Chapter 1 || Quoth the Raven “Nevermind” (1)

Zeke met the raven girl on a Wednesday. It was the third day of the semester, after the breakfast rush but before the lunch rush; the only other person in the cafe was the manager, taking a smoke break out back.

His impressions of her: rude, stand-offish, perplexing. And yes…

…pretty cute.

“Hi, how can I help you?” he said in his best customer service voice. He was nothing if not professional.

“I’m here to see Dax Crowley, is he working today?” asked the girl. Her voice was lovely- soft and lilting.

The manager, much like the devil, appeared as he was spoken of. “I’m Dax Crowley,” he said. “How can I help you?” With a subtle hand flap under the bench, he dismissed Zeke from behind the counter. No doubt he wanted a chance to talk to a pretty girl alone.

Unable to find something else to do, Zeke began wiping the tables outside. He had a nice pattern going: a neat little zig-zag which optimised his movements. He was starting to fall into rhythm when he was interrupted by a sudden commotion inside.

“You come into my shop and ask me these questions?” yelled Dax.

There was a murmur of reply from the girl, but Zeke didn’t catch it. He rushed inside to see his manager with his arms half-raised, standing far too close to her, face contorted in anger.

Sheer panic flooded through Zeke. It was instinct, or perhaps the numerous induction videos he had watched the previous week, that made him seek out the small, red emergency box on the wall. Without hesitation he flipped open the lid and activated the fire alarm.

The sprinklers sprang into action.

It took the manager a second to figure out what had happened, but when he did, his rage turned squarely over to Zeke. “You- you damn bastard!” he roared, advancing on him menacingly.

“The fire brigade is coming,” said Zeke. “Do you really want to start something now?”

For a moment it looked like Dax was grappling the urge to break something, but in the end he merely screamed, “You’re fired! Get out! Both of you get out! Come back and I’ll call the police on you!”

Well, he said more things than that, but Zeke tried not to listen too hard. Nor did he need telling twice. He booked it as fast as the now-wet floor would let him. Once outside, he realised the girl hadn’t followed suit. He was about to run back in when she emerged, looking completely unruffled at everything that had occurred. 

“Wha- what was that about?” said Zeke. He could feel the adrenaline rushing in his ears.

“Why did you do that?” asked the girl.

“Huh?”

“I didn’t need your help.” She calmly began to wipe at the water on her face.

First Zeke stood silent in disbelief. Then came the annoyance. This girl had been in a dangerous situation with no apparent inclination of de escalating it. “Actually, you may not have wanted help, but it sure looked as though you needed it.”

“Hmm,” said the girl, which would have been a very inadequate reply, but at that moment, a raven landed on her shoulder.

“Wow,” said Zeke involuntarily. He was completely distracted from his earlier annoyance.

“What?”

“No, it’s just that… that’s a very well trained bird.”

She blinked at him in surprise. “Oh, yes,” she said, “my bird is very well trained.”

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence, broken by gentle pitter-patter as rain began to fall.

“Well I’d best be off,” said the girl. “If you need a new job…” She paused, thought for a second, then finished, “Nevermind.” She opened her umbrella and walked away, not even gracing him with a goodbye.

Zeke was left on the drizzling sidewalk, wondering what on earth had just happened. The girl had come through the door, and in the span of ten minutes he had become jobless. He realised he didn’t even know why Dax had been so angry in the first place; for all he knew he could have been fired over a misunderstanding about muffin prices.

He sighed and began to trudge home. The morning’s events left him suddenly weary, as he contemplated the fact that he had lost his job not even a week into the semester.

—

It was already cool by the time Elowen made it to the rooftop. The air was crisp as a chip in rich people town: a welcome change from all the drizzling. She couldn’t get comfortable though; It was a little too exposed, and too well lit by the ever changing lights of the city below.

The rest of the crew were already there. By the edge of the rooftop, Cap was preoccupied with the ropes as Alyssa watched him intently. 

The only one who greeted her was Rowan. Her twin grinned as she approached and asked her jokingly, “What took you so long?” 

“I was following the Emily case,” replied Elowen. “I ran into some problems. Also, I think I met a Sensitive.”

“Oh yeah? You sure they weren’t a vampire?”

“Yup.”

“Sleepwalker?”

“Uh huh.”

“Distant spellcaster cousin?”

“None of the above.”

“Hmm. We should keep an eye on them then.”

“Yup.” Lifting her voice over the wind, she said, “Hey Cap, Alyssa, did you hear that?”

“Nope, I was too busy stoking my own ego,” said Cap.

“We heard, he’s just being stupid,” said Alyssa. 

“You know me far too well,” said Cap. “But first things first. We start in one minute. Y’all ready?”

—

Note: I noticed a few days after posting the prologue that in the process of uploading, 2~3 pictures got taken out towards the end. Deeply upsetting as I kinda spent a lot of time on those. To the people that include lots of screenshots in their wordpress blog- how do you all do it without tearing your hair out?? If you have any advice it would be greatly appreciated. (Also the missing screenshots are there now, so please check them out if you have time, thank you all for reading!)

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