Lower Fens Ring ring, banana phone

[Priya]

Following this thread

It was one of those rare evenings where everyone happened to be home at the same time. The windows were open, letting in an evening breeze that slowly washed away the petrichor scent of the spirit’s magic. Priya watched the screen dim and then turn off.

After hanging up on the Inquisitor, she was left in a quiet fluster. Should she call him back? Apologize? The spirit wasn’t certain she had the energy for that—maintaining one phone call was quite enough for the evening.

Besides, she was sure Max would come back looking for his phone at some point. She didn’t feel the need to hide that she’d used it, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to admit she was back on the hunt for answer.

Priya was more conscious these days. She could stay visible for longer, while manifested in the real world. She could hold thoughts in her mind for longer than a few moments. They needed to be powerful thoughts with strong emotions attached to them—anger, jealousy, joy—but at least she could work her way through them.

Biting her lip in concentration, she pressed the tip of her finger to the edge of the phone. With a furrowed brow, she carefully pushed it back to the center of the coffee table so it wouldn’t fall off, but rather than get up and leave she stared at it. What if the Inquisitor called back? Would he? How long would it be?

Maybe she should tell Max. Tell him she was expecting a call. She’d have to fess up to using his phone, then.

[Max Kuryakin]

Strike (Detect Magic) Exceptional success

Max could smell Priya in the apartment.

Or, he could smell her magic. That petrichor-ozone scent that declared her arrival, presence, and departure. Before, it hadn't lingered too long, and Max usually had to be close enough to pick it up. However, lately, he'd been more sensitive to it. He could be in his room and catch the sense of her, the hairs on his arms raising and that scent of petrichor hitting his nose. Like now, where he realised it'd been around for a while, but he'd been so focused on his work he hadn't registered it until the sound of plastic scraping over wood caught his ear.

It meant it was getting late, so Max searched around for his phone in the nest of books and pieces of paper he'd made for himself. He came up empty, scratching his head and trying to figure out where he'd left it. He'd had it last in the kitchen, getting something to eat and texting with Dune about meeting for a drink and some dancing later in the week. So there was nothing to do but extricate himself from the centre of the mess–careful not to jostle the books and notes–and leave his room.

Padding down the hallway barefoot, Max raised his arms to stretch, his back giving a satisfying series of cracks as he straightened up from his less and perfect posture the past few hours. He was in grey sweats, something easy and light in the heat, and shirtless. With the weather warming up, shirts were entirely optional, more than they'd already been.

Barefoot as he was, he was moving quietly out of habit, no tap of shoes to give him away. When he spotted Priya on the couch, he slowed, deliberately trying to silence his steps as he watched her. She didn't really hang around, from his experience. She was usually around someone or doing something. But she looked to just be sitting. And there, on the coffee table, was his phone.

Manoeuvring so he was coming up behind her, the living room big enough that there was space to walk behind the couch, Max evaluated the form of her. Was she solid today? Even if she wasn't, Max gave in to mischief and snuck up, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and uttering an amused and sudden, “Boo!”

[Priya]

Cinder Manifest (6/5 passes), extraordinary success
Strike 4vsDC4, hit

Lost in thought, she didn't hear the werewolf's approach until it was far too late. Still, Priya was only semi-solid. Max's arms closed around her shoulders, and he touched the cool, smoke-like surface tension of her skin. Shocked, the girl held together for just a moment before her upper half popped into a mist. At the same time, Priya jolted from her seat on the couch. As a result, she moved right out of his grip, her lower half standing and turning. Her shriek was lost when she lost her head, but when she reformed, she looked incensed.

“Max!” she wailed, missing the irony of getting spooked despite ostensibly being the ghost. The rainstorm smell intensified and without thinking, she picked up a cushion and walloped the werewolf with it.

[Max Kuryakin]

It happened quickly, Max's arms closing on Priya, like pushing through water surface tension before it suddenly disappeared. Her shriek, which the werewolf would've taken much delight in, was cut off abruptly when her head disappeared. It would've been a frightening sight for anyone who hadn't lived with a ghost for years.

For Max, it was hilarious, so he was belly laughing even as Priya reformed and levelled an angry look at him. He didn't have a shred of regret, even as he lifted a forearm to shield himself from the pillow. It bounced Max was too busy laughing to retaliate.

[Priya]

The pillow bounced off Max’s head and slipped from Priya’s already tenuous grasp, flying through her legs to land on the floor. The werewolf was too busy laughing and the spirit was too busy fuming to bother catching it.

