Twin Vice Paranormal Detectives

Twin Vice Paranormal Detectives

Over the Threshold

oOo

"Phenomenon, abnormal occurrences, magic... Muggles are never satisfied with seeing, and their ears are never filled with hearing, and so they spend their lives chasing the wind. Because, to a Muggle, something that cannot be seen or heard is simply something that happens.

That is why, of all the strange creatures and prophecies of the world, Muggles are amongst the strangest of all."

-- Sir Hector Archimedes Oddness, 1759

oOo

"Weasley Manor, Junction of Pentonville Road, City Road and Upper Street," detective Nox repeated, reading off the hastily scribbled napkin in her hand. "I was right." She frowned. "No number."

'This family is probably so wealthy that the ruddy house only needs a title...' she thought wryly. 'Rich bastards.'

Chewing agitatedly on an apple stem, Nox scanned the instructions on the napkin carefully once more. The Junction was famously renowned as the location of Lyon's Angel Hotel, a beautiful old structure sporting a rather striking external dome which had become an Islington landmark in London city.

Therefore - 'The rent's going to be sky-high,' Nox groaned. 'Knew it was too good to be true. I'm wasting my sodding time.' But as Nox re-read the scribbled handwriting a third time, she felt inexplicably drawn towards the place and suddenly realised her feet hadn't stopped their progress through the bustling streets. 'I guess,' she reasoned, 'it's not like I've got anything else to do. Might as well check it out at the very least...'

It had all started when Nox had been approached by a peculiar man a week earlier while eating lunch in her favourite hot spot just off Leicester Square. He was an oddity in his mauve top hat and velvet tailed coat, but no one appeared to notice him (this was central London, after all). He reminded her a bit of a bird, with all his bobbing and excitable hopping about.

"Excuse my terrible rudeness, dear lady." He approached her. "But it appears to me that you are on a quest to discover a safe abode, am I correct?"

The detective blinked rather stupidly, a fork-full of sheppard's pie stuffing her mouth. "An abode?" she replied, spraying pieces of food across his moth-eaten purple cravat.

"A dwelling! Dear miss, a domicile in which you can hang your hat!" the man proclaimed cheerfully.

"Oh." She laughed a bit nervously, unsure whether the man was a raving lunatic or just a friendly eccentric. "Yes, I suppose I am."

"And quite right, too! Quite right! Everyone needs a place where they can hang their hat. Very wise of you miss, very wise," he said. "Excuse my rudeness for poking my metaphorical nose into your very private business, but might I inquire into your progress?"

The detective shook her head and smiled. "No luck yet I'm afraid. At this rate I'll have to sell my soul before I can afford anything. This place here," she pointed to a photograph of a derelict looking apartment block - its windows were boarded up and tufts of grass protruded from underneath the main door, "is £450 a month and that's not including gas or electricity bills."

"Alas! This fair city is ruthless in emptying the pockets of its loyal underdogs." He put a hand to his heart and shook his head sadly, then, as if he had received a great shock, his head shot up and turned to her, aghast. "Gracious me, how rude you must think I am! We haven't been properly introduced." Before she could protest he had clasped her hand in both of his and was shaking it vigorously. "My name is Diggle, dear lady, Dedalus Diggle. And what might yours be?"

"N-Nox," replied Nox shakily, as Dedalus was still throwing her arm up and down with terrific force.

"Ah, a Greek name. Excellent! First rate! Very lovely," he flattered. "And now that proper protocol has been made and we are such good acquaintances, I might be of service to you in your great search for a humble dwelling."

Nox grimaced. There had to have been an angle somewhere. She had written his instructions down out of politeness and let him on his way without harbouring any real intentions of visiting the place.

And yet...

"Here I am," Nox muttered ruefully, spitting the apple stem she had been chewing onto the pavement.

An old sign stuck out of the building at a jaunty angle, swinging on its rusty hinges. Its swirling maroon letters read, 'Weasley Manor'.

