Mayfair Manor

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For a moment, Antha almost laughed. It was apparent by her smile, which she tried to subdue, her muscles straining against the effort. "At least you can still put on a serious face," she murmured, taking his bleeding hand gingerly in her own, and her blood pooled with his, mixed and slowly dribbled into his veins before she ran a slow, delicate finger across the wound and it sealed under her touch, the skin knitting together just enough to stay closed before she pressed her lips to the mark as a child might, a kiss to make it better, and being a witch it really did make it better, if only a little. The dark magic pulsed around them as she did so, seeped from her veins to his and back, contracted upon their bodies and settled, content with the blood that still drip, drip, dripped to the ground.
Behind them, the door slammed closed and something in the distance groaned, like metal creaking and settling, and if nothing changed in the room around them, the difference in the air was palpable. Those dark, bitter spirits were swarming, hovering, tugging at Antha and trying to consume her. The girl, releasing Rynn's hand, closed her eyes and rolled her shoulders, her brows knit as if she were trying not to listen to something atrocious whispered in her ear. "There's an old spirit laced with the rest of these," she whispered, resisting the pull she felt at her power, that urge to go to some horrible, evil place, and bring her cousins with her, "One of the spirits that put Nero away forever and ever ago. Like any angry spirit, he carries the stain of his magic with him, and that's what we need." The doorknob turned under her touch, and when the door swung open there came instead of the attic those antiquated, gas-lit red halls of the airship, the distant groan of metal and whir of the engines.
Quietly, the old boards creaking under her footsteps, muted beneath the carpet, Antha went to the wall of windows that looked over the drifting clouds, the long expanse of nothingness beneath the stars. "Hello, darling," she purred, her hands resting against the cold windowpanes, before turning back to Rynn, "Things work differently, here. Even time flows differently, as if it has a mind of it's own, but I should be able to control it enough that we are not gone for long, no matter how much time we spend here. It is a dimension separate from our own, and though it's loyalty is to me and my cousins, it has a will of it's own and a cluster of very angry spirits, who have more power here than our dimension." As if to demonstrate her point, there came a dim, haunting laughter from down the hall, a child's, and the slam of a door, pattering footsteps. Antha spared only a glance. "The main reason for swearing that blood oath before entering was because these spirits tend to infect witches within this space with their madness. It's like a drug, that darkness, the madness, as you should be able to imagine. It makes even the strongest witches do strange things, and whatever it makes of us tonight I would rather we did not kill each other for it."
The girl turned, taking Rynn's uninjured hand, and led him down the carpeted hallways to the door labeled 'EMPLOYEES ONLY', and marked beneath the plaque in red crayon, that messy scrawl, 'PLAYGROUND'. She paused here, her eyes (which were going strangely sharp, shining with something that was not quite right, not sane) flickering at the board on the wall, the titles scribbled in red and the names corresponding to them. The hideous red blotch, a crayon taken to the paper to scratch out the name beside Viscountess, seemed disturbing today and she wondered, dimly, if they would be forced to replace the missing number amongst the aristocrats. With a darker feeling, she wondered what would become of the aristocracy when she was gone. None of her cousins could control the darkness, the power, and the madness took them easily. And the possibility that her children should ever come here, that amongst their generation they should ever form their own aristocracy, was wiped forcefully from her thoughts before she continued on.
Down the groaning metal stairs and the dim, decrepit old hallways, through the sliding doors and storage areas of rope and dusty tarp (one of them stained with what might have been blood a very long time ago, covering something that was not as angular as the others), through the crew cabin with the rough dining table and rows of beds, the old splatters and dragging trails of blood that had been shoddily mopped up and then seeped into the cheap wooden floorboards, she led him into the maintenance sector of suspended catwalks, the loud whir of machinery echoing through the metal hull out in the darkness, and all the way into the back of the ship, turning the corner to the hallway of painted walls, the blue water and poorly drawn, colorful fish, and the slightly rotten bodies strung from the ceiling, their legs bound with rope tails. "There you are," she purred, releasing Rynn's hand, and the nearest pale corpse stirred, the lifeless arms swinging. "In a particularly dour mood this evening, I see."
In response, a draft twisting through the hallway and the metal of the ship groaning, the stretched arms of the nearest corpse jerked, lashing out towards her. She stepped back rapidly, just out of reach, and the corpse convulsed, the mouth gaping like the fish creature it posed as, the arms flailing uneasily before the spirit released the mermaid, drifting through the corpses so that they stirred. "What, you're mad he's not here for the game? Cheer up, I made a new mermaid last time, didn't I?" Illium's body jerked nearby, and there was the unmistakeable prickle of dark power as it drew near, circling the two witches. "And I'll bring you a vampire mermaid next time, if you help us now," she whispered, her voice absolutely wicked, remorseless, bringing another little draft through the hall that made her smile darkly. "Rynn, this is Cassian. Or it was, some thousand years ago. He's one of the few spirits here to remember who or what he actually was, why he's so angry with absolutely everything. He was burned by his own kind, it left him rather bitter." Metal groaned, and Antha laughed madly, the magic of the airship slowly infecting her mind, hopping up to sit on the railing, legs crossed, eyes glimmering dangerously, "I don't think Cassian likes you, darling. He wanted to watch us play the game. But you are no gegor, no mermaid." There was a small sound, a flare of magic, and before Antha knew it a drop of blood fell from her leg, rolling from a little slash made just beneath the hem of her short skirts. "You can rail against it all you want, Cassian," the girl hissed, her gaze settling on a point in the air, her painted lips twisted into the most terrifying smile, "But we're taking that magic. We need it to put Nero back to sleep. You remember Nero, don't you?" The wolfish grin grew, her eyes taunting, "Yes, of course you do. And you want him to suffer more than anyone, don't you? Then you need to cooperate, or else I will cause a scourge to erase you entirely from existence. Remember who you are dealing with, Cassian, and do not take the Princess of the Red Rose lightly, here of all places."
Slowly, begrudgingly, the magic that lingered in the fish tank became dense, formed a shroud of darkness that twisted and churned between Rynn and Antha, seemed to inspect them as tendrils curled about their bodies. Antha had reached out as this happened, taken a piece of that darkness that radiated power and formed of it a sphere that she toyed with as if it were a parlor trick while it slowly began to gather and advance upon Rynn. "I don't think I mentioned," she murmured errantly, hopping down from the railing and nearing Rynn as a full cat might stalk a mouse, "While I doubt any physical harm will come to you at all, given the nature of all of this, some parts of this process...well, they're reeeally going to hurt." A breath's width away, Antha brought her lips briefly against Rynn's, long enough for her hand to come forcefully against his chest just over the heart, shoving that bit of materialized dark magic into him, through him, and with it came the rest of the shroud as if pulled by a string, slithering into the boy. "There's more than one reason I wanted you drunk tonight," Antha whispered into his ear as the magic churned within the boy, seeming to inspect him from all angles, to explore every dark part of his spirit, "It rather dulls the senses, and this is no easy process. I suppose you would call it a possession, much like how the Mayfair ancestral spirit possesses me. These spirits cannot control ones such as us, as they can humans, but with power such as Cassian's it is no difficult thing to step into a witch's soul." By the way the power pulsed, and the time that had elapsed, Antha judged that the pain would be dying down now, the power of the spirit slowly beginning to bond with Rynn's own power, and that...that was a frightful thing. It could make the most rational, sensible people wild, bring out sides to their personality they had never even known, entirely corrupt the truly innocent. "It makes you feel alive, doesn't it?"

Back in Mayfair Manor, Courtland was rummaging around in the fridge when he heard the cough behind him to announce the presence of company. Not that, even drunk, he was not aware of the newcomer, and he was so little shocked that he didn't so much as glance over his shoulder as he poured his soda and liquor into a glass, topping it off with more liquor. "You just missed her," he informed him in a rolling sigh, his voice thick with inebriation, "She took off with Rynn a few minutes ago, and after a dark little pulse of power and some spilled blood to go with it, the door to the airship opened and closed---tightly. I don't think they want to be disturbed."  

[Okimiyage]

"Then I will wait," said Vikteren, firmly, and he took a seat at the counter, hopping up in a curiously graceful manner that was too much reminiscent of a cat taking possession of its rightful place. He took up so much space that it seemed a remarkable miracle that the man could move so silently. The vampire cocked an ear, listening for noise from above--descending steps were the preference--and watched Courtland fixing his drinks through languid, half-closed eyes. In some ways, vampires were very much like cats. Humans found them alluring, they kept odd hours, sometimes played with their food, and could be very feral at times.

In the other room, Liesse stopped--not just stopped, but froze, as the kittens frolicked around her shiny patent-leather shoes. She craned her neck, staring at the ceiling. Her fingers dug into Malakai's sleeve, white-knuckled, when seconds ago her grip had been so playful. Rynn's presence had gone--cloudy. Distant. Somewhere else. Like a radio station, very static-y and nearly muted. "Where did she take Rynn?" she heard herself asking, from very far away. "My brother is--"

Rynn had followed, obediently, along the corridors of the airship. A little Mayfair graveyard all in itself, he thought immediately, and he found himself glancing around the cobwebbed passageways with an interest that was nearly studious. And from what she said of it, an altar as well--a place that demanded sacrifices in order to feed it, to maintain the spirits that dwelled within. These, the ghosts of dead witches, would no doubt have very particular appetites. Like the labyrinth, then--and he wondered whether she saw the similarities between them. The Calais altar had been known to drive those who ventured inside to the brink of sanity--even family members, who were supposed to be immune from harm, had been known to suffer ill effects. But when she brought him to the--well, he could only think of it as a meat locker--he finally turned on her. "Is this why you brought me here?" he asked, grimly. "Is that why you had me swear that oath? That's--ha--that's a good strategy. I'll have to use that next ti--"

Rynn never got to finish the sentence. Something came into him, stuck a long needle-sharp pin through him like a butterfly on a collector's card, but a thousand of them at once, and turning from every angle, so that he could not escape the piercing eye of the collector. He made the foolish mistake of attempting to jerk free, but only once--it amounted to nothing more than a writhe of agony, and then he went absolutely rigid, which was better than trying to fight it--whatever 'it' was. His limbs were as stiff as a doll's. And, like a doll, when the spirit was finished with him, it tossed him aside. His body crashed into the metal railing, flopped limply to the ground, and convulsed briefly before drawing itself into a half-approximation of the fetal position.

When it was all over, Rynn lay in a tortured, crumpled heap on the weathered floorboards.
For what seemed like a long time, the witch-boy was aware of no other sensation than that of his own breath, drawn into his lungs and exhaled, and a dim ringing in his ears. His nose was bleeding; gradually, he noticed the taste of salt in his mouth, and the wet trickle down his upper lip, and that was what brought him back to reality, and opened his eyes--the taste of his own blood, so recently shed, and he hated how much of it he seemed to be capable of mislaying these days--
Groaning, Rynn raised himself up on his elbows. Well, at least he wasn't playing the role of sacrifice. He could thank Antha's angelic little heart for that much. "One day someone's going to come along with the power to give you a taste of your own medicine, Antha," he muttered begrudgingly, getting to his feet with all the staggering skill of a regular alcoholic. The drink hadn't done much to numb the pain, just snapped him out of the soft and dizzying cloud that inebriation imparted. Now all the drink was good for was his poor sense of balance and the beginnings of a colossal migraine.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Between the two of us," Antha began sharply, going down to her knees beside Rynn and pressing a handkerchief to his nose to stop the flow of blood, "Only one of us has a reputation for being untrustworthy, and it isn't me, mon ami." Behind her, the pale shadow that had emerged from Rynn quivered, almost as if it were laughing. "Our agreement was that you would learn this magic, that you would take it into yourself and use it against Nero. How else are you going to learn except through the being that possesses it? The fact that he likes to loiter around the fish tank is only a grim coincidence." And she laughed at that, madly, as she wiped the blood from his face. "I don't know how you dealt with the dead before, but spirits such as these are very invasive. They like to crawl around inside you, to take your measure." With a little laugh, more at Rynn than anything, Antha tossed the bloodied bit of cloth into his lap and purred a taunting, "Now stop whining like you've never used dark magic before." Deep in the belly of the ship, far out in the darkness, something groaned horribly, a sharp and resonating sound that stole the girl's attention for a few moments before she turned back to the matter at hand. "I suppose we should let you rest for a while," she sighed then, and taking him by the hand led him back through the ship to the sickbay, the spirit of Cassian trailing idly behind them.
They passed an imp along the way---a grotesque little thing of rubbery gray skin and blank features, holes for eyes and a mouth, draped in a black coat---taking a broom to a puddle of blood as if it would clean it up rather than merely smearing it around. "And they wonder why we're crazy," she murmured in a little laugh, closing the door behind them and heading for the stairs, "Growing up playing around this ******** place. It was the reason Courtland and Jack started drinking in the first place, back when they were thirteen, why Dolly Jean started to fear strangers, and what piqued Vittorio's interest in the grim art of performing surgery." Down the hallway of the first class section, towards the door to the altar where the sheet of paper marked 'This month's gift: A wolf in sheep's clothing' was still tacked up, there was low, eerie laughter, the shuffle of feet. "I hate those ******** imps," she muttered, shoving Rynn into the sickbay and locking the door behind them, "I'm not even sure what they are or where they came from. They just creep around, doing as they please. Some of them attacked Courtland and me once, in a little gang with butcher knives they found in the kitchen." Ominously, the handle of the door began to jiggle just then, being turned this way and that, but when the lock held it stopped, feet shuffling away down the hall. "******** imps," she repeated, sighing and dragging a chair across the room to jam up against the door. "Anyways, you should rest. Otherwise, Cassian just might rip you apart, and that isn't going to benefit anyone." Rummaging around in the cabinet, which looked straight out of a doctor's office from the turn of the last century, complete with a bottle marked 'Ether' and a jar full of dead, shriveled leeches, Antha retrieved a few bottles that she set on the table beside the sickbed. "How about some laudanum?" she asked, that wicked, teasing grin to her lips, "It really takes the edge off. Aunt Marquerite used to use it on her human experiments. We started off using it on our victims, but as time progressed it became less and less a concern of ours." She shrugged, setting the bottle back on the table and seating herself on the foot of the uncomfortable bed, picking at the sheets stained with age. "Trust me, the unpleasantness of the process isn't over, and the madness of the spirits will start affecting you soon. You might like to be out of your senses entirely. I won't even take advantage of you, scout's honor," she said, and fell into a dark laughter at the idea of her as a scout.