“It’s not funny,” she insisted. “It’s really rude, actually. To scare a girl while she’s working.”

The claim, overall, made very little sense, but Priya folded her arms and tried to look very stern about it.

[Max Kuryakin]

The pillow fell and Max let his laughing die down, leaning forward and bracing a hand on the back of the couch to reach out and lightly slap her shoulder. He'd managed to get the balance of reaching out but not putting force behind it that he barely touched her when he did, but he wasn't going to stop just because she went intangible anyway. It frustrated the wolf in him to no end that he couldn't touch and rub his scent off, but Max relied on logic to shake off the restless feeling caused by it.

“Working?” Max responded, laughter in his voice. “What're you up to that has you so focused, then?”

[Priya]

Manifested like she was, her form held up to the light touch. She felt the static buzz of Max's energy on her shoulder, while she felt like light smoke under his fingers. So long as he didn't press it anymore, she would stay in shape.

Deflating, Priya grinned bashfully, looking away and then down. Working wasn't a good word for it, and on top of that, she'd been appropriating his stuff for it. “Yeah- Using... Well, using your phone.”

[Max Kuryakin]

He caught the way she deflated, and the bashful grin, so he let his eyebrows jump up in amused surprise as she admitted to snooping on his phone. Max didn't know what she'd need his phone for, but he wasn't worried. If anything, he just saw the opportunity to tease her more.

“If you wanted to look at my nudes, all you had to do was ask,” he said, smirking and giving her a sultry look, bedroom eyes and all, as he braced a hand on the back of the couch and vaulted over it to join her next to the coffee table. Seeing his phone, he reached down to pick it up, still smirking at Priya and anticipating her reaction.

[Priya]

Ghosts couldn't blush but Priya made a solid effort. Shoulders in a straight line, she puffed up, flustered, but leaned in with unconscious interest. It went a little further than seeing Max's nudes though. She had to ask, “Why do you keep your own nudes on your phone?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, knowing on some level that he was messing with her. But if he wasn't then good thing she hadn't gone snooping.

[Max Kuryakin]

Max's grin widened as Priya leaned in, self-satisfied and as cocky as ever. He didn't currently have any nudes on his phone, but it wasn't unheard of if he got caught up in texting.

“To share,” Max answered the spirit, leaning towards her and bumping his shoulder into her incorporeal form, but not enough to break the tension barrier of her misty body. He kept teasing her, always enjoying getting a rise out of her, giving her a wink on top of the smirk. “You want a peek?”

[Priya]

To share! Leaning away as he got close, Priya’s mouth dropped open and she looked away. “No!” she squeaked, more flustered that he was getting the better of her than anything else. “No, doesn’t matter! You guys wander around practically naked anyway!”

The spirit rolled her eyes, acting like it was no big deal at all. It was a bit of a deal. Priya could barely look at either of them when they forgot their shirts. Like right now, with Max in nothing but his sweatpants.

[Max Kuryakin]

Max chuckled at her denial, smirking at how she leaned away and rolled her eyes. He kept his eyes on her, giving her a heavy lidded look coupled with his smirk as he poked some more. “So you admit you've been lookin'?”

Without looking at his screen, Max swiped his phone unlocked, glancing down to check his messages but finding nothing of note there. He really was curious what she'd been up to, but it wasn't as if it was urgent. What was the worst she'd do with his phone?

[Priya]

Priya's entire spectral form went a bit pink. She'd been lookin'. She'd been snatching guilty glances here and there when nobody knew she was around. It was hard not to since Max and Goki were both very attractive, but the spirit wasn't going to admit to it. Besides, there was nothing to do but look, which made Max's sultry looks feel more frustrating and depressing than anything else. Still, she stowed that, hiding behind girlish aggression.

“I should haunt you both,” Priya puffed, narrowing her eyes at the werewolf as he went through his phone. “Some really scary stuff. Blood on the walls, faces in the mirrors. Spoiled milk.”

[Max Kuryakin]

Max grinned crookedly at the kinda pink hue blooming over her, like some kind of live photo-filter. He knew he'd possibly hit too close to the truth, and knowing his own frustrations about not being able to reach out and touch like he normally did, he smiled as she threatened a grisly haunting and let the conversation shift away.

“I'm absolutely terrified,” Max teased, swiping up the recent apps that'd been open and spotting the call panel. Swiping to it, he saw Crowhurst's number up top. “That why you're chatting with the top Ghostbuster?” He lifted the phone and showed her the recent calls list. He was terribly curious now, considering his own first meeting with Priya and her start-stop of wanting to find out what had happened with her.

