Aslan Koch, Private Investigator, had yet again agreed to meet a strange man, at night, in a graveyard.

Not “for the first time ever”. Not even “for a surprising second time”! No. Yet again, Aslan Koch, Private Investigator, had agreed to meet a strange man, at night, in a graveyard. He had half a mind to skip to the chase and bring his own shovel just to save the damned trip home and back with another flimsy excuse to Nisa as to why he was meeting another strange man, late at night, Allah knew where, with a shovel.

Did he need to humor this request this way? Probably not. He could have even asked for a more reasonable place, or even a more reasonable hour – or better yet, both.

Fuck that. He brought a knife, a prayer, the suit he most preferred to be buried in, and an unhealthy amount of curiosity.

He arrived early to pick an optimal perch. Already knew where McDonald’s grave was – it was one of the giant crosses. Contemplated sitting on one of the slab monuments, but opted for camping out behind the giant cross instead. Drummed gloved fingers on the back of his right wrist, listening for the sound of steps …

Hallow Ground, Thomas Champbell had a poem about it at which Alec could only recall — And is he dead whose glorious mind, lifts thine on high? To live in the hearts we leave is not to die! 

Perhaps it should have been a sacred space, a place of the promise of everlasting mortality, but in truth Alec always thought of gravesites as nothing more than a wasted void where the shells of great men went to rot. It was the soul one should rejoice upon not mark a grave with the reminder that life was far more fragile than it should be. 

One day he would correct this error, but this night he would correct something far darker…his sister’s betrothed. Alec didn’t know much about the man, but what he did come to find out bothered him more than he’d ever let on. In secret just when the sun came down he took to the path to where the ad had lead him. 

Dressed in black he made his way through the stone and sculpted angels until even they turned their eyes away from him. He was to set fire to their sins should they dare hasten his judgement now, but already this man to whom he was to hire felt so very strange and out of place. Perched against the cross as though he had any right to dare touch it, Alec’s stormy blue eyes settled upon him to cast his judgement. 

“Have I kept you waiting?” He asked in a dull and deep voice as his eyes now studied the man’s drumming fingers, “Or are you nervous?”

Alexander Mason. Mr. Alexander Mason. Damn the man for having such a common name. Was he the ailing Alexander Mason, 89, looking for dirt on the woman who somehow managed to successfully divorce him? Alexander Mason, 50-something, who lost a duel and lived to tell and tell and tell? Was he from town, out of town, something in between? Any relation to the Masons with the corner store? The Mason with the oil paintings? What about that Gregory Mason who was always in and out of the constabulary? Was it even his real name?

Ugh. Only one way to find out.

The patter of fingers against leather stopped once he heard footsteps. Aslan lifted his head and peered, expressionless as the angels who stared solemnly past all these petty mortal affairs. Unlike the angels, however, Aslan looked straight at him. Practically into him. A gaze pale enough to draw stray moonlight in would meet eyes which seemed to suck the light out of the air itself, endless in their darkness.

Was the suit dark gray? Brown? Blue? It was hard to say in this lighting, but he had chosen a smidge lighter (and more than a smidge less concealing) than this Alexander Mason’s chosen garb – favored an overcoat that subtly accentuated his figure and brought him as close to the J. C. Leyendecker ideal that a tailored but nonetheless years-old wardrobe would permit.

Dark eyes catalogued Alexander openly from head to toe. What make were his clothes? What make was the man? How significant was his height advantage? Was he, too, armed with a freshly sharpened knife – or worse? He was far younger than Aslan would have expected. Fingers splayed across the stone cross as Aslan pushed himself to a straightened posture, like he had been waiting his turn against a wall at the pool table rather than for his client to show up and have a chat over some buried, dead bodies. If Alexander had been seeking polite company, after all, he assumed he would have met him in a polite place.

No shovel, at least.

“Not at all,” Aslan answered breezily.

He stepped forward, closing the distance between them easily – if a touch closer than necessary. Close enough that this Mason’s reach would not give him a reach advantage if he did intend something sinister, and yet far enough that he could still extend his hand for a plausibly polite handshake. A plausibly polite handshake he indeed did extend his hand for, though his gaze was too sharp to be called ‘friendly’.

“I should mention,” he added offhandedly, voice high and light to Alexander’s deep and dull, “that it is an expensive and a lengthy ordeal to have a body exhumed.”

Neither volunteering that he’d do it … nor implying that he wouldn’t, let alone on what legality he worked. Oh, the fine, fine lines between respectable and effective.

In eyes the color of amber darkened by the moon, Alexander saw an ember spark to life, or had it always been there? He recognized it as someone akin to his own mentality and as someone who studied and both condemned a man for first appearances. Yet where Aslan was tailored, Alec was not. He wore his wool and his linen so that the cross could never condemn him. There was not a knife sharpened for the evening, but the silver his savior tucked carefully over his heart. 

Endless eyes were met with a direct flash of a true condemning hunger to see a man hanged. Would it be Aslan whose wrists were nailed to cypress? 

I should mention […] that it is an expensive and lengthy ordeal to have a body exhumed.

“Is this what you do then?” He asked in a tone of pure accusation and judgement cast without an answer, “Have I asked for you to do such a horrid thing?” 

Alex folded his hands behind his back as he squared away his feet with his shoulders—the stance of a soldier, but was that not his title? He was a soldier of God and this man was a simple mortal with misguided moral compass and far too…loose of an attire. 

He did not shake his hand at first, but looked down at the offered thing and worried now for where it had been; however, he eventually relented and shook. Once free he straightened his fingers as though burned and ran his palm along the side of his cloak. He would wash it extensively when he got home. 

“I have come,” he announced once again returning to his rigid and standoffish stance, “To hire you to look in on a man who has forced himself upon my sister.” As there could be no other reason Amelia would fall for such a.… horrid excuse of a provider.

The look that met his fixed squarely in the ‘not friendly’ territory. Most men were polite enough to hide their immediate dislike, but this one wore it like an overcoat. It was as though he were a ball of fire, ample to set whatever he could land on aflame for the sheer gall of being in his path.

This Alexander Mason wanted Aslan’s fear – and Aslan had no plans to offer it unearned.

“You brought me here and you’re afraid of bodies?” he returned, placid as a starless night.

Somehow, he had the growing suspicion that this was not about someone’s death. Or, well, at least not a loved one’s death.

Aslan squeezed his hand, brief but hard with a grip that could bend steel if it so willed, and then loosened it. However, he remained clutching Alexander’s hand. Was this the closest this quaint fellow had been to another human being outside of a prostitute? When (and only when) Alexander attempted to withdraw his own hand, Aslan released it with that same serene look. He fixed a seemingly piteous glance down on Alexander’s hand, and then on Alexander himself.

Allah Allah. Next time he’d come with naked hands just to see if he regarded them as hot irons. The glove felt clean, but there was a hint of amusement threatening Aslan’s facade. He remained in Alexander’s personal space.

His tailored suit was, in fact, too tight to let Jesus in. No sign of a cross on Aslan’s person.

When Alexander announced his intentions, however – something changed. A young man with a sister gravely wronged. Was he the same age that Aslan had been when Nisa was being--…

Aslan shut his mind from those thoughts, clasped his hands before himself, and finally stepped back to return their personal spaces.

“Go on.”