"Antha won't let anything happen to him," Malakai murmured, carefully avoiding the direct question.
"Besides, they made a blood oath," Courtland added, ambling back into the parlor, "I could feel it. It suits me just fine, I don't trust that little demon child. By the way, there's a vampire in our kitchen. The dark, moody one, what was his name?"
"Vikteren," Malakai sighed, picking Amadeo up as he came begging for attention.
"Right, that one. Antha's responsibilities never end, do they? But ah, Malakai, why don't you take Liesse for a walk in the garden? It'll keep her mind off of things." And he all but shoved them out the door, closing it behind them, and turning to his cousins said breathlessly, "I can feel it calling."
"Ignore it," Vittorio ordered shortly, "You have no business in there right now."
"But I want it~!"
"Courtland, sit!" Pouting, the boy begrudgingly obliged.
In the garden, Malakai was massaging his temples. "I don't even want to know what they're up to in there," he sighed, glancing towards the parlor windows, and then turning to Liesse, "But don't worry, really, Antha and Rynn will be back soon. And Antha wouldn't let anything happen to him, really. Antha wouldn't stand for anything other than herself to be the end of Rynn, and she made a blood oath, up in the attic, she swore not to harm him. And she promised Cian before, that she would not be the death of him if she could help it. She's...odd, in matters concerning your brother. Nicolae desperately wanted him dead, but she forbade it." He paused, hands clasped behind his back, and inspected a nearby rosebush, his eyes distant and thoughtful. "There's not much Antha would ever deny Nicolae, so it came as quite a shock. I don't think he's taking it well. Any of it, really. But then, what do I know? We haven't been connected in so many years." He turned, gave his best attempt at a laugh to lighten the mood, but the effect was something hollow and dry. "I'm not sure I want to know what goes through his mind anymore. We were born together, but it's the only thing we have in common. The one thing we should have in common, our beloved little sister, we don't. The sort of love we have for her is opposing. It's what drove us apart to begin with, in a way." His fingers curled around the stem of a particularly pretty bloom---one of the few that did not carry the stain of blood on it's scarlet petals---he snapped it, carefully tearing off the thorns, and slid it into Liesse's hair. "It happens to all twins, I suppose, even Mayfairs. One day, perhaps we'll have to comfort our niece and nephew when they grow apart."  

[Okimiyage]

Antha knew how to to play Rynn like a fiddle. No matter how much it had hurt, his drunken pride couldn't stand the thought of being called a whiner. And so through slitted eyes he glared at her, and shook off the pain, and got to his feet despite what felt like splinters grinding in the sockets of his bones. And to think that he'd almost, for a second, forgiven her--! it seemed ludicrous now. Antha Mayfair, no matter her good points, would always have her vanities, her madness, as well. She used kindness like a kind of illusory fog, lulling you into a sense of security, almost--well, Rynn did not know if it could be called 'trust'. Their relationship had nearly--not quite--made it to mutual respect, like tomcats that have learned to avoid one another's territory. Now, well-- pressing the hankerchief to his nose begrudgingly, he got to his feet and followed after Antha.
It felt a little like rape. Like having something forced inside of you, without permission or obligation to be gentle, just a greedy child's delight at the act of violation. His temples ached. If he didn't know better, he'd have sworn they'd been flayed raw, his skull beaten to a pulpy mash. And it had made him feel very odd, more than just off-kilter. The airship corridors almost seemed familiar. Rynn had the unsettling feeling that he knew where he was going, in a place where he had never been before.When at last they came to the safe haven of the kitchen--although how safe anyone was from those imps, in the airship, he really couldn't be sure--the witch-boy collapsed onto the rickety iron bedframe. A few flakes of rust drifted away with the motion. Staring up at the ceiling, he frowned at what looked like a growing patch of black mold--until it stirred, and was revealed to be a colony of spiders, which scuttled like a single-minded hive unit into a long, narrow crack in the wall.
"Charming," Rynn muttered, wiping a final smear of blood from his lip. Then, turning his eyes on Antha as she went to the cabinet, he scowled. The bottle of laudanum was meant as an insult, he was certain. "I'm not Cian, thanks," he snapped, in refutation of her offer. Generous though she might think it, he was eager be in full possession of his faculties again. There was going to be a reason why Rynn didn't get drunk from now on. Even if possession by spirits was the most painful process imaginable, the idea of being helpless--completely out of his own control--in Antha Mayfair's care was even more unpleasant. "Just strap me down so I don't kick and give me something to bite if I start having a seizure, okay?"

Liesse gave out a tremulous sigh that threatened to turn into a sob, but held it back until they had been escorted out of the gathering of family and into the gardens. It was only then, burying her face in one of the dewy rose petals, that she allowed herself to whisper her thoughts aloud to Malakai. "I don't like it--wherever they are, it's done something awful to him. He's in a dreadful state." Glancing up, she turned away from the bush and put her hands into the pockets of her dress. Poor Malakai, she thought, and smiled--because he was kind, and rescued her from the family, and in some ways he seemed terribly, terribly lonely amidst all of the Mayfair revelry. He didn't have anyone who understood him, which was--unnatural, considering he was born already bonded to his brother. Liesse came towards him, and touched his sleeve, saying firmly: "You shouldn't resign yourself to that inevitability. I can still feel my brother despite the body I--" stole "--find myself in. It doesn't have to happen to all twins. No matter what happened between you two--as long as you're both still alive, is there any reason why you can't make amends?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For the slightest fraction of a second, the haze over Antha's eyes cleared and she said, in a quiet, very serious voice, "No...no you're not. And thank the heavens for that." And she glanced at him from the corner of her eye, that quiet voice questioning, "What would have happened if Liesse had not been in my house when you showed up last night, Rynn? Would you have tried to kill me? Was that your plan?"
With a little exasperated sigh, Antha shook her head, bringing back that haze, and smiled. "You're so suspicious of everything," she laughed, going back to the cabinet and rooting around for bandages, which she applied to the cut on her leg as she continued, "You know, there's a much easier way to do this. It ends with you nearly dead. I could have just gone with that, but I opted for the way that was easier for you rather than me. I'm not saying I've forgiven you for all you've done---I haven't, and I probably never will---and I don't think you've forgiven me, but we are bound to one another Rynn, and even if we can't really come to like each other, we can be civil, we can co-exist. Do you think your troubles in this city are at an end? No, mon ami, you have targets on you, and if you think you can handle them all on your own, you are a fool. In this city, if you are a witch of any note, you need powerful friends, co-conspirators, and after all you've done, I'm your only option. That's not to say that I would do it for you, not with the way you act, but the fact is that the easiest way to you is through Liesse, and I couldn't allow something to happen to sweet little Liesse because of you, not again. What's more, I couldn't bear to see Cian hurt by your death, he's only just getting over the grief of the in-ci-dent."
There was a bang outside, a door slamming, and heavy footsteps headed down the hall towards them. Too heavy to be an imp, the floor only creaked under their tiny footsteps, and Antha tensed, eyeing the chair propped against the door nervously as it began to rattle. It stopped briefly, as if the would-be intruder had just realized it was jammed, and just when Antha would have relaxed, there was a deafening bang as the door flew open, the chair crushed to kindling flying across the room, giving way to a figure that loomed in the doorway, definitely bigger than an imp. "What in the hell are you psychopaths doing in here?" Nicolae questioned stiffly.
Antha, wide-eyed with surprise, only blinked at him. "Playing doctor?" she offered, fighting the urge to grin. Nicolae rolled his eyes at her.
"How did it seem like a good idea to lock yourself in here---with Rynn Calais, of all ******** people, not even intending to kill him---without any of the other aristocrats, anyone to help control this place.
"They would have gotten in the way," she whined with an obstinate little pout, "It's none of their business anyways, or yours. Speaking of which, I thought I sealed that damn door."
"You did," he growled, eyes narrowing, "But you forgot, you may be the Princess of the Red Rose, but I am the Prince. The airship obeys me every bit as much as it does you."
"You ran away from the aristocracy," she reminded him, brows knit, "Completely abandoned it. The airship hasn't forgiven you, you know." As if to agree with her, metal groaned loudly in the distance.
Nicolae, making a frustrated gesture of his hands, turned to shout in annoyance down the hallway, "I'm sorry, okay? I'm ******** sorry that I got turned into a vampire and ran off and this goddamn place wasn't a priority anymore. Now---" He turned back to Antha, his face set in those angry lines, "---can we discuss why you thought this was a good idea?"
"I didn't," she admitted easily, shrugging in a highly exaggerated manner, "But I did it anyways."
"He could have killed you, Evie!"
"No," she disagreed, as if it was a small, inconsequential matter, "Especially not here."
"What if---"
Before he could say it, the speakers all throughout the airship crackled with static and the two Mayfairs froze. Their eyes shifted to the speaker, which sounded with that dreaded xylophone---duh, duh, duhhhh---before the child's voice, what had been Nicolae's greeted them with, "Good eeeeeevening, everyone."
"You have got to be ******** kidding me," Nicolae murmured, a hand to his forehead.
"How are we all doing today, hmm?" the voice purred.
"I did not sound like that," Nicolae groaned, brows knit, and Antha patted his arm.
"It seems we have a new player on board today. The imps can smell the blood."
"Oh, lord," Antha sighed, and turning rapidly on her heel, went to the bed and began searching between the mattresses.
"If you won't feed them," the voice continued in that wicked purr, "You'll have to kill them."
"Antha," Nicolae began as the mad laughter on the speaker drifted off, the xylophone sounding.
"Already on it," the girl murmured back, pulling a butcher knife from between the mattresses to flash ominously in the light, "You know, you shouldn't have come here. The airship would have shut up and left me to my business if you hadn't come."
"Don't be so sure about that," he snapped, glancing down the hallway as half a dozen other doors creaked open, a low thrum of whispers drifting from behind them.
"Cassian, perhaps you should continue while we are otherwise preoccupied," Antha said innocently to the spirit that drifted about the room, and it gathered obediently around Rynn as Nicolae vanished down the hall and Antha stood in it with her butcher knife, laughing, "Have fun." The door slammed behind her, and all at once Cassian swarmed, invaded Rynn---not quite as before, more as a witch would pry into another's mind---and suddenly it was snarls, the smell of blood, thirteen terrified vampires standing in a circle around one, caught in a web of silver chains and thrashing wildly, growling like the most dangerous beast as the runes weakened him, as the holy ground burned him, as bit by tiny bit he went down onto his knees, snapping his jaws and fangs at the air in vain.
You are not to be trusted. Crimson eyes, furious and glowing, turned to the figure beside Cassian, who looked on in silent terror, trying to put all his power and focus into the spell. You are not safe. There was a deafening roar, the endlessly long rivers of inky black hair stirring this way and that, sweeping the bloody ground around Nero's knees as the captive vampire fell lower and lower down towards the ground.
The magic, a complicated conglomerate of things, was the focus of the flashback, the feel of it, and Cassian did what he could to imprint it upon Rynn's mind as the memory burned out and restarted, over and over, for nearly two hours. It stopped only when Antha busted back through the door, her arms and legs splattered with dark blood and bits of grayish gore, a few flecks on her dress. "Sneaky little bastards," she was murmuring to herself, throwing the butcher knife down with a loud clank in the small steel sink, "Jumping off rafters, trying to cut the catwalks loose...they tried to bag me! With a bloody burlap sack, like horror movie kidnappers!"
She was pouting as she washed the blood from her arms and Nicolae entered, a great deal bloodier than his sister, due in part to the tears in his clothing that looked like they had briefly been stab wounds. "At least they didn't stab you with pairing knives and scissors and ******** screwdrivers. Since when do we have screwdrivers on board?!"
"You shouldn't have rushed into a goddamn mob of them," Antha scoffed, shaking her head.
Nicolae, staring at her in outrage, exclaimed, "You're the one that stabbed me with a butcher knife! I was getting away from your frenzied little mindset!"
"And I'll do it again, if you don't stop bitching about every little thing!" Antha yelled back, staring daggers at her brother.
"Do it!" he dared her, turning his head and offering her his neck, "Go on, do it! I will throw you off the side of this ship so fast---"
"We both know you wouldn't dare," Antha scoffed with a confident little grin, flashing the dripping butcher knife at him, "But I would."
"One day you're going to push me too far," he murmured childishly, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall, very pointedly looking the opposite direction of her.
"Oh, stop pouting," Antha sighed, and then turning to Rynn, pointing at him with the gleaming knife, "Take a note, darling, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to just let them tear you limb from limb. It doesn't even break our blood oath if I didn't orchestrate it. But I didn't, did I? I went through all this trouble, even let them use my big brother as a pincushion, just to protect you. So have a little faith in me every once in a while." Dropping the knife unceremoniously back into the sink, Antha gave a weary little sigh and finally said, "I think that'll be enough for today. The ship is satisfied that the game is over, so I suggest we take our leave before Nicolae pisses it off again."
"It wasn't me!" he shouted, but went ignored as Antha took Rynn's hand and led him down the newly blood-splattered halls of the first class section where the imps, gone submissive now that the game was over, were taking mops to the crimson stains, some of them with brooms, smearing it more than anything. Antha went quickly to the altar, all lit up with candles and scattered with those damned roses, slamming the door behind Nicolae and turning the dial, reopening it to the Mayfair Manor attic. The hours in the airship had translated into just short of fifteen minutes in the real world.