[Priya]

It had only been a matter of time before Max found out what she was doing on his phone, but she hadn't tried to hide it. She didn't feel called out, although the 'top Ghostbuster' marked the typical casual irreverence the boys tended to throw at the Inquisitor. Priya tried not to laugh, because he'd been very helpful, and serious, and she liked him. She failed, tittering a little before shrugging, a quick, nervous hunch of her shoulders.

Glancing down at her hands, she twiddled her thumbs. “Yeah, I guess... I feel like it's time to work out what happened. To me.” Priya never said she was a ghost. She couldn't, but enough time had passed and there was enough evidence that the denial just seemed stupid.

[Max Kuryakin]

Grinning when he got a giggle out of her, even if he could tell it was a little reluctant, Max flopped down on the couch behind him, patting the couch cushion next to him. This was something of a Talk, he thought, since he'd looked her up on her own request, but then she'd chickened out. He wondered why she'd gone to the extreme end of problem solving this time around.

“Yeah?” Max prompted, lifting his hand to drape over the back of the couch, practically lounging.

[Priya]

Priya sat down next to the werewolf and pinned her fidgety hands between her knees. She was the picture of nervousness, but when did the spirit ever look at ease? She leaned back on the couch cushions, but they barely moved, just the smallest indent that could be mistaken for the cushions settling rather than a ghost's presence.

“Yeah,” she repeated, gnawing on her bottom lip. She glanced over at Max, who looked as relaxed as ever. She smiled, but it was sad. Priya was somewhat aware of the denial she'd been swimming in for the past few years, but at least her realization came in increments rather than all at once. “Call me crazy, but I'm starting to think I'm not going to find my body again.”

[Max Kuryakin]

Max watched as she settled onto the couch, noting how the cushions didn't even move and rather than heat from a warm body near his arm over the back of the couch, he felt a faint chill. When she looked at him, her sad little smile making him give her a small smile of his own, aiming for reassuring.

When she spoke, it was the realisation she'd refused herself when she'd told Max she didn't want to know, after all, and his smile turned a little sad as well. He'd still pressed enter, seen the search summaries, so Max had an idea. But he knew little beyond the certainty about what she was. No soul displacement, just... not an echo, he wouldn't say. She was more than that, a real presence, but still a ghost or a spirit, whatever it was.

That wasn't what they were discussing, though, so Max didn't point any of that out. Instead, he focused on the call, asking softly, “And you want Crowhurst to do an investigation?”

[Priya]

“Yeah,” she confirmed, the word sounding a little sticky, as if she’d swallowed back tears before uttering it. She paused and cleared her throat before turning her big, dark eyes up to Max. Seeing his sad smile, her own emotion reflected back at her, she glanced away again.

She went on. “I’ve gone all over this city in the past few years and I’ve only met two other people like me. One of them- I don’t know where she is anymore. The other…” Priya set her jaw and scowled at the carpet. “Is kind of an asshole.”

‘Asshole’ didn’t quite cover the breadth of Alexius’ existence to Priya, but that wasn’t the point. “But, point being, I don’t think we’re all that common.”

Thus, something had happened to her that was worth investigating.

[Max Kuryakin]

Far as Max knew, he'd only met one like Priya, and that was Priya herself. He thought he could reliably say he'd encountered ghosts and spirits other times. Like the go-go dancer at Barbarous who'd had it in for the guy he'd been flirting with. Still, he couldn't help his mouth twisting up in amusement when Priya declared this mysterious other an asshole. He wondered what'd happened, for someone as mild and shy as her to declare that.

Still, Priya's words implied something deeper than just ghosts resulting from death. People died all the time. Why wasn't the world lousy with ghosts? So logic followed that some circumstance created them, much like Max's affliction created him. A rock settled in the pit of his stomach and Max wasn't all that certain he wanted to know how a ghost with a solid presence like Priya were made.

“So you think there's more to it than just-” Max cut himself off, gesturing loosely with his free hand, looking for a different word but coming up blank, “-being dead?”

[Priya]

Gaze dropping to the carpet, Priya went unnaturally still. She paled, her face dropping with sadness. The word dead echoed down to her core, threatening for what it represented. “Dead” was the simplest explanation for literally everything about her existence. However, it also meant there was no going back. No life waiting for her when she figured out what was wrong with her.

