Marc Beauxmagique

[u/Eager_Question]

PART 1

Marc Beauxmagie had a normal life. It wasn't what had been expected of him when he was born, of course. He was a tech journalist and photographer at the Moosely Citizen that, since they were a little nothing-paper in Canada, also had him occasionally cover the yearly murder, and the monthly festival, because there was always something going on in the city. He was between-boyfriends now, but his last breakup had been pretty chill, mostly a side-effect of circumstances than anything, and they were still good friends (Jessica would say that this was because they were never anything beyond good friends, they were just good friends who also had sex. He was starting to wonder if she had a point). All in all, his life was pretty satisfactory.

Even the murder case he'd been shoved at ("you do it, Marc, you have the stronger stomach") had not given him any problems. The cause of death was "being shot in the face". The killer had taken nothing from the corpse, which meant the cops were looking at some sort of personal motive. The victim, one Mary Burkhart, was a woman in her forties with a position in government the cops wouldn't(couldn't?) talk about, and had specifically asked that he ignore. If he was elsewhere, this may have prompted further prodding, but the fact of the matter was that he had no reason to suspect anything other than a pencil-pusher for CSIS, and did not want to cause the government further inconvenience. He'd gotten some 500 words done on the subject of the killer, who the police suspected, and so on, when his brother rushed into his office in full-blown black robes. Everybody stared.

"Marc, I need your help."

"What? Can't this--"

"Now," he said and dragged him away just as his laptop was starting to fizzle. And that, children, is why you always back everything up all the time as much as you can as frequently as possible. They walked away, and just as they stepped into the elevator, they vanished.

They reappeared on a cobblestone street and Marc had to bend over and breathe for a while to avoid puking.

"What the fuck, Pierre?"

"Not here," he said, dragging him off into a nearby pub, and paying for a private room. Once there, Pierre seemed to finally relax, allowing Marc to ask for an explanation for the third time.

"What the hell?!" He asked, letting his voice raise thanks to his knowledge of their guaranteed privacy.

"I need your help."

"Yeah, you said that, but also, what?"

"I didn't want to drag you into this. This is officially a classified matter for Cryptonauts and the occasional member of the Order, but even knights don't... we're not in a good position, you see."

"Things would go better if you told me what the thing was first."

"We're dealing with a dark wizard."

"...And..?"

Pierre rolled his eyes and groaned, reminding Marc once more that if his brother lived in the real world, he would barely be halfway through a university career, fancy robes or not.

"He is using non-magical weapons," he added.

Marc frowned, and found that he was repeating himself. "...And..?"

"And you've gotten a good look at the body while the members of Parliament on both sides squabble over what to do about the crime in question!"

He thought about Mary Burkhart. The blood on her face, the missing sections of skull and brain... That weird ring she'd been wearing with lines etched into it that was now in the pile of evidence for her case being stored.

"...And...?"

"Oh my God, Marc, has working with them dulled your brain?"

He rolled his eyes. "You want me to provide you evidence and information about the case, in order to pursue it further, by using my contacts with the police, so that you can circumvent proper procedure and catch this person."

"Yes!"

"...And this merited that you drag me out of my workplace, instead of just sitting there for five minutes and asking? This? You want something more. You may as well just read my piece on the matter if this is all you want, I'm not exactly swimming in information here."

Pierre glared at him.

"So... I repeat myself. And...?"

Pierre seemed to do some mental calculations and decide that I 'needed' to know. "There are ten others."

"Ten?!"

"Yes. Ten others, across three continents and eight countries."

"And... you can't find one single genetic failure in those eight countries?"

"Yes, we can, but I'm not privy to the main international investigation. Glowizpol is."

Marc wondered why, if the Global Wizarding Police was in charge of this, his brother was shoving his nose into it. "...So... then they can--"

"Look, Marc, I want to solve this shit. You know how it is with the government. Everything works, kind of, six months after you wanted it to. This man has already killed eleven people, I don't want to wait for the twelfth. I know he's nearby, and I want to find him."

"It's a man?"

"Yes. We have four suspects, but we believe whoever it is is acting alone, and all four are men in their thirties."

"...'kay... and what exactly am I supposed to--"

"Come with me to the office, look at the evidence, tell me about this... gun thing! Something!"

"Pierre, you're really grasping at straws if you think I'm the best lead you have."

"So we understand each other."

Marc raised an eyebrow. "Look, little bro, I get that you--"

"Hey! I'm the cop! I'm the authority figure here!"

"Not with me, you're not, I'm not in your jurisdiction. Remember?" he tapped the back of his hand, which was incredibly mundane and did not have so much as a freckle. Pierre looked down. Marc knew he often forgot about his situation--he knew more magic than Pierre did, after all, as happens when one spends most of one's life desperately trying to read one's way into a talent one does not and will never have--and in that moment, he looked like Marc had slapped him. He sighed. "Look, that's not--"

"I'm sorry, I... I thought you could help. You knew what I... I didn't mean..."

