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FBI Special Agent Rio Vidal loved all things paranormal, supernatural and spooky. Except for ghosts. Rio hated ghosts. It had been this way (the paranormal thing, not the ghost thing, that’s another story) since she, at the impressionable age of ten, had lived with her abuela in Canóvanas for the Summer of ‘95.
The neighbourhood had been plunged into terror when animals—wild, farm and pet—started turning up dead. Their bodies wilted and pale under feather and fur, the blood having been drained from them in the night. Rio had gone in her jelly-sandaled feet from house to house asking if they had any dead animals she could see.
People began to whisper, it was el chupacabras—the goat sucker. There had been attacks on sheep towards the centre of the island in March and rumours spread of a scaled creature with long spines and sharp teeth. Her abuelo had scolded her, out of love and fear, that she would attract the attention of the hellish creature if she kept moseying about.
When Rio had returned home to New York, she borrowed every single book on the strange and unexplained from the local library. When she grew tall and gangly and was asked what she wanted to do with herself, she had unequivocally answered, “Catch el chupacabras.”
Special Agent Agatha Harkness, on the contrary, did not love all things paranormal, supernatural and spooky. Except for Rio, who could be considered a gremlin at times. Agatha loved Rio. They had met over burnt bodies in the woods outside of Salem. Some nutjob had thought he was burning witches at the stake. Rio had run a parallel investigation into whether the victims had actually been witches and Agatha came to the opinion that Rio Vidal, too, was a nutjob. But a hot nutjob to whom Agatha had given a hand job in their rental car at the conclusion of the investigation. (There were no witches).
After weeks of sexual tension and bickering over their opposing ideologies, they had called a fuck-me-truce and followed through on it. Neither of them expected to see each other again until the Bureau bigwigs decided the brilliant-but-problematic Agatha Harkness, with her forward attitude and inability to humour people, would be the perfect gremlin tamer for their resident gremlin.
Special Agent Rio “Gremlin” Vidal’s lair was in the basement office of the Hoover Building in Washington D.C. Her assignment was on what was known as “The W-Files”, a unit devoted to cases which couldn’t be solved by conventional means. It had been an adjustment for Agatha, a woman who enjoyed her creature comforts, to leave the Boston office and co-exist in a shoebox in downtown D.C with a woman who had seen her tits in the back of a Three Star Rentals vehicle.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Agatha had warned Rio upon their reunion.
She had a reputation to uphold at the Bureau. She was highly educated (overqualified, really, she was also a medical doctor), proficient in her (spy)craft and she absolutely did not (often) fuck her co-workers.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Rio had answered, lying through the tiny gap in her front teeth.
If they did fuck on Rio’s desk, well, it was a government funded team-building activity. But usually, they reserved such activities for outside of the office due to the poor ventilation and faint smell of mildew which could sometimes ruin the amour. That wasn’t to say they didn’t have a good time in that tiny basement. They developed a comfortable routine and eventually Agatha settled in and forgot what it was to see sunlight through a window.
Agatha’s D.C colleagues came to understand, as her colleagues in Boston had, that she was not one to cross. Special Agent Alice Wu-Gulliver learnt this the hard way. Alice was a staunch believer in solid, old-fashioned police work. Her mother had been a bit of non-conformist who told anyone who would listen that the women in their family were cursed. This had caused Alice to develop an allergy to all things other-worldly.
Even after Lorna Wu died in a mysterious hotel fire (“fell asleep with a cigarette in her hand”, if you asked Agatha) and the rest of her family began to speak of “The Curse”, Alice shut her ears and buried herself in work. Years later, sullen and still in the same position, she could be found ridiculing Rio’s work on the paranormal throughout the halls of the FBI Headquarters.
Whilst Agatha could relate strongly on the batshit-crazy-mother front, the public criticism of her girlfriend was inexcusable. Also, Agatha swore underneath it all, Alice had the hugest, fattest, crush on Rio. Who could say if it was this or the ridicule which every so often led Agatha to sneak up to the 23rd floor and slip photos from Lorna Wu’s autopsy into her daughter’s desk with words like “MUMMY’S WAITING” scrawled across them.