She was here. Her body was moldering in the ground somewhere. That was the reality, there was no going back, no fixing this, whatever this was. And she’d spent the past few years trying to pretend otherwise. Admitting she was dead didn’t solidify her death, it represented the death of any hope she had. But that wasn’t what Max had asked about.

“Probably,” she said softly, carefully, like she didn’t mean for her voice crack, but the sound of tears was there. She cleared her throat and glanced up at Max, shifting her body again into a more natural sense of movement. She offered a wan smile. “Something is keeping me here or… something sent me back. Maybe I’m still holding on to something.” Priya shrugged, aimless in her brainstorming as she added, “Maybe you guys summoned me?”

[Max Kuryakin]

Max saw the shift in her, the stillness, and could guess it was from his choice of phrasing. He didn't know how she took it, but he knew she'd hated being called a ghost before. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and offered her a hand, wiggling his fingers for her to take it.

“I don't think it was us,” he offered softly, biting his lip as he thought it over, before continuing, “I talked to the landlady after I first found you.”

[Priya]

Cinder Manifest, exceptional success

Max didn’t think it was him and Goki and Priya nodded. That had been a long shot anyway. Then, Max offered his hand and Priya glanced at it, a faintly surprised look on her face.

After a moment, she slowly reached out and tentatively slid her slight hand into his. Although she sat on the couch in full color, fully present to the eye, her touch was barely there. It was like a cool misting from a garden sprinkler, except it didn’t warm on the skin. For her, it felt like touching a live wire. It was a faint electric buzz on her ectoplasmic skin.

Priya frowned, gaze on their hands, the spirit concentrating on maintaining the touch. “You did? What- what did she say?” She hadn’t thought of landlady, but it made a lot of sense that the woman would possess the first clue.

[Max Kuryakin]

As Priya slipped her hand in his, it felt like touching cool air, concentrate in one spot. If Max had to guess, it might be like touching aerogel. But he was used to how cold she was to touch, and Max stroked his thumb over the back of her hand.

“That the apartment's been haunted for a while,” Max began, squeezing her hand gently but didn’t put too much pressure on it. “Not much detail on how, not sure she knows, but that's why the rent was so cheap. She had trouble getting anyone to stay.”

He was pretty sure the landlady knew who Priya was, but she’d fluttered around that too much for Max to get it out of her. Her comments while she made him a cup of coffee when he’d been helping her unclog her kitchen sink seemed to imply she felt some sympathy for the ghost.

[Priya]

Even with effort, Priya’s grasp on the physical world was already tenuous enough. The news that the apartment had been haunted for a while, that the rent was cheaper because of her, made Max’s grip on her turn to mist. She stiffened, a little shocked as her dark eyes widened and her mind spiraled around the implications.

How long had she been here, then? How much time had she lost? Priya already knew she couldn’t measure time the same way the living could, but her estimations of a few months to a year or two of being dead now looked unrealistic.

Her hand reformed, her fingers intersecting with his now, the cool touch becoming freezing the deeper into her body one got. “What’s today? What’s the year?” she asked tremulously, a mote of panic lancing across her face. “Did she say how long it’s been haunted?”

Unbeknownst to her, Kanupriya Chitre was murdered in 2018 at twenty-two years old. She had lived in the apartment with roommates for two years before that. To Priya, it had felt like a few months to half a year at most. Even after she woke up in the wall, the occasional islands of consciousness in her life only felt like they could be weeks apart. The living world did change, but her delusion had been stronger.

[Max Kuryakin]

Max had a good handle on when he'd disturbed or upset Priya to the degree where he should back off, and the way her hand faded in his grip was one such sign. She came back, but when she did, her hand was freezing. The sort of cold spots traditional ghosts were said to have around them. Max didn't pull his hand away, feeling that pulling back was the wrong choice here, as she asked for the date, the year.

“She didn't say exactly, but ballpark... a few years, maybe,” he said, settling her second question before he got to her first. He took a breath, not relishing Priya's reaction. “Today is the 5th of June, 2023.”

[Priya]

Priya didn't remember her life before this, not in its totality. There were memories in the form of sensations: sounds, like an earwormy collection of notes in music, or smells, like wet soil in the planters on the roof of the apartment. These things told her she'd had something but lost it. A tip of the tongue feeling, where if she thought too hard about it, it disappeared. However, she knew enough to say, small and sad, “That's- It's been a long time.”

