Chapter 9: Notes

The shrill ring of the phone made Brooklyn jump and drop the book she had been so engrossed in.

She wiped her eyes, taking a moment to glance at the clock, was it really 1:30 AM already?, and reached for her phone as she picked her book back up.

It was a thick book, written by a mythic historian on the mythic culture in Romania, the native homeland of haltijas among other mythics. She had been reading up on Warren's past, her mind trying to decipher his behavior in the only way she knew how. She hadn't intended to but she had gotten lost in the words and didn't realize so much time had passed. She chastised herself, she had work in the morning after all, as she hit the 'talk' button on her phone. The phone number was one she recognized and she smiled as she said hello.

“Hey, Brook.” the familiar voice floated through the speaker. She sounded kind of fuzzy but then she was calling from halfway across the world. “How are you?”

“Hi, Tina.” Brooklyn smiled as she sat back against her pillows. “I'm fine and you?”

Tina Cross, Jack's only daughter, had been in Africa for the better part of two years now studying non-humanoid mythics. Much like her father, her job was her life and she tended not to call the States all that often. Brooklyn was sure Tina had forgotten, or more likely didn't care, that it was so early in her time zone.

“Not bad. I just got into Cairo about an hour ago. You would not believe all the stuff I've been getting over here.” she answered. Tina was a no nonsense kind of women, work and very little else sparked her passion. Brooklyn considered her a friend, one she rarely saw or even spoke to, but a friend nonetheless. However, Tina was not the kind to call just to chat, especially not from such a distance. If she had called, she needed something.

“I'm glad you're enjoying yourself.” Brooklyn smiled. “Did you need something?”

“A few things.” Tina paused to say something to someone else, she seemed to be speaking French to Brooklyn's ears though she couldn't imagine why. “Sorry, my guide is impatient. We've been hearing a rumor of a sphinx running around in the deserts around here. He really wants to go out there and check it out.”

“I'm sure you do as well.” Brooklyn couldn't help but be impressed. Sphinges were incredibly rare and notoriously shy around people. Getting a photo of one was considered a feat in the scientific community, if Tina could find out anything about them, it would be incredibly precious information.

“First, as you can probably imagine, I want you to mail me anything you can find on sphinges. I want the best chance to find this thing.” Tina said.

“That won't be a problem.” Brooklyn promised going down a short mental list of books and files and papers she knew that contained information on sphinges. It wasn't a particularly diverse selection.

“Great. I also need you to pass on a message to dad for me.” she continued.

“You can't tell him yourself?” Brooklyn asked, a bit surprised. Sure, Tina and Jack didn't have the most loving of father-daughter relationships but they respected each other and got along well enough when they were together.

“I had to call you anyway, I figured I'd take out two birds with one stone.” she sounded careless, like it didn't matter to her. “Anyway, he asked me to keep an eye out for anything weird happening with the mythic populations.”

“And something has been happening?” Brooklyn asked sharply. There was only one reason Jack would ask Tina to keep her eyes open for something like this.

“It might be nothing. There are mythic poachers the world over but...The bennu populations over here, something is bothering them lately.”

The bennu were considered a sacred mythic in parts of Egypt. A close cousin of the more common firebirds, they were great, beautiful birds. There was a place for them in the illegal animal trade as a great many collectors loved having the rare specimen that the Egyptian government did not allow out of their country as a pet. That might have been all Tina was referring to but Brooklyn doubted it. Tina had encountered those people before, she knew the signs, if she said something was weird then something really wasn't right at all.

“What kind of things?” Brooklyn asked making a mental note to tell Crispin the moment she saw him the next morning. Jack had instituted a 'minimal technology' rule recently and, although there was no other way for Tina to tell than to call directly, she knew he wouldn't want her to pass on the message via a phone.

“Well, normally they're quite calm, even friendly. But when me and Rafi went to see a group of them a few days ago, they started acting agitated.” she sighed. “We found the remains of a net and a few of the nests had been tossed, all the eggs were gone. If it had just been a predator we would have found the shells, the remains of the meal, but they were just gone. We also found a lot of feathers, almost all of them female, and far too many for the number of them that we saw.”

