Reflections

After Ivy left, Ethan pulled a small chair over to the pile of miscellaneous items in the living room and began sorting through Roxanne's belongings. Miss Chloe found a corner, curled up into a ball, and tucked her head into her feathers for a nap.

The pile consisted mostly of battered furniture. Ethan set the detector by his feet and spent half an hour rummaging through everything without finding a thing.

With no luck, he dragged a hard bed frame back to the bedroom, lay flat on it, and stared idly at the rafters overhead. He placed the detector beside his head and drifted off to sleep.

He slept until the middle of the night, when Miss Chloe woke him.

A faint cooing came from the living room. Ethan lay in bed and listened carefully. The sound was gentle, as if someone were talking to another person.

His gaze shifted to the detector beside the bed. Its needle pointed to yellow, and every so often it crackled like television static.

Before dawn, a weak field wave finally appeared in the Haunted House. That meant Mr. Roxanne might have come home.

When Ethan stepped out of the bedroom, he saw Miss Chloe standing behind a semi-transparent figure, her head tilted with curiosity. She tried to get its attention with a coo, but the man, sitting upright on empty air, seemed completely unaware of her.

Miss Chloe rose onto her toes and tried to nudge the man's back with her head, but passed straight through him.

"Coo?"

She looked even more confused.

Although the man wore a clown mask and a circus uniform, she still recognized him. Mr. Roxanne was a good man who sometimes came to the chicken coop to feed her breadcrumbs and candy. In her list of favorite people, Roxanne came second only to Ethan.

"Don't bother Mr. Roxanne. He's busy."

At Ethan's call, Miss Chloe nodded blankly and backed toward the corner of the room, glancing back with every step.

Mr. Roxanne seemed strange today. She didn't like it.

Ethan sighed. Miss Chloe would probably have a hard time understanding what she was seeing. Why would someone return home after they had died?

Understanding 100 Dark Creatures had described something like this. While traveling through a small mountain village, Demon Hunter Augustus had encountered a ghostlike presence by chance. The clients were an elderly couple from the village. Their daughter had left home a few days earlier and never returned, and strange things had started happening in their house ever since.

Augustus had named this phenomenon "reflections." After investigating, he concluded that they weren't ghosts, but supernatural images. They had no independent thoughts, couldn't communicate with people, and wouldn't attack the living. Their only behavior was to repeat certain actions from their lives.

Reflections didn't last long. They usually faded after three to five days, leaving behind the dead person's final trace in this world.

Augustus believed that a reflection appeared when the deceased felt, before dying, that they still had something left unfinished.

Ethan found a table in the pile and pushed it in front of the reflection, then brought over a chair for it to sit on. That way, he could get a general idea of what Roxanne had been doing.

Roxanne was examining an object, occasionally picking up a pen to add a few words to it. Though his clown mask hid his face, the way he flipped through the pages and wrote made it clear that he was growing more and more anxious.

That meant he did this every day.

He came home late at night, exhausted, and sat down at the table to examine something at once, without even taking off his mask or changing out of his costume.

After ten minutes, Roxanne shut the object with a thud and tossed the pen aside. He slumped back in his chair and stared up at the apartment ceiling for a long time. Then he pulled himself together, slapped his face hard, and seemed to say something.

He picked up the object from the table and went into the bedroom.

It was right in front of the hard bed frame, two steps away from where Marshall had developed laughing sickness. Roxanne put the object inside.

Ethan was certain that Roxanne hadn't stored the object in the pile. There was nothing in it that looked like a book.

That left only one possibility.

When the Imperial Union Bank cleared out Roxanne's apartment, it had taken away the book and the container holding it. That might have been the direct cause of Marshall's laughing sickness.

Marshall wasn't being honest.

Even after the Cursed Object affected him and he sent a plea for help to the Containment Bureau in Gear City, he hadn't told the truth in his letter. He had never mentioned the book in Roxanne's apartment. Ethan suddenly remembered Ivy mentioning her goal: she had come all the way to Brookwood Town, a remote backwater, to find a Magic Book.

Could Roxanne have come into possession of that Magic Book by chance?

Ethan stopped thinking. He wasn't going to waste brain cells on wild speculation. Now that he knew Marshall had hidden something from the Containment Bureau, he could leave the rest to Ivy. Even if Marshall refused to cooperate, Ethan trusted that Ivy could make him talk.

Ivy had collected many magic scrolls and potions. Ethan had heard of a potion called Truth Serum. Just one tiny drop in water could make Marshall reveal the darkest secrets in his heart. It was far more effective than a twenty-first-century lie detector.

"Miss Chloe, we're off. Let's go ask our boss for instructions!"

After receiving the order, Miss Chloe glanced toward the bedroom one last time. Just then, she saw Roxanne's shadow grow fainter and fainter until it vanished into thin air before her eyes.

Her eyes widened in surprise. She headed for the door, glancing back every few steps.

Miss Chloe had a keen sense of smell and plenty of strength. She could run fast even with someone on her back. But this time, she didn't head straight for Ivy's luxurious apartment. Instead, she ran to the bar on the street. A closed sign hung on the door, yet a faint light shone inside.

"Madam Rose, we—"

Ethan pushed open the door, but the sight inside the bar left him speechless.

He found Ivy in the bar, though it seemed he had arrived at a bad time.

Ivy was holding a gun in both hands and aiming it at the bar owner. The terrified owner had his hands raised above his head. Ethan's entrance disrupted the standoff, and both of them turned to look at him.

"Miss Chloe."

Ethan said in a low, serious voice, "Go keep watch by the door. Don't let anyone in."

Miss Chloe obeyed and stood guard at the entrance like a proud, imposing gatekeeper.

Ethan strode to the bar counter. Under the watchful eyes of the other two, he put on leather gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. Then he opened the cash drawer behind the counter, took out the Gold Lions and Silver Antelopes, and scattered them across the bar.

"...What are you doing?"

Ivy's eyelids twitched violently.

"Staging the scene." Ethan tugged at his gloves, looking every bit the professional. "Making it look like there was a home invasion, robbery, and murder."

"You get over there too."

The black muzzle turned toward Ethan. Ivy bit her lower lip until it bled. "Put your hands above your head!"

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