Was it fucked up? Yes. Would she continue doing it? Yes, she’s literally doing it right now. As mentioned, she was brilliant and problematic. The only person who was allowed to ridicule Rio’s work was Agatha. It was practically their foreplay.
“Rio…Why are we looking at dead goats?” Agatha asked with a sigh, pinching the bridge of her distinctive nose as they looked at the sixth slide of a bunch of dead goats.
They were holed up in their basement grotto, Agatha perched on the edge of Rio’s desk, plum-coloured skirt hitched up (partial practicality, partial seduction) watching Rio’s impromptu slideshow on the analogue projector she occasionally wheeled out for such occasions.
Rio clicked through to the next image. It was a close-up of the neck of a dead goat with three small puncture wounds showing through the coarse hair. Rio gave Agatha a meaningful look and Agatha internally cursed the Vidal genetics for those big, dumb, gorgeous, doe eyes.
“Okay, fine,” She flicked her hair away from her face in a well-practiced motion, “What? A goat vampire?”
Rio grinned and nodded enthusiastically, “El chupacabras.”
The plane trip to Albuquerque, home of the dead goats, was uneventful. Rio spent the three-and-a-bit hours drooling on Agatha’s shoulder. Agatha filled the time scrolling through cryptid wiki and wishing Rio would wake up so that they could experiment with altitude and orgasms in the plane’s lavatory. But the small, exhausted, snores in her ear stopped her from rousing her girlfriend for the sake of her own curious libido. Maybe she would have been less kind if she knew Rio was tired merely from staying up to watch a documentary on entomopathogenic fungi.
Anyway, there was always the flight home.
The hot New Mexico rapidly dried the rather large patch of salvia on Agatha’s blazer, and nobody wisely mentioned the white line around where the damp had been. Rio drove nibbling on sunflower seeds as Agatha flicked through a pamphlet she had picked up at the airport. “10 Things to See and Do in Albuquerque!!” it exclaimed in enthusiastically red, Rockwell Extra Bold font.
“Ohh, the Petroglyph National Monument!” Rio said as she caught sight of the list.
“Ohh,” Agatha mimicked, put down her window a crack and posted the pamphlet out of it.
“Agatha!” Rio gasped in an unreasonably horrified tone for someone who knew her so well, “That’s littering!”
“Oh, is it?” She said in faux horror then, seeing her I-care-about-the-environment girlfriend’s sullen expression, waved a dismissive hand, “Relax, it’s biodegradable.”
Rio’s only response was a tightened grip on the steering wheel, so Agatha opted for distraction, “I’m surprised you’re not begging me to visit Roswell while we’re here.”
“Hm, I’ve been to Roswell seventeen times.” Rio replied, flicking on her indicator and weaving through the outbound traffic.
“Seventeen?!”
That was unnecessary, in Agatha’s correct opinion.
“Yeah, the last time was a real blast. There was this girl,” Rio paused to roll down her window and spit out a seed husk, “who boofed a whole, live, scorpion at Alienfest.” She gave Agatha an incredulous look. Agatha stared back with a blank expression.
“It’s when—”
“No,” She held up a hand, “I don’t want to know what you and your people get up to.”
“My people?” Rio asked, cocking her head to the side like a dog learning a new word.
“Yes. You and the other weirdos who go on annual pilgrimages to haunted houses and dusty corners of the Earth where a weather balloon once crashed.”
“Agatha,” Rio laughed incredulously, “It wasn’t a weather balloon.”
“Oh, sorry, flying saucer.”
“It wasn’t a UFO either. It was a downed US military aircraft operating on extraterrestrial technology.” Rio said with the certainty only a true weirdo possessed.
“Right,” Agatha said, poking a finger into Rio’s sunflower packet and swirling it around for the sheer sensory joy.
“You’ll see.” Rio grinned and accelerated past an old Silverado with a wobbling tire. “One day, there will be something that will fundamentally change your perspective. One day, you’ll believe me.”
Agatha looked out the window at the desolate flats of desert populated only by small scrub and soft hills. She wouldn’t dare say that, perhaps, she already did believe.