Nox pursed her lips and whistled appreciatively. She'd passed this way many times before on her way to Camden market, but in all her years Nox had never seen this building. And it was pretty hard to miss. Weasley Manor was immense, dark and gothic in its grand architecture, and contrasted dramatically with its bright and friendly neighbour, the Angel Hotel.

If she had had any sense (or been any good sort of detective), Nox would have listened to the tiny voice in her head that instructed her to turn around and walk away. Unfortunately, she was a bit deaf to that voice.

A little hesitant, Nox opened the gate and stepped into a small overgrown garden situated at the front of the house and began to walk the little path that cut a narrow channel through the tangle of weeds and rose-bushes towards the main entrance door. The walk seemed to take a great deal longer than she had expected - after all, the distance between the high street and the house could only have been a few feet.

'Must be my imagination,' she mused, and placed her hand around the large brass doorknob, pushing it gently.

The door swung open.

She mentally swore. 'What am I thinking, just barging in like this? Landlord's going to have a bloody field day with me!' Nox grimaced, visualizing the Mr Weasley of the Manor as a tall, dour gentleman resembling an old Victorian Bell-ringer.

There was no visible doorbell anywhere, so she cleared her throat noisily and waited on the front step. She could hear what sounded like a pair of voices coming from one of the rooms deep inside the murky house, but the speakers did not appear to have heard her.

The main entrance hall was simply, but elegantly, decorated. A pair of floral covered armchairs stood on either side of an elongated cabinet across from which stood a tall grandfather clock. Nox poked her head further through the door for a better look. Above the cabinet hung a large portrait whose features smiled down at her from behind a pair of half moon glasses with sharp, intelligent eyes.

Again she felt that same unfathomable attraction, as though thousands of tiny invisible ropes were pulling her further into the holds of Weasley Manor: an overactive imagination in action of course - her insatiable curiosity had been the culprit of many a misadventure. But being nosey came with the territory, Nox justified. She was a detective, after all. Not your ordinary sort, of course, but a detective all the same.

Nox hovered about on the doorstep for a minute or two longer before it became clear no one was coming to welcome her in anytime soon. She glanced at the crumpled up napkin in her hand: 'noon'. No specified day, just 'noon'.

She glanced again at the portrait hanging above the cabinet. Social etiquette declared it unfit for a young lady to intrude upon a house in which she had no real business, no fixed appointment, and no real intention of renting, but it was too late. Her imagination, or some other equally powerful force, had already sunk its claws in, and Nox was finding it increasingly hard to look away from the eyes behind those half-moon glasses.

'Well, what do Scots know about social etiquette, anyway?'

She took a breath and strode purposefully across the threshold.

The entrance hall was so much darker than she had anticipated. The only light came from the front door (which she half expected to slam shut behind her, the cornerstone rule of every horror movie). The thought sent a shiver of fear crawling up her spine and her hand instinctively went to the mobile phone in her trouser-pocket. Outside, a red Double Decker was stopped at the traffic lights while shoppers, and tourists, and students carried on their business up and down the street. Nobody gave Weasley Manor a second look.

"What a day to give up smoking," Nox muttered.

Swallowing her fear, she crept further into the murky halls. It hadn't looked so large from the doorstep. Indeed, as her eyes became accustomed to the dim light, it became apparent the room opening up around her was not the room that she had seen from the doorstep. The floor was chequered in white and purple marble slabs and a huge, iron-railed staircase wound its way up from the centre of the room to the second floor. It was as if in that one flitting moment where she had crossed the threshold between London and Weasley Manor, she had stepped into another world completely.

Nox whistled again despite herself. "Hell's bells, it's like Dali fell down the rabbit hole and became an interior decorator..."