A few years, lost. Priya let her hand slowly drift to the couch cushions between them, feeling like her chest was caving in. “I guess... If I had a family, they would've moved on by now.” As much as a family could anyway. Looking up, she blinked a few times, but couldn't stop the build-up of tears on her eyelashes. Still, she held it together enough to ask, “Does she know who I am? My name? What happened to me?”

[Max Kuryakin]

Priya took it quietly, but Max wouldn't claim she took it well. When her hand lowered, Max dropped his into his lap, looking down at her hand rather than at her. There was little comfort he could give for someone finding out more time than they'd thought had passed, like being in a coma and waking up to everyone having moved on, Telenovela style. Priya took it with more quiet sadness than anguished wailing, though, Max letting out a heavy breath as she spoke.

Her last question had Max looking up, one shoulder lifting, as he couldn't be certain. “I think she might. She talked around it, but I can't be sure.”

[Priya]

Priya sucked in a shuddering breath that she didn't need and then exhaled, sinking back into the cushions. Literally sinking back, the pillows swallowing her up before she found the back of the couch and stopped. Looking up at the ceiling, her throat moved as she swallowed back the urge to cry. Somehow, tipping her head back kept the tears at bay, although she couldn't begin to understand how that worked. It wasn't as though gravity meant much to her.

The landlady had talked around it. So she knew something, but either it wasn't much or she didn't want to share with Max. “I guess I can't just pop up and ask her,” Priya thought aloud, toneless as she just tried to absorb it all. She looked over at Max, sad, but holding it together. “Unless she's alright with ghosts... I mean, she didn't call the Ghostbusters either.” 'Either' because Max and Goki hadn't made the call. In fact, Priya had called the Ghostbusters on herself.

[Max Kuryakin]

Max allowed himself a dry little huff of a laugh as Priya used his own joke to bring a little levity into things. Difficult, all things considered, but he'd play along. “You called Crowhurst, yeah? If he's coming over to check things out, maybe leave it to him?”

[Priya]

“Yeah,” Priya agreed, one side of her mouth struggling to crook up into a grin. Eventually, it was successful, and she clung to that despite the pit in her stomach. “I'll leave it to him... It'll probably be okay. I think... I'd like to know how I... died at some point.”

[Max Kuryakin]

Max pursed his lips, thinking it over. He thought that ultimately knowing would do Priya more good than bad, to know, but he was applying human psychology to something decidedly intangible and unknown. Who even knew that she operated on human mentalities, anymore? To a degree she did, if her reactions to his teasing said anything, but he'd judge that as more... surface level.

“Crowhurst isn't one to string anyone along, from what I know. I think he'll tell you, if you ask,” Max said carefully, even knowing he'd only had a phone call with the guy. He had evidence all around him, just based on what the guy had done each time Max heard about something. “Maybe he won't mind if you're involved, step by step? It's worth asking.”

[Priya]

Crowhurst did seem quite professional, although Priya would have to take Max's word for it. The only living beings she encountered regularly were her roommates.

The spirit paused, silent as she thought this over. It was only for a heartbeat though, before a chuckle bubbled out of her. “Maybe I'll get to solve my own murder. Bust my own ghost.” She glanced over at Max and flashed a grin--nothing too broad when she was coming off the emotional wave, but the prospect of being involved, doing something was heartening.

[Max Kuryakin]

Max could see that the grin wasn't as broad and happy as it could've been, but it was better than what she'd looked like earlier. He imagined having something specific to aim for, rather than relying on others to work it all over, had to help. Maybe it made her feel a little more rooted, less of a spectre.

“A regular Nancy Drew,” he teased, resisting the urge to chuck her chin and sticking to a broad grin instead. “And, you know, you don't haveta take no for an answer. What's he gonna do?” Exorcise the ghost he'd say he'd help? Crowhurst couldn't be that big of an asshole.

[Priya]

“Oh,” Priya breathed, extending the word into a sound that trembled between amusement and scandal. The thought was very funny, but the prospect of doing it herself made her want to disappear. Still, she let the sound morph into a laugh, even as she bit her lip with nerves. “Can you imagine me haunting the Inquisitor?”

Priya, the ghost who could be snuck up on. Who tended to disappear at the first sign of trouble. But then, stranger things have happened.

[Max Kuryakin]

“Sure,” Max said, confident even if he couldn't really. His grin was broad, though, at least making it seem like he knew what he was talking about. He barely knew what the guy looked like, but he had a feeling that Priya's haunting would be low on the scale of the worst things that had followed the guy. “I bet you'll be the friendliest ghost that guy's been haunted by.”