"There is a very real reason," Malakai murmured, and gave a little sigh as he tried to properly organize his thoughts, "Nicolae, he's...cruel. If it serves his purpose, he'll hurt almost anyone. He loves me, and Antha, and our cousins, intensely, but that doesn't make up for the fact that at the end of the day, that's all that matters to him. He does terrible things first and asks questions later. I wanted to love him as I always had despite what a wanton creature he was, to be as we always had, but he dragged me down into it. In the end, at the bottom line, Nicolae is the stronger personality between us, and as long as I tried to be two parts of the whole as we were when we were children, I couldn't be me. The person that I am at heart, the person I want to be, was eclipsed and then destroyed by the person he is at heart. As long as I tried to keep that bond of twins between us, I couldn't exist as I really am." He paused, taking a moment to regain the breath he had lost in the sudden rush of words, and regaining his composure he murmured, "It's not like we're on bad terms. We still love each other, we are still twins, but on the day that Antha appeared in our lives and he drew away from me in jealousy, putting that first crack into our bond, I saw everything with such agonizing clarity and I realized how much better it was for everyone, including us, that Nicolae and I were not one soul stretched between two bodies. I realized that as long as we were I would end up doing things and acting in ways that would make my heart ache, because it was natural to me to go along with him. For my own sake, I had to let that bond crumble into the thin thread that it's become. I had to be separate from him, no matter how much I loved him."
A light clicked on in the attic, throwing a series of square lights across the yard from the window, and Malakai glanced up to see Antha pass by the glass, pausing and peering down at him, blinking curiously at the sight even as the little teasing grin spread across her lips. Nicolae, showing up beside her in heated animation, yelling something, gave a double-take, staring down at his brother in the garden with a girl, which was something strange indeed.
"Do you want to explain that?" Nicolae asked of his sister, making a motion down towards Malakai and Liesse.
"Nothing to explain," Antha said innocently, shrugging and heading down the stairs.
"Since when does Malakai hang around the garden at night with girls?!" he yelled after her, whipped up into a new sort of frenzy, and when she only laughed he chased frantically after her, screaming, "Somebody tell me this isn't what it looks like!"
Ignoring her brother, Antha descended the stairs and slipped into the kitchen, yanking open the fridge and grabbing a container of ice cream which she put a spoon to without need of a bowl, hopping up to sit on the counter as she finally glanced at Vikteren, sighing, "It's been a long night, so if this has anything to do with massacres or undead armies, can we pretend otherwise until tomorrow?"
In the hallway, Dolly Jean was screaming hysterically as Nicolae stormed in, all bloody ripped clothes, bits of grayish meat in his golden curls, demanding that Courtland explain what his brother was doing 'sneaking around with a girl in the middle of the night'. "It doesn't show any promise of lightening up, either," Antha murmured thoughtfully, tapping the spoon against her lips as she licked the traces of ice cream from them.
"Not all girls are predators like Antha," Pierce reminded him in a sigh, carefully patting his shoulder, "Some of them are gazelles."
"And Malakai is like a bunny," Nicolae shot back, very seriously, "Gazelles can trample bunnies."
"I don't think that happens a lot," Courtland murmured thoughtfully, lounging on the couch with his bottle of gin, a second before he yelped and clapped a hand over his left eye where Nicolae had hit him, screaming helplessly, "WHY IS EVERYONE BEATING ME UP TODAY?! AND WHY THE FACE?! I NEED THIS FACE!"
"You have talents other than your wayward grin," Pierce reminded him in a purr, his eyes distant, thoughtful, as if his mind wasn't really there. Of course, Pierce was not one to keep his musings to himself and glancing out the window he murmured finally, "It might be amusing to see them together. They have similarly kind hearts and gentle dispositions, if Liesse lives in less of a shell than sweet, darling Saint Malakai. And isn't it the nature of witches to fall for other witches? Malakai has to help continue the main branch of the family, and as we learned from Antha their blood has taken all the interbreeding it can, and how many non-Mayfair witch girls are there out there? Perhaps we've gone about this all wrong, trying to head off the danger."
"Don't let Rynn hear you saying that," Jack warned him very seriously, though he smiled with wicked amusement, "He'd probably rip your heart right out of your ribcage and toss the rest of you in the swamp."
"He thinks he knows my power," Pierce purred dangerously, still staring out the window at Malakai's figure drifting through the garden. He assumed that with Antha's reappearance there had come Rynn's and Liesse had gone running to him. "He doesn't. If Antha is correct about him, perhaps he could kill me one day, but not now. And growing up in this house, going along with Antha's adventures..." He laughed once, dryly, "...Rynn doesn't scare me. I'm not sure the devil himself would scare me, at this point."
"Drink more," Jack said simply, frowning uneasily as he got up and shoved the bottle of gin at his cousin, "You're in that awful halfway place, and you know you get weird and moody when you're at that place."
Pierce smirked, holding up the bottle. "Cheers, then. Bottoms up, mon cheri." It was gone in mere moments.  

[Okimiyage]

For a long time, drifting between reality and the ghost-place, Rynn was conscious of not much else but screaming. Whether it was his own or that of the ghosts, he wasn't certain. His body felt taut, stretching between one realm and the next, spanning the gap like a tenuous bridge. Images of sadism and debauchery played out in front of his mind's eye like a reprisal of Salò. He could not look away. He had no eyelids to shut, no ears to block, inside his head. And all the while, the spirit's piercing venom sang through his veins, madness and despair, in a miserable greek chorus of pain.

The consciousness that was Rynn drifted through the airship. Blood spattered against wallpaper somewhere, staining the dingy floral print with fresh pigment. He thought, for a moment, that he saw a glimpse of Antha's face amidst a mob of shadows (then, in the next instant, he was certain he was mistaken--Antha was much older than that child, after all).

The screaming was beginning to wear on his nerves. He could almost hear a melody to it, which was a sure sign that he'd been listening too long. How long? He wasn't sure. The minutes ticked on into hours. Someone must have noticed that they were missing by now, but who the ******** would ever think to look here?

He thought the airship was a tomb as certainly as the Calais vaults had been. The delirious thought came to him, I should have died there.--yes, that would have been better than being subjected now to the whims of Antha Mayfair, with the expectation that--what? She would welcome him into the arms of their fold and he and Liesse would live out the rest of their lives in domestic bliss?

It was a terrible thing that laughing hurt too much to contemplate when he had this thought, because the only other available route was fury. Antha had been 100% correct when she had asked if he had intended to kill her last night. Oh, yes. He had come armed for a goddamn kamikaze brawl. Oh, he had no doubt that he would have been killed. Antha had powerful allies. But he had no reason to want to live last night beyond seeing her dead. She would never know how close she had come to her own destruction when she invited him to that house. If Liesse hadn't been there...

When the spirit released him, finally, his body was covered in the clammy sheen of cold sweat. His limbs were trembling. When he realized that he was capable of opening his eyes at last, for a good long minute he did nothing more than flex his hands, open and close, trying to get feeling back into his quaking fingers. Rynn was sitting up, slowly, when Antha whirled into the room again with her brother in tow. In the face of their frenetic excuses, Rynn leveled a long, sour glare at the two of them. Eventually, the man swung his legs off the groaning mattress and stood, with no small effort.
"You sound like you think that safe-guarding my body from a ******** horde of ghouls merits some kind of 'thank you'." he observed. There would be none forth-coming. It was a jab, but he was too exhausted to follow up with his real argument. If she thought that he was going to thank her for getting him drunk and dragging him into a pocket realm so as to partake in an arcane and painful ritual that she didn't even have the decency to explain to him beforehand, much less ask for permission--
Rynn didn't have to finish that 'if'. He didn't even have a comparable quantifiable measure to describe how wrong she was. Eventually the Mayfair siblings left, and Rynn followed behind them in brooding, weary silence. He was not so far behind as to escape noticing, however, their stop at the window and the subsequent comments.

Rynn stopped and looked out onto the lawn as well, but said nothing--merely pressed his lips together, and sighed, and made a mental note to speak with Liesse later about fraternizing with the enemy. He could already imagine her flippant response. There wasn't any harm in it, he just didn't like the idea of--well, more Mayfair nieces and nephews to associate with. They'd be Calais, too, kin that he couldn't stand to ignore.
He ground his nails into his palm, and continued downstairs.

In the garden, blissfully unaware of the approaching shitstorm, Liesse smiled up at Malakai. "Well, there's no one solution for all situations, I suppose. Perhaps you're right. I used to think it would be good for Rynn, do you know that?--to get out in the world for a little while, on his own. Not to be concerned with estate affairs every waking moment. Perhaps our own separation is equally inevitable, it just…hasn't happened yet." She found herself looking at her clasped hands without really seeing them, turning a clover blossom around and around in-between her fingers. There was dirt under her nails, and the soul that had owned the hands before Liesse had chewed her nails into ragged shreds. The lace cuffs of her dress seemed oddly mis-matched, a beautiful gilded frame for an ugly child's crayon drawing. "Maybe, secretly, selfishly, I just wanted him gone, though." she murmured, and tossed the flower out into the yard. "I always felt that I was badly suited to being a witch. I would have liked to live a very, very boring life, but witches--ah, witches bring chaos wherever they go. They upset things. You know how it is, I'm sure. And Rynn, he became so unbalanced on his own, the way he--well." She didn't want to touch the subject with a ten-foot-pole. Rynn had been half-a-step shy of insane, with not a soul in the house having the gall to check his madness. It was somewhat shameful. And that was the beauty of the Mayfair household, in a way--that Antha had so carefully crafted a system of checks and balances for all of them, a tangled web of obligations and lovers and favors owed and truces drawn. Liesse crouched down next to a flower-bed, inspecting a sprout briefly, and used it as an excuse to muffle her half of the conversation in her skirts. "He likes having me near, you know? Even if I'm not doing anything, even if I'm an inconvenience. Sometimes I feel like his familiar instead of his sister." Liesse had never complained to anyone of the outside world. She had never complained, even, to Rynn or any of her other brothers. It felt like a relief to say it aloud, that shameful secret, the desire for autonomy.

