Croix arrived promptly with the sun. Light licked the roof of a timid cottage made of stacked stones bound with a cracked mortar and painted a soft, haggard white. An acre of wispy farmland stretched out behind it. She pulled a thin parchment from her pocket.

Four dollars for the death of a monster. Cottage ten miles down the northern road after the tavern.

Croix stood before the cottage door and picked some gristle from her teeth, flicking it into the grass. She unslung her spear from her shoulder in an effortless, habitual movement and set it against the cottage wall. It was a monstrous thing. A black metal spearhead the size of a short sword adorned the tip. The shaft, starting a foot below the spearhead, was layered with leathers. The spear sat there like a broom: confused without hands to give it purpose.

“I won’t be long,” Croix said to her spear before knocking.

The clients let her in without a word. Croix ducked through the doorway into the kitchen. A table, rough in the fashion of homemade things, sat in the middle of the spherical room. There were three doors, one open, one closed, and one she’d just walked through. There were cracks, now plastered, running like webs along the walls. Behind the open door was a bed and the trappings of a married life. A musket, touched by age, hung above the cabinets. There was no clutter. The husband walked past Croix and sat at the table, his eyes and clothing disheveled. The wife continuously swept the same dustless corner. He gestured to an open chair.

“I don’t sit,” Croix said.

“Why not?” he said, “That’s disrespectful round these parts.”

“I’m a bit heavy.” She replied.

“Mhm. I do like that chair.”

“Said on the advert that you were paying four dollars for a slaying.” Croix said. “I like to see the money before we talk shop. That fair to you?”

“How do I know you won’t steal it and run?”

Her sigh was exhausted. “I don’t like mobs.”

“Mhm. Fine.” He took his shoe off and, from the crusty brown sock he wore, pulled four sweaty and crumpled dollars. He flattened them one by one on the table before nodding. “That do you?”

Money. Actual money. Even if it was damp. Croix let herself relax.

“That does me,” Croix said. The words came easier now, “Give me as many details as you can provide in as much detail as you can provide.”

“No details needed,” the wife said from her corner. Her fingers were white around the broomstick. “We need you to kill a banshee. Plain and simple.”

Fuck.

Croix sighed and stared at those horribly beautiful four dollars again. “You can’t kill a banshee, ma’am.”

“Liar.” Venom dripped from the statement.

“No, it’s-”

The husband interjected, “Ain’t that what your black metal is for? Burning spirits? We ain’t paying you more for a spirit, if that’s what you’re after. Four dollars is a good deal.”

“Listen,” Croix boomed. She drew herself up and found both of their eyes before continuing. “Banshee are creatures of fear, born from deaths so traumatic that the spirit is trapped here with us. They cannot escape. Trauma ties them here like a rope around the ankle. To us, the banshee seem like omens. This is wrong. They only seek dying souls to hitchhike upon. A banshee does not kill. It cannot.”

“That’s not what the stories I heard as a child said,” the wife said, “They spoke of women who died before their time that sought souls to drown.”
“I’m sorry,” Croix said, turning a glare onto the wife, “was your entire childhood consumed with endless study of the otherworldly? Have you spent your entire life hunting and dealing with spiritual and alchemical abnormalities?” Croix spoke swiftly, allowing no reply to the rhetorical questions, “No, you haven’t. So trust me when I say that a banshee only portents death. It does not cause it. Who did the banshee appear before?” That final question preempted any further dissent.

The husband and wife shared a haunted and meaningful look. “Our daughter,” the husband said quietly. He let the words hang before continuing. “What I’m hearing ya say is that someone else is going to kill her, not the banshee?”

“It could be anything. There are a lot of ways to die.”

“Then can you watch over her? Keep her safe?”

Croix sighed. “Again, banshees do not abide by the laws of time. Your daughter will die. Soon. You cannot prevent that. I cannot prevent that.”
The wife and mother glared with hateful eyes at Croix, then at her husband. She set the broom against the wall where it lay, unattended, and left, slamming the door behind her.

The husband and father looked lost. Pride, despair, anger, and denial battled in his eyes.

“Can you try?” he asked, holding the dollars up as if in prayer.

Croix took a breath, closed her eyes, and then nodded. She plucked out two dollars and brushed away the remainder.

“Thank you ma’am. Thank you.”

“Don’t. I hear coffins aren’t cheap.”