The scene of the crime (Agatha had said this in air quotations), Geoffrey’s Galloping Goat Farm, was about 45 minutes south of the city if you followed the river. It was a small plot of land, a little greener and a lot less decrepit than some of the places they had passed on the way. A man who was presumably Geoffrey was waiting at the low, chain-link fence that surrounded the property. A dozen curious goats huddled behind him.
“Is that man wearing fringed overalls?” Agatha asked, pulling off her sunglasses like Sam Neill in Jurassic Park.
“Be nice,” Rio warned as they pulled into the dusty driveway.
Agatha quickly came to realise that she didn’t much care for goats, and it wasn’t due to their horizontal pupils or association to Satan. Agatha had no beef with Satan. It was because as soon as she stepped out of the car, a stray goat headbutted her squarely in the back of the legs and took her out.
“Aloysius! No!” Geoffrey scolded the goat, “Sorry. He’s in mourning,” Then he himself abruptly burst into tears, “We all are.”
“Death is a part of life.” Rio said nodding as she helped Agatha back to her feet.
Agatha, who usually found her girlfriend’s lack of appropriate human responses to be endearing, recognised the man’s impending breakdown (she may have caused a few in her time) and clapped her hands together.
“Okay, let’s get this going!” She jabbed a thumb towards Aloysius, “Where are the dead ones of these?”
“This is psychopathic,” Agatha said at the same time as Rio said, “Wow, cool.”
Geoffrey had led them to a small, fenced off, English-style garden behind the brown brick house. Scattered amongst the bushes and flowers like awkward, demonic, garden gnomes were several taxidermied goats. Some were posed in an eternal frolic; others had their heads bowed to the grass as though eating.
“I guess autopsies are out of the question then.” Rio said forlornly as she slowly raised her phone and snapped a photo for evidence but also, probably, a reddit post (username igotadvil69).
“Autopsies were always out of the question, Rio. They’re goats.” Agatha replied dryly. She was not going to autopsy a farm animal. She had a reputation to uphold.
“Fanny’s still in the fridge,” Geoffrey supplied helpfully from behind them.
Agatha stood over Geoffrey’s glossy pinewood dining table elbow deep in Fanny.
“She was a good goat,” Geoffrey said, hat held over his heart in honour.
“Why did you keep her in the fridge when the others are all…you know?” Rio asked from her perch on the kitchen bench as she spooned at a glob of goat’s cheese from a jar Geoffrey had offered.
“My son is the one who fixed up the others. He’s been staying with his mother in Santa Fe for the past week.”
As though summoning the devil himself, at this exact moment a tall boy with dark curly hair and thick eyeliner wandered into the kitchen.
“Oh my gosh—Fanny! What are you doing to her!?” The boy exclaimed in a voice that had not yet passed the full gauntlet of puberty, he held a hand dramatically to his heart, “You’ll ruin her pelt!”
“Billy, these ladies are from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“Dad, William, not Billy. Please, we live on a goat farm.”
“Son, they’re investigating what happened to Fanny and the family.”
“Oh, I get it,” Rio said in the background, “Like billy goat.”
“I didn’t know…The FBI investigated the death of farm animals.” Quipped Billy William as he gave Agatha a suspicious look.
“Mysterious death of farm animals.” Agatha corrected because she needed to justify why she was, at the peak of her career, wearing frilled kitchen gloves and dissecting a goat on a dining room table.
“O—kay…Have fun with that. Just…put her back together nicely, okay? I have plans for her.” And with that he was gone, a faint smell of nag champa in his wake.
“Kids, you know.” Geoffrey said proudly.
“Never had the displeasure,” Agatha said and started up the bone saw.
Rio watched on, sucking thoughtfully on her spoon.
Rio had—Agatha suspected, quite purposively—forgotten to mention that instead of staying at a hotel (motel, more accurately, thanks budget cuts) as per usual, they would be staying at the farm.
“El chupacabras hunts at night,” Rio explained as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“That ChupaChup is long gone, Rio.” Agatha said as she made uncomfortable eye contact with the Zac Efron poster tacked to the ceiling about the single bed on which she lay. The room had once belonged to Billy who now resided in a re-purposed shed out the back for teenaged-privacy reasons. Probably with much more goth décor than the whimsy yellow theme of the current room.
