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English
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Part 6 of CW Detective Agency
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Published:
2024-04-10
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2,995
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1/1
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The Case of The Spooktastic Snoop

Summary:

“I’m not angry, I just want to know which one of you set up the website. So that I can disembowel them.”

Notes:

Thanks, as usual, to everyone who’s been enjoying this series, your support is deeply appreciated and inspiring and you all get sloppy kisses (sorry) 😘😘😘💝💙🩷

There is a kidnapping in this one, but it is mostly the fluffiest of fluff.

Work Text:

Jon loved his friends. He really did.

The degree to which his life had improved since Martin, Tim and Sasha had waltzed right into it and decided, against all sense and reason, to make it their home, was frankly staggering; and the idea of being without them was one which left him all curled up and whimpering inside and wishing that he could reach in and hug his own emotions all better.

But there were some things which just couldn’t be borne.

“I’m not angry, I just want to know which one of you set up the website. So that I can disembowel them.”

Jon had objected from the start to having an ‘internet presence’. Enough people were aware of his Detective Agency to ensure that they were kept busy and, for the most part, with those who needed his particular expertise the most. Certainly they took on a few non-Fears-related cases, but those were generally quick enough to deal with and greatly outweighed by the rest. Making his business more mainstream seemed like an open invitation to every tedious adultery case in London.

Tim, Sasha and Martin had argued, with large pleading-kitten eyes, which Jon resisted only with great difficulty, that there were still people in need who were not aware of their existence; and that they could set up a discreet and professional site which subtly emphasised the supernatural aspect of the business, without making him seem like a joke.

They had been wrong.

“We might have got a little bit carried away. With the spooky.”

“If by ‘carried away’ you mean ‘wandered into the path of a roaring tsumani’, then yes. I would agree.”

The repeated use of the actual word ‘spooky’, as childish as Jon found it, was one of the least of his issues. Whereas, the little animated Jon, scuttling importantly across the page in a trenchcoat and fedora, followed by the cheesiest floating eyeball he’d ever seen (admittedly, there hadn’t been a huge array of contenders) was probably the worst.

“And exactly how much of the copy did you steal from Ghostbusters?”

They glanced at each other, sheepishly, with the expressions of three people who had forgotten that, contrary to popular belief, Jon had occasionally crossed paths with popular culture.

“Less than a third.” Sasha considered a moment. “Probably.”

Tim slung his arm around her in solidarity. “I mean, to be fair, if there is something strange in the neighbourhood … then you are exactly the right person to call.”

Jon sighed and meant it.

“Well, now it seems that I am also the person to call if people want to ask for Dr Venkman, pretend that they’re being terrorised by marshmallows, or want to inform me that they went to school with me and are glad to have their feeling that I was ‘as whacked as a bag of snakes’ fully confirmed.”

Tim raised his free hand.

“I mean … it’s not entirely impossible that there really is a plague of killer marshmallows?”

“Tim, I don’t need the Eye to tell me that there aren’t any …” Jon paused while some new information dropped casually into his brain. “Okay, fine, I’ll phone that particular person back. And dig out the reinforced tongs. But the rest of my complaints stand. I’d like the website down by the end of the day, please.”

“What if we just modified it a —”

“Gone.”

Jon glared his best glare (from his non-lethal range; he hadn’t been that put out about it) and turned his attention to marshmallows.

