The Penny Sheets: Cacopheny's Musebox

More power wasn't the answer. He realized this after he got the power from his father and the ressurrection still failed. It was something he wasn't doing right.

Chase didn't stalk the Ipswitch boys to try and take their power. He stalked them until he found their semi-secret little spell chamber, broke through their pathetic wards, and read all their books and records. He needed a proper spell for this. He just didn't know what it was.

He didn't get the spell from their books, but he did get a lead. Darklings, the spirits he summoned, could be made tangible and permanent, he learned. It had been done exactly three times in the boys' family records: once in medieval Europe in the 1400s, once in New England before the civil war, and once in fucking... San Francisco, almost a decade ago. There wasn't much to go on, but he thought he could probably use the same kind of magic to sniff out a former spirit in a crowd if he had to.

So he books himself plane tickets to California, hires himself a car once he gets there, and starts driving, with a little locator spider sitting on the dash, scurrying left and right as it seeks similar summoning magic to itself, acting like a compass. Wherever this former darkling is, Chase is going to find him.

And then-- he's not sure yet. Maybe dissect him.

They're heading out to dinner for his birthday, all four of them. He's laughing at some dumb dad joke, but later he won't even remember what the joke was, because he doesn't actually remember anything for several minutes before and after it happens. It. Because he has no idea what it is, only that one minute they're driving along like normal, and the next there's light and heat and something that isn't quite pain but does a damn good job pretending like it is. It's magic, he knows, but it's magic unlike anything he's felt before.

And then the next there's a smoking wreck of the family car and an overturned semi truck, and he's curled over their mother sobbing, unable to remember exactly how he got there, but feeling like his blood is singing with more power than he's ever had before. It doesn't make her get up. He knows his eyes are pitch black, the air is warping around his hands, but nothing he's pushing into her body is making her get up.

Then suddenly Misty's there, and they're stumbling away together from the smoke and the blood. "I don't know what happened," is all he can say, the panic gone but now feeling numb, shocky. The magic is draining out of him as they weave along the side of the road. The police can find them later, probably, but for now it's just them. "Misty, I don't know what happened."