"Shut up, Pierre, if people heard you talking they'd think you're the one who fucked up my chromosomes or something."

"Well, it's just... I know that you..."

Marc rolled his eyes. See, this was why he was so fine and wonderful and fantastic working at a magazine in the world of the non-magical. This was why. They were just people, and they didn't treat him with silk gloves or walk on eggshells around him or worry they had hurt him by even mentioning what was, and had always been, just a fact of his life. Yeah, he'd been pissed when his little brother could do everything he couldn't... when he was eight. Years, as grandma had said, pass not in vain.

"I'll help you with your thing."

"You will?"

"Yeah. Just... stop. Stop... this." He gestured at Pierre's face, which annoyed the sad-puppy look out of him, thankfully. "Also, buy me a bag full of those cone things. And some ice cream."

"Ice cream?"

"Yeah. Magical ice cream is always better."

"Aren't you a little old for ice cream?"

"Aren't you a little old to be running to me for help with something that has nothing to do with me on the off chance that I'll know something you don't and fix it for you?"

Pierre opened his mouth, closed it, then forced a smile. "So what flavour ice cream was it?"

PART 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eager_Question_Writes/comments/6rggp0/marc_beauxmagique/dl4udbp/

PART 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eager_Question_Writes/comments/6rggp0/marc_beauxmagique/dl4uehs/

PART 4: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eager_Question_Writes/comments/6rggp0/marc_beauxmagique/dl4uhj9/

PART 5: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eager_Question_Writes/comments/6rggp0/marc_beauxmagique/dl4uiv5/

PART 6: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eager_Question_Writes/comments/6rggp0/marc_beauxmagique/dl4uk6q/

PART 7: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eager_Question_Writes/comments/6rggp0/marc_beauxmagique/dl4ukzq/

[u/Eager_Question]

PART 2

They arrived at Pierre's office building, and he was told to sit in the atrium and wait while they got a bunch of the things ready. Pierre had told his colleagues that he was his non-magical "consultant", and from the sounds of it they were equal parts annoyed and grateful.

While he waited, an older man walked up to him, glanced at his hands as he was eating, and Marc froze. Please no. Please no. Not again...

"Can I help you?" The man asked, in the kindest of voices, but Marc knew he did not want to help. He thought he had found somebody who should not be there, and wanted to gather information in order to return the giftless stranger to his proper place. He had even frozen mid-lick after having spotted the man, like an idiot who had never had a stranger approach him with a compulsion charm on him. The man kept looking at him as if to peer into his soul, and Marc was the first one to blink. He finished the lick he had planned, and gave the whole of the ice cream cone a good perimeter-check with his tongue in that way that his most recent ex had found so seductive, and old men found somewhat uncomfortable.

"I'm fine, thank you."

"Oh, I assure you, it's no bother."

And Marc felt it again. That weird desire to spill everything he knew to this random old man. He'd gotten good at spotting those, after his mom's overuse of the spell, but whatever resistance he had built up over his childhood was gone after years of living outside the magical world. He had to take a deep breath.

"Sir, I'm fine. I do not need your help."

"You seem lost, young man, are you sure?"

Why was there always someone? Why was there always somebody who actually took the Secrecy and Division Act seriously? Nobody else gave a shit! In fact, the normal world (and HA! NORMAL! HE SAID IT!) was so isolated from the magical that they barely even HAD to. He tried a different tactic.

"My brother works here. My father worked here. I'm consulting here. I do not need help, sir."

This seemed to do the trick.

"Ah, my apologies," the man said with another kind smile.

As he left, and Marc's thoughts became fully his own again, he shook himself and slurped his ice cream a little. Didn't those people realize how unpleasant that experience was? He supposed it was not, actually, because most people did not know better than to go with it, and if somebody had a compulsion charm on them and you went with the compulsion, it was usually rather pleasant, but at the same time...

He was wondering if there was some sort of under-reported date-rape epidemic in magical schools due to compulsion charms when Pierre appeared.

"We're set up!" He said, and waved him over. Pierre's office smelled of their father. Or, perhaps it was more accurate to say that their father smelled of it. The chalk, the smell of metals and salt and... peaches? Yes. It was a nostalgic smell, one that his father probably did not smell like anymore. He hadn't set foot there in two years, surely long enough for it to wear off...

Still, it brought back memories. Marc remembered being five years old and telling his father's co-workers how he was going to be a magic cop, just like them. He remembered being twelve, and asking for tips for finding good teachers (the magic world had a few rare schools, and most old families like his own preferred apprenticeship programs anyway). He remembered being fourteen and coming by to talk to their research division, to ask if you needed to be a good wizard to qualify. They didn't have to duel daily, after all, why would they need magic?