Then, as if somebody had turned on the lights, Nox could suddenly see that the hallway in which she was standing was in fact circular in shape, its great upward curving walls meeting around a glass dome which reminded her of the old Victorian greenhouses her father had taken her to visit when she had been a child. The circular wall was frequently broken by thirteen doors, each one a different colour and each one more bizarrely labelled than the last:

Bottoms Up

Black is White

Up is Down

Short is Long

Rabbit's Foot

All Beans, Has-bins

Entity Aquaticus

Mortal Peril

Halls of Fortitude

Phineas Codex

P.S. PPPPPP

Room NO. 54, Balderdash

GLEIPNIR

Nox came to the last door and paused. Unlike the other brightly colour-coded doors, this one looked rather ordinary and out of place. "Gleipnir?" she read. "Funny... that rings a bell."

"Is conversing with yourself an overtly Scottish thing..."

"...or are you just a bit nuts, Nox?"

Nox spun on her heel towards the source of the voice.

Leaning against the curling iron rail at the bottom of the staircase stood an extraordinary looking man. He wasn't too tall, and he wasn't too short; his face wasn't incredibly handsome, but it certainly wasn't unattractive either. He wore a bottle-green tailed coat and a smile more befitting a Cheshire Cat than a human being. Crowning his head of thick red hair sat a black top hat, the rim of which he had clasped between two gloved fingers. The hat was tipped and he smiled, but it wasn't, Nox thought, an altogether friendly smile - more the keen leer of a cat who had found a lonely mouse in the dead of night.

He was certainly an oddity, and not quite in the same way Dedalus Diggle was an oddity. There was something far more striking about the man before her. The very air around him seemed to crackle with excitement. Nox felt drab in his presence: she was gangly and short, and her messy chin-cropped hair often flopped stubbornly in her face. Her only redeeming feature, she supposed, were her clear grey eyes which she raised to meet the gaze of the Cheshire Cat before her.

"Sorry for barging in on you like this," said Nox, "but I couldn't find a doorbell."

"There's a knocker," he replied, beaming. "Always knock three times."

"Right..." Nox replied, not bothering to store that piece of information away. There wasn't a chance in Hell she'd be coming back. "Is there someone else here? I thought I heard two voices."

"I solemnly swear there are only two living souls in this house," he replied, the grin on his face never faltering for a second. "You and I. That's the complete truth."

Nox didn't for a moment believe the man before her had ever told a complete truth.

"Nox Gertruda Wolfe, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yes..." She didn't remember giving her full name to Dedalus.

Suddenly, the man sprang to life. "Excellent! I was beginning to think you weren't coming. That'd put a stopper in things. Rile him right up, that would." In three long strides he was in front of her and shaking her arm with enormous force. "Anyway, glad you could make it, enchanted! Overjoyed! Right, let's get on with things then. The Weasley tour is about to begin! Don't wander off, wouldn't want you to lose anything just yet." He laughed and began to lead her by the hand across the marble slated floor.

Utterly perplexed, Nox tossed a last glance over her shoulder and saw the main door slowly closing behind her. "Here now, what's this all about?" she cried.

"Don't get your knickers in a twist," he replied. "It's just a draft. Nothing to worry about. Now, which door do you want to choose? Take your pick! They won't bite..." He presented with one arm flung towards them, beaming with pride. "Well, that one will a bit."

Nox looked at him uncertainly. She was loathe to trust anyone with that much confidence in themselves.

"No, no!" he pushed her forwards gently. "Go on! No tricks, no surprises, I promise you..." He stopped and hesitated. "Well, there might be a few surprises. Can't help those, not in this house."

Nox gave him a piercing stare. "You are Mr Weasley, aren't you?"

He stopped and looked at her as if she'd suddenly grown another head. "Yeah. But that's a bit formal, though, don't you think?"

'No, I don't think it's formal enough,' thought Nox severely.

"You can call me George," said George, grinning. "Now, go ahead and choose your destination!"

Nox sighed, defeated, and pointed towards the plainest door closest to the main staircase: "GLEIPNIR"

"Oh, not that one," said George.

"But you said any door," she retorted.