Rio, who sat banished on the old trundle bed Geoffrey had pulled out, waggled her finger at Agatha.
“We don’t know that. Many occurrences have the same areas targeted for prolonged periods of time. When I was in Canóvanas—”
“—The capybara killed over 150 animals over a period of a month, I know.” Agatha sighed.
“Capybaras are not native to Puerto Rico, Agatha—they would destroy the endemic flora.” Rio said very seriously.
Agatha rolled onto her stomach, the springs of the old mattress squawking below her.
“What are you expecting to find out here?” She didn’t mean it unkindly even if it sounded so.
“If I’m lucky, what I’ve been looking for my whole life.”
“A strap shaped like Apollo 11?”
“Har-har,” Rio said, pulling back the covers of her camper bed.
“You’re not seriously going to sleep down there are you?” Agatha asked, suddenly irritated.
“Agatha, that bed is made for a child.”
“We’ve been in tighter spots,”
It’s true, they had been. But more metaphorically so except for that one time in the supply closet on the third floor.
Not one inclined to decline such an offer however, Rio wordlessly rose and made her way over to the single bed. Agatha, who was still laying in the centre, feet on the pillows, made no indication of movement.
“Move over.” Rio instructed, attempting to pull at the neatly made sheets.
“You know,” Agatha started, as she relented the territory and drew up to sit on her knees, “You could have been knuckle deep in me right now on a Novotel queen-sized bed.” Rio’s mouth dropped open, equal parts scandalised and aroused by the imagery. Agatha (unfortunately) continued, “But, instead now we’re going to sleep on a wank-stained mattress of a teenaged boy.”
Rio’s face contorted in horror, and she made a sound that sounded something like, “Meugh!”
Agatha shrugged and pulled back the sheets before manoeuvring herself into the sunflower-yellow bedding ensemble. Rio stood frozen, looking down at her beautiful girlfriend tucked into the piteous mattress like a plump cuckoo chick in a warbler’s nest.
“Oh Rio, I’m sure it’s clean.” Agatha chastised despite having been the one to setup the imagery. After another moment of inaction, Agatha flipped back the covers for Rio and innocently said, “You could always…sleep on top of me?”
Rio, again not one to decline such an offer, hopped into the bed and they tussled about trying to figure out the best logistics. There was no wriggle room, and it was Agatha who ended up more on top. Rio lay flat on her back and Agatha on her side with a leg, arm and half her body weight cast over Rio. She shifted a little, indulging in the feeling of her cunt shoved up against Rio’s hip bone. They were quiet for a spell, contented at the closeness of their bodies.
In the half-light Agatha watched Rio stare unblinkingly at the ceiling, likely seeing far beyond it into the depth of her own thoughts.
“What are you thinking about?”
“My abuelo.”
“Oh?” Agatha asked lightly, bringing her left hand to rest above the worn cotton of Rio’s New York Liberty shirt. She could feel the steady beat of Rio’s heart below.
“Hm, just something he told me when I was a kid.”
“What did he tell you, my love?”
“That if I wasn’t careful, el chupacabras would get me too.”
“He was just trying to scare you,” Agatha said as she traced the cracked plastisol ink of the liberty flame with a finger.
“Yeah, maybe,”
“From what you’ve told me, and from what I’ve read,” She propped her head up on her hand and looked down at Rio’s pensive expression, “a Chupacabra has never attacked a human.”
“That’s true.” Rio turned her head to meet Agatha’s gaze and brought her focus back to earth. “Alien abductions and spirit encounters are the most common form of human interaction with the paranormal.”
“Oh?” Agatha said softly, imploringly. After a year working on the W-Files alongside Rio, she knew these base facts but would never step in to tell Rio this, not with the way her eyes caught light when discussing the ghoulies and the ghastlies. She dragged a hand to the hem of Rio’s shirt and scratched lightly at the skin above her waistband.
“Yeah, I mean, even with the technology available today, almost all paranormal phenomena remain unproven. Even with the rise in amateur ghost hunters and increase in exploration and data collection. Did you know you can buy EMF detectors on Temu now?”
