The Millhouse, at least, the parts he gets to see, remind Alex a little of his childhood home, though even more strongly of the family's old home in Buckley, Michigan. Organization only works when you don't a few generations worth too of taxidermied specimens, journals, charms and weaponry piling up. Not to mention the world's last known colony of superintelligent, hyper-religious talking mice dedicating shrines to family members.
Alex looks around with a bit of curiosity, but knows better than to actually touch anything.
He's got each of the charms secured in a bag of its own. One appears at first to be a stone wrapped in wire with stamped metal symbols worked into it, along with bits of bone, glass and seemingly random shards of metal. "Our road magic expert" and by that he means his 'aunt,' a ghost spotted all over North America, "identified the chunk of asphalt as being from the site of a massive pile-up with high casualties," she'd been there when it happened. Made IDing it easier.
"The glass and metal bits are all from ruined cars, probably the ones whose drivers or passengers died." There are also a few (thankfully empty) ghost traps made from old glass Coke bottles, and other similar charms made with bloodstained concrete, road gravel, and even a shard of iron rail.
Someone's most likely trying to cause large-scale accidents and forcibly trap the resulting ghosts. But that's far from typical road-witch practice- more of an inversion of it, really, given how sacred the roads are to them.
"Aunt Rose is pretty out of sorts about these. She's found them in five different states so far."
Constantine makes a humming noise, glancing over the evidence, before clearing a space on his table and heading to the shelves to pull out various bits and bobs to help him suss out what he's looking at, exactly. Zed makes all this a sight more convenient, sure, but John has been doing this sort of thing long before she started doodling his likeness from her dreams. He can't just touch it and know what he needs to, but he can drag the information out of it kicking and screaming with a little magical help.
"Hmm. Not so many things are so well traveled. Nasties like to pick a place and stick to it: bit lazy that way, if you ask me." Which narrows it down, at least. But not in any sort of good direction. "Which tends to mean people, yeah?"
People are always messier to tangle with, because their actions are determined by motivation and intellect rather than instinct. Instinct can be exploited easier, in John's experience. You send a demon scarpering, you force a soul to rest, you can go home feeling good.
Killing a man to stop him is always more complicated. John's done it, of course, and he wouldn't take back most of them, but not all of the people in his line of work really have the stomach for it. He turns around with a scrying pendulum and a dusty leather tome in his hand, scrutinizing Alex to see his reaction to the idea. "Using spirits to power spells, that's some shady business. If that's what's being done."
He assumes it is, just based on what he's seen so far.
"Sentient cryptids aren't usually the nomadic type, no. I do know of some ghosts who manage to get around," Alex considered. "And as much as these charms and traps would be just about the closest thing to heresy for a route witch, whoever is setting them has learned some of their magic. Which explains the distance." The more well-travelled something is, the more hands it's passed through, the more power it has for the route witches.
Alex shuts up to let John do his divining thing. His family more or less views magic as a branch of physics humanity hasn't quite gotten the hang of. His grandfather, Thomas, had been a practitioner and ended up trapped in another dimension. So, Alex watching someone else poking about with the so-called "dark arts" was a bit akin to sitting by while someone with a decade or so more experience in the field fiddled with the controls of a particle accelerator.
All that considered, he seemed pretty cool about it, not doing much more than fixing his glasses and watching in a way that suggested his fingers were itching to start taking notes as if John were a particularly interesting field discovery. You can take the nerd out of academia, etc etc.
no subject
Alex looks around with a bit of curiosity, but knows better than to actually touch anything.
He's got each of the charms secured in a bag of its own. One appears at first to be a stone wrapped in wire with stamped metal symbols worked into it, along with bits of bone, glass and seemingly random shards of metal. "Our road magic expert" and by that he means his 'aunt,' a ghost spotted all over North America, "identified the chunk of asphalt as being from the site of a massive pile-up with high casualties," she'd been there when it happened. Made IDing it easier.
"The glass and metal bits are all from ruined cars, probably the ones whose drivers or passengers died." There are also a few (thankfully empty) ghost traps made from old glass Coke bottles, and other similar charms made with bloodstained concrete, road gravel, and even a shard of iron rail.
Someone's most likely trying to cause large-scale accidents and forcibly trap the resulting ghosts. But that's far from typical road-witch practice- more of an inversion of it, really, given how sacred the roads are to them.
"Aunt Rose is pretty out of sorts about these. She's found them in five different states so far."
no subject
"Hmm. Not so many things are so well traveled. Nasties like to pick a place and stick to it: bit lazy that way, if you ask me." Which narrows it down, at least. But not in any sort of good direction. "Which tends to mean people, yeah?"
People are always messier to tangle with, because their actions are determined by motivation and intellect rather than instinct. Instinct can be exploited easier, in John's experience. You send a demon scarpering, you force a soul to rest, you can go home feeling good.
Killing a man to stop him is always more complicated. John's done it, of course, and he wouldn't take back most of them, but not all of the people in his line of work really have the stomach for it. He turns around with a scrying pendulum and a dusty leather tome in his hand, scrutinizing Alex to see his reaction to the idea. "Using spirits to power spells, that's some shady business. If that's what's being done."
He assumes it is, just based on what he's seen so far.
augh, sorry, never got the email notif
Alex shuts up to let John do his divining thing. His family more or less views magic as a branch of physics humanity hasn't quite gotten the hang of. His grandfather, Thomas, had been a practitioner and ended up trapped in another dimension. So, Alex watching someone else poking about with the so-called "dark arts" was a bit akin to sitting by while someone with a decade or so more experience in the field fiddled with the controls of a particle accelerator.
All that considered, he seemed pretty cool about it, not doing much more than fixing his glasses and watching in a way that suggested his fingers were itching to start taking notes as if John were a particularly interesting field discovery. You can take the nerd out of academia, etc etc.