself into his brain, into every last cell of his body; he remembers nanny as well as he remembers his own mother, really, and,

“What the fuck,” Warlock says.

To his surprise, the first man chuckles and looks at the second man with obvious fondness. “Well, it seems he’s got your mouth, my dear,” he says, but now that’s Brother Francis’ odd accent, and Warlock finds himself sitting down without any conscious movement on his own part.

———

Warlock’s got his arms crossed, and he’s frowning at both of the - beings? - sitting across from him. No fucking wonder he hasn’t been fazed by any of this supernatural type talk: he was raised by a demon and an angel, for fuck’s sake.

“You thought I was the Antichrist.” He doesn’t mean his voice to be so sullen, but it is.

“Hey,” Pepper interjects. “Adam was the actual Antichrist, and he’s fine. Don’t get your knickers twisted.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Warlock insists. It’s weird enough to find out that your nanny and your gardener were also your tutors and are actually a gay (gay? Are they even men?) couple living in Soho. It’s another thing entirely to find out that they’re a demon and an angel. The fact that they thought he was the Antichrist - and that Adam actually was - is like a weird icing on top of a cake Warlock isn’t really sure how to deal with in the first place.

Nanny - the red-haired - demon - Crowley sighs, pitching his sunglasses onto the table in front of him and rubbing his hands over his face. “Look, kid, I’m sorry - we’re sorry - we can, uh? Talk about it? Is now the time to talk about it?”

“You had said something about Adam,” says the angel - Brother - Aziraphale. He’s peering at Pepper. “Something’s wrong with Adam?”

Pepper glances at Warlock. He shrugs. Adam comes first; Adam’s his friend, Adam sent him a box of tapes that ended up being a cry for help. He’s having some mixed emotions now about Mr. Harrison and Mr. Cortese, who his younger self had thought were particularly cool in a smart, aloof sort of way. Warlock doesn’t really want to process all of that at the moment.

“Yes, Adam’s missing,” says Pepper. “Anathema says he’s caught something called a Slenderman.”

———

“It’s a recent myth, angel,” Crowley drawls, looking down at his mobile phone. “It’s a shame you don’t have any books in here more recent than the 1960s.”

“I’ve told you this a million times,” says Aziraphale, rolling his eyes. “All modern superstitions are rooted in ancient myth. It’s the way human process things.”

Warlock glances up from the book he’s paging through. He wants to find Adam, yes, but this is fascinating. It’s a book containing illustrations and information on an increasingly cool list of — creatures? He isn’t even sure what they are but as he turns the page from Bog Witch to Borneneaux (many), he can’t help but want to borrow it for a month or so.

“This is from the internet,” Crowley insists, waving his mobile phone in their general direction. “It isn’t real.”

“Actually, Anathema said it was real,” says Wensleydale, and Crowley grumbles something; Warlock watches as a smile touches Aziraphale’s lips, even though he doesn’t let his attention leave the page he’s looking at.

“If it’s real, then it’s something else borrowing the story for a go,” Crowley insists. “Trying it on. Like a pair of shoes or something. Lots of different kinds of energies do that, pick up some human-made archetype, give it a spin. Lots of times that’s how they become real.” When he looks up and catches the looks on their faces, he grins, and Warlock spots a glint of sharp teeth. “Just don’t ask about the naga. Not right now.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale scolds, and Crowley turns that mischievous smile onto the angel, who fondly rolls his eyes.

It’s a lot to take in. Warlock feels like his concept of the world has been a punching bag these last few days: finding out Adam was being haunted, seeing the damn thing in Pepper’s basement, witches being real. Angels and demons being real. Angels and demons having raised him, because he was almost the fucking—

“Hey.”

Warlock nearly jumps because apparently Nanny - Crowley - makes no noise when he moves. (She? For fuck’s sake.) He looks up. It is a lot, a lot to take in. Crowley gently takes the sunglasses off his face and lets Warlock look into those brass-yellow snake eyes. They’re very strangely familiar, in a way that resonates inside of Warlock like Nanny’s voice did. He can’t decide whether it’s comforting or it isn’t.

“This has to be a lot,” says Crowley. His face is calm, in a way that’s oddly grounding, even if Warlock hasn’t decided whether he’s happy or mad or some other brazen collection of emotions he’ll decide on later. “Look, kid, I wanna focus on Adam now, but please believe me when I say that Aziraphale and I will be around to answer all your questions and figure everything out afterwards, alright? I know it’s been a while and I’m pretty sure we owe you a big explanation and an apology, but we’ve been — busy.” He gestures wildly at the shop, at Aziraphale, and then upwards and downwards like it’s supposed to mean anything to Warlock. “I’m just.” Crowley swallows. “I’m happy to see you, kid.”

Warlock thinks for a second, but it feels like underneath all of it, he’s kind of happy to see Nanny and Brother Francis and Mr. Cortese and Mr. Harrison again, even if they’re all the same two people, because at the moment he doesn’t have a lot from his childhood that he liked but they were alright. “I, uh, yeah,” he stammers. “I’m glad too.”

———

The afternoon passes in a rush of research and chatter. Warlock manages to stuff all of his emotions into a box and instead spends his time quietly geeking the fuck out to all of these books. It’s one thing to find out that this shit is real; it’s another to find out that this shit is real, and he’s been happily flipping through the texts and yelling out information to Wensleydale, who is quickly making a database of their finds on his little laptop.

“Right,” says Aziraphale. The way he closes his book casts a sort of formality over things, like a spell, and everyone looks up from what they’re doing to listen. “As interesting as this is, I’m afraid that defining the sort of spirit that took Adam isn’t getting us any closer to finding him.”

“Angel,” Crowley says slowly. “I wonder if we’re coming at this from the wrong direction. What if there’s a way to contact Adam?”

“Can’t you just, you know, snap your fingers and find him?” Pepper asks, although it’s a bit scathing because if that’s the case, why didn’t they do it hours ago?

“No,” Aziraphale tells her. “The Antichrist has an automatic defense … thing … that keeps occult and ethereal beings such as ourselves from being able to directly locate him, unfortunately.”

Crowley snorts. “Yeah, otherwise the whole Armageddon thing would have been a lot easier.” He flicks a glance at Warlock and then looks away. “No, angel, what if there’s a human way to contact Adam?”

“A human way,” Aziraphale breathes, his eyes going distant as he thinks. “Oh!”

“What,” Brian says accusingly, probably because Brian doesn’t seem to want to put down his illustrated book on haunted places in England.

Crowley looks at Pepper. “I assume you’ve got the Mom-mobile?” When she nods, he grins, and tucks his phone into the inner pocket of his blazer. “Alright, kids. Angel, grab your jacket. We’re going to see a psychic.”