And downstairs, in the kitchen, Vikteren heard the approaching flurry of footsteps and stood, unfolding himself from the chair in a motion so quick it barely could be seen, and then he was in the doorway staring up at the second-floor like a cat watching a mouse-hole.
When he saw Antha, a smile lit his face like a flash of lightning, and disappeared just as instantaneously. He knew what she'd been doing. He'd felt the absence when she left the house, disappearing into the airship. It had been a relief when the fifteen minutes were up, even if Nicolae had been forced to go after her and they both came back a battle-stained mess. He wouldn't comment--because it was none of his business, as long as she came back sane--but he couldn't help but feel some relief to see her alive and--well, spattered with gore, but intact.
The fact that the Mayfair Manor had a 'room' where you faced mortal peril every time you went in said something about the people who lived there. In normal houses, you didn't get nervous when it took longer than ten minutes for a family member to return from the attic--not that Antha was any ordinary family member, but still.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"That is the problem with being so closely bonded with someone else," Malakai said in a wispy murmur, his fingertips brushing the plush grass, and under his touch the little wildflowers sprinkled amongst the dark green blades of grass that had been waiting eagerly for spring, their blooms wrapped up tight, unfurled and stood tall, their petals shivering as their hue turned vibrant. Malakai smiled, oh so softly, as if they could see it, react to it, and they really did seem to. "Autonomy, having a life of your own. You're always subject to their whims, their desires, their life." He stood slowly, wiping the green grass stains from his fingers onto his jeans, and turned to look at the pool nearby. "I guess it's that way with any tight knit family, you can't be autonomous without abandoning them completely, but with a twin it's just that much more...consuming, I suppose. Not even the space inside your head is your own."
The boy paused, glanced up at the source of the rapidly shifting shadows on the ground, Nicolae's arms making heated gestures as he spoke, Jack shuffling bottles around at the bar, Courtland rising from the couch with a hand to his eye. "I suppose I must have been about fourteen when I broke away from Nicolae. Younger than you are now, and it had started years before, with Antha. I thought he would never forgive me, that he would never accept that I chose to be anything more than his shadow, some appendage to him that did what he thought I should do. But he accepted it, gradually. It made him more protective of me in the end, when he realized that I wasn't him, that I couldn't take the things that were utterly natural to him." The screen door slammed nearby and Nicolae stepped angrily down off the porch, bringing Malakai to silence as his fair-haired mirror image tromped towards the pair, plopping down angrily in the grass, legs crossed, staring down at the wildflowers as if they had done him a great injustice. "How did it go?"
"I hate him," Nicolae hissed, and by implication of tone it seemed more a reminder than an announcement. Malakai gave a little sigh, tilting his head and staring down at his brother as if he were hopeless.
"Somehow, I don't think you're talking about Courtland..."
"I'm not," was the rapid, angry response, the vampire pausing just long enough to scowl before his words came tumbling hastily out, "Why did she have to bring him here anyways? He shouldn't be here. He's nothing but trouble."
Malakai paused for an uneasy moment, whispering uncertainly, "Do you mean Rynn, or Cian?"
Nicolae's eyes flashed dangerously dark, his expression all the more sullen. "Cian's no trouble, I suppose," he murmured begrudgingly at length, "Everyone else likes him. Julien's even coming around. Hell, he fits right in."
Malakai gave another sigh, his fingers gently resting on his brother's shoulder before he quickly changed the subject, turning to make a little gesture at Liesse, "I'm not sure if you two were ever properly introduced. Either way, considering all that's happened, reintroductions are in order. Nicolae, this is Liesse. Liesse, this is my brother Nicolae."
The vampire spared an appraising glance over his shoulder at the girl, studying her as if to decide whether or not he wanted to be reintroduced, but finally he unfolded himself and rose to his feet, holding his hand out to the girl. "Nice to see you again," he said, and if his voice was quiet, at least it was sincere. "Malakai," he began suddenly, his eyes cutting at his brother, "Promise me you'll never forget you're a bunny."
Malakai, who was probably the only one amongst the cousins who would never eavesdrop on such an animated discussion as what had just passed in the parlor, a fact Nicolae momentarily forgot, cocked his head, staring at his brother as if he had lost his mind. "But...I'm not a bunny."
"Trust me, you're a bunny."
"...I'm pretty sure I'm not a bunny."
"Malakai, just shut up and accept that you're a bunny."
Around the corner, the sliding door to the kitchen opened and Antha's voice rang out distantly, "He's not a bunny, Nikki!" The door slid closed again, and Malakai fought not to smile as Nicolae glared in the direction of the kitchen.
"Why's everyone beating Courtland up today?" he asked suddenly, turning back to face Malakai.
"He mentioned the Vera thing," was the uneasy reply, which struck instant fear into Nicolae's eyes. "And other things."
"What other things?"
"Just...other things."
"What other things?"
"Why'd you hit him?"
"...I had my reasons."
"So did I." Malakai smiled at the look he was given, the utter incredulity that Saint Malakai would resort to even so much as kicking someone under the table.
"Alright, maybe you're not a bunny. Maybe you're...a chipmunk, or something. I'm open to the theory of evolution."
"That's not quite how evolution works, I don't think."
"Stop being difficult," Nicolae sighed, rolling his eyes as he reached out to ruffle his brother's hair, "Come on, my second in command is harassing our little sister."
"I seriously doubt he's harassing her," Malakai murmured uncertainly as Nicolae began towards the kitchen. The vampire stopped only for a brief second, glancing thoughtfully at Liesse before taking her hand in his cold fingers and bringing her along with them into the kitchen where Antha still sat on the counter with her carton of ice cream.
"Who invited you?" she asked of Nicolae as Malakai came up next to her and she handed him the spoon.
"Oh, don't be like that," he purred, going to the sink and taking a towel to clean what blood he could off of himself, even sticking his head under the faucet, "Vikteren, everything alright?"
"You're going to get blood on the counters," Antha whined meanwhile, and then turning to Malakai, "He's going to get blood on the counters. You're my witness when Julien sees it, I warned him."
"You did warn him," the boy agreed sympathetically, handing her back her spoon just as Nicolae appeared beside her, shaking his wet hair over her so that she first gave a little scream and then laughed, pushing him away.
Malakai put his arms up in defense, simultaneously stepping in front of Liesse to shield her. "Is that what having a dog is like?"
"Shut up," Nicolae ordered, laying a kiss on Antha's cheek now that he was forgiven. That was the rule particular to him, if he could make her laugh he was forgiven, and whether Antha liked it or not she acknowledged the rule, at least.
"Liesse," Antha sighed, offering her the carton of ice cream, "Have I mentioned your brother is horribly unpleasant? He has no manners at all. Incidentally, if he says I tried to kill him, I didn't. I protected him, at that."
"As you can see," Nicolae murmured, picking at one of the few blood splatters on the hem of her skirt, "And all he can do is b***h and whine about it. I didn't see him fighting off the hordes of imps that wanted to kill him. That was just us. Are you sure he's related to you and Cian?"
"That's what they say about us and Malakai," Antha reminded the fair-haired twin, nudging his shoulder with her elbow as she tapped her spoon thoughtfully against her lips.
"Because Malakai is Saint Malakai, and he doesn't do drugs and he doesn't sleep with everyone and he doesn't play political games with dangerous people, and the rest of us do. Liesse is as sweet as Malakai, and Cian is fun, and Rynn is...depressing, and aggravating, and hurtful, and unpleasant, and downright homicidal, and every time he opens his damn mouth you just want to wring his neck. And let's not forget he was going to try and murder you last night, before you brought him into our house, to live with our family."
"I can handle Rynn," Antha said simply, shoving a spoonful of ice cream into Nicolae's mouth to shut him up.
Courtland meanwhile, ambling into the kitchen with the rapidly darkening strings of bruises around his eye, looked between them as they spoke, eventually slinging an arm around Liesse's shoulders as he concurred with, "I don't know how you expect him to interact with us, Evie. He doesn't like us, he makes that clear enough, and he makes it harder and harder for us to force ourselves to like him. We love Cian dearly, he could have been born one of us for all it matters, he has all of our own favorite traits, and Liesse is a doll, really---" He paused only long enough to press a kiss to Liesse's temple, rearranging her hair around the rose Malakai had stuck behind her ear, "---but Rynn isn't one of us, he doesn't want to be, he makes a point of pissing us off and threatening Pierce---"
"He deserved that," Antha interrupted in Rynn's defense, which met with a thoughtfully quiet moment followed by a gesture of acquiescence before he continued.
"---and he probably wants to kill us, at least a little. You do know that, don't you?"
"He'd sooner kill you than try to make friends with you," Nicolae agreed grimly, standing shirtless by the sink, washing blood from his chest with a floral print hand towel.
"Hence the blood oath," Antha countered, lightly enough, "You are all powerful witches, if the entire lot of you are afraid of Rynn---"
"I never said we were afraid of him!"
"---then clearly you have let yourselves go, you need to step up your game. The matter isn't up for discussion."
"I never said he was unmanageable, that we can't stand to have him in the same house, but we have absolutely no idea how to interact with him, Evie." Courtland sighed, downing the last of the bottle of gin in his hand and, tossing it with a clatter into the garbage can, pulled Liesse into his arms like a favorite teddy bear. "At least we get Liesse out of the arrangement. Even if Rynn leaves, or he and Pierce kill each other, we get to keep her, right?"
"That would be up to Liesse," she reminded him, and he looked down at the girl in his arms with such earnest, heartbroken eyes, glimmering with the heavy influence of alcohol and at least one other substance.
"You wouldn't leave us, would you? I maintain that you should marry Malakai and stay with us forever. We'll even let you haunt the house with us when we die. Oh, just think of all the wonderful jokes we could play!"
"I don't think Liesse is as eager to torment mine and Cian's grandchildren with fluttering curtains and slamming doors as you are, mon cher."
"My legend must live on!" Courtland proclaimed, a moment before he stumbled and fell flat on the floor, laughing, "Since you're married, I'm never going to have any legitimate children, just more and more Mayfair bastards, so how else am I going to live on through the ages?"
"I swear, Courtland, if you terrorize my children---"
"Terrorize? I'm going to love those goddamn kids. I'm going to sneak them alcohol and give them their first drugs and take them out for nights of meaningless sex and---"
"Stop trying to corrupt my children before they're even born!" Antha interrupted, pouting angrily at him before suddenly calling, quite loudly, "Cian! Courtland is never allowed around our children!"
"That's not fair!" he whined, grabbing hold of her leg and tugging pathetically on her foot, "Jack and Pierce will be even worse. You need me, Evie! Cian's not going to fight Julien about how to raise them!"
"That's true," she sighed ruefully, "Fine. But you have no idea the sort of vengeance I will wreak from my grave if you go corrupting my children as our cousins corrupted us."
"Depends on how protective of a father Cian turns out to be," Courtland scoffed, laughing, "Malakai is a pushover, but Cian might be trouble."  

[Okimiyage]

