Mayfair Manor

[Okimiyage]

In the garden, Liesse was left to her own devices. Wandering over to a flowerbed, she reached out to cup a white rose and froze in the next second as a large, honey-colored bee landed upon her knuckle. The outstretched arm quivered in place; Malakai's voice sounded behind her. Very carefully, eyes still on the bee, Liesse turned to face him. She didn't understand what he was going on about at first, until she realized he was addressing the enormously fluffy black cat in his own arms. And then Amadeo kicked his way out of Malakai's arms, and his gaze turned back to Liesse. There was something alarmingly similar in his eyes to Rynn's--something about their shape, the long lashes, even if they did not share the same color. The bee crawled over Liesse's ring finger, and she found herself stammering as the other approached. "I don't understand--"
And quite suddenly, his lips found her own. Her hand flew up in amazement; the insect, startled, plunged the tip of its stinger into her tendon. Shock and pain caused her to cry out; it was all that she could do to refrain from clenching her teeth into Malakai's lower lip.
The bee flew away, but did not get far before its flight zig-zagged and wavered and plunged into the tile. Suicidal little thing. When Malakai tried to pull away from her, Liesse would not allow him. She pressed her cheek close against the linen of his shirt, feeling her finger throb as she wrapped her arms about his waist. "I'm not sorry, either. And I don't count it as stolen if it would have been given freely… Even if Rynn takes affront, I'll defend your right to that." She didn't know where the words came from, nor this sudden, heating boldness that rose up inside her breast.
He pulled away from her all-too-quickly. She still had more questions about the dratted Sophia-Astoria and what had prompted him into this devil's pact with the other woman, if he felt the way that he claimed. All that was left was the pulsating pain of the insect's sting--and the little folded bit of paper clutched in her aching palm-- to remind her that he had been there at all.
She opened, and read the neat scrap of script.

Inside, Dorian was very much protesting his removal from the scene. "I don't need tests. What am I, a pet dog? To be dragged to the vet, clawing and whining, every time I so much as run away for a night?" In his mind, part of Dorian still resolutely believed t hat he had been away for no more than twenty-four hours--a fortnight at most. That couldn't be the house that he remembered, with the glamourous furnishings and diamond-studded chandeliers--absolutely couldn't be.
"Vittorio, let go of me! I can settle my own affairs with the damned mud-slingers down at the paper." Personally, Dorian felt the whole affair required fisticuffs, and not just because he'd been longing for years to break the writer's perfect jawline, ever since he'd slept with Antha.
Rynn, in the meantime, hung back from the scene, his eyes flickering with distaste. Antha over-exerted herself arguing with Julian; Cian, the helpless puppet that he was, shrugged and grinned and played along, dashing after his mistress when she fled the premises.
Rynn's attention was momentarily diverted by the arrival of Gerard. Some alternative branch of the family, he was certain, preppy and clean-cut as a model in a catalogue. A suitable consort for the insipid Sophie Astoria.
Then their gazes swept across one another, and snagged. The man had eyes like a limpid pool, clear as water. Rynn was the first to drop his eyes, glance away as though there hadn't nearly been a staring match held in the parlor. Sophie must have come from an old family; a newer bloodline would not have thought twice about sending a scion of the bloodline to another's house unattended. But that was the way they did things these days, after all--
Still, when Antha's cousin came forth to protest Gerard's insult, Rynn could not help but flinch away in distaste. It would have been beyond gauche to entertain relations with the old lover of your sister-in-law--no matter how acutely Rynn felt the need for allies.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