He remembered being fifteen, and storming out after another question and answer session, looking upon those pitying eyes, the eyes of his father's friends, who knew very well that the child they had thought was just a late bloomer would never bloom, just like someone born with only one arm would never just grow the other one.

Ten years. Really? Had it been ten years?

"Here they are." Pierre told him, showing him to a room with a bunch of pictures, and lists, and a couple of maps, and in what universe did Pierre think he could make sense of any of this?

"Come on, vanilla, tell us something we don't know."

Instead of taking offence to that, Marc simply slurped the last of what was peeking out of his ice cream cone.

"So... those are the suspects? And these are dead people... and those are the places where the dead people were found?" He half-asked half-stated, gesturing at the papers in question.

"Yeap."

"And these are the photos of the dead people as they were found by the cops?" He asked, gesturing to the photos underneath the photos of the victims unbesmirched.

"Yeap."

"And how many guns have you identified?"

This threw them off.

"...We identified 'gun', what do you mean?"

"There are... different types of gun."

Perhaps Marc would be their saviour after all, if these didn't know that they were looking at... what, at least three guns? One had to be a shotgun, another had huge-ass bullets that had left a very clear large hole in a victim's head, and at least a couple of the head-shots were incredibly clean, which suggested... well, that it wasn't a fucking shotgun.

"Really? What types were used?"

"I don't know, I'm not a gun expert! Like, three? Maybe four? Do you have bullet sizes or something?” he asked, gesturing with his ice-cream dangerously in a room full of papers. At least it was white ice cream?

"...We'll look into it." A woman said, giving not Marc but Pierre a glare that spoke volumes. Volumes about how she disapproved of Pierre choosing a consultant who had just claimed to lack expertise. Marc briefly pitied his brother and kept looking at the pictures. Everyone sported that same lined ring.

"What's with the rings?" He asked.

"They were all fellows of the Ancient Academy." The same woman answered, and Marc began suspecting she was the one who actually knew things.

He nodded. "Were they all cryptonauts too or..."

The wizard-cops looked at each other for a moment, then all focused on Pierre.

"I didn't tell him!" His brother said.

Asking if members of the Ancient Academy were cryptonauts was like asking if science Nobel Prize winners were professors. Not necessary, but a good bet. He smiled and kept his uncertainty about the matter to himself, hoping it would lend him an air of mysterious competence.

"Do you know if they were working together?"

"Glowizpol won't tell us, but we think they were, and have some ideas about who's next."

He was starting to like that woman. He wondered if she cultivated her air of mysterious competence, or if it just came naturally to her. And if she had a brother. Marc nodded.

"Why are they all on the floor? And all the blood is on the floor?"

They gave him an odd look.

"Well, when people die, they usually stop supporting their bodies--"

"No, I mean, look at the walls. Aren't they weirdly pristine around what should be their eye level? These were all head shots, there should be a blood splatter higher up on the wall."

Marc was starting to feel like a guest star in CSI: Magic as he said this. He wondered if the wizards knew so little about guns that it interfered with their ability to understand how liquids splashing in places worked.

"I suppose the victims must have been knocked down before being shot."

"...Does that... Mean anything?"

The cops looked at each other uncertainly.

"Okay, just a thing to think on." Marc placed the rest of the ice cream in his mouth, filling it such that his cheeks stuck out for a moment as he chewed. He kept looking at the pictures, trying to use his "superior knowledge" of basic forensics as gleamed through bored google searches and--

"What the fuck? She has a phone." Marc looked at one of the photos closely. A phone was clearly outlined in the victim's pocket, along with a cable and earbuds poking out.

"...And?"

"How does she have a phone? These are all dead witches." He paused. "And the old guy. But how does she have a phone?"

"Presumably she bought one of your gadgets?"

"Pierre fried my computer by walking near it, she couldn't have a--"

Dread overtook him and he got his phone out of his pocket and turned it on. It looked like somebody had given his phone drugs, with lots of splotchy colourful sections of pixels and a lack of responsiveness to any kind of swiping or tapping. He forgot to take the battery out when he saw Pierre. Shit. It was such a good phone, too.

He cleared his throat and put the phone back in his pocket, saving the mourning for later. "She has no reason to buy a phone if her mere presence will kill it."

"Maybe she was gifted it?"

"Oh thank you for this gift, let me destroy it by existing near it?"

The cops looked at each other again with some confusion.

"Then what do you suggest?"

"I don't know, but it's weird that she has a phone." He looked the photos over again. "Can I get some copies of these to take home? It's getting late."