Liesse watched the interaction between Malakai and Nicolai. She could not imagine ever being so disparate from Rynn, could not imagine not knowing the next thought on his mind as if it were her own. She did not like what she sensed in him now; she could feel him descending the staircase now, with begrudging steps. She saw the blood on his cuffs before she saw Rynn; the flicker of elation in her eyes died where it smoldered, and was replaced by a wrathful spark. He'd been in some violent matter again. He seemed to attract bloodletting no matter where he went. I can't leave you alone for a second, she broadcasted to her twin. Her sudden turn of mood was apparent in the way she pulled at Nicolae's hand, hurrying towards the house.
Cian was in the kitchen, waiting for Antha. Vikteren followed her as she skipped through the doorway, a watchful shadow as always. His face was tense. He had wanted to bring up the subject of his sire, but this was not the time for it. By the look of Antha and Nicolae's bloodstained attire, they had already seen their share of combat for the evening.
He did not like it, Cyrus's presence in the city. He could feel the miasma of his sire's aura settling down possessively into the streets, a net cast for some particularly slippery fish. It was hard to imagine how the Mayfairs could so boldly celebrate night after night in this castle without heed of the impending threat.
Liesse stormed into the kitchen like a small, furious doll. Cian caught her up, spun her about, whispering something into her ear--she kicked at the air, and he let her down. "Settle, Liesse," he said fondly, ruffling her hair. "Can't blame me for asking. You two seemed to get along so well, after all--" She flapped at his hand, blushing furiously. "Don't treat me like a kid. I know what you were thinking, and it's none of your business." He did nothing but laugh at her, and readjust the rose that Malakai had tangled in her hair.
Taking a deep breath, she smoothed out the front of her dress and turned back to the kitchen island, where Antha and her coterie of beautiful cousins were gathered.
With Cian at her side, she approached the counter, leaning on the beautifully polished surface across from Antha. The cousin's excitement to have her back was unmistakeable; everyone crowded around, joking and shrieking and teasing one another to the point of death threats. "I know Rynn can be insufferable," she admitted, helping herself to the proffered spoon. "Our family was…very different from yours, you see. Rynn was always under a lot of stress, as heir and successor to the title. It hasn't been easy for him. This--transition, in particular, is into a wholly different environment from everything that he's known. I wouldn't expect him to trust anyone or anything here, at least not for a while. He's always been rather fickle." It was hard for the Mayfairs to remember, perhaps, but Rynn had been in a position of relative importance and power throughout his life, at least as far as the small world of the Calais title was concerned. He hadn't been prepared for what Antha Mayfair had exposed him to. He'd been dealt a crippling blow not only to his ego, but to everything he knew and loved in a single fatal hour. It was impossible to ask him to forget that resentment in the span of a few days--that damage had been dealt, and no matter what brilliant surgical patch job Antha had done by bringing Liesse and Rynn together again, it would be a long time before it fully healed.
Liesse thought this, but didn't know how to explain it to Antha. She had a right to hate Rynn, too, if she'd been at all interested in putting forth the effort. He'd intended to kill her, after all. They were probably right in assuming that he still wanted to. Suddenly, she felt a gentle squeeze on her right shoulder, and startled. Cian was behind her, looking down with a gracious smile. He didn't say anything, which was good; Cian had always known when to shut up. Turning back to the table, Liesse went on. "I can't speak for my brother, or promise that he's capable of change. But for what it's worth, I will try to persuade him to--to open up, at least a little more. And I would like to ask all of you to please be kind to him, even if he can be--as Nicolae said--depressing, and aggravating, and unpleasant. "
"And when he is depressing and aggravating and unpleasant," Cian added, "we'll just sic Liesse on him. He'll have no idea how to respond to her disapproval; he's never encountered it before."
Antha didn't need to worry about her own husband's protective qualities. The second that the twins were mentioned, he crossed his arms and leaned into the conversation. "Don't worry, Antha, I have my eye on this one."--with a nod towards Courtland. Then, winking at his wife to show that he was teasing, he went on: "Although honestly, if they want to be corrupted, it'll be difficult to stop them. They're your kin, after all. Even if we shipped them off to boarding school to protect them from this--" and he glanced down at the glass of scotch in his hand, then let his eye travel around the table, "--ah, corrupting environment, I have a feeling they'd manage to make their own corruption. But isn't an interest in sin supposed to be perfectly natural in a child, after all? Healthy, even."
Rynn, lingering in the halls, arrived in time to hear a burst of laughter. Liesse tensed, sitting just a little straighter, and turned her head. She just missed the sight of Rynn, features hard, moving past the doorway and onwards to the room they shared. He hoped Dolly-Jean wouldn't be there. Right now all he wanted to do was collapse on a soft mattress in a safe environment and pretend that none of the past two hours had happened. He didn't want questions. Even to Liesse's urgent probe, What happened?, he only sent one word back in response. Later. If she got the full story from Antha, he'd be intrigued to hear how their accounts differed. Otherwise, he couldn't even entertain the possibility of joining the Mayfair brood in the kitchen right now. Let them think he couldn't handle his alcohol and had to sleep it off.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"The thing I hate most about Rynn," Antha murmured thoughtfully, reclaiming her spoon and forcing a glob of ice cream upon Cian, "Is that he has no idea how well I understand."
"The thing I hate most is how he pretends he's soooo much better than everyone else. No offense guys, but the Calais family...you were nobodies, as far as the rest of the world was concerned. You had your own little world, but really Rynn was nobody and yet even we---the vastly egotistical members of one of the most powerful families in the world---don't act half as high and mighty as him." Grabbing the spoon Antha slid from Cian's lips, Courtland took the last few traces of ice cream from it, licking his lips as he grinned at Antha in what might have been his most wicked grin yet. "Indirect kiss," he murmured suggestively, blowing a little kiss at Cian though his eyes remained on his cousin. In the next moment, she had slid down from the counter, thrusting the ice cream into Malakai's hands, and was chasing him into the dining room, knocking over chairs and breaking some porcelain thing or another.
"Her worries are that he's going to try and corrupt them more than is standard in the Mayfair family," Malakai began as the ruckus went on in the next room, digging into the ice cream as if he were oblivious to it, "Certain things that most people would call corruption are just standard for Mayfairs. Your children...they're probably going to sleep together, and their cousins, and use terrible magic just to see what it's like, and run away to join the circus. But Courtland...he decided to push the envelope when we were growing up, he's been in jail more times than I can count, almost killed himself at least once a month, and he's going to try and influence your children to follow in his footsteps. That's why she's worried, because Courtland is too wild and crazy even by her standards."
Antha returned to the kitchen as her brother spoke, satisfied that Courtland had paid dearly for what he had stolen (he, meanwhil,e was still sprawled out in the dining room floor, sobbing 'Noooo! My mangaaaaa!'), and hopped back up onto the counter near Cian, grabbing his arm and pulling him possessively closer. "The blood wasn't his fault, by the way," she continued easily, glancing at Liesse as she reclaimed her ice cream, "I made him swear a blood oath. He had to swear never to cause harm to me or my family, and I swore never to harm him or you. Not that he was any less inclined to believe I was going to try and kill him ten minutes later." She shrugged, sighing as if there was no helping the matter.
"What about Cian?" Jack mumbled, busy picking things from the fridge as he stuffed his mouth with cookie dough, "Isn't anyone concerned about not killing him?"
"Legally, Cian is family. Not to mention the whole my bearing his children thing," Antha responded with a hint of sarcasm.
"He didn't make you promise not to kill him?"
"Who the hell would think I'd kill Cian?" she protested, bypassing the issue they knew he was actually addressing and dismissing it all at once, bringing her arms tightly around the boy in question.
"It's true," Courtland murmured, staggering back into the kitchen, "She'd probably sooner kill me than him."
"I'd sooner kill you than a lot of people," she murmured in response, rolling her eyes as Courtland broke out his most offended, heartbroken puppy dog eyes.
"I'm glad I didn't marry you," he mumbled with a pout as he joined Jack before the refrigerator, snatching his cookie dough and taking a big bite of it as he continued mumbling, "...never share...always beating me up...probably would have cheated on me..." The 'me' in the last part was said very pointedly, and in turn all of the cousins glanced at Cian, studying him. They didn't have to voice their thoughts that they were surprised she hadn't slept with anyone else yet, especially considering she had said outright that she didn't demand monogamy from him, they were all thinking it and they knew it.
"I think we're all forgetting the bigger issue here," Jack interrupted, his voice only slightly slurred, as he grabbed Cian's shoulders and stared him intently in the eye, "Cian...I set all the reptiles free at the pet store today." With the way he beamed then, uncoiling the little green snake from around his arm and stroking it's head, whispering sweetly 'Yes we did, didn't we, Rex? Set all of our scaly friends free,' no one had the heart to remind him that they had foiled his attempts.
"How long is Rynn going to lay upstairs pretending to be a bad drunk?" Courtland cut in when only Jack's loving utterings to his garden snake were being spoken, pointing at the stairs, "He does realize we know better, right? And if he thinks that he's going to have any privacy while he's in this house, we'd best set his straight right now."
"I thought setting people straight was sort of the opposite of what you did," Antha murmured offhand, force feeding Cian ice cream again.
"You're one to talk," he accused her in a hiss before continuing with, "He's really being stupid about this. It's not like he can just decide not to have anything to do with us later on."
"How do you figure that?" Nicolae asked, brows knit, his curiosity piqued despite himself.
Courtland rolled his eyes as if it were obvious, leaning against the counter and making idle gestures to accompany his explanation, "Antha's children are going to be his niece and nephew, and as Mayfairs they're going to want to keep their relatives around, especially the Calais ones, since they're in such short supply. Furthermore---" He paused for dramatic effect, his lips curling deviously. "---one of these days, probably sooner rather than later, Malakai and Liesse are going to end up drunk at the same time and, with neither of their natural shynesses getting in the way, they're going to end up sleeping together."
"Stop saying weird things!" Malakai cried, his voice panicked and face flushing scarlet.
Pierce, who had slipped in almost unnoticed, grabbed the boy, restraining him with one arm as he petted his hair with the other. "Shhh. Let him finish."
"It's all hypothetical, of course," Antha reassured him, though the glimmer in her eyes said otherwise, "You know Courtland's rampant imagination."
"Let me finish!" Courtland whined, glaring at them until they all went quiet, Malakai against his will by means of Pierce's hand clamped over his mouth, "Anyways, so they're going to get married and Liesse is going to stay with us forever---"
"She's staying with us forever either way, right?" Jack interrupted, looking around at his cousins for confirmation, repeating a panicked, "Right?!"
"Will you let me finish?!" Courtland yelled, smacking Jack in the back of the head, "AS I WAS SAYING...Liesse is going to be part of the family and stay with us forever, and Rynn's never going to leave Liesse, so he's stuck with us forever too, whether we like him or he likes us or not."
"You are going to stay, right Liesse?" Jack continued, staring at the girl in horror before turning rapidly on his heel to grab Malakai's shoulders, shaking him violently as he cried, "Malakai, get her to stay~!"
Malakai, peeling his hysterical cousin off of him, finally just shook his head, putting a hand to his face, and murmured, "I don't even know what's going on anymore."
"I think you guys broke Malakai," Antha said, watching him and tapping her spoon against her lips.
Courtland offered him his bottle of gin as he dropped into a chair at the table, only to make a sound of shock when he took it and poured himself a glass, gulping it down and going for another glass. "Oh God, we did break him," the boy groaned remorsefully, and he really did seem sincere for a moment before suddenly he looked up, eyes shining, and said, "Although, this might be fun. I like drunk Malakai, we never see that guy. Maybe he'll let me take advantage of him."
"Don't make me kill you," Antha sighed simply.
Heedless of her threats, in the next few moments Courtland, Jack, and Pierce had stolen away with the poor boy and Antha could only sigh. "I suppose," she murmured, her attention shifting quietly to Vikteren, "Since you came all the way here, we might as well discuss Cyrus. After all, ignoring him will hardly make him go away."
"If only," Nicolae groaned.
"At the very least, we can continue in full force now that Rynn is no longer in his employ."
"Is that why you were holding back? Rynn?"
"We need to locate him, first of all. I won't have such a ridiculous disadvantage hanging over my head as him knowing where we are while he hides in the shadows," she continued thoughtfully, her distant gaze set on the floor.
"Rynn might know," Nicolae offered, but Antha shook her head.
"Let's leave getting information from Rynn as a last resort. Besides, if Rynn knew where to find him and Cyrus has any sense, he would have relocated as soon as Rynn switched sides. Or he could have laid a trap. No...it's best to figure these things out on our own."
"I guess we can start with what we know about Cyrus," Nicolae sighed, leaning against the counter with his arms folded, brows knit in concentration as he listed off the things that came to mind, "He's old, he has archaic magic at his disposal, he's sadistic, he uses puppets..."
"He understands fear," Antha murmured, only to be shot a curious glance that made her grin darkly, "As humans, there is nothing we fear more than what we cannot see. It's like children who fear the dark, there is no telling what could be hiding in it, and no matter what rational thoughts cross their minds they cannot shake that fear because their imagination kicks in. Cyrus has kept to the shadows, sent messages through corpses, dolls, and smoke, never revealing himself to his enemies. That, my dearest, is how you create fear in powerful opponents. If he wasn't trying to steal precious things away from me, I could almost admire him for it."
"So he understands fear, fine. If we find him, bring him into the light---so to speak---then we take away that element of fear. But us...our element is pure insanity, and no one can take that from us."
"Taking away his element of mystery is merely a preliminary strike, mon frere. The battle begins afterwards."
"Vikteren," Nicolae murmured, turning to look at his second in command, "Any ideas where we might find him? These old ones always have patterns."
"Evie!" Antha gave a start at her brother's cry of her name from the parlor, the shuffling and scuffing she hadn't noticed before.
"We fixed him!" Jack called before she could rise, "But now that he's fixed, he's drunk!"
"How much did you force down his throat?" Antha called suspiciously back.
There was a slight pause, a tensing in the atmosphere before he finally called, "Most of the bottle. But don't worry, it was only 100 proof!"
"Goddamn it," the girl groaned, sliding down from the counter and running into the parlor.
"The fact that he's never been raped in this house is nothing short of a miracle," Nicolae sighed, "But how can you blame them, with looks like those?" He smiled at his little joke, winking at Liesse, and then turned to follow after Antha, "We might as well continue this in the parlor. Antha's not going to leave Malakai alone with those vultures any time soon."
In the parlor, Nicolae entered just in time to hear Malakai, laid out on the couch, tugging at Antha's skirt as she stroked his hair, murmur drunkenly, "---doesn't matter. No, Evie, listen, it doesn't."
He could just see the corners of her lips twitching, the girl fighting with all of her might not to laugh. "Of course not, darling."
"And it's not true," he added, his fingers loosening in her skirts and finally going to try and fix the buttons of his shirt, haphazardly done up after Courtland's attempts to undress him, and then nuzzling down into the plush couch cushions. "It really doesn't...right?" His cousins watched him for a minute or two, those big, earnest doe eyes, biting their tongue before finally, Courtland burst out laughing. Jack and Pierce started immediately after him, and despite her best efforts, Antha couldn't stop her shoulders from shaking, her hand covering her mouth as if she could force back the laughter. "I really hate you guys sometimes," he muttered then, pulling a pillow over his head to hide.
Courtland, still snickering and unable to resist teasing the poor drunk boy, took up the phone receiver, offering sweetly, "Want us to call Sera for you?"
There was a moment of silence, his cousins raising their eyebrows in curious amusement before his muffled murmur sounded beneath the pillow, "No."
"Why did you have to think about it?" Antha sighed, gently stroking his pale back. Then, shooting Pierce a dangerous glare, hissed, "Are you happy with yourself now?"
Pierce sighed, nervously scratching his neck. "No."
As Antha dealt with their brother, Nicolae stood leaning against the door frame, shooting Liesse a glance, and in the quietest murmur he did something unusual for himself. "I loved Malakai like I will never love another person in this world," he whispered, watching the boy, "No matter how selfish or cruel I got, Malakai was always there, always the same kindhearted boy he had always been. Our separation was terrible to me, at first...I couldn't stand it. I lost my mind for a little while, and only Antha could find it again for me. But, at the same time...it's nice to be free. I never even guessed at how nice, back then, never realized how many chains bound me to him." He paused, flashing a smile as if he could dispel the heavy atmosphere he himself had created, and patted Liesse on the head. "I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes, you just have to try to be your own person, not half of a set. Understand?"
Courtland and Antha were arguing meanwhile, in that way they did, but Nicolae hadn't been paying attention and only caught the end. "Shut up and go have your war meeting," Courtland interrupted Antha, taking her by the hand and shoving her at Vikteren, shooing them out the door, "We're working here."
"The real miracle in this house is that I don't murder them," she hissed when the doors closed behind her, leaving herself, Nicolae, and Vikteren in the hallway. Cian and Liesse they had pulled further into the parlor, Jack and Pierce telling them not to bother with Antha's 'serious business' while Courtland dragged Malakai from the couch, demanding that he be better company.  

[Okimiyage]

Liesse felt very young, watching Malakai nuzzle down into a state of inebriation. At least he wasn't an excitable drunk, the sort that rushed about shouting or getting angry for no reason. It was rather charming, actually, seeing him drowsily grope for his words like a child who has stayed up far past his bedtime. For a moment, she envied Antha the hand on his tousled forelock. Someone needed to play guardian sphinx over Malakai when he was like this.
Finally, the girl looked up at Nicolae behind her. He had said that the break between them had driven him mad, for a little while. She wondered for how long. It seemed cold to compare their situations, to try to put into quantitative terms how long Rynn or her own mourning period might last. The idea of ever becoming a separate entity from Rynn seemed chilling in itself, so far disparate from everything she had ever known. In her time of illness, when mind and memory had been a tangle of twisting ribbons, half of them cut, Rynn's mind had looked like a shattered stained glass window through Liesse's eyes: all brilliantly colored glass and webs of fantastic cracks, held together only by the iron frame.
Softly, Liesse whispered, "You are more like your brother than you imagine. There's the same talent for kindness in both of you." Turning luminous blue eyes up at the man, she added, "You would not have given me an explanation if there was not. It would be quite natural for most people to give my brother and I the cold shoulder."
If she could have inspired the same kindness in Rynn, she would have felt much relief. It was not that he was a bad person. She wished that she could make the Mayfairs understand that. There was very little of what you could call 'evil' in him, although he did not think much of lying or murder in order to achieve his goals. It was a very studied kind of amorality, rather, one that should seem natural to the Mayfairs. Family came before everything. The Calais clan put their faith in their ancestors before they prayed to any god. In such an isolated state, Rynn could not be expected to have much familiarity with the process of explaining himself, much less asking forgiveness.
Liesse gave out a great sigh, which inflated her thin chest like a bellows before the exhalation. "I keep trying to find excuses for him. It's difficult to go on defending him in the face of--" Well, she didn't want to even think of the consensual Mayfair denouncement of his character in the kitchen. "He isn't the awful brat everyone thinks he is," she said finally, turning her eyes to her toes. "But he has too much pride to put himself at the mercy of a jury that's already made up their mind. He doesn't expect understanding from anyone." Anyone except Liesse. To Rynn's mind, anything more would be a vulnerability.