“No, really?” Agatha placated and, sensing she was about to lose Rio to an information sharing session, quickly dipped her hand beneath the waistband of her girlfriend’s cotton shorts. Much to Agatha’s disappointment, Rio was wearing underwear below.
“Yeah.” Rio replied airily as deft fingers ran over her mons pubis and down between warm thighs which parted as far as they could in the narrow space. Barely the distance of a fist but Agatha could work with that.
“The most well documented encounter—Oh, that’s—” Agatha had begun oblique, soft circles over the fabric of her underwear, “—with aliens, is still probably the abduction of the Hills in ’61. Oh—But there’s no actual—Mmm—physical evidence.”
“That’s no good.” Agatha said, tutted, and firmly cupped a hand over her core and pressed her fingers into Rio as far as the fabric would allow. She was met with a delightful gasp.
“N-No—ah—but—oh—the existence of extraterrestrials is now a widely acknowledged fact but—mh—there’s little evidence still of creatures like el chupacabras, sasquatch, mothman, bunyip—”
“Al-mi'raj?” Offered Agatha as she shifted back to lighter strokes, using her ring and middle finger to narrow down the search. The gusset of Rio’s underwear had fought a valiant fight against the blossoming lust but now the walls were breached and a growing spot of wet could be felt under delighted fingertips.
“That’s…oddly specific.” Rio said, breathing hard.
“Dragons?” Agatha asked, a curious finger pushing aside the panties and tickling over the soft swath of hair there. Rio squirmed, hips jolting, plump bottom lip drawn between her own teeth.
“Sure,” Rio swallowed, eyes fixed closed, “those too.”
Agatha in reflection bit her own bottom lip in victory and rewarded herself by dipping a fingertip further in to find a pool of silken heat beginning to form in earnest. Rio’s hips pushed up to meet her and a bedspring boing-ed indignantly below them.
“Dragons—” Rio began (a false victory!) only to be cut off by Agatha’s two exploring fingers spreading her open and running from clit to perineum and then back. Whatever thoughts Rio had left about dragons was slain gloriously upon her lips.
“Shh, shh, shh,” Agatha whispered as they began a steady rhythm, the headboard of the bed softly knocking against the wall, the springs of the mattress creaking, Rio’s soft and low keening. It was a heady mixture that made Agatha’s head spin as she pressed her face into Rio’s neck.
Limited to a one-handed strategy, Agatha whole-heartedly committed herself to a study of steady-state exercise. Alternating laps between firm circles around Rio’s clit before then dipping down into cruel, shallow circles with her fingers, stretching her open. Never both actions at once. She watched Rio’s face with raptured attention. Dark brows were furrowed, thick lashes fluttered closed and full lips parted with heavy breaths.
“Lift your shirt,” Agatha instructed softly into her ear.
Rio’s hands released their death grip on the sheets and hurriedly pushed up the dampened cotton, exposing her breasts to the warm night air. Dusky nipples were puckered tight in want.
“Good girl.” Agatha whispered and pursed her lips, blowing a cool breath of air across the soft skin, gleaming with sweat. Rio wiggled delightfully and Agatha, who had been subtly getting off on Rio’s hip, stuttered a little.
“P-pinch your nipples.” She commanded and when Rio did so, she pushed into her fully, middle and ring finger, a little deeper and rougher than expected. Rio’s head slammed back against the pillow and her hands flew to clutch at Agatha.
“What did I say?” She reprimanded.
“Yeah,” Rio, no longer a sentient being, responded but a hand did find its way back to her left breast, pulling at the nipple roughly.
“Good girl,”
“Dragons—”
“Shut up, Rio,” Agatha added her index finger to the next thrust, and their noises harmonised.
“Oh, Agatha, I’m—”
“Shh, shh, hush now.”
Agatha awoke three hours later in the worst way possible; sweaty, alone and with a crick in her neck. She scowled at the faint outline of Zac Efron looming above her and cast her eyes over toward the old trundle bed in search of her lover. It, too, was devoid of her gremlin. A strange noise pierced the quiet and then a shout. Agatha bolted up, heart racing.
Rio!
By the time she made it outside she realised, too late, that she was both bare breast and bare foot. The former was easier to deal with, but the latter caused her to reconsider her life choices (from start to end) as her foot landed in a bramble of goat head weed. She howled and, horrifyingly, something howled back.
