As they walked down onto the bus, Eliza's face beamed a look of admiration and awe at the older man.

"You know Arthur Portello?" she gasped excitedly. "THE Arthur Portello, leader of the Portello gang and business tycoon of the underworld alcohol trafficking profession?"

St. Oswald gave a small smile.

"Do you realize I couldn't have gotten a better partner to do this with me?" she cried, upsetting an older woman sitting in front of them. "I thought you could just tell him a joke to break the ice or something but this is WAY better!"

The thought settled and suddenly an idea came to mind. "Unless you were involved with a case in the past that involved Portello and he doesn't like you at all." She laughed. "But that can't be right. Um... right?"

(I'm starting to notice that Eliza both dislikes authority and seems to idolize the criminals she puts away. Should I be concerned? I'm just going to say she's free-spirited...)

They got off the bus on a cobble-stoned road further out from the city. Eliza could tell off the bat that this was the wealthy area of homes. Each mansion was huge and spaced out from one another. Oswald had taken the directions from Eliza and was silently looking from the paper to the addresses. Finally, he stopped in front of a white villa.

"This is it." she heard him say.

Eliza reached the doorbell first and rang it with enthusiasm. The was a pause before a tall man answered the door.

"Hello?" he asked, a thick accent hanging in his voice. He looked like some muscle-for-hire, but dressed as a butler, and he avoided Eliza's handshake with a look of suspision.

"My name is Edith Terrace." Eliza told him, sweetly. "I'm a friend of Tom's. May we come in?"

The door man sighed, so Eliza fished out a small scrap of paper from her pocket. "He gave me his phone number." she informed him. "I'm not lying. We met at a party last week."

"Mr. Thomas isn't in at the moment," the man answered. "He stepped out for the city around an hour ago to meet with some frien..."

"We're not here to speak with Tom." Eliza winked.

Not long after (although Eliza was surprised by how easily they had done it) they were sitting on a plush sofa in a large parlor room. The butler ran off, mentioning something about the Portellos being outside, and they waited silently before the couple entered the room.

Eliza knew them from files she had read from headquarters. The woman, Catherine "Kitty" Portello, sat first. She had a long, gaunt expression and curled blonde hair. She looked like Thomas' mother; the two had the same hair and eyes. But she looked annoyed by the visitors and shot Eliza a questioning look.

Arthur, as Eliza had remembered, had been an Italian immigrant, coming to America when he was twelve. Eliza had always found Thomas odd looking: he was clearly italian, but never looked it. His father, on the other hand, did. Arthur was much larger and heavier built than he was, with dark hair and eyes. He held himself tall and his very presence felt powerful. Had Kitty not been sitting there, Eliza wouldn't have known Arthur was Thomas' father in the first place.

"You're not exactly who you say you are." Arthur began, his eyes locked on Oswald's as if he was trying to remember who he was but couldn't quite place it yet.

"Yes, sir." Eliza answered. The couple seemed surprised that neither of them were denying it. "In fact, we'd like to speak to you about you son, if that's alright."

(Boring cliffhanger, oh no!)

Eliza slapped down two newspapers onto the small coffee table that separated them. "You're familiar with the recent deaths of your rival gang, aren't you?"

"Yes, we've heard." Kitty snapped.

"Are you accusing my men of these murders?" Portello said with unfazed calmness.

"Course not," Eliza laughed. "These murders are far more gruesome than any 'work' you've dealt with in the past." She pulled a small sheet of paper from her coat pocket. "Let's see here... I'm a good criminal profiler, for the record... ah, here we see your typical style of murder is the usual drive-bys, shootings... well, you like guns."

"I do." he replied, his face blank, but Eliza detected amusement in his voice.

"I've been reading old cases involving you for the past week and comparing them to the current spree," Eliza continued. "And I'm finding it hard to believe you'd turn to occult-forms of torture when you have enough muscle to do the job already."

"Excuse me!" Kitty stammered. "You aren't suggesting those rumors of 'spiritual warfare' between the mobs are true."

"It's our profession to know these things." Eliza heard Oswald say pleasantly. "And it's also very classified."

"Not many people really know about it. Which brings me to your son." Eliza began.

"You're not saying he's behind this!" Kitty shouted, her face growing red.

"Oh, we know he's behind it." Eliza said, her hand folded in her lap and her expression fallen. "In fact, I believe some of your men no longer follow you, Mr. Portello. I think you're involved in a power struggle with Thomas that you're not even aware of, and that you cannot trust your men much longer."

Kitty fuming, twitching as if she wasn't sure if she should leap across the table and strangle Eliza on the spot or stay there in her seat. Arthur, on the other hand, locked his eyes with Eliza's, his face growing pale. After a long time, he muttered softly, "I didn't want to see it..."

"I know it's hard," Eliza said, soothingly. Her eyes never left his. "I know he's your son, and crime lord or not, you're his parents and you want to believe in him. But he hurt a friend of ours, and we need you to understand how dangerous this situation may be for the both of you."

(Kitty is a nutcase.)

