Jackaby's Accidental Home for Tragic and Nefarious Fellows

1/4 - I guess he's here now

New Fiddleham was a hotbed of strangeness, odd occurrences and even odder individuals. There were several hypotheses for this, a thinness in the veil between the worlds, something leeching out of the Oddmire that got caught in the city, or even just a series of coincidences that all added up in such a way that created the perfect environment for peculiarities to brew and draw in the sort. This was mostly a manageable fact of life apart from the times where a fairy king of chaos - as he made sure everyone knew he was, once he'd been exposed for his lies it would have just been weird and embarrassing to keep trying to commit to a bit that was not working for him anymore - and so the precise combination of oddness managed to balance out to a shaky sort of harmony. 

A shaky sort of harmony was about the best that the Seer and paranormal detective R. F. Jackaby could hope for, so he considered this as close to a total win as he dared consider. 

In fact, as far as many of the more 'normal', so to speak, residents of New Fiddleham were concerned, the most alarming and unusual thing in the city was the man they deemed mad that had taken up in the notoriously haunted house 926 of Augur Lane. This was not true, of course. Not the haunting business, that was very much true, but the fact that Jackaby was even half as strange as any number of things he saw on a daily basis. But to be caught in the Seer's unnatural, stormy grey eyes, perhaps there was some truth to the rumours of him not being entirely human. Anymore at least. Some people had mistakenly assumed to see him somewhere, his long, dusty brown coat jingling softly as he walked, the scent of fine crushed herbs swirling throughout the air was some sort of herald of doom, much like the Augur his address referred to, but if anything, he was the only thing out there holding back the very doom that people really did seem to enjoy blaming him for. 

And where was Jackaby at that particular moment? Goodness only knew, even his eternally patient assistant Abigail Rook could only really make the most basic educated guesses on the matter. That morning - at that point between horrendously early morning and mid-morning, if one happened to find themselves wanting to be needlessly precise for no reason at all - there had been what the Seer had concluded to be a locationalised earthquake of magical origins. It was not long after that the man had dashed off to try and find out what, if anything was going on. Abigail had tried to accompany him, of course, as that was her job but unfortunately he did something that he was annoyingly good at doing. He was very sensible and told her it was best if someone stayed behind in case anybody came by alarmed after the event and that she was better equipped than most to manage it if that was the case.

More annoyingly, he was completely correct about this. Several people of various degrees of dubious humanity - she was very polite about it, but it was easier to tell if somebody was actually just water in an ill-fitting suit and a mask than one might think if they, themself, happened to be water in a suit and mask - but she would like to think that she managed to send them on their ways feeling a little more secure in the knowledge that they weren't about to open the door to a multidimensional interglobular armageddon, which would have been a bit of a shame to have to deal with when life was already weird enough already. 

There was certain flourish to the way her employer came and went, exuberant striding about with an energy and intensity that she was sure must have been very tiring. It was this very reason that the woman did not bother looking up from her tea when the cheerful red front door swung open. The man did not partake of his usual striding about immediately upon arriving, however, so her curiosity left her gaze wandering upwards.

"Did you find anything when you were out, s-" she began in greeting before letting out a sound that would have been kind to describe as a slightly dignified squawk, "Sir, did you kidnap a teenager?"

By this point, Abigail could wonder if she had any right to be surprised by seeing her employer carrying what she very much hoped was an unconscious body. In fact, she'd even helped him carry other people in similar states to this, but that did not mean she wasn't at least a little alarmed, even if it was more a worry for the little scrap of a fellow in general rather than why he was there. 
'Scrap' did seem like the appropriate description for the fellow, whose body mass seemed to consist more prominently of the ruffles of the vibrant purple costume he wore than, well, actual body. A vibrant costume that jingled with the bells that made the slowness of Jackaby's movements a little more excusable and vaguely reminded her of the court jester in some half remembered book from her childhood.