In a second Rio materialised at her side from fuck-knows-where, adorned in night vision goggles, black boots and full camouflage gear. Agatha, bleeding foot aside, pondered for a moment as to whether this was a pre-existing outfit or if Rio had checked out a full Amazon cart for this monster-hunting sojourn.
“What are you doing out here?!” They both exclaimed at the same time, gripping each other by the forearms.
“You’re naked!” Rio said, gawping at Agatha’s moonlit tits.
“You look like an extra from Predator.” Agatha returned dryly and then pointed down at her injured foot, “Help me?”
The two hobbled away from the caltrop hive and took refuge on the cement porch where Agatha was placed delicately onto a rickety wooden bench seat.
“Here,” Rio said, unzipping her camo jacket and handing it to Agatha who took it gratefully.
This left Rio hovering over her in a tight white tank top tucked into the matching pants. The sweat on her arms and face shone golden in the burnt light of the porch. If Agatha hadn’t just been stigmata-ed by a noxious weed which had no business existing in the same world she did, she would likely have appreciated the view more.
Rio knelt and inspected Agatha’s wounds, “You scored a seven.”
“Lucky number seven,” Agatha said and winced as Rio began to pull the burs from her skin. At the end she held them up for Agatha to see. “I don’t want them, thank you.”
If they were home, she was sure Rio would have kept them in a jar and labelled it Agatha’s Agony. “For the memories,” She would have said.
“I heard you shout,” Agatha began, eyeing Rio and pulling the jacket tightly around her, “I also heard a howl. There are coyotes out here, you know that right?”
Rio sat back on her haunches between Agatha’s knees and grinned up at her. “I saw something along the fenceline. It wasn’t a coyote.”
“Was it your fleeting sanity?”
“It was not, no.” She answered wryly and pulled the night vision goggles from her head. “I didn’t get any footage.”
“Alas.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
Agatha squinted and considered being polite for a moment, then decided not to be.
“Rio, we’re not staying here another fucking night.”
The following night, Rio was happily tucked up against her girlfriend in the sunflower-yellow bed being smised down at by Zac Efron. Agatha sighed in defeat and rubbed her healing foot, now bandaged in cotton, against the mattress to alleviate the healing itch.
“Are you going to wait ‘til I fall asleep to dress like a commando dyke and go monster hunting again?”
Rio nodded against her chest.
Agatha sighed again and closed her eyes to feign sleep so that her lover may be released to enjoy the thrills of her cryptid quest under the guise of a federal investigation.
A couple of hours later, Agatha awoke in the (more) worst way possible; sweaty, alone, with a crick in her neck and having not earned that crick from being eaten out at an odd angle. Rio, of course, was gone. She contemplated rolling over and going back to sleep, but there was a looming anxiety in her gut and FBI Special Agent Agatha Harkness always trusted her gut. It had gotten her into many precarious situations and that’s really what made life interesting.
After a detour to pee, she emerged into the night dressed more adequately this time: sleep shorts, Rio’s Liberty shirt and her own shoes sans socks. She flicked on the torch and swept the crystal beam of light across the yard and into the paddock.
Fast-paced walking in the direction of her gut-compass in the pitch black of a New Mexico night on a goat farm which was allegedly the target of a demonic blood-sucker hadn’t been on Agatha’s bucket list for the year. Getting Rio to commit to buying an actual bed for her apartment (imagine her surprise when she tried to move their first “sleep over” from the couch to the bedroom only to find out there wasn’t one, the space—“the plant’s room” Rio called it by ownership—having been allocated instead to an array of indoor plant stations including desert terrariums, misty glass houses, a suspiciously glowing hydroponic tent setup), buying herself that new purple coat she had been eyeing off and, finally, getting herself back into the gym after gaining a lover who was twelve years her junior. But chasing said lover in the dark to ensure she was not being devoured by a rabid rodent? Decidedly not on the list.
“Rio?” She whisper-shouted as she approached the corner of a large shed. Gravel crunched behind her and she whirled around only to be grabbed by long arms and pulled back against the wall of the building, the flashlight dropping from her hand.
