Just a Job

The cold and damp hallway greeted him as an old friend as he walked down it; his boots making a slightly sickening hollow thump each time they fell upon the decaying wood of the floor. He dragged a rough hand against the dingy wallpaper, peeling away from the cracked horse hair plaster. He was sure the raised trim that followed the same path he did was coated with lead paint that had once been red, but was now fast fading into darkness.

He turned the corner and was greeted warmly by a pink door with two fading names painted on it. A third; slightly below, and in a different hand, was fresher. He smiled a bit at his own title and opened the door. The office was well lit and cheery; he liked it that way. Everything was colored with warm golds and deep reds. His own desk, being stained cherry, was stark in contrast to the other two in the room, both of which were a muted and fading black. He hung his jacket on the hook situated behind the door and sat at his desk. He noticed something different, and stood up to investigate. He picked up the golden triangular shape that had the words:

“Tibias Emerson Sharpe”

Tibias smirked at the gift. He was sure that his colleagues had not given it to him; they were, to put it bluntly, bloody arseholes. Not that it was their fault; but Tibias sometimes wished he could work with, well, humans. He walked over to the small teapot on a table near the dark window and poured himself a cup of cold tea. "Fuck, I'm going down, I'm going down!" The voice dripped from the cracks in the old horse hair plaster that no one had even bothered to wallpaper, even when the building was new. Tibias jumped and promptly dropped his tea.

"Sod it all!" he exclaimed as his favorite red vest and slacks were soiled with the day-old tea. He turned as the voice was brought into a near solid body of a man standing, yet not looking at Tibias, but through him. The man was short and dressed in the uniform of a pilot.

"I can't see, this is going down! The VTOL!" The man was blubbering now, "The elementals are everywhere! They are attacking me!" Tibias gathered that the man was flying some sort of jet, but he was never very great with technology. Suddenly the man went quiet and calmly stated, "I have taken too much damage to continue, I am going to land." The man was radioing his superiors. Tibias felt a slight pang in his chest, as he realized this man thought he would survive.

Tibias quietly poured himself another cup, hands steady as he gazed at the frightened man. Tibias noted as he walked around him (he had learned rather quickly as a child that walking through these spirits assaulted his sense of morality) that the man was growing fainter and was almost gone by the time the old pink door opened quickly to reveal his partner and his associate.
Without looking away from the fast dissipating spirit, Tibias took a sip of his cold tea and waved his partner in with a casual gesture. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his vest before remembering the tea which had been spilt on him earlier. He sighed.

"What went wrong? I can hear you scowling." Tibias said dryly to the tall man standing in the doorway, who was silent. "Are you going to just stand there Mr. Tarrant? Ms. Trean?" He turned to them, as always amazed at how clean they remained. He was well aware of their line of work.

"Am I going to have to go out again?" Kole asked, hands at his sides, standing perfectly straight. Keera was slightly behind him, hip jutted out in a display of attitude. "You could see something, am I wrong?"

"It was some sort of pilot, nothing to worry about." Tibias shrugged it off, "Did you dispatch the demon?" He already knew the fate of the women and her unfortunate family. He had seen her caducus, the spirit just before death, crying out for mercy. She couldn't see him, none of them could and they were the last hope of a soul who knew its fate, even if the body was unaware.

"We did not apprehend the demon, but there is another reaper after it. I thought it would be more productive to allow another to hunt it while we received news of anything more," he paused, "challenging," Kole stated calmly while walking across the small room to sit behind his desk. He did not speak as Keera continued to her own desk and waited for him to nod before she sat. She raised her eyebrows slightly and tilted her head down as if asking to speak. Kole blinked twice and tilted his head, as if not understanding.

"What is it, Ms. Trean?" Tibias asked, replacing his glasses back to perch on his crooked nose.

"Well, it's just that I have noticed a boom in demon activity this past year." she looked at her desk while she spoke softly, Tibias noted how different she acted in the office as compared to working in the field, "We have had significantly more work than before, I'm sure of it,"

"You are just getting lazy," Kole spoke in such a flat voice, even Tibias couldn't tell if he was joking.

"I may to look into it, who else does paper work around here?" Tibias questioned rhetorically glancing into his now empty cup. He would need a refill.