“Females and children.” Brooklyn sighed at the familiar theme. “Thank you, Tina. That's exactly the kind of thing Jack is looking out for.”

There was a pause, then Tina said sort of quietly, “I don't really have a good feeling about all this. Joe has told me...things. It just doesn't feel right. Makes my nose itch.”

Brooklyn couldn't help but smile. Tina was her father's daughter alright. Her nose itching was her version of Jack grinding his teeth. The pair of them had a sort of intuition when it came to things and it manifested physically and was usually incredibly accurate.

“We're doing all we can.” Brooklyn assured her. “I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. There's nothing you can do anyway.”

Tina groaned out loud. “You sound just like Joe. Dad sounded weird the last time I talked to him, he's never hid anything from me before but he really didn't want to talk about it. I'm worried Brook, alright? My nose is itching up a storm over here every time I think about it.”

“You're a scientist, Tina.” Brooklyn reminded her. “Your job is to discover and catalog mythic species. Our job is to handle things like this. And Jack is very good at it. Don't worry about him.”

“I know all that.” Brooklyn could practically see the frown on Tina's face. “But dad isn't infallible. He likes to act like he is and he's good enough at backing it up that people believe him. There's a shit storm coming, Brook, and...I don't know. Call it a hunch but I just don't like any of this.”

“None of us do.” Brooklyn said as she yawned. “Jack will take care of it, alright? Focus on your job, we'll do ours.”

“Will you guys stop pushing me to the side? Look, if you need me back I'll be on the first flight home. I can help.” she insisted getting a bit angry.

“We'll be fine, Tina.” Brooklyn yawned again. Now that she wasn't so focused she could feel her exhaustion creeping up on her. “I have work in the morning. I'll get Kieth to pick up that information on sphinges for you.”

“Your creepy little assistant? Really, Brook?” she could hear the exasperation in Tina's voice.

“He hit on you once.” Brooklyn grinned at the memory. He had called Tina a cougar despite the fact that Tina was no older than Brook and Tina had ripped him into verbal shreds. “And he's good at his job.” Brooklyn just wouldn't have to time, not with the inspections going on, she had no choice but to delegate her normal workload.

“Whatever. Just look after dad for me, okay?” she sounded genuinely worried to Brooklyn so she relented.

“Don't worry about Jack. Crispin is taking good care of him.” she promised sincerely.

“Oh, yeah. I heard about that. So is it true his new assistant is a siren?” Tina asked cautiously.

“Crispin is a good guy.” Brooklyn yawned for a third time and knew she had to get off the phone. “Look, Tina. Can we do this later? It's late.”

“Huh?” Tina sounded genuinely confused for a moment but Brooklyn practically saw the realization come over her face.”Oh, yeah. Sure. Tell everyone I said 'hi', okay?”

“Sure thing.” Brooklyn promised. They said they're good-byes and Brooklyn's head dropped back onto her pillow. She could already feel sleep tugging insistently at her mind. She picked up her book and admired the simple cover for a moment. It wasn't a particularly exciting read but it was fascinating and that dew her in completely.

The book fell on her chest as she finally succumbed to sleep and she dreamed that night about Warren as a knight in shinning armor, unable to stop defending his castle even as it was falling under the tide of battle.

XXXXXXXXXXX

“Memo. Memo. Memo from three years ago.” Warren said moving the stacks of papers around into more manageable piles as Crispin laughed silently.

“So you have nothing yet?” he signed with a smile.

“I have a chance to save the life of a very nice sounding, if grammatically incorrect Nigerian prince. He's even offering me compensation for it.” Warren waved a printed copy of an e-mail around. Why in the world Lester would have printed the spam was beyond him but he stopped questioning the reasoning behind the mad scientist the further into his piled he dug.