"Yeah, any door but that one," he replied.

Nox raised an eyebrow, curious. "Why?"

"Like dogs?"

"Yeah." She shrugged her shoulders. "Guess so. Not the ones the size of rats with dead fancy names though. Always wanted an Irish Wolf Hound myself."

"What about dogs with three heads?"

"Pardon?"

"Never mind. Go on, choose another!"

Nox scanned the other doors until she came across a pale blue door with magenta writing: Mortal Peril.

"How about that one?"

"Ah, not that door, either." He shook his head. "Really, you're rubbish at this."

"Well, you did say any door," she sniffed, a bit put out. "What's behind that one, then?"

"A tenant," George replied.

His answer surprised her. "But you said we were the only ones here?"

George leered at her, that same Cheshire Cat look which sent shivers up her spine. "I know what I said."

He took her arm again and began to hurry down a broad corridor hidden behind the staircase. "Seeing as you're sodding awful at picking directions, I'll lead the way," said George in a tone which told her he had always intended to do just that.

"Look, I'm sorry if I've put you out, Mr Weas-"

"George."

"George. An acquaintance of yours directed me here, Dedalus Diggle," Nox told him.

"Daft git in a top hat?" George asked.

She glanced at the top hat crowning her host's own head and stifled a laugh. "That's the one."

"Know all about it; Dedalus said you'd be perfect for the place," said George, grinning with delight. "You're a bit on the dowdy side, but you can see past your own nose." He smiled at her. "And that's got to count for something."

Soon they were running down corridors and squeezing through narrow passageways, taking a left, then a right, then a left, then a right. All along the walls there hung beautiful portraits of ladies, and bishops, and pirates, and kings. Nox knew she was moving at a brisk trot and therefore couldn't fully trust her eyes, but she was almost certain a couple of the figures in the paintings had moved.

"Halt!" cried her host, who stopped so suddenly that Nox went crashing headlong into his back. "Reflexes of a sloth, you have," grinned George.

"Cheers," Nox grunted, rubbing her nose. A startled gasp left her throat as she looked around at their new surroundings. A labyrinth of lush green gardens was spread out before them under a star-spattered night sky. An enormous yellow moon was bobbing in the air as though suspended by invisible threads and its smirking face reminded her all too much of her flame-haired companion.

Exquisitely carved stone arches separated each green avenue, upon which were headed such strange titles: Fire Weed; Aquatic Herbology; Vermicious Knids; Mandrake Farms.

"Where are we?" Nox asked in alarm. "Are we outside? It can't be getting dark already; it's only noon for crying out loud!"

"Huh? Oh, no. This is the greenhouse," George informed her. "Wouldn't go poking around in here much by yourself, mind. You're liable to lose a buttock." He shook his head sadly. "Poor Grendell."

George began to lead her down one sweet smelling arbour, where hundreds of deceptively beautiful pearl-shaped blooms grew in enormous purple bushes.

"Take a deep breath and hold it," George ordered.

"They're beautiful," Nox commented from behind her collar.

"They're Violent Violets - send you into a deep coma where you live out your worst nightmares," replied George. "Nasty way to go."

"Live out?" she asked, puzzled. "You can't really live your nightmares."

"The power of the unconscious mind is a force to be reckoned with," answered George, his Cheshire Cat grin fading a little. But his change of mood was short-lived. "Well, come on then!"

He grabbed her arm again and began to twist in and out of the leafy avenues until they had made their way across the greenhouse and into another winding corridor. The place was like a rabbit warren with all its twists and turns and directions going this way and that. She couldn't help but smirk at the Alice analogy.

"Right, here we are!" George announced at long last.

Nox looked around. "But we're back in the main hall again," she said, looking around them.

"Yeah, I thought we'd take the scenic route," chuckled her companion.

"Please tell me it's the scenic route to the pub," Nox pleaded, pushing her flopping hair away from her face.