Vikteren led the way outside when Antha at long last disengaged from the party, onto the back porch. The vampire stepped down to ground level, tucking his hands deeply into his pockets, before turning around to face the Mayfair designee. The choir of cicadas in the garden had fallen silent, and the humid evening air suddenly seemed to contain a chill. Vikteren thought of how long it had been since they had been together like this, just the two of them, no bodyguards or jealous brothers or children of the night around. Like before. Antha had been just a slip of a flame-haired girl, then, creeping amongst cemetery headstones. Had it really been so long? Since she had been so unimportant to him--just a pale face in the shadows--before he had even known her name. It had been so long since he had thought of any human as being essential or important--well, any more so than sustenance was, at least.
He looked up at the sky, where pale clouds moved across the star and shrouded the stars in wisps of fog. The vampire took no pleasure in the eerily beautiful moonlit vista. The mist reminded him too much of Cyrus's ensnaring magics--which (thankfully) brought his attention back to the topic at hand, instead of dwelling on his initial introduction to Antha Mayfair.
"He's extended an invitation to us." announced the vampire. "Rather informally made, yes--no card, no RSVP--but since we've been scouring the city for weeks looking for him with no luck, it looks like he has finally decided to give us a chance. I'd like to take him up on the offer; I am sick of waiting. Particularly as he has gone to pains to make the location…convenient." Vikteren's brows knit together briefly; a dark cloud passed over his face, and then disappeared. 'Convenient' was a polite way of putting it. Outright insulting would be the layman's terms.
"It's an old haunt of mine. Well--I say 'of mine', but only because it has been so long abandoned by whoever owned it first. Cyrus has decided to take it upon himself to move in. I am not sure when--he may have been in residence for weeks without calling attention to himself. My sire is very good at laying low, when it suits him. He has chosen not to do so now; the place is leaking his poison as if he were nuclear waste." Admittedly, describing Cyrus as a living piece of toxic radiation wasn't too far off the mark, even if it was a rather extended metaphor. "It is a rather isolated chapel in the forest; once part of a much larger structure which has since collapsed with the weight of its own age." There was a small network of chambers and tunnels that spiderwebbed out from underneath; Vikteren had often slept there when he desired no company but his own. Aside from that, it was exactly the kind of set-up Cyrus enjoyed: a dramatic, high-ceiling'd stage, riddled by decay, on which to play at his masterful villainy. "It would be incredible ill-advised to go into this expecting anything other than a trap. Cyrus would not make such an announcement of his presence if he thought I would let it pass ignored, but he will most certainly not allow us to simply waltz into his lair without suitable fanfare."
Without thinking, Vikteren looked up at her suddenly. He stepped to the edge of the porch, but came no closer to Antha. "I understand if you'd rather send a proxy in this matter." His eyes were greener than the grass under his feet, flecked like a cat's. There was something terribly earnest in the way that he looked at her. No matter how powerful she was, Antha was still a young woman--or looked like one, at least. He couldn't ignore the impulse to protect her, even if Antha was the one who asked for the least concern out of them all. Perhaps it was why he felt she was due so much more. "You're owed it. You've already seen more than your fair share of blood tonight, isn't that so?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"You think so?" Nicolae blinked curiously down at the girl, seeming to put a great deal of thought to her words, and finally glanced at his brother, his sainted twin. "I think I would be happy, if that were true, even if he is a Saint and I thrive on being anything but." He paused, made a strange face as he continued to gaze at his brother, listening to the teasing from their cousins, and whispered finally, in the most confidential tone, "I wish he were a little less of a Saint, though. Being who he is, when Antha is not here to threaten Sera off then she's going to move in on him, and before any of us know it she's going to force him into marriage because Malakai does not value himself above her, as he should, and she's going to bear children under his name that are not his and he is going raise other men's bastards, as our father raised us, and by the time he is our father's age he will be even more worn than he is because he will be alone and he will never have had any great love in his life." He sighed, feeling that heavy atmosphere descend, and shook his head as if that were all it took to be rid of it. "You know," he said, leaning down to press a kiss against Liesse's hair, whispering confidentially in her ear, "Maybe the powers that be sent the Calais blood to us. Maybe it was destiny. Cian---awful rival that he is, destroyer of everything I ever wanted---has given us our heir, the continuation of the bloodline we needed to survive. Maybe you ended up here for the same reason. Maybe fate sent you here to save Malakai."
Pierce, meanwhile, was going on int he background, rattling off, "It's not that we think Rynn is evil. We consider very little to be evil, with the exception of Julien. As Antha constantly reminds us, he only did what he would have done in the same situation, and we can overlook that whole situation for it. We haven't branded him 'villain' yet---oh, you would know all too well if we had. He's allowed to be disagreeable and moody and carry his dark clouds around him like a shroud, but he acts as if we have done him some wrong and we have not. What Antha has done is...debatable, after all what is fair after someone has tried to murder you? He is determined to have conflict, even if only the silent kind, and we won't tolerate that, we've done nothing to warrant it." He shook his head at long last, giving a graceful, dismissive gesture of his hand as if it didn't matter at the moment and turned back to the bar to make another drink.
"I wish oncle Louis was here." Amid the usual revelry of the parlor when the cousins were present, wild with their various substances in their systems, and despite the seriousness that surrounded Nicolae, oblivious as he appeared to it, a curious hush fell when these words came from Malakai, turning with some difficulty from his stomach to lay on his back, his hand draped across his eyes, "He was the first one to ever get us drunk, do you remember? We were about thirteen, Antha was nine, the rest of you were somewhere in between, and it was New Years Eve."
"He opened a bottle of champagne and gave us each a glass," Courtland said with a hint of revelation, as if the memory had vanished from his head for years and only just now reappeared, "And Nicolae was crying because Antha wouldn't dance with him."
"I was not crying," Nicolae interrupted darkly, his slitted gaze narrowed at Courtland, "It was dusty in that attic, my eyes got irritated."
"And Julien came up to see what the ruckus was and he was so furious," Pierce laughed, patting Malakai's head as he made his best attempt to sit up, "He tried to send us to bed before midnight and Louis...oh, what was it he said? 'Julien Jean-Pierre Mayfair, you watch your tongue when you speak to me. Now you go back downstairs and go the the quarter where your mistress is waiting for you and you leave my little ones alone.' Oh, the shade of red his face turned! I thought he was going to drop dead right there!" And he laughed as if it was still the greatest thing he had ever been witness to, the other Mayfairs around him following suit. Even Malakai had burst into riotous laughter, falling back against the couch cushions.
"And after he put us to bed, he came down here with the rest of the old generation---that was what we called the seventh and eighth generations, those under Marquerite and Eden's reigns," Courtland began, turning to Liesse with this side explanation, "Louis and Stefan and ancient Suzette and the rest of them---and they moved the furniture and rolled up the carpet and pulled out Louis's old victrola and danced for hours. I remember because we crept out of our rooms and sat on the stairs and Antha was clutching at Malakai's leg with one arm and hugging that old stuffed rabbit with the other, and Thorne could barely talk but we couldn't get him to stop making noise and we didn't want him to give us away."
"It's a shame you weren't part of us then," Pierce sighed, and he really seemed to mean it, "You and Cian both. We lived in a truly golden world, back then."
"And we loved to watch the old generation dance more than anything," Courtland murmured dreamily, taking Liesse up in his arms, clear off of her feet, and twirling around in mimicry of those old dances, "We always sat on those stairs watching them in the middle of the night, because they were always dancing, always in their pretty dresses and suits and mountains of jewelry. Which reminds me, we need to teach Cian and Liesse to dance properly."
"What about Rynn?" Jack asked, hesitantly. He didn't want to admit just how much the conversation in the kitchen had rattled him, the thought that maybe Liesse would leave one day, any day, and as far as he saw it, the best way to get her to stay was to sway Rynn to their side.
Courtland's lips puckered as Pierce simply turned around, making himself another drink at the bar and ignoring the subject. "How about this," Courtland began thoughtfully, "If Rynn can be nice to Cian, I'll rethink my opinion of him. Being mean to Antha I can forgive, she can handle herself just fine and anyways she seems to get off on that hostility---" Nicolae shot him the meanest look any of the cousins had ever seen, but he ignored it. "---but I don't want anything to do with him if he's going to be mean to Cian."
"I would be fine with him if he weren't so hostile in general," Pierce chimed in, scoffing into his glass, "Or at least if he didn't show us such open contempt. We're no angels. In fact, we're a pack of wild demons and we do as we damned well please, but we know it, we admit to it, and we carry on. What did we ever do to him? He tried to kill our Designee of the Legacy, our most beloved cousin, and we're willing to overlook that. The least he could do is make even the most halfhearted attempt to get along with us."
"We could always go drag him out of his bed," Jack suggested helpfully, rising to his feet.
"Not tonight," Courtland responded, shaking his head as he carried about his business, which at the moment was sitting on Malakai's stomach, fighting the boy to remove his shirt, "Maybe tomorrow, but he's in a foul mood tonight. But then, why wouldn't he be? He's been in the airship."
"We didn't even get him properly drunk," Jack sighed, "We failed Antha. Especially you, Pierce, you promised her."
"We'll try again later. Speaking of which..." Turning from the bar, he closed a tumbler of scotch securely in Liesse's hand and gave the solemn toast of, "Drink up, ma bichette."
Malakai laughed, in that way that terribly innocent, bad drunks do, murmuring, "Little doe, yes, elle est bichette." And then, in a rapid change of tone, "Courtland, will you leave my shirt alone?!"
"I think Cian shall be ma mie," he murmured thoughtfully then, his hand to his chin in the general gesture of serious thought.
"Cian's not bread," Malakai interjected, staring strangely at him, "Cian's anything but bread."
"Mie is the soft part of bread," Pierce said quickly, going on the defensive, "Opposite of the crust. It also means 'my dear', remember? It's that old fashioned French that oncle Louis used."
"Just remember, he's Antha's 'mon amour' and she'll beat the daylights out of you if you forget."
"'Beat the daylights' out of me? Oh Malakai, you do get so southern when you're drunk. And don't argue French with me, who's the one that's been in Paris for two years?"
"Are you still going on about that?" Malakai sighed, throwing his hands down at his sides as he abandoned his attempts to button his shirt back up, it was too arduous a task in his current state and it didn't matter anyways. Amdeo took the opportunity to hop cautiously into his lap, balling himself up and tucking his little paws under himself as he regarded the other cousins warily. Amadeo was not a creature to forget things easily, so he knew that at any moment the beings around him could burst into loud noises and wild animation. He also knew that Malakai had gentle hands that scratched his ears and that he let him curl up on his pillow while Antha was otherwise preoccupied in the middle of the night, so he was exceedingly fond of Malakai, enough to risk the frightening cousins to sit in his lap.
"Why do I get the feeling this is going to be a long, long night?" Pierce sighed, his gaze flickering towards the window which overlooked the front porch when the drapes were drawn. "Antha, ma belle, don't be foolish now."

