Lt. Higgins pulled the trigger. He tore a hole through the entity’s head that it was left with its mouth wide open as though in wonder as to what happened. It tried to step back, but the woman that it stabbed had another plan. She used its arm stuck on her stomach to drag its weight to the side, leaving it no way but to meet the barrage of glinting bullets that ripped through its green ethereal body like normal flesh.

Their enemy crumbled to the floor. After the woman pulled herself free, Tom fished a small but long glass vial from his back pocket and tossed it to what remained of that entity.

Tom aimed at the monster once more, watching the item that he threw shatter upon contact, expand into a light ashen sphere, and implode, eating whatever flesh or a piece of the floor that was inside of it. He swallowed his saliva. The thing that he fought didn’t move anymore, but the bits of its ghastly flesh remained. He found his gaze scattering on the vases and to the walls once more, until it rested on the woman who snapped her fingers to get his attention.

“Good job, Tommy.” The woman gave Tom a helpless grin and helped herself up. She picked up her arm from the floor next, frowning and sighing at her ruined polo shirt and coat.

Tom looked away and smirked. He gave Lt. Higgins a nod, who responded by taking the liberty to examine the victim. Tom’s attention made its way to his laptop, but he turned to the woman near him with a sharp breath. “So, Miss Rosemarie, do you need a hand or something?”

Tom scoffed at first, but he cut his words short. He froze when Rosemarie stopped, and like a machine, slowly turned her body towards him while keeping her stern gaze. A second of silence passed. It dragged as though Rosemarie’s eyes were pulling the hand of the clock backward, allowing it to only move on when she blinked and pushed the right corner of her lips to give him a half-smile.

“Good one.” Rosemarie nodded. Her eyes drilled through Tom’s skull before falling to the hole on her stomach. She let out a mechanical laugh next and held out her arm towards him like a reward. “Please, hold this for me while I fix myself up.” She smiled at him once more, making Tom straighten his back as she turned to the door. “Verdell, are you there? Sorry about what happened, but c-can you g-get a metal stick from my bag?”

“S-sure, ma’am,” a feeble voice rang from the hallway.

Tom followed suit and took Rosemarie’s arm away from her, watching as another woman with blonde hair and green eyes carry a black duffle bag inside the room. Her black business attire seemed ruffled, her glasses were cracked, and her left cheek was bloated.

Tom let out a heavy breath. He held his words back and cradled Rosemarie’s arm, keeping his attention close to Verdell while she laid out the duffle bag on the floor.

Verdell pushed her glasses up her nose and handed the stick to Rosemarie, who smiled back to thank her. Shaking her head, Rosemarie bit the metal stick like a cigarette and turned to Tom with an open palm to get it back. Snatching it at the moment it was offered to her, she pressed her severed arm on her shoulders. She whispered a few words next, turning the metal stick into ash and making her right arm convulse as it reattaches itself to her body. Tom’s brows quivered at the symphony of satisfying cracks that filled his ears. It went on until it ended with Rosemarie finishing it with a long fulfilled breath.

“That hits the spot,” Rosemarie murmured, massaging her shoulders and smiling to thank Verdell once more. She took the energy drink that Verdell offered to her and drank it all in one go. With another satisfied groan, she wiped the blood off her lips and turned to Lt. Higgins. “So, what do you guys have so far?”

“Nothing much,” Lt. Higgins replied without taking his eyes off the victim’s body. “We got called in at first light; the first respondents only gave us a name and few of the neighbor’s statements to work with. We’re getting the victim’s bank details later in the day, so this might give us an idea of what this guy has been buying for the last week other than maybe telling us if he’s broke.” He scratched the side of his beard. “Though, if you want to be crazy so early in the morning, this scene feets the MO of the ‘Room Wraithcaller.’”

“I did believe that they were fire elementals,” Tom looked down and cleared his throat. “judging how they dragged us in and appeared.”

Rosemarie tilted her head. “You mean wraiths.”

Tom mirrored Rosemarie’s expression. He scoffed a second later, adding, “What? It had a burning skull—”

“Of course,” Verdell cleared her throat and rested her back on the wall.

Rosemarie forced up a patient smile. “You don’t call that one hero or something ‘The Fire Elemental Rider’ right?”

“Well yeah, one, because the calling him Ghost were cooler,” Tom continued.

Rosemarie pouted, she nodded at Tom and gave her attention to Lt. Higgins. “So, spatial divinations... Have you checked his belongings?”

“Mr. Greg here tried a supposed harmless clickbait article to buff his own luck. The article itself was pretty sketchy, so I didn’t think anyone would be dumb to try it, yet here we are. The steps that he took seemed to be pretty accurate as it followed the steps from the guide down to the detail… only that it didn’t work as a way to buff someone’s luck; it was to summon a wraith that probably hammered his torso to bits like a pocket cannon.” Lt. Higgins wiped the sweat off his face. He walked towards them, scrutinizing all every bit of blood that dirtied the room. “Still, it narrows our suspects to a more detailed list, but given that our main task force is working with the church to pick up the Wraithcaller’s trail, who had the same MO, maybe we can treat this as a case as a diversion?”

Rosemarie combed her hair at the back of her head and glared at Lt. Higgins. “So you’re saying… what?”

“See, we have nothing much,” Tom blurted. “We received a couple of calls roughly in the same hour as the other districts about crimes being magical in nature so early in the morning. We were dispatched here, got inside to investigate—” He turned to the spot where the entity they killed dropped, and to his surprise, its body was still there. “Wait,” he chuckled nervously. “are fire elementals supposed to keep their bodies?”

“Wraiths,” Verdell stressed her words. “If they were, you would’ve burned to death along with this building at the moment they dragged you in—”

“But are they supposed to move even after you’ve killed them, though?” Tom interrupted. His jaws started to loosen. The flame the was stuck on its waist seemed to flicker and was alive; it grew by the second until it twitched and pulled the rest of its body upward.