It was nearly five minutes into their conversation all it felt Eliza had done was make Arthur Portello stare unblinking at his left hand and spiral Kitty into a historical fit which forced Jack to pass over his handkerchief to her as she wailed loudly. Several times, the large butler who had answered the door came in asking if everything was alright only to be waved out by Eliza, who was now growing tired and wishing the Portellos would wave them out.

"I c-c-can't accept that Tommy has... has..." Kitty sobbed. "He's always listened to his f-father! He's always... oh, dear, please exc-cuse me..."

"Not at all," Eliza said with a sigh.

"He's spoiled." Kitty told her. "I spoiled him. This is my fault; I didn't raise him right."

"I'm sure you did as well as a crime family could," Eliza sighed.

Kitty was trying to calm down, dabbing her eyes and wiping off her running make-up. "Sweetheart, when you're a mother, don't you dare spoil you children."

"That's okay," Eliza said, growing slightly pink. "That's not really on my list of things to do at the moment."

"Professor, it's been great to see you," Arthur said suddenly. "And you... Miss. But my wife and I need to talk about things."

"Oh course." Eliza and St. Oswald said.

"We need to... confront our son." he continued. "I pray both of you know what you're talking about. If this is nothing..."

"No, we're positive we know what we're talking about." Oswald chuckled.

"Mr. Portello?" Eliza blurted just before they were escorted out the door. He raised his eyebrows at her. "The reason we came today was to see if both of you were involved in this, but as I suspected, you weren't. Just be careful: if Thomas continues to do what he's doing, I hope neither of you become suspected of his crimes."

"We have enough of that as it is." he said, but she could hear a lightness in this and smiled.

"Oh, I'm not saying you're innocent of anything." she laughed. "But this isn't the normal mob conflict you see everyday."

"I'll take that to heart, young lady."

They waved goodbye to the grime looking family and walked away, both feeling in awe of how civil that conversation had gone. Both of them, while usually talkative, walked to the bus stop in silence.

(Heads up: last page of the comic's chapter goes up tomorrow and a Christmas surprise is going up the next day for the start of chapter 2)

(EDIT: Original posting plans aren't looking so hot. Maybe two things up tomorrow? Merry Christmas, everyone.)

Poppy looked up from her book, walking over to him.
"Everything go okay in there, Hershel?"  She asked gently.  She could tell from the look on his face that it hadn't.

"Well, look on the bright side."  She said hopefully, slowing her steps so she could walk beside him.  "You probably won't have to deal with them anymore."  She looked behind her, noticing the young detective watching them go.  She shot him a glare, and he promptly turned and went back into the office.  She felt rather smug after that.

As they got back to the desks, she saw Bachman and Zeke flipping through books.
"Need some help?"  She asked, picking up the nearest tome.
"Not that one."  Zeke said, without looking up.  "St. Oswald said what we're looking for's in a red one."
"Oh..."  Poppy nodded, reaching for the nearest crimson cover.

"I found it."  They looked up at the priest.  Bachman held his book open.
"It wasn't chapter twelve, it was chapter twenty-one.  The fool St. Oswald got confused."  He grumbled.  He held up the page in the book for the other three to see.

"A Shabti."  He said.  "Ancient Egyptian.  A representation of a servant of the afterlife."  He flipped through the next few pages.  "Portello must somehow be harnessing the entity trapped within one of these figurines."
"Well..."  Poppy said quietly, "At least we know what we're dealing with now..."

(Um, double post cause I have writer's block and this is the only thing I can think to write.)

The office was dimmer with the blinds down. He was standing in front of his shelf of photographs, examining the frame of last year's Christmas party. There was a group of people, all workers from the Coalition smiling and raising glasses. Only a few people in the crowd stuck out to him. First he saw Jack St. Oswald, who although had at the time not been employed there had showed up for a small portion of the party just in time to get his picture taken as he stood near the back. His smile was wide and he looked happy.

Father Bernardo Bachman was on the other side nearly cut out of the shot. He had tried to move out of the picture but another agent had grabbed his by the arm and held him there, and so his expression was livid and cold but strangely humorous in comparison to the rest of the crowd.

The three youngest agents stood closer to the middle. Zeke was standing off a little, looking out of place but smiling still. About two people away from him stood Hershel, Eliza and Poppy. Eliza was dead center in the front (of course) with a toothy grin and a ridiculous pose with one arm hooked around Poppy's. Poppy stood on Eliza's right, arms at her sides but bearing a sweet smile. Next to her, Hershel was in mid laugh and looked much healthier than he did downstairs right now. Everyone looked peaceful and calm.

It really wasn't fair. None of them deserved to be involved with any of this. But he had over-estmated them. Time and time again, he had tried planting them false leads and they never even noticed them. He had even managed to put an inexperienced medium on the case for a reason. But they always looked straight through everything. Truly, they were better than he expected, but they were in too deep, and the further they went meant the closer he was to having to take care of it. His eyes fell back on Eliza's face in the photo.

No, this really wasn't fair for any of them, but this needed to be cleaned up quickly. Quietly, he set the frame back on the shelf.