Really Strange Stuff - Ch.31 - Uncovered (Patreon)

=::= Callie's PoV =::=

"You know what was even more surprising than having her just vanish in front of us like that?" Serenity commented after a sip of her drink. "The fact that her two human friends didn't seem so surprised. I'll bet they've seen her do that trick before."

Bailey agreed, "That's a good point. If anything they were probably more surprised at their friend disappearing in the middle of the lunch room than they were that she vanished at all."

I nodded slowly as I munched on a bite of my sandwich. Then I pointed out, "Whenever we've seen Cassandra or Kaylee teleport in or out there's always been a sort of swirly-lights thing, almost like special effects. We didn't get that when Mara vanished, it was more like she suddenly faded away."

"Huh," my tall sexy ravenette girlfriend looked thoughtful. "So either she knows a different kind of teleportation magic, or maybe she didn't teleport away after all?"

That left all three of us quiet for a moment. Then Bails grimaced, "You're suggesting she didn't actually leave? She just turned herself invisible?"

"Maybe?" Sere shrugged. "In which case she was probably sitting there quietly the whole time we were talking to her human friends."

"Unless she snuck away as soon as she was invisible," I pointed out, before popping a few fries into my mouth.

My girlfriends and I were having a late lunch at one of the restaurants near our hotel. After the demon's disappearing act we hung around for another ten minutes or so trying to interview the two human students, but we didn't get a whole lot out of them. We managed to get their full names though. Kate Conway and Hannah Franklin said they met Mara back in June, then became friends with her over the summer break. We also learned that Hannah was studying a computer science course while Kate was taking a music program.

There were only two really interesting details the coeds let slip. Apparently Mara lived in a house with a few other demon girls, that we figured were probably her twin and the other two she was seen flying with. And the demons were hosting a big halloween party this coming Saturday night, on October the twenty-sixth. After that the girls tried to cover it up, but thanks to my goddess-given talent I knew which comments were true and which ones weren't.

Unfortunately Kate and Hannah decided to stop talking entirely after that. They gathered up their things, along with Mara's backpack which the demon had left behind when she disappeared, then hurried out of the cafeteria.

We made sure to give them both some RSS stickers with our contact info just in case, but it didn't seem like they'd be eager to talk with us again any time soon. So my girlfriends and I headed back to the car, then found somewhere to grab lunch while we discussed our next moves.

"So is there some way we can try and find Mara's address?" I asked my girlfriends. "Sere, Bails, you're both pretty good with computers. Could you maybe get some info from the college's website or something?"

"I really doubt it Callie," Serenity replied quietly. She lowered her voice and added, "We're not hackers, and we don't want to risk getting caught doing anything illegal."

Our foxgirl girlfriend grimaced then commented softly, "I could probably get all kinds of information if I had a few seconds with her phone, or one of her friends' phones. Or if I had a minute or two with a computer in the college's office? But like Serenity said, we really don't want to get caught breaking any laws."

My ears and tail drooped as I frowned, "So what do we do next? What other options do we have?"

"We've got her full name now," Sere pointed out. "And both Bailey and I got some clear shots of her before she vanished. Why don't we head back to the hotel, then we can do some conventional searches and see what comes up? You never know, some people aren't always that cautious when it comes to what they put online."

Bailey didn't seem that hopeful. Her ears folded back as she responded, "I don't know about that? I have a feeling anyone involved in the supernatural is going to be extra careful about what they post or share. They'd know the importance of secrecy more than anyone else."

• • • • •

"Ok I stand corrected," Bailey admitted as she and I stared at all the information displayed on Serenity's laptop. "It's like this girl's never even heard of 'secrecy' before."

It was mid-afternoon and we'd only been back at our hotel room for less than an hour, but that's all the time our girlfriend needed to dig up a whole heap of information on the demon girl and her friends.

"Honestly I'm getting the feeling it's the opposite of that?" Sere responded as she slowly shook her head. "It's almost like she's going out of her way to flaunt the fact that she's a demon."

"That only started recently though," she added. "Mara's social media account was created five years ago, in twenty-nineteen. She was pretty active at first, but there wasn't anything suspicious or supernatural back then. The only unusual stuff was links to a site where she was selling naked pictures of herself. Well, that and the fact that she hasn't changed or aged since then. Anyways a few months after she created the account she went quiet again."

Serenity continued, "It picked up again in late twenty-twenty, but there was very little in the way of supernatural stuff. There's pictures of her girlfriends though, and enough information to give us their names and social media accounts too. Then this past August Mara got a lot more active, with pictures from a big holiday on some Greek island. And finally just over two weeks ago she started posting selfies with her horns and tail visible, and almost casually mentioned that she's actually a demon."

I watched quietly as Sere scrolled through a few dozen of Mara's social media posts, then when a group picture came up I asked her to stop there. It was taken by a pool somewhere warm and sunny, probably that Greek island my girlfriend mentioned. There were a lot of people in the picture though, and almost all of them were girls. There was just one guy way off at the far end on the right.

Mara and her twin were towards the middle of the picture, next to a slightly older couple. The ones who caught my eye though were the two girls standing closest to the young man. The one next to him had a long fluffy feline tail and fuzzy tufted cat ears on her head, and beside her was a tall attractive brunette girl with a tiny pair of horns just visible poking up through her hair, which looked wet like she'd just been in the water.

"Do we know who those people are?" I asked. "The catgirl and the one with the tiny horns?"

