'til our fingers decompose

one

DELPHI, MABEL, & CAMERON

The December rain is freezing Delphi's fingertips where her gloves are ripped. Her right hand, curled around a locket, is even colder– sources radiate the kind of unnatural cold that almost feel like frostbite, and the dampness isn't helping.

Her chin is bleeding from where she hit the cobbles. The soaked state of her hair drips into the blood, and it stings, but she just kind-of wipes it with the back of her green raincoat sleeve and ignores it.

"So... can I go inside?" She asks to the curly-haired boy beside her, eyebrow raising in glaring annoyance, specifically at the fact his hand is still clutching the upper half of her sleeve. He ignores her. Then, when he finally opens his mouth to answer–

The door opens.

A girl, Delphi's own age, face framed in a blonde halo and smile stretching just too wide, stands just within the threshold. Her rosy cheeks are splattered in fine freckles, long light eyelashes framing cloudy blue eyes that manage to both blink too much and too little at a time. She claps her hands together in excitement.

"Oh, Cammy, she's real!" The girl beams, and Delphi breaks herself out of the strange stupor she found herself in. "What did you do to her? Come in, quick, quick. Where are the plasters..."

–

Delphi gulps down her lumpy hot chocolate in five seconds flat.

She catches the plaster that's been tacked onto her chin as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, ripping it off with a piece of her skin. The boy and the girl- Cameron and Mabel, she's learned- watch her intently from their own spots in the cramped living room. Like they're studying her. Her mug loudly hits the coffee table.

"What?" Delphi demands, and Cameron clears his throat.

"You have a source. Belongs to DEPRAC–"

"We have a proposition for you!" interjects Mabel pointedly, tucking a strand of blonde behind her pointy ears. She blinks as Delphi's attention burns into her.

Not the most resilient of agents, the brunette assumes.

Cameron sighs as he leans back in his saggy armchair, and lets Mabel do the talking. "You know, tons of people call you Nessie. Like the monster? 'Cause you're always found near the river, and stuff. I think it's cute. Even though Nessie's found in the lake... my point is, you're famous. You're good."

Delphi absently picks at her plaster. "And?"

"And, we're short on agents. It's just us, I'm– out of practice..." She seems to drift off, then regains her train of thought. Delphi finally notices how the cloudy blue of her eyes stretches over her pupils, too.

"I just think you're cool." Mabel concludes.

"I'm not an agent. 'Can't use one of those." The brunette points at the umbrella holder full of rapiers in the hallway. "And I'd need my Level 3, and I don't do teams. Cool? Cool."

She gets up to leave. But Cameron sticks his foot out in front of her, and she whirls around to snap her jaws at him as she almost trips. "You fucking–"

"We'd pay you, you get a room, you get friends. Free food, too. I think you're in desperate need of all of that." The boy nonchalantly lists it all off on his fingers. When he stands up, his frame towers over her; he's impressed when nothing about her demeanour changes.

She's not afraid, not of anything.

"It's cold outside." Mabel chimes in, fiddling with her necklace. Delphi's attention falters from glaring into Cameron's forehead to look over at her, and he has to stifle a laugh at the way she instantly beams back. "Warm in here."

Delphi considers it. "My own room?"

"Attic room."

"Please?" Mabel ignores him. Her bottom lip sticks out almost comically as she pouts, and she doesn't even realise she's doing it.

There's silence for a few long, stretched, moments. Then, "Yeah, sure, whatever."

She likes the warmth spreading through her hands, even in the middle of December. She likes the cramped but cosy atmosphere; she likes Mabel, and she likes Cameron, if she's totally honest with herself. Delphi may not be an agent, she may just be some random relic-girl (the only, actually, get it right) who shows up on the newspapers now and then.

But Mabel barrelling into her to hug her and welcome her into the agency makes her feel more than that.

Cameron sighs. "This is literally illegal."