"Nah, we'll get to that later. We're heading up the staircase. You've got the first floor, remember?" He laughed at her. "Bit slow, aren't you? Come on!"

Nox began to climb the staircase, wondering what on earth she would find on the first floor considering her first glimpses of the ground, when a green and red coloured blur shot by her at an incredible speed.

"Why are you taking the stairs?" cried George as he whizzed past. "The banister's much faster!"

Nox watched him fly up the iron rail with wide grey eyes. "No, thanks," she murmured faintly. "The stairs look safer."

"Fine, be a miserable git, but skip the middle step," pointed George. "I don't want to have to come looking for you in Peru! Don't like the place much."

Nox took his advice and skipped the middle step, and thanked her lucky stars that she did when one of her bangles slipped off and fell straight through the step into nothingness.

'It can all be rationally explained,' Nox assured herself, despite the giddiness in her stomach. 'There must be some mechanism on the banister and indoor greenhouses are the thing of the new millennium.' She cast a wary glance back at the middle step and frowned. An explanation for that currently escaped her.

Swallowing thickly, Nox climbed the remaining steps to the first floor. George was nowhere to be seen.

The first floor looked remarkably normal in comparison to the rest of the house. Polished wooden floorboards gleamed beneath the afternoon sunshine, which was streaming in through a domed skylight, smaller than the one in the main entrance hall and panelled around the edge with smaller squares of brightly coloured stained glass. On the left side of the hall three rooms had been prepared: a bedroom, a dining room, and a bathroom. Nox peered around at the large oak door to her right. Ingrained into the doorframe were two identical "II" and the words:

Twin Vice Paranormal Detective Agency

Nox tried the handle, but the door was locked.

"I have a proposition for you," George suddenly said, two inches from her ear.

"Hey!" growled Nox in warning, trying to slow her pounding heart down after the scare he'd given her. "My boyfriend knows I'm here, so don't try anything funny," she said, wagging a long finger in his face.

George gave her a withering look. "Well, that's a whopper of a lie."

Nox felt her cheeks flush red in her annoyance. "What?" she exclaimed.

"Well, you're single, aren't you?" stated George casually.

She didn't know how to answer that exactly. He'd called her bluff. "I don't see how, I mean...that is...it's none of your bloody business!"

"You don't say half of what's on your mind," said George suddenly, crossing his arms and fixing her with a steady gaze. "Not unless you think no one's around." He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "Put it together from that really. You're not around folk much, are you?"

Nox shifted her gaze to the floor. "Never mind that, it's not your business."

George just beamed at her, propping his hands on his hips. "Always say what's on your mind. Even if it's not what people want to hear. After all," he spread his arms wide, "you can't live in your head in a place like this."

Nox raised her palms to him. "Look, I don't think I can afford the rent here," she said, forgetting the fact that she didn't know where 'here' was. "I'm sorry but I'm probably wasting your time."

"There you go again!" cried George, entirely amused. "'Probably.' 'Don't think.' If you don't think and you probably all the time then what are you doing here in the first place?" George asked a sterner tone to voice now. He stuck a finger in her face. "Be more assertive. Now, what do you want to say?"

"I think you're a raving lunatic!" Nox covered her mouth in shock at her frankness, but the man only hollered with laughter.

"Rent's fifty quid a month," he chortled. "You can move in right away."

"Fifty quid a month? But how? How can you afford to charge that?" asked Nox, taken aback. "What's the catch; have the last five tenants mysteriously disappeared or something?"

"And your blunt personality finally makes its appearance! Nah," George said, and plunked a hand on her head. "Disappearances are the least of your worries here."

Nox narrowed her dark eyes in suspicion. "You're a bit cryptic yourself."

"I bloody hope so!" cried George, looking somewhat offended. "I've never tried to be anything but! Now, back to my proposition." He produced a large, intricately designed key from his pocket and locked it into the keyhole, turning it first to the right, then twice to the left, and then back again to the right before the door opened with a click.