As he suspected, there was a very loose system of organization to Lester's piles. The closer they were to his desk, the more scientifically relevant they were. The closer they were to the door, the more likely they were an e-mail from Jack or Mr. Ozera chewing him out for something. Warren had no idea why he printed e-mails, he couldn't think of a single person who did that, but he did and Warren was dealing with the consequences.

“Anything to report to Jack that's relevant?” Crispin asked, his mood unaffected by Warren's obvious unhappiness with the amount of work he was having to do.

“Yeah. I want a raise.” Warren moved a stack of papers to his immediate left.

As he was going through the papers, he was putting them into a more ordered system. There were scientific documents, journals and research papers, as well as stacks and stacks of papers full of equations that made Warren's eyes hurt just looking at them. There were files and books on information Warren knew Brooklyn must have gathered for him. Those he put in a pile by the door, intending to return them to her and, by extension, the library itself. The printed e-mails were separated by category with the spam being put in a recycling bin immediately. Then there were all the scrap papers, napkins, notes on top of other notes, or pages that looked like they had been ripped from a book or magazine that had Lester's handwriting on them from an epiphany that had hit him and he had nothing else to write on. Warren had to read each paper for meaning, separate it into an appropriate pile, and make sure anything that Jack might find useful (which was nothing so far) was put into its own pile.

“I've gone through Lester's finances.” Crispin told him. “There was nothing too unusual. He doesn't really spend his money on anything. He's very work oriented. There's no strange deposits or withdrawals. He even pays his taxes on time but that may be because he hires someone to do them.”

“So, dead end?” Warren sighed. “You know, as messy as this guy is, he's quite brilliant. Look at this.” Warren picked up a napkin that he had recently placed in the 'scientific mumbo-jumbo' pile and read out, “'Firing capacity of fire bird flames in relation to size' then math. So much math. And under that, 'take heat readings on fire birds, compare to size, diet, gender, and age'. I saw a paper earlier covering all of that that he published. I didn't understand half of it so I guess that means it's impressive.”

Crispin shrugged. He wasn't really into science overmuch. It was interesting and impressive but nothing he was likely to get too excited about. “I'll come back later.” he said simply and left Warren to keep going through the piles.

“Oh, look. Notes on humans.” Warren said to himself as he grinned widely and picked up a research paper on human anatomy and physiology.

He was pretty surprised to find it actually as Dr. Fontane was an expert on mythics. He flipped through a couple pages, smiling at it. Most of the words were a bit too big for him to understand and there were plenty of incredible graphic pictures of human bodies that had their muscles or bones exposed.

His smiled faded from his face as he flipped through them.

The images were clinical, there was nothing too horrific about them. These were bodies whose owners had donated them to science, these were bodies that had been treated with great care and respect that had likely helped many a medical student learn how to save many a life.

Still the pictures created a sink in his belly. He couldn't stop himself from turning the pages, letting his eyes take in each carefully exposed muscle, each meticulously cleaned bone, every organ that had been preserved perfectly. And he couldn't stop each one from reminding him of the bodies he had seen, desecrated and decimated.

And those poor souls reminded him of Josh.

The little traitor, the sweet nerd with a slight lisp; looking over the clinical pictures brought into his mind images of the tiny man dead and cold, his body clammy and pale, as his blood coagulated on the hard wood of a stranger's deck.

Warren slammed the book shut abruptly and practically threw it away from himself sending it crashing into a pile of papers he hadn't got to yet and knocking it over. He was surprised to find he was breathing hard and feeling his own pulse jumping in his veins.

He shook his head as they both slowed, trying to regain control of himself as the all too familiar dark emotions threatened to wash over him.

Warren took in a deep breath and reached out to fix the papers he had knocked over. There was no point in making a bigger mess for himself.

As he moved the papers around, one word caught his eye.

XXXXXXXXXXX

“There is practically nothing on sphinxes, Miss B.” Kieth said as he dropped the only two books he had found onto her desk.