Serenity shook her head, "Mara's posts mention a lot of names on that trip. I can identify the ones on the other end of the group picture, but the only one on that side I can guess at is 'Lucas', since he's the only guy."

She went on to point out the others she'd figured out, "Mara's twin sister is Mira. Then the short innocent-looking one is Amber. The average-looking one is Melissa. And the tall stern redhead is Susan. Those three all live with Mara and Mira. I'm pretty sure the one that looks like a fashion model is Grace, but I haven't figured out who the others are? The names that have come up are Eva, Lily, Lexi, and Marianne, but I don't know who's who."

"Those ones might all be from Europe," Bailey suggested. "Penpals, or maybe distant relatives or something? Probably not relevant anyways, we should be focusing on the ones who live here."

Sere nodded, "That's what I was thinking. Anyways like I said I've figured out who the girlfriends are, and was able to find their full names."

"This is Melissa Perry," she said as she tabbed to another social media feed. "She's a professional photographer, and her social media is mostly about her pictures. Her feed is pretty basic, and as far as I can tell there's no reference to anything supernatural at all."

Then she tabbed to the next one, "Amber Dubois is very interesting. She's the small cute shy one, but apparently she owns a successful 'adult store'. She seems to be into photography as well, and her social media feed is a split between innocent photos and advertisements about sales and new merch at her sex shop."

Serenity wrapped it up by saying, "The last two have their social media set to private. I was able to find the tall redhead's full name, she's Susan Mackenzie and she works as a nurse at some sports rehab medical place? And the demonic twin Mira Carter does volunteer work at a nearby hospital."

"So what does all this get us?" I asked. "Can we use this to find where she lives?"

Bailey nodded, "It might. We can try searching them online now that we have their full names, and see what else comes up."

Sure enough it was no more than twenty minutes later when the cute foxgirl's tail started wagging as she looked up from her laptop and announced, "I think I've found them! Susan Mackenzie owns a house, she inherited it when her father passed while she was still a teenager. And I was able to find the address in the public land transfer records. The picture of it on street-view matches an image on Mara's social media."

Me and Sere were both looking over Bailey's shoulder by that point, while she pointed it out on her maps app.

"That's it there," she stated. "A typical little split-level in a normal subdivision, and it's only a couple miles away from here."

My tail and ears were both sticking straight up as I grinned, "Awesome! So who's up for a stake-out? Is there somewhere we can park the car and just sit and watch the place, keep tabs on who's coming and going?"

"Slow down there cutie," Serenity said as she put a hand on my shoulder. "Remember what Cassandra said? She asked us to keep her updated on our investigation, so we should probably forward this stuff to her before we get in too deep."

My shoulders slumped as she added, "There's also a good chance Mara's already warned the other demons about us. So they're probably all going to be keeping an eye out for us. And two catgirls and a foxgirl are going to stand out no matter what. So maybe we should let things cool down a bit before we try and get closer."

Bails agreed, "I wouldn't be surprised if they're doing some research on us now too? Hannah and Kate probably passed one of our stickers on to Mara, so she'll have our contact info. She and the other demons are probably looking at our website, maybe checking out some of our shows and stuff."

By that point my ears and tail were all drooping again, but Serenity spoke up before I could respond.

"They might even reach out to us," the tall hot ravenette pointed out. "If they want to be interviewed they'll know how to find us anyways. And from Mara's social media it sure seems like she wants people to know she's not human."

I sighed, "So what do we do in the meantime?"

Sere replied, "We send Cassandra an update like she asked. Then I don't know? Maybe we take it easy for a day or two. Toronto's a big city, I'm sure we can find something to do here."

"If nothing else we know where we'll find Mara on Saturday, right?" she added with a smile. "She's hosting a big halloween party, and now we know where she lives. If we haven't heard from her by the twenty-sixth, we can drop in on her and see if she or her girlfriends are willing to talk."

Updating our patron goddess didn't take long, that was mostly just a matter of writing up a detailed email. We basically included everything we'd found so far, like all the names and social media accounts, the address of the house where the demons were living, and what happened when we tried to approach Mara in the college lunch room.

Then after we sent that off the three of us spent the rest of our afternoon figuring out our plans for the next few days.

Like Serenity said, there were lots of things for us to see and do. Toronto had its share of spooky or haunted locations just like any big city, and considering it was almost the end of October most of them were trying to cash in on the season. We really didn't expect to find an old haunted 'European' castle in the middle of the city though, but as soon as we heard about it we knew we had to check it out.

So we spent most of Thursday visiting 'Casa Loma', doing the ghost tour and exploring the grounds. Unfortunately it was a little over-commercialized for us. They'd put too much effort into dressing the place up for halloween and adding fake scares, while we were way more curious about the actual history and hauntings. It was still a fun visit though, and if you looked past all the silly decorations there was some good stuff there.

On Friday we took a ferry boat across the harbour to Toronto Island, so we could visit another haunted location. The Gibraltar Point Lighthouse was something like two hundred years old, and apparently it had been haunted for almost that long. We ended up spending about half the day wandering around the island, before finally taking the ferry back across to the city again. Then that night the three of us went on a ghost tour of the city centre. Like the castle that was a little too commercialized for us, but it was still interesting hearing about various hauntings in the heart of the city.

When Saturday arrived and we still hadn't heard back from the demon girl, my girlfriends and I all agreed our next step would be to drop in at her place for the halloween party. That meant we needed to put together some last-minute costumes, but it didn't take long to come up with the perfect ideas.

Then we spent a few hours Saturday afternoon finding what we needed to turn our costume concepts into reality.