As all of this was going on, and Antha was taken out the front door by Vikteren, Julien happened down the hallway, strolling in his usual demure, aristocratic demeanor, dressed to the nines in well-kept vintage slacks and a smoking jacket of deep blue crushed velvet, sapphire cufflinks and an ivory silk cravat at his throat. "Cian," he murmured in greeting as he came across the boy, tapping a slender black cigarette against a nearby crystal ashtray, "Rejected from their plots and intrigues for the night?" He took a long drag of his cigarette, those sharp blue eyes---Courtland's eyes, one might notice once they had been around the two of them long enough---looking him quietly up and down. "It's just as well. I need to have a word with you. If you would join me in the kitchen, I have someone I would like you to meet."
He spoke as he moved, making languid gestures reminiscent of Antha, "Do you like tea, Cian? We Mayfairs are quite fond of tea, if you hadn't gathered." Entering the kitchen, the sound of two voices met them, Michael sitting at the little round table facing a silver-haired man very vaguely resembling Julien, save for the congenial set of his face, the good-humored light in his eyes and easy smile, and more than anything the casual clothes---Mayfair casual that was to say, which meant designer, vintage, old-fashioned, but not as aristocratic as Julien or Stefan. "Cian, this is my older brother Remy. Remy---"
"Antha's husband," he said, and stood to shake Cian's hand, that easy smile spreading across his lips, "Mon dieu, those words just do not sound right being spoken aloud. My apologies for not introducing myself at your wedding, but my daughter Millie is quite young and she was tired after the excitement of the day. But I believe you know my daughter Sera, yes?"
"We were just discussing you," Michael purred, breathing the smoke from his cigarette out the sliding door, as was his habit, "Have a seat, Cian. Julien hasn't had a moment alone with the tea, so please don't worry about poisoning."
Beside him, Remy laughed. "Oh, are things that bad? Cian, please don't worry about my willful little brother. He can only suffer from your death, when Courtland steps in to help raise your children. Raise them to despise Jules, that is."
"That is not my name," Julien hissed, in the timeless tone of little brothers everywhere, but made no protests pertaining to the other matters.
"Really, the younger generation demonizes him too much. He's no angel, of course, and he is stubborn to a fault, endlessly severe, but it is all for family. As a matter of fact, he was raising some concern earlier for how your children will view him. Mayfair children are never 'normal' children, you know, and things that other children would hardly understand are held as the gravest of offenses by Mayfair children. The tenth generation, anyways. They cannot forgive Julien his indiscretions of youth---that is to say, siring most of them, almost secretly---nor his strict raising of them. It's almost comical how dearly they despise him for it. Antha pushed him down those stairs once, you know, with full intentions of killing him. She was thirteen and as I recall, Julien had forbidden her from being alone with Nicolae."
"Imagine you had a son, Remy, and imagine that Sera was sleeping with him and the two were discussing running away from the family, severing all ties, so that they could be together. Tell me, what would you do?" Julien questioned in a low hiss, packing a cigarette against his little golden cigarette case.
"But then, I'm sure you can understand their position concerning him, Cian. Michael tells me he has been quite rough on you. The entire family history? Really, Julien?"
"Well," Julien began, preoccupying himself with his cigarette case, "He wanted to be part of this family, so it is only fair, non? We are all making compromises here. I have agreed to honor Antha's wishes and let him remain in this family and raise their children if he properly prepares for it. It is a great responsibility becoming a Mayfair, it is the least he can do."
"Have you learned nothing from your youth?" Remy sighed, shaking his head at his little brother, "Oh, how Antha's children would despise you if they learned you had deprived them of their true father! If would be the tenth generation all over again, and you don't want that, do you mon frere? Besides, who are you to say Cian is not worthy of this family when our curse has accepted him? And who are you to stand in the way of love or blood?"
"Sometimes, you are infuriatingly like Antha," Julien hissed, cutting his eyes at Remy.
"Well she is my little sister's daughter, why should she not take after me, at least a little?"
"Family squabbles aside," Michael cut in, leaning back in his chair with cigarette in one hand and teacup in the other, "Tell us, how are you feeling Cian? I was terrified to become a father, and it only got worse as the time drew nearer. Oh, and to learn that there was going to be two of them! And that was with nine months, you have had considerably fewer months."
"I was terrified for nine months that when Sera was born, I would drop her," Remy concurred, sipping his tea, from which the smell of whiskey drifted shamelessly, "And I did. Only onto the couch from perhaps a foot, but I thought my wife would divorce me on the spot." He laughed, loudly, and then in quick, hushed words, "But don't tell Sera that, she would never forgive me and I have enough trouble with that child as it is. Don't let her marry your son, Michael, really, she would eat him alive."
"Relax," Michael assured him, "As I understand it, the kids have set all their energies on setting him up with Liesse. Sweet girl, really, the children all adore her. Courtland even let her scold him the other day, it was adorable really."
"That's good. I love my daughter dearly, but she is an opportunistic little minx."
"And speaking of Liesse, how is she getting along? This is not an easy house to transition into, by any means. And how is Rynn coping, for that matter? He's hardly a wild child like the rest of them, a drinker and a troublemaker, loud and obnoxious. You know, he might get along well with you, Julien. You two could curse Antha's name together."
"Antha is mine to curse and no one else's," he responded sharply, and the other men laughed, "No matter what she has told you of me, Cian, the truth of the matter is that girl has caused me nothing but trouble for a decade, and someone had to keep her out of jail, or from killing herself, or others from killing themselves over her. If I had to count the miserable creatures that have threatened to kill themselves over their love for her and her indifference towards them, or the restraining orders we've had to press...I don't even have the numbers. And the women...mon dieu, there are no creatures more pitiable than the poor girls Antha seduces and leaves confused and obsessed, except perhaps Courtland's boys. She may not have liked it, but someone had to look after her, and that task fell to me, God help my soul."
"And Cian has likely saved you months of new lovers threatening to jump off of bridges or trying to break into the house. You should thank him, really." Julien merely blinked at his brother as if the thought hadn't occurred to him, but then waved the matter aside as if it didn't matter, "Personally, I'm a little bit in awe of you, Cian. I always assumed that when Antha did bear a child she would never name the father, that she would go on with her life as usual, or at most marry Courtland. And you're hardly the first pretty witch boy she fell in love with---I never saw a more fickle heart than hers, she always fell in love at least twice a month---and if all this were only for the sake of her children, she would still be up to her old ways behind closed doors. To think that she settled down for you, that she carved out a place for you in our beloved, tightly-knit family...it is a bit astonishing."

Antha was sitting on the porch steps while Vikteren spoke, watching him move with dark, guarded eyes. It was a valid offer---send someone else to do the dirty work, to deal with the traps and snarling vampires. It probably would have been wise, she had already seen more than her fair share of bloodshed that night, already gone to the mad state of mind and come back, and besides...
Her fingers went automatically to her stomach, her maternal instincts hissing refusals in the back of her mind. She had so much to lose nowadays, more than simply her life.
On the other hand, there was no one else to send. Those old instincts kicked up when she thought about it, the hissings of the little orphan girl barely scraping by in that attic where she had been abandoned to rot---you can't trust them to do it right, it has to be you, by your own hands, your own magic---and she didn't dare send anyone else to face her adversary for her.
"Sometimes," she murmured, taking a step outside of her head to stare out into the dark garden, the splashes of a dozen shades of green, the blotches of blue and purple and white and red, red, and more red, "I think I would pay very dearly not to be me. Just for a little while, to have someone else handle things, to go dispense with the big bad wolves of the world and keep this filthy, chaotic city in order. What is that they say, 'Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown'?" She sighed once, infinitely soft, whispering in her own head, Remember it well, Sebastien my darling, my dearest, before she rose, taking the steps slowly, and with each one she seemed to return a little more to herself. "It's about time I met this Cyrus. He trespassed into my territory, my kingdom, making threats and trying to take things I cherish away from me and hasn't even shown himself to me. It's all horrendously rude of him, and I don't take these slights lightly, as you know. So...those traps aren't going to trigger themselves. Or if they do, they're hardly worth it." A wry smile flickered across those cherry red painted lips, her dark eyes gone sharp, dangerous, as she took Vikteren's hand. "Shall we?"  

[Okimiyage]

Liesse raised her glass of scotch above her head in answer, although not so much intended as a toast as an admiration for the way the light glowed, sifted through her cupful of amber.She had never been drunk before. There had been wine cellars, before the fire, but the entrance had collapsed and been buried in its own charred remains. Liesse had understood, anyways, that it was her duty as the sole lady of the house to abstain from such a thing. That was Cian's prerogative. She lifted the glass to her lips and threw it back.

A moment later, Liesse came back gasping. For all the black and white films of gentlemen casually sipping at their tumblers, nobody ever mentioned how bad this stuff tasted. She had made the beginner's mistake of getting some on her tongue; now, with her face screwed up, the girl gave a colossal shudder and opened watery eyes reproachfully upon Courtland. There was a scrape in her voice when she spoke.
"I'll speak to Rynn. I'll do what I can."--setting the now-empty glass down on the table, taking a half-step back. Her hip bumped against a stool. "But it's hard to describe--" She thought for a moment, the alcohol filtering through her brain, and then took a deep breath and said something she shouldn't. "For Rynn, this isn't hostility." Liesse seen him fight with the brothers. There were times when no-one else in the family had supported him. "He doesn't hate you. I mean--" she touched the top of her head, and extended her hand in a mimicry of a radio antennae. "I know what he's feeling. If anything, Rynn's--scared of you guys. He doesn't act it, but--'s like porcupines, right?" She straightened triumphantly, as if this explained everything, and then slouched again, sat back, and added resignedly, "Rynn's a porcupine."

In the hallway, Cian listened to his little sister's tipsy dialogue, chuckling to himself. "Cute," he murmured. Well, he certainly wasn't going to be the one to stop her. He'd been drinking well before Liesse's time, even if the body she currently inhabited was a little younger. Maybe it'd be good for her, anyways.
His firewhiskey-bright eyes swung around on the silver-haired gentleman that sauntered by with the grace of a cat. Idly, Cian thought, I'd like to age like that, and followed at Julian's invitation.
The two brothers hardly gave him a chance to speak. All Mayfairs did seem to banter so; it was a charming quality, but one he knew Rynn would find infuriating. "To be honest, it's a little bit of a relief. Far less time to worry about things with everything happening so fast. If I had to deal with it for the full nine months, it would certainly be--trying." He paused, warily eyeing the two of them. He wasn't certain what this was all about, but it seemed a little much just for an exchange of pleasantries. Then again, Mayfairs always did things a little over the top. "Liesse seems to be adapting well enough, but Rynn--well, he's not used to it. He needs to learn what it's like to live normally, without the pressures of leadership or life-threatening magic hanging over him. Antha's made such a sacrifice for him, but it's been a long time since Rynn's trusted anyone outside the family--and now that Liesse's here, he thinks he doesn't need to."
Cian sat back, blew out a long sigh. "He's a bleak topic. But honestly, it's alright--at least we're not at one another's throats for now. Rynn will come around eventually." He gave them both a broad and easy smile. "And to be honest, I'm pretty sure Antha married me for the shock value. Everyone expected her to make a union inside the family, and when was the last time Antha did what people expected of her?" He pointedly ignored the subtle jab about 'settling down' for him. Obviously Antha had her attractions--to deny the chemistry between her and Rynn would be to be blind--but to imagine for a moment that she would dishonor any vow she had made, even one made while addressing a silly preacher in a church service, was to do her a discredit.

Vikteren smiled down at her. For a moment, in the garden, the two of them alone, it was like old times. He took her hand in his; the green in his eyes glinting dangerously. "There's no-one else who could fill your shoes, my dear." he reminded her, gently. That was what all the fuss was about, after all. After Antha was gone, the idea that the city's power structure would hold together without a queen was--well, a feat beyond the abilities of most to choreograph. Antha was irreplaceable.
He leaned down and brushed his lips against her brow. Now that she was married, he had to restrain himself to more modest affection. Withdrawing, he brushed his hand against her cheek, and breathed a string of syllables onto her brow that made the world around the two of them turn to silver and smoke. Suddenly the ground under their feet shimmered, and the world darkened on either side, shadows like blinkers, and Vikteren pulled her forward. "The woods will be teeming with his creatures tonight. I made this path in the-place-inbetween for us to walk--follow me."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Pierce grinned wickedly, giving Liesse an affectionate pat on the shoulder. "Probably should have warned you, this is an acquired taste. And even when it is acquired, it's still awful. And yet, strangely satisfying..." He downed the last of his glass, turning to make another, handling the ice with the little tongs and pouring the scotch from a cut crystal decanter that was older than Stefan as she spoke of Rynn. It was at the end, her comment about how he was a porcupine, when Pierce and Courtland simultaneously burst into laughter. "Oh, a porcupine, yes. Porc-épic. Parfait. Little Rynn, curled up by himself, covered in prickly things."
Across the room, Malakai snickered silently to himself. "Prickly..."
"Antha's a bit of a porcupine too, don't you think?" Jack murmured thoughtfully, lounging like a lazy cat across the carpet. "More of a lioness and a serpent, but a little bit of a porcupine."
"Enough talk of animals!" Courtland groaned, rising with a start from the divan by the window, "This is a glorious night, why are you rattling on about porcupines and snakes?"
"Rex is offended by that," Jack muttered, stroking the little green snake as it slithered across his stomach.
"Look around you, Pierce. Malakai is drunk. Liesse is drunk, or getting there, anyways. Stop talking about animals and let's properly enjoy the magnificence of the night."
Nicolae, stationed statue still at the window, trying to spy through the lace drapes at Antha, glanced briefly, suspiciously, over his shoulder at Courtland before turning back, rapt.
"This is true," Pierce purred, eyes narrowing deviously at his cousin settled on the couch, the little ball of fluff that was Amadeo curled in his lap, purring as his ears were scratched. "And Malakai should have his fun, before Sebastien and Vanessa arrive and his life is nothing but taking care of infants with Cian." He paused thoughtfully, that grin broadening. "You might as well set about making your own, you know. The only playmate their age those children will have is Olivier, and as far as we know he's going to turn out just like his father. You remember how awful a playmate Vittorio was? He was always serious, even from our youngest years, and always a little violent, even before Antha showed up in our lives."
"They do need playmates," Courtland concurred as Jack shook his head in agreement, "We were lucky enough to all be born one after another. We should get to work, if the next generation is to be so fortunate."
"You say that, but you're hardly getting anywhere with Jack."
Jack's head snapped up from where it was lulled on the carpet, his eyes drowsy, as he retorted, "We would make wonderful children, don't try to deny it."
"I told you," Courtland sighed, sinking down onto his knees on the carpet to cradle Jack's head lovingly in his hands, "No children until we're married. I have enough bastards out there already, I'm sure."
"You both do," Pierce murmured into his glass, rolling his eyes.
"Like you're one to talk!"
"It's absolutely incredible that Vittorio is the only one to ever spawn within the family," Malakai murmured errantly, sunk into the plush couch cushions with all of his hazy attention settled on Amadeo. "And he and Cyrus are the only ones with legitimate children."
"Yes, it is concerning. That's why we'll leave the whole full blooded, legitimate Mayfair heirs thing to you. Say, Liesse has Mayfair blood, right?"
"Shut up," Malakai hissed rapidly, diverting his gaze from the teasing grin he was shot as he plopped over onto his side, curling defensively up on the couch with his face buried against the cushions, "You're like a broken record."
"Me thinks the gentleman doth protest too much," Jack whispered, snickering, his head resting idly in Courtland's lap, "But not the lady. Curious, no?" The boys all glanced in unison then to the lady in question, smiling conspiratorially, up until a pillow was hurled across the room at Pierce's head.
"OW! DAMN IT, MALAKAI, YOU'RE THE NICE ONE, STOP THROWING THINGS! Liesse, go tell him to be a good boy," he said, taking the girl's shoulders and, after closing another glass of scotch in her hand, pushing her towards the couch, "No, scratch that, he doesn't need to be good. He just needs to STOP. THROWING. THINGS."
"You need to stop throwing things," the boy retorted in a childish murmur, and Pierce only shook his head.

