Hansel noticed her before she noticed that he'd noticed her.
That was usually how it went with people who needed something but didn't know how to ask for it. They shuffle, started and stopped. They did the thing where they looked at you and then looked away and then looked back like playing peek-a-boo, hoping you'd somehow already know what they wanted so they wouldn't have to say it.
He was on his way back from the corner shop on Denner Road, bag of whatever Morvane had asked him to pick up hanging from one hand, and she was about fifteen feet back on the pavement doing exactly that. shuffling, starting and stopping. The specific body language of someone carrying something too heavy to put down and too heavy to keep holding.
He slowed down.
She stopped completely when she realized he'd seen her. Stood very still like maybe if she didn't move he'd just keep walking.
He didn't keep walking...
"You alright?" he said.
She looked at him for a second. She was young, maybe twelve...thirteen, I don't know, has a kind of face that looked like it was used to being careful. Dark hair. Something about her that Hansel couldn't immediately locate but filed somewhere in the back of his head under huh, weird without being able to say what specifically was weird about it.
The evening light was doing that thing it did in Merrick where it came at a low angle between the buildings and caught everything gold. It caught her too. Just.... not quite right. Like the light knew what to do with everything but her.
He told himself it was probably just the wind...
"I need help," she said. Quietly. Like she'd practiced it and then forgotten the next part.
"Okay," Hansel said. Just like that. Okay.
She blinked a huh. Like she'd expected more resistance.
"My name's Hansel," he said. "What's yours?"
"....Calla."
"Alright Calla." He shifted the bag to his other hand. "What do you need."
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She told him about her father the way people tell you things when they're not sure how much to say. In pieces. With gaps between them for your imagination that she didn't fill and he didn't push on because pushing wasn't how he operated with people who were already standing on the edge of saying something hard.
Her father was missing. She didn't know where he was. She needed to find him.
Hansel asked the obvious questions. How long had he been missing? Did she have anyone she could call? Where were they staying in Merrick?
Her answers were.... fiiiiiineee. Just occasionally they had that quality where the words were right but something underneath them wasn't quite sitting the way it should. Like when she talked about her father she talked about him the way you talk about someone you're trying to remember rather than someone you're trying to find if that makes sense. Present tense but with a distance in it that didn't match present tense.
He noticed but just kept going.
They walked. They asked around the area, a few shopkeepers, a woman who seemed to know everyone on that particular block, a guy outside the chicken place who turned out to know nothing useful but was very confident about it... weird. Before he knew it, the night grows near and the streetlights are here to stay.
He looked at Calla.
"Where are you staying," he said. "Like specifically. Which part of Merrick."
She went quiet.
"Calla?"
"I don't...." she started. Stopped. Something moved across her face that was there and gone before he could read it properly. "I don't remember."
The way she said it sat in the air between them differently than he expected. Not the way a lost kid said I don't know. More like she'd reached for something that should have been there and found the shelf empty.
Hansel stood on the pavement in the early evening of Merrick and looked at this girl who didn't know where she lived, glowed in a way and talks about her father like a memory....
He picked up his phone.
"Okay," he said while letting out a hard sigh "I know someone."
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John opened his door with the expression of a person who had been trying to have a quiet evening but it's now ruined and has to accept it.
He looked at Hansel. Then he looked at the space beside Hansel. His expression was like one of his instruments was giving him a reading that his other instruments couldn't confirm.
"There's someone with you," he said. Not a question exactly.
"Her name is Calla," Hansel said. "She needs somewhere to stay tonight. I can't take her to mine."
John looked at the space beside Hansel again. Looked back at Hansel. The complicated expression remained.
"You can't take her to yours," he repeated slowly.
"Morvane would ask questions I can't answer right now."
John made a very long pause. Then accepted the situation.
He stepped back from the door.
"Come in," he said, to both of them, which was the part that got Hansel. He said it to both of them even though he could only clearly see one of them. Like whatever had happened in that club room basement had rewired something in John that wasn't going back to how it was before.
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Mary arrived twenty minutes later with the energy of someone who had been waiting for an excuse to be involved in something and was trying not to show it.
She came through John's door, looked at Hansel, looked at the space near the window where Calla was sitting, but she could perceive her better than John.
"Hi," she said, to the window area. Warm. Genuine. The Mary voice that didn't have any performance in it.
Calla didn't respond, looking reserved to see yet another person.
"Is she alright?" Mary said.
"She's looking for her father," Hansel said.
Mary nodded like this was a completely reasonable thing to be doing on a weeknight. Then she sat down, pulled out her phone, and looked at Hansel with the focused practical energy of someone who had just found the thing she was actually useful for.
"Tell me everything you know about him," she said. "I know a guy... who knows guys."
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What came back through Mary's network over the next hour was consistent in the way that only true things are consistent when multiple people who don't know each other say the same thing without coordinating.
Secretive. Kept to himself. Polite but careful. New to the area, maybe eight or nine months. Never said where he came from. Paid in cash where he could. The kind of man who was friendly enough that people didn't think to ask questions and careful enough that questions wouldn't have gotten anywhere anyway.
A man hiding.
A man who was very good at it.
Hansel looked at Calla when the last of it came in. She was sitting near the window still, the streetlight outside doing the same uncertain thing with her that the evening light had done earlier, like light in general hadn't quite figured her out yet.
Her expression when she heard it wasn't surprised.
It was sad in a way that sat too deep for a girl her age. Not new sad. Old sad. The kind that had been carried long enough to find its level.
"He was always careful," she said quietly. "He just.... he just wanted us to be safe."
The room held that for a moment.
John was looking at his notes. Mary had her phone in her lap. Hansel was looking at Calla and thinking about the gap in her memory, the way she talked about her father like memory....
He didn't push on it.
But something in him that had been quietly louder since the morning of his skipped day was getting louder still, sitting in this room, looking at a girl whose shadow didn't fall quite right.
He just didn't know what it was trying to tell him yet.
End of Chapter Six: Darkness Within Our Souls