By the time he’d dealt with that little issue, he’d practically forgotten the whole affair.

~~~

Jon woke up in a very familiar state of disorientation; comprehending just enough to be frustrated that he wasn’t going to hit his two months kidnap-free target (and would also probably get one hell of a talking to when he got home; because one of Martin’s less endearing qualities was the tendency to assume that Jon could just not get kidnapped and menaced, if he really put the effort in).

“ …get away with horning in on our territory? Oh no, I don’t think so, mister. We deal with all the ghosts round here, thank you, and no swanky Johnny-come-lately is going to swoop in and woo all our custom, right from under our noses.”

A finger wagged right in his face and Jon’s brain snapped back to attention: first, registering the two strangers, one cool and collected, one red-faced and glaring at him; next, the ropes around his wrists and ankles, tied with frustrating efficiency; and, finally, the Eye filling in all the blanks with far too great an eagerness, so that he was almost more confused from an excess of memory, than he had been from the lack of it.

He and Martin had been walking home together, as usual, when they had heard an sharp and urgent cry for help from an alleyway.

Which really would have been a great time for the Ceaseless Watcher to have put in a word, but apparently it was taking a nap or something, because they had both instinctively run towards the desperate shout of distress, not realising that it was a trap, until they had catapulted over the trip wire; after which, things were a little blurry.

Which obviously raised some immediate concerns about Martin, but the Eye seemed to be awake now and it informed him that he was safe and reasonably sound, apart from a splitting headache and scuffed knees; and was currently being attended to by Tim and Sasha.

Jon had long since learned that his patron was by no means opposed to his falling into harm’s way (even if it preferred him to also fall out of it again) so he was resoundingly unsurprised by this ‘accidental’ lapse of usefulness in a crisis.

What did seem to be working perfectly well, however, was a perk which Jon had picked up since becoming the Detective and which he tended to think of as ‘Engage Supervillain Monologue Mode’.

It had saved his life on numerous occasions, forcing his captor, or captors, to not kill him, or do whatever other unpleasant things they had planned, until they had explained exactly why they were intending to do so, generally at some length. This usually gave him time to either escape, be rescued, or have his death scene interrupted and delayed (and, in one case, abandoned altogether, after the kidnapper realised that their reasons sounded frankly ridiculous, when they said it all out loud, and just let him go, with an apology and a promise to get some therapy).

“… don’t care if you’re some ‘Spooktastic Snoop, who knocks weirdness for a loop’,” - and, good lord, Jon must have blocked that tagline from his memory - “we’re the best ghosthunters in town, thank you very much. And you’re about to become the latest ghost.”

Jon knew quite a lot of the people who were involved with the Entities in some way, but these two were new to him. They had not long since returned to the UK, the Eye informed him, after a sojourn in America, where they had, indeed, been very successful hunters of ghosts and other things (mostly actively malignant, though a few were just in the wrong place at the wrong time).

And, oh yes: they had a mutual acquaintance in common.

Since Gerry Keay had recovered from his death, he had happily thrown himself full tilt into living, without being constrained by his mother, his mentor, or the chains the supernatural had looped heavily around him, keeping him from ever seeing himself in a life which wasn’t permanently oppressed by it. Nowadays, he divided his time between a regular bookstore job, helping out with Georgie’s podcast and his penchant for baking, which meant that the office was usually suffused with the delicious scent of muffins or fresh lemon curd buns, whenever he dropped round to visit.

The Eye had given Jon a lot more background detail about the ghosthunters, which would have inclined him strongly to compassion and overlooking the small matter of their attempting to kill him; except that these two had treated Gerry like a useful object, instead of a person, and Jon’s protective streak was kicking in hard.

Not that he could do much about it currently. Even without being pretty comprehensively tied up, Jon’s main weapons of attack were, essentially, a disapproving glare and actual smiting, with not much in between. Jon didn’t really want to actually kill them - assuming it would even actually work on them - and he doubted, somehow, that they would be persuaded to let him go by the threat of Jon getting really quite cross with them.

“Look, this is clearly all just a misunderstanding. I’m not actually a … a ‘ghostbuster’.” The word only passed his lips with a lot of nudging and effort. “I’m a private detective. My friends just got a little creative with the advertising.”

Though, honestly, it was his own fault for not being firm enough. All this could have been avoided if he had just been more convincingly determined about the whole thing. And thought to expressly veto the use of eighties film references.

“A private detective. You don’t look like a private detective.”

“What, but I do look like a ghosthunter?”

The older one - Trevor, apparently - a weather-beaten looking man, with a sense of wiry strength about him, looked him up and down and shrugged.

“Fair point. But, either way, you deal with the supernatural, right?”

Jon considered lying; then reconsidered, on the grounds that deception was so much not one of his natural talents that three separate would-be murderers had ruptured something laughing at his attempts.

“Well, yes. It does sometimes come up. But I’m sure that there’s plenty of scope for our respective skillsets —”

“Oh, come on, lets just kill him before he bores us to death.” The other one - Julia - crossed her arms impatiently. “We’re losing good hunting time.”

This was about the sort of time that the cavalry would be very welcome to make an appearance; but Martin hadn’t seen their attackers and they didn’t have leads to follow, except everyone with a grudge against Jon.

Which was not a small list.

They would likely go to Jonah Magnus first, though, as the most obvious suspect: and that would not only cheer Jonah up, after his recent mishap, but put them all in grave danger. Jon really needed to get out of this predicament, and fast.

“What if I could find you some ghosts? Or,” Jon considered Trevor’s history briefly, “even some vampires?”

They glanced at each other.

“Well, then, I guess we wouldn’t kill you until after you’d shown us.”

“Oh. Right. Though, I was kind of hoping for not being killed at all? And I still don’t really see how me being your competition is a good enough reason for murder in the first place.”

Julia smirked at him.

“It’s not, really. But the both of us have had bloody miserable luck for ages, ever since we lost something important to us and, frankly, you’re just the last in a long line of poky little thorns in our side. And the one with the crappiest website. So, lucky you, you get to bear the brunt of accumulated resentment.”

“But if you take us to some vampires first, we’ll probably take the worst of it out on them, and kill you nice and gently, how about that?”

Jon sighed; and accepted.

~~~

Julia’s car was old and creaky, and about one medium pothole away from shuddering itself to pieces; but, on the plus side, it had a surprisingly roomy boot. Jon shared the space with a heavy-duty blanket; some plastic sheeting; a first aid kit; assorted - and uncomfortably poky - weaponry; and a small, tattered stuffed bear, which the Eye informed him was named Growly.