"Oh, we are not very enthusiastic exchangers of pleasantries in this family," Remy laughed breezily to Cian, picking the thoughts from his head with an air as if it were nothing, an idle talent, not the slightest bit rude, "We are traders of gossip and thinly veiled, affectionate insults. It is our way, and it always has been." Leaning back in his seat, Remy flashed the most endearing, shameless smile and then leaned over, stealing the cigarette from Michael's fingers to take a few drags.
"Three years," Julien answered to Cian's rhetorical question meanwhile, "It has been three years since that girl did anything that anyone expected her to, and that was to move out of this house the moment she felt that I could not stop her from it."
"You know, I think you give yourself far too little credit, and Antha darling for that matter," Remy murmured thoughtfully, "The marriage of supreme shock factor would have been to a Talamascan, and that was very nearly a reality. She played at trying to get David Talbot to marry her for a while and as much as that poor creature tries to restrain himself, he almost gave in. They even offered her Aaron Lightner---"
"The blonde one that was spying through the window when Antha conceived your children," Michael reminded him helpfully.
"---who agreed rather begrudgingly, but she turned the proposal down in the end. Those two have always fought almost as much as her and Julien, just as fiercely and twice as passionately. This house would have been in ruins if that ever came to pass, which I suspect was incentive for darling Antha. I suppose she saw too many parallels to her mother in the situation, as Aaron holds the same job that Michael held when Mary Beth married him. That is, maintaining the files on our family. No, you were hardly the most shocking match she could have made. And besides, Michael never would have given his consent if she were not sincere."
"Indeed not. You do not seem to fully grasp the gravity of just what Antha has done here, Cian. Not only did she do the conventional thing and get married, but she chose a less shocking match from what she could have, and rather than stashing you away at Satis House as she certainly would have any other husband, she brought you here, to be part of the family, and put every protection upon you that she physically could. But perhaps most shocking of all, in all this time, she has been faithful to you."
"An astonishment indeed," Remy concurred, "Hence I maintain, you must be terribly special, Cian."
"Oh, he is," Pierce assured his uncle, strolling casually into the kitchen and pouring himself a cup of tea, shamelessly topping it off with half an inch of whiskey, "We love him enormously. I believe Courtland mentioned something about a polygamous marriage between Cian, Jack, and himself when Antha is gone. Assuming tragedy does not befall Malakai, in which case darling Belle has first claims over him."
As Julien shook his head, Michael hid his light laughter in his cup of tea and Remy laughed outright. That was when Courtland and Jack entered, dragging Nicolae between themselves. He didn't seem to have made up his mind whether he wanted to struggle against them or not just yet. "Oncle Remy!" Courtland exclaimed in cheery delight, hopping happily into the older man's lap and laying a kiss on his cheek, "We've missed you. Your daughter was here yesterday, trying to rape poor Malakai. Antha was very harsh with her."
"As she should be," Remy pronounced, and then with narrowed eyes, "But, remind me Courtland, weren't you the one that called the house yesterday asking for Sera?"
"We're making up for it!" he cried instantly, jumping up and running to hide behind Jack, "It's true! Why just now, we pushed Liesse at him and then ran and locked the door behind us." As Courtland spoke, Pierce produced from his pocket an antique key that he spun about his index finger, grinning.
"Good boys," Remy commended them as Julien stared incredulously, the anger building in his gaze, "Looking after your poor, innocent cousin. You owe it to him, though."
"Oi!" Nicolae protested, pouting fiercely, and then turning to Michael, "Dad, do you hear this?! They're corrupting my little brother!"
"Liesse is hardly a corrupting influence, I think," Michael dismissed the subject airily, sipping his tea, "And you're only an hour older, son."
"They're throwing girls at him!" Nicolae continued desperately, as if he were about to burst with indignation, "Malakai can't handle girls! I don't think he even knows what to do with them!"
"As an unwitting eavesdropper upon my daughter's phone conversations with Saria and Vera, let me assure you, he knows what to do with them. As I hear it, the two of you actually have something in common. Seems your most prized shared trait did not pass over him after all."
Around Remy, all eyes blinked in shock, Courtland and Jack's jaws dropping. "Malakai?" Pierce asked for clarification, astonished, and Remy nodded. Michael, as he was want to do in these situations, abruptly quit the room without a word.
"Whoever would'a thunk it," Courtland murmured in amazement, briefly adopting that thick, exaggerated southern drawl, and then laughed. "Well, I guess there was no helping it. Everyone in his immediate blood is a master of the bedroom arts, a beast between the sheets, especially his brother and sister." And he continued to laugh, no matter what shock still left his cousins silent. "Who knows, maybe Liesse is the one we did a favor for."
Nicolae, staring wildly around at his relatives, finally settled his frantic gaze upon Cian, his last resort. "You're not going to let them use your sister as a pawn, are you?"
"She's not a pawn!" Courtland interrupted with a sudden flare of indignation, "The nerve of you, thinking we'd use Liesse! We're making her part of the family proper. Besides, I think she likes him."
"Agreed," Pierce added as Jack nodded his head, draped across Courtland's shoulder, "Besides, what was that you said earlier about Liesse being sent to us? Don't think I didn't hear."
"I didn't mean for you to get her drunk and lock her in a room with my drunk brother," Nicolae snapped, "But if you think you're so in the right here, maybe we should go see what Rynn thinks?"
As Nicolae turned, before his vampire speed kicked in, the three witch boys were simultaneously upon him, knocking him to the floor where, with the help of magic, his preternatural strength was no use against them. "We're not going to let you do that!" Pierce hissed, struggling with his cousins against the vampire, "Just lay down and accept it, damn it! Did we want to protest when you started sleeping with Antha, the two of you whispering about running away together? Yes. But did we? No, because we are family and if we don't let each other do whatever the hell we want to, then we're screwed. Just give them a chance here, Nikki."
Nicolae's eyes narrowed dangerously, though his struggling ceased, and Courtland took the opportunity to jump in, "Malakai's not like us, you know that. He's never going to make a move on a girl, he needs our help, whether he wants it or not. What he does want is Liesse, even if he can never admit to it without having a panic attack, and it's about time he got something he wants. He deserves it, don't deny him that, Nikki." He glanced up from Nicolae, petting his golden curls, and gave Cian his most sincere stare, "You agree, don't you? They're perfect for each other, really, they just need a few good, hard shoves towards each other."

In the parlor, Malakai banged on the locked door, yelling at Courtland and Pierce through it, though he doubted they could hear, giving up only with a groan and a little kick, turning and setting an apologetic gaze on Liesse. "Sorry. You know how they are...intrusive, and pushy, and completely obsessive once they set their minds on something." He groaned anew, leaning his back against the door and sliding down to sit on the floor. "You know, Courtland tried to beat down the door the night I lost my virginity. He wanted to give me advice, apparently. I was mortified beyond all belief, and he just laughed, like he always does." He gave a brief laugh, and he didn't know why, his head rolling back against the door. "Antha's right, you can't have any privacy in this house. Even when no one's trying to intrude on you. I walked in on her and Nicolae at least half a dozen times over the years. I thought I was helping the first time...she was screaming, I ran to save her. I was fifteen, it was traumatic. And then there was the time she and Courtland built a fort out of boxes in the attic, and I went to get a lamp or something, and the time that I found Saria and Vittorio in the garden---Dolly Jean was in tears at it, there in the middle of her roses, but in retrospect I guess she had other reasons to be upset---and once I even stumbled across Pierce and Courtland on the balcony. But that was all back in the days when sex was the only thing that any of them ever did, they made a competition of it, and they were always going at it with everyone else around the clock. They made twice as much fun of me in those days, if you can believe it. And then...then they sent Sera after me, because it was absolutely unacceptable to be a fifteen-year-old virgin Mayfair." He stopped abruptly then, slapping a hand somewhat clumsily across his mouth, gaze dropped to the carpet before him. "I'm talking too much," he murmured slowly, his fingers falling and revealing a small, guilty smile, somewhat nervous, "I do that when I drink. That's why I never drink, I make as big a fool of myself as Courtland or Jack, and I don't have any of Pierce's suave charm to pull it off." He laughed once, that guilty smile growing a touch more genuine. "But it is nice, sometimes. Letting go. Not being the good one. Even if they do still make fun of me, still try to find ways to corrupt me. In the end...in the end, I know they're doing what they think is best for me. And when it isn't what's best for me, Antha sets them straight. Violently." There was that guilty smile again, with just a little amusement and worlds of affection, before his attention shifted with inebriated versatility across the room, pulling himself up to his feet and making his way (with surprising grace, considering his condition) over to the old victrola. "Do you dance?" he asked as he set the needle and switched it on, one of Antha's old mournful, hauntingly beautiful lounge songs crackling to life as Malakai took Liesse's hands, pulling one arm around his neck and clasping the other in his own hand, his arm sliding easily around her waist. "I can show you, if you don't. Otherwise Courtland will take it upon himself, and that's not pleasant. Us Mayfairs...we dance. It's in our blood. They teach us early, they teach us vigorously, and we love it. Even Lawrence loves to dance, and Lawrence doesn't like anything." He laughed again, softly, shaking his head as he began to move, guiding Liesse with him. "I'm talking too much again. I'm sorry."

"That is the problem, isn't it?" Antha sighed, shaking her head and smiling in spite of herself. And then his lips were on her brow, his cold fingers against her cheek, and her breath involuntarily caught. No, she scolded herself internally, no, and she willed her heart to be calm. "His creatures," she scoffed, shaking her head even as she followed after him, "It seems pointless to bypass them now, when we shall just have to find ways to be rid of them when Cyrus is dealt with. But, ah, n'importe quoi. To the trap first."  

[Okimiyage]

Vikteren smiled, an expression which seemed to happen in slow motion, and then pulled Antha close to him. Around them, the world faded into shades of gray, and then began to blur.

((continued in The Forsaken Abbey))

In the study above, Cian laughed to see Nicolae tackled by the gang of cousins, and leaned forward with his eyes dancing in anticipation. If they hadn't moved faster, he would have had to lunge in their place--and how undignified would that be, in front of the family elders? "I'm afraid I don't feel any obligation to rush to Liesse's defense. In fact, I'm quite certain a romance would be good for her. She's as old as Rynn--old enough to handle herself, anyways, and it's about time for her to get out from under his wing for once." He raised an eyebrow, and then his tumblr followed in a mock-toast. "You have my approval, by all means. Just don't let Rynn know." Leaning back, he lifted the glass to his lips and drank deeply. He only attended to the charming, petty games of the cousins because he did not want to turn his mind to the questions Julius and Remy brought to the fore. To be truthful, all three of the brothers had unquestioningly assumed that Antha and Rynn would leave in a match with one another. Perhaps they had, but certainly in a way no-one expected. There was the quaintest of terms for what occurred with those two in a room together--chemistry. They made things explode. Whether that power was capable of being harnessed for use, nobody knew yet. But to deny its existence would be reckless. Cian knew he was not a fraction of the witch that his brother was, but something else had drawn Antha and Cian together that had nothing to do with their bloodline. He still remembered the day that he had first seen her--sprawled on the stairs, looking up through a filmy haze of drugs into lively, emerald-green eyes. The spark of recognition that had passed between them--was there a word for that? Was that why Antha had brought him back, had made him part of her family? Was it in obligation to their dead, because she felt a responsibility to him?--well, that was what Rynn might have thought.
But it was pointless to dwell on the subject, Cian knew. However selfish his feelings might be, he would not be the first to question a miracle of the sort that authors spent their entire careers waxing poetic over. Besides, he rather thought that the elders underestimated Antha's restraint. If anything was important to her within the empire she had built, it was her family. Cian, too, was now responsible for upholding the Mayfair name--for living as a parent, someone to look up to. He'd be damned if he gave anyone the ammo of an affair to use against his offspring. Of all people, the Calais progeny--the Mayfairs too, for that matter--should know just how cruel children could be.

Below, the parlor door shuddered in its frame, but held against Malakai's indignant blows. Liesse, behind him, laughed a little. The scotch wasn't so bad now, once she'd gotten used to the way it burned. "It sounds like you should be grateful they give you any privacy at all." She took a half-turn on the parquet floor, setting down her glass on the end-table next to their settee. She could almost hear the music before Malakai let the phonograph needle slip from his fingers. "I thought you did," she said, softly, taking another half-turn, and spinning gently into Malakai's reach. "It's the floors in this house. They're made for dancing." In some of the upper rooms, you could see the scuffs where steps had trodden arcs and whorls into the wood. Aleric had tried to teach her, a little. He'd said it was something a lady was expected to know. Liesse had good grace as a result of her initial training, but her steps were faltering and a half-measure behind Malakai's as she re-learned. "You don't talk too much, either." she said, suddenly looking up from her feet. "You talk just the right amount. It's just that everyone else doesn't, and there are quite a lot of them, and it's easy to be--overheard. Trust me, I kno--o--woah!"
Liesse had taken her eyes off her feet for a moment too long. Somehow tangled in-between Malakai's legs, she pitched into him desperately and all but knocked him to the floor. "I'm sorry--sorry!" she squeaked, frantically propelling herself backwards off him--more by sheer panic than any coherent muscle control. "Are you alright? I didn't hurt you, did I?"