Since the boys had moved on, Brooklyn had gotten her office back and she had stopped in for the day to tell Kieth to get Tina's information and to pick up a book on haltijas she had ordered about a week ago now.

“Sphinges.” she corrected automatically. “The plural is sphinges.”

Kieth made a face. “That doesn't sound nearly as cool.”

“Neither does incorrect grammar.” Brooklyn laughed gently at herself. When did she become that person?

Kieth laughed at her but didn't protest at her correction. “Is that your new book?”

Brooklyn smiled and hid the title from him. She wasn't ashamed, of course she wasn't, but she considered this her business.

“Did you find the research papers on sphinges as well?” she asked instead of answering.

“Yeah, of course.” he opened one of the books and showed her the two files that existed in her library.

“Great.” she smiled. “I want you to ship those to this address.” she paused to write down the location of Tina's camp. “As quick as possible if you please.”

“You got it, Miss B.” Kieth winked and left, taking the books with him, a smile on his face.

Brooklyn sat down behind her desk, taking a moment to admire her new book.

So far, she was doing exactly as she thought was right as far as Lester's inspection was concerned. The cleaning crew had already taken over his wing with all of Lester's undergrads, grads, and interns having a few days of unexpected vacation. Until she was given the all clear, they weren't allowed back and until they came back, she couldn't really begin her interviews.

Which meant, she smiled as she opened the book, that she had plenty of time to read a few chapters of the book.

A few words in, Brooklyn dropped any pretense that she was going to start at the beginning and skipped right to the chapter on vakis.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Warren didn't realize until hours later that he had gotten lost in reading. It certainly hadn't been his intention to do so, goodness knows doing research wasn't his strong suit. However, something about the paper, written in Lester's own messy hand, that caught his attention and drew him into it.

'Human/Humanoid fertility, demi viability' the words scrawled across the top said. It was more than the simple ramblings, disjointed phrases, and completely undecipherable math that he had written on other pieces of paper. This one was clearly written out, meant not just for his own eyes, and it was neat and orderly, as if Lester half expected it to make it into print some day.

Demis were the part human/part mythic children born out of pairings between humans and humanoid mythics. Haltijas, fairies, centaurs, elves, merfolk, sirens, and various other mythics were counted as humanoid for their ability to produce offspring with humans. Others, such as changers, caladrius, and various others that weren't even close to human in shape were considered non-humanoid. Demi children were, in actuality, rather rare. They weren't unheard of but it wasn't common to see them running around playing with other children. Warren couldn't think of a single demi that he knew personally.

Dallas, Ilia's permanent boy toy, had told him that her family consisted of just as many demis as not. It had been, he told him, a real treat to be around such a diverse family. However, her family was the exception to the rule. Most, human and mythic alike, preferred to mate within their own species.

As Warren was involved with a human woman, he felt a pang of pain thinking of her and how they were pulling away from each other, he had a vested interest in the subject.

There was, he learned, a difference in the chances of children between humans and humanoid mythics of different species. Fairies, as far as he could decipher from the incredibly large words before him, were the most fertile with human breeding. Already being able to easily produce offspring within their own species, they carried the trait over to their human partners as well. Warren made a mental note to tell Ilia, he wondered what she would say.

The least fertile were elves, who were already almost completely sterile anyway, who had very low conception rates with humans.

Centaurs averaged somewhere in the middle conception wise however the children weren't always carried to term especially if the female was human as human bodies weren't made to deal with centaur children. Centaur demis, he knew from reading, had sharp hooves in place of feet that, in fact, endangered not just their own life but that of the mother as well as they could, and did, rip at the placenta and uterine wall.

It was an incredibly detailed, fascinating read. Warren found himself, before he realized what had happened, passing over an hour just pouring over the material.

What made it so incredible, to him at least, was how amazingly detailed it was. He was sure Lester didn't have access to so many demi cases, so where did he come up with all the data? He didn't name any of the people he studied, interfering instead to call them subject-blank with a series of numbers and letters filling in for the 'blank'.