The dark might have seemed all-encompassing, if Jon hadn’t already had experience of what that really meant. As it was, it just felt comforting: and inspiring. Jon was pretty sure that the Lightless Beast - which had dropped by to visit a few times and had been essentially mooching about, at a bit of a loose end, now that it wasn’t needed for the end of the world - would really enjoy chasing Trevor and Julia; while the pair of them were probably wily enough not to actually get killed.

And as Jon now had some sort of Honorary Dark status, from eating the sun ...

“Alright, we’re here. And there had damn well better be vampires, or we’ll all be finding out together exactly how many bones you can break before you die.”

Ignoring the answer which popped happily into his head, with pictures, Jon waited patiently until they had unpacked him from the boot and untied him - so he could lead them to the vampire nest - before taking a deep breath and performing the Summoning of the Beast: which mostly involved thinking Dark Thoughts and muttering the first incantation which came to mind.

(Jon added a bit of an arm flourish too, but he was pretty sure that was just for his own sense of drama.)

The result was delightfully satisfying. The Lightless Beast formed happily from the shadows, with a wriggle of excitement; Trevor and Julia released a string of cursewords that practically set the air on fire; and then the chase was very much on.

Jon didn’t bother to stay and watch. He had a phone call to make.

~~~

The cup of tea was perfect and, if the blanket wasn’t strictly necessary, it still felt soft and warm and comforting enough around him, that he didn’t object to the coddling.

Besides, he was enjoying the story.

“So, Martin was all set to stalk right up to Jonah, slam his hands on the desk and demand that he give you back or he’d break him in half.” Tim made an appropriate snapping gesture, with some vigour. “Which, you know, he could probably do.”

Martin blushed deeply and tried to hide his indisputably impressive arms, but Jon thought he was secretly rather pleased.

“Only we managed to persuade him that he’d probably do some sort of mind-whammy and that we weren’t actually certain that it was Jonah who had you in the first place.”

“So then Martin remembered that pigs have an excellent sense of smell. And Sasha pointed out that Georgie has a van large enough for even the most gigantic of pigs.”

“Good lord, you didn’t —”

“Good lord, we absolutely did. Don’t worry, no one was working at the Institute that late and, anyway, we told the Hogster not to eat anyone who wasn’t actually trying to kill you, or you’d be very upset and wouldn’t give him back scratches for a month.”

Jon shook his head, but mostly at his pig being dubbed ‘the Hogster’ rather than at the plan itself, which he was actually very impressed by; if still a little alarmed about all the people whom Hogules might theoretically have browsed on, if he’d happened to have gotten bored searching for Jon and fancied a snack. Not to mention the fact that someone might mistake him for a monster, rather than the best and sweetest pig that ever breathed (murders aside).

“Hogules searched the place pretty thoroughly. And ate a dozen statements and a photocopier, to keep his strength up. But it didn’t take long before we realised you weren’t there. So …”

“So we took him to Jonah’s house. I’m honestly not sure if it was better that he wasn’t home or not. I would’ve loved to have seen his face when Hogules strolled through his coffee table.”

Jon was on his second cup of tea by the time they finished getting through the state that the house had been left in, after some pointed searching by a pig with a grudge and a full stomach. The pauses, while they shook with laughter or found yet another euphemism for dung, rather drew out the narrative.

All in all, they seemed to have had rather a good time, for once, while Jon had been kidnapped, and he felt genuinely pleased about the fact. It was reducing his usual guilt count considerably.

“We were just working out where to try next, or whether to just let Hogules sniff around and hope for the best, when you called.”

The humour dropped away from Martin with a thud, and, for a moment, his face was truly open and raw in a way it rarely was, despite most people’s assumptions about him. Martin was so practised at a cheery, non-threatening friendliness, that it took a lot to break through the surface.

All the relief that had been in his voice, when Jon had called him, was blazingly visible now.

“I’m sorry. I’ll try to be less … helpful, when I hear mysterious cries of distress, in the future. It’s just that, well, I get quite a lot of those and most of them are real. And fairly time-critical.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t just you who fell for it. Literally.”

Martin gave him a rueful smile and Jon squeezed his hand, to reassure him he wasn’t to blame.

They gazed into each other’s eyes for a time; possibly slightly longer than the socially acceptable amount of public soppiness, as the others - not just Tim, Sasha, but also Georgie and Gerry, who had refused to be left out - began making the sort of teasing remarks which Jon would probably resent, if he wasn’t too happy and cosy and just the tiniest bit sleepy (which was partly from the kidnapping and partly from dealing with the ecstatic, and ever so slightly dangerous, greeting from his pig).

So he wasn’t quite sure if Tim had really suggested that they remake the website, but base it on ‘The Exorcist’ next time - complete with dramatic use of animated pea soup - or if that was just a dream; but, either way, he didn’t plan to worry about it until the morning.

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