“UNHAND ME YOU BAS—” She swatted at the figure only to smack her hand on something mechanical and solid.
“OW!” A familiar voice cried, “Agatha! These are expensive!”
In the second-hand light from her lost torch, she could make out a pair of bug-like lenses gawking at her. She then struck her hand out again, smacking the Rio-bug hard on the shoulder.
“Ow!” Rio cried again.
“Augh!” Agatha dragged a hand through her hair, got caught on several tangles, gave up and stomped a few paces away.
“What’s wrong?” Rio asked, lifting the night vision goggles from her face. “Is that my shirt?”
“Shut up! I was looking for you.” She considered thwacking Rio again. “Why did you grab me like that?”
“Sorry!” Rio put her hands up to soothe down Agatha’s heckles. “You were about to head into the goat pen.” She pointed just past the shed and into the direction Agatha had been heading. Her eyes now adjusting to the dark, Agatha could see Aloysius’ tapetum lucidum glowing menacingly at her from the corner of the open corral.
“Were you worried about me?” Rio asked. She was grinning. The bastard.
“No,” Agatha lied, sniffed haughtily and waved a dismissive hand, “I just thought you could use some back up. On our final night here at Geoffrey’s Galloping Goat Farm.”
“Sure,” Rio said, still with a stupid grin on her face.
They sat together on two upturned tin pails behind the shed, chatting quietly away about the mysteries of life under the swirl of the Milky Way. The remaining herd of goats were left to their own devices under the watchful lens of a camera Rio had stuffed into a hay bale. It was only when the indigo slick of dawn appeared that they stood, stretched out cramped legs and returned to their hoofed monster bait.
“Oh.” Rio, who had far better eyesight than Agatha, said as they approached. “No fucking way.”
There, in the middle of the corral, lay Aloysius. Dead as a doornail.
“I guess he gave up the goast.” Agatha remarked and chuckled at her own joke.
Rio rushed past her into the far corner of the pen. “The camera’s gone!” She cried and then dramatically sat on the lowest haybale of the stack. “It was only recording to the local storage.”
Agatha touched the chest of the poor beast; it was still warm. She looked at the ground, it was covered in hay and goat muck, no discernible footprints but, curiously, a few drops of blood. She then turned her attention to Rio who had her head in her hands forlornly.
“Fine.” Agatha sighed. “One more night.”
The following night Rio was dead asleep come eight-thirty, her wet hair still wrapped in a towel. Agatha watched the line of drool pool below her lover’s partially open lips as she snored. Two nights of nocturnal hunting had really taken it out of her.
They had been mid-conversation, Rio having just returned from her shower as Agatha flicked through a 2009 Guinness World Record book she had pilfered from a shelf when Rio’s replies had dropped off like the edge of a continental shelf.
“Seeing that guy squirt milk from his eye on primetime television was really neat. You know horny lizards can squirt blood from their eye to deter predators?”
“I wish I could do that to some people,” Agatha had replied, consciously choosing to skip the horny lizard joke.
“I heard Alice crying in the breakroom again last Friday to Jen. Someone is still putting autopsy photos into her desk drawer. That’s so fucked up."
“Yes, Jen told me.” Agatha said, flipping the page and glancing over an article on the most northern city in the world. Inanimate bodies achieving world records by simply existing seemed like cheating to her. “That internal investigation didn’t turn anything up. Must be a witch doing it.”
She smiled to herself and looked up only to find Rio had departed the wakeful realm.
Agatha knew she had two choices. Choice number one was to shuffle them both into the bed for their (actual) final night at Geoffrey’s Galloping Goat Farm. They had to be back in D.C by eleven the next day for a divisionary budget meeting. The other choice was…
Agatha sighed. Love was annoying. It came with this nagging need to do things for other people. Rio, to be specific. So, Agatha Harkness gathered herself and donned her partner-in-crime-fighting’s combat fatigues, pulled on the ridiculous night vision goggles and set herself to work.
“What are you wearing?” Billy asked.
Agatha, for the first time since she was thirteen and Mavis Rowbottom had stolen her itty-bitty bra from her bag and strung it up to the school flag post, felt absolutely mortified. She stood motionless in the well-lit kitchen as Billy stirred his hot chocolate at the counter. Kettle still steaming in the background.
