Tweetie

2

Tracking could be murderers was far more complicated than chasing current killers.

For starters, there were typically no crimes actually committed, this made finding the evidence for future crimes near impossible. Secondly, energy was required. Something, on her good days, Hazel White rarely had.

And yet, the energy was spared and the impossible was disproved by a girl too young to know that a man with a knife and particularly pointed umbrella could be crueller than a man with a gun. This was just her typical Wednesday, unfortunately. No school, no homework, no clubs and no hobbies. Just crime. Or, stopping crime, really. And thinking about it, it's not just Wednesday, it's the whole week. Weekends included.

"Are you going to rest now?"

Archie, her legal guardian, friend, assistant... whatever he was most at that point in time, had called from the kitchen. A subtle American tone coated his voice, one that had since faded from years away from home. Every now and then, he would catch himself saying 'mum' rather than 'mom' and it always felt as strange as it sounded.

The sky was dark, almost pitch black and riddled with light pollution. It was so dark, when she paced past the small curtainless window, she could see her reflection as though she was standing in the mirror. Black eyes, grazes on her cheeks, a bloody nose, bulky teeth and tattered brown hair falling from an already messy bun. The hours were ticking by, two in the morning, and it showed in her dark brown injured eyes.

She was a mess. As usual.

"Nope." She called back to Archie as he poked a copper-haired head out of the archway that leads into the kitchen. He was young, older than she was and more experienced in life, but that was expected. Most of the people she worked with were. But, out of everyone she knew, he was the youngest at the age of twenty-two, with brotherly ease to him and a lot of care for her.

"Hazel. You need to rest, you might have a concussion."

"I don't. Anyway, that's the opposite of what you're supposed to do with a concussion."

"Not sleep," he corrected. "Rest. Sit down, stop working. Why was it tonight that you had to get yourself thrown downstairs? Of all nights? You told me you were going to take a break today."

"Sorry, next time I'll ask him to try and kill me on a weekend, shall I?"

"Next time, at least plan what you're doing before you go into a possible murderers house."

"That's no fun."

"More fun than being thrown down the stairs."

"I live for the thrill, Archie."

"The thrill is trying to kill you."

He left the kitchen, two new mugs of coffee in his hands as his feet shuffled and scuffed against the greying red of the old apartment carpet.

Hazels home was a strange one. It was in an apartment building, but one that was never really finished being built. Two apartments were finished, the others abandoned because it turned out the waterworks were too faulty to connect to every room in the place. It would have cost too much to repair it enough to finish the building. So, they left it as it was. Two apartments. One belonged to Hazel, the other Archie.

Of course, the place looked finished on the outside. But if you went up further than one floor, you would see that it lacked proper floors and the walls were still plaster. People rarely saw this if at all. It's not as if anybody had a reason to even go into the building.

"Hazel..."

She looked up from the file she flicked through, her gaze drifting to Archie who raised an eyebrow and placed the mugs down on the low coffee table as she felt the air drift from the quickly closed pages she pretended not to be reading through. The sigh that escaped him as he met her eyes told her everything she needed to know, yet he continued.