"Come on, come on! I reckon we've wasted enough time running about the place with your stumpy Muggle legs," George huffed and pushed her inside.

"Muggle?" she frowned. "What's a Muggle?"

"I don't have time to answer all your questions."

"So far you haven't answered one!" Nox retorted.

The large office curved at one end and split into three separate factions with a little room at the back, visible through a long plain glass window.

"That's the secretary's room," George explained.

"Then what's the rest?" Nox asked, utterly perplexed by the grand interior of the office room.

"Well, that," he pointed towards a large rosewood desk situated in front of the room's broad curving window, "is your desk. And this," he leaned against a desk carved of pale green rosewood, "is mine."

She squinted at the large golden "G" painted on the front of the desk. "Just in case you forget your own name?"

George shrugged. "It happens occasionally."

Nox turned to acknowledge the desk's red twin. A large golden "F" adorned its front. "Who's that for then?" she asked, curiously.

"You'll meet him soon enough," he replied, a little too cryptically for her liking.

"And your proposition?" She couldn't help it, her interest was piqued now.

George grinned. "If I told you I could help get your dad's old business off the ground in return of a small favour," he said, "what would you say?"

Nox chewed her lip and stuffed her hands deep into her pockets. "I'd say that'd depend on the favour."

George swiftly caught her gaze; his eyes were no longer bright and cheerful but dark and deadly serious.

"Hire me."

"H-hire you?" spluttered Nox. "Why would you want me to do a thing like that?"

George's grin returned and he laughed heartily. "Dunno, a Muggle job sounds like a laugh! So go on, what do you say?"

"I say you're barmy!" Nox clutched her head. "I've already got a secretary. What do you need with a job anyway? You're loaded."

George just leaned back on his desk and smiled. "It's like I said, for kicks. And believe me when I say it'll be in your best interests. I reckon I've got something that'll come in very handy in your field of expertise."

"How do you know about my work?" asked Nox, suspicion creeping into her voice again.

"Paranormal Detective?" George snorted. "Yeah, London's really swarming with those. You stand out like a Muggle at a pure-bloods' reunion party!"

Nox wasn't even going to ask what that meant. "How is it exactly that you think you can help me out?"

"Put it this way," started George, "if I were a Paranormal Detective solving the crimes and mysteries of the dead, it'd come in handy if I could, you know, see the dead, don't you think?" he placed a round object into the palm of her hand and stepped away. "Scarf that and you'll be top of your league... uh, or whatever competitory fields Paranormal Detectives run in anyway."

Nox stared at the object in the palm of her hand, incredulously. It looked like a Jammy Dodger. And on further inspection, she said, "It's a Jammy Dodger."

George watched her, placidly.

"You really think I'm going to eat this?" asked Nox, arching her eyebrows. "After everything I've seen here?"

George just shrugged. "Everything you've seen here is exactly why you shouldand you will eat it."

Nox thought back to the excitable Dedalus Diggle, the night-garden with its Violent Violets, the portrait of the old man with the half-moon glasses, and of the room labelled Mortal Peril. Curiosity gripped Nox like a vice, and her heart skipped a beat.

She swallowed the biscuit whole.

"Well?" George inquired an eager light in his eye.

"Tastes a bit mouldy," Nox grimaced.

"Sorry about that," said George. "He prefers them that way."

"Who does?" asked Nox.

"I does," replied a new voice.

Her eyes darted towards the red rosewood desk with the gold painted "F", the owner of whom was leaning casually against the wood as if it were the most normal thing in the world for the ghost of a dead man to do.

"Hi." He waved cheerfully. "The name's Fred."

Nox could only gawp at the transparent figure for a moment or two before falling heavily to the ground in an unconscious heap. The twins stared at her body for a long moment before George cursed loudly.

"Damn it," he groaned. "She didn't scream."

"But she did faint!" Fred countered. "That's five Galleons. Cough up!"

oOo