“Why are you awake?” She finally managed to stumble, hoping desperately it would come out as a reprimand.
Billy slurped his drink.
“It’s, like, nine.”
“Don’t you live in a shed somewhere?”
“It doesn’t have kitchen facilities.”
Agatha wanted to jump out the window. It would only be a three-foot drop, she’d be fine. But also, there was a door.
“Okay, well, I have work to do.” She said and made for the flywire-guarded exit that led out into the yard and to her salvation.
“Can I come?” Billy piped up as Agatha’s hand firmly closed on the door handle.
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
“There’s coyotes out there.”
Agatha paused.
“Fine.”
“Really?”
“Hurry up.”
“Oh my gosh, wait, I need to change first.”
Billy did live in a shed. It was, in fact, the shed right next to the goats they had sat up against the night before. The walls were painted black and were covered in posters of retro horror movies and various whimsygoth iconography. A painting of a demonic three-eyed goat loomed above her.
“Are you going to taxidermy Aloysius?” Agatha asked, spinning in a blue velvet chair at Billy’s antique writing desk.
“Dad said not to.” Billy said, excitedly shuffling through a clothing rack of dark garments.
“Why?”
“I think he’s worried about me.”
Agatha stopped spinning.
“Why? He seemed proud of the other ones.”
“Yeah, he’s great. He’s really supportive and everything.” Billy said as he pulled a pair of distressed black jeans from the rack, assessed them and then put them back.
“But?” Agatha prompted.
“I don’t know.” He pulled out a set of jeans identical to the first.
Agatha narrowed her eyes. Teenaged boys and their ability to evade questioning. Even the chatty ones.
“You’re such a teenager.”
“I am a teenager.” Billy said and his voice cracked a little.
“Bet you don’t really fit at school here, huh?”
“Presumptuous,” Billy said but laughed and, apparently having decided on the second pair of jeans, moved onto finding the various other elements of his fit. Agatha resumed spinning.
“Is that why you’ve been staying with your mother?”
“Yeah, but Dad wants me to learn the ropes and all here so I can take over one day. It’s fine and all.” Billy said nonchalantly.
“But?”
Billy shrugged and pulled out a long sleeve shirt with the armpits cut out of it. He held it up and waved it at Agatha, “What do you think?”
“Suits you.”
“Okay, give me two seconds.” And he disappeared behind a black and white paisley curtain which had been strung up in the corner to form an ad-hoc dressing room.
“So, people are assholes?” Agatha called as she quietly began poking through the desk drawers.
“People are assholes.” Billy agreed from the corner. “Hey…”
“What?”
“Did you go to your prom with a girl?”
The bottom right-hand drawer was locked.
“Oh, I didn’t go to prom.” She pulled a multi-tool out of the pocket-leg of Rio’s cargo pants and hurriedly shoved a screwdriver piece into the antique lock. “But if I did, I would have wanted to go with Marcy Davis, she was so mean to me.”
After a couple of jiggles, the drawer popped open.
Rio’s old trail camera was stacked atop a coil of arterial tubing.
“Okay!” Billy announced and drew back his little curtain. He had smudged a line of black under each eye. “I’m ready to go.”
Agatha smiled at him.
“You know what, Teenager? Let’s just hang out here for a bit.”
Rio sucked thoughtfully on a sunflower seed as they sat at Albuquerque airport. One side of her hair was royally fucked up from passing out with it wrapped up in a towel.
“So, he was going to full Carrie the class? With goat’s blood?” She asked for the third time that morning.
“Yep.” She emphasised the p with a popping sound.
“Poor goats.”
“Yeah, well, teenagers, you know? Don't know how to communicate their feelings.”
“No, Agatha…I think that’s a sign of psychopathy?”
"Well, he's going to be moving in with his mother now. I'm sure the rest of them are safe." Agatha said and squeezed Rio’s knee in sympathy. “I’m sorry you didn’t find the truth you were looking for.”
Rio turned and gave her a dashing smile.
“Oh, don’t worry about me, I know the truth is out there.”