The Mayfairs and the Astorias sat at tea for several hours, chatting idly. Sophie and Malakai were supposed to be on a date, after all, they had to make it believable.Courtland left them alone for a while, sulking on the balcony upstairs, but eventually meandered down and sat at the tea table with them. Pierce, watching with flashing eyes, had gone in search of Rynn and Liesse and then dragged them into the parlor with them, sitting them down at the tea table whether they liked it or not.
The Mayfairs were equally relieved and amused to watch Malakai interact with his would-be arranged bride. They suspected that, though he was nothing but polite as always, he didn't particularly like the girl. It probably had something to do with the sparkly-eyed way she talked about his little sister for an hour straight.
When Pierce entered with Rynn and Liesse, Sophie gave her usual radiant smile, her eyes settling on Liesse as she said politely, "You must be Liesse. From what I hear, I've caused you a bit of trouble. I'm terribly sorry about that, but there's no helping the politics between families."
Gerard, who had remained mostly silent throughout the entire conversation, bothered to mutter, "Bullshit. You just wanted to see Antha."
Sophie's smile became a little easier, the expression on her face waxing dreamy. "She does look lovely lately, don't you think? More regal...and she glows."
Courtland, raising an eyebrow at the girl over his teacup, murmured pointedly, "It's probably the whole pregnancy thing. You know, from her husband."
If Sophie heard a word he said, she didn't acknowledge it, only continued dreamily, "I do wish I could pull off those dresses the way she does. But she has legs for days, no one could look as good as she does in them."
Gerard cut his eyes at his sister, rolling them as if he were exasperated by all of her talk and then looked to Malakai, sighing, "How do you put up with her? Fake relationship or not, I would tell her to shove it."
Malakai, his jaw subtly clenched which was the only indication he ever gave that anything was ever getting on his nerves, smiled politely at Gerard and answered, "I look at my phone and rejoice that my Aunt Suzette hasn't called me twenty times in the last hour."
Gerard tilted his head and gave a vague shrug as if consenting that that was fair, turning his gaze idly back out the window.
Lawrence arrived shortly after, bearing the bags with Rynn and Liesse's tailored school uniforms which he set on the couch before cordially greeting the Astorias. Gerard rose to shake his hand---a proper gentlemen when he wanted to be, with all the good graces of an eldest son groomed to take over a prestigious old family business---and Sophie just smiled, murmuring, "Oh yes, I remember you."
"You guys know Laurie?" Courtland questioned, glancing between the Astorias and Lawrence.
Lawrence, somewhat tight-lipped, gave a passable smile and murmured in return, "Yes, father and I manage the Astoria family's accounts. And, if I am not mistaken, I met Miss Astoria once with Antha. As I recall, she had locked you in a maintenance closet and called me demanding a restraining order."
Unperturbed, Sophie's smile never wavered. "Oh, that? Gerard convinced her not to go through with it."
Gerard gave a small grumble, still staring boredly out of the window. "Yes, I remember now," Lawrence said, clearly agitated that she had ignored his entire point.
Courtland grinned mischievously, sipping his tea and slyly glancing at Gerard. "You must have a lot of sway with Antha then, eh Gerard? I suppose she must have felt bad, dumping you for your sister and all."
Gerard, glancing briefly in his direction, muttered only, "Shut up, Courtland."
"Yes, Courtland, please," Lawrence sighed, taking a seat at the table and redirecting the conversation to Rynn and Liesse. "That reminds me, Jacob is to fetch your school supplies tomorrow when he does the weekly shopping. Book and paper and pens and the sort. Be sure to let him know if there is anything in particular you need."
"Rynn needs notebooks with kittens on the front," Courtland piped up very seriously, "It's very important. Actually, I'll just go let Jacob know myself." As he rose, Lawrence laid a single firm hand on the boy's shoulder and forced him back down into his seat, sipping the tea Malakai had poured him with his free hand.
"As dire as I am sure that is," he murmured, sighing beneath his breath, "It might be best to send him to his first day with something simpler."
"Ugh, but that's so dreary!" Courtland whined, pouting and laying his head on the table, "Rynn needs something with pizazz! You'll at least tell him to get kitten notebooks for Liesse, won't you?"
"I'm sure Jacob can make sound judgement on notebook designs by himself."
Lawrence was spared the annoyance of responding any further by Vittorio returning with Dorian, at which he sighed with relief and called, "What's the diagnosis?"
Vittorio shook his head, glancing at the Astorias, but Lawrence motioned for him to continue and he murmured, "He's technically healthy, but something came back in his bloodwork that I..." He grimaced, holding up the papers and staring strangely at them.
Lawrence nearly snatched them out of his hand, eyes narrowing as he inspected the results. "What is that?"
Again, Vittorio shook his head. "To be quite frank, no one knows. We don't even know how it got into his system, if it was ingested or absorbed through skin contact or even simply inhaled."
Beside Lawrence, Courtland gave a booming laugh. "Did Dorian get date-rape drugged?!"
Vittorio shrugged. "It's possible. Until someone properly analyzes the compound, we have no idea what effect it had on him. Or will have on him, before it fully exits his system."
"Is he going to be alright?" Lawrence questioned very seriously, raking his eyes briefly over Dorian in concern.
"There doesn't seem to be any immediate danger, but we should watch him just in case any lingering symptoms crop up."
Gerard, halfway listening, gave a small sigh. "These are distinctly Mayfair problems, you know that? Most of us can pass through life without getting drugged with unknown substances."
Subtly, Courtland went on the defensive. "Getting drugged can happen to anyone, Gerard, it's a reasonably unmanageable situation. Now having a creepy stalker sister, on the other hand..."
Pierce gave a snort of laughter and then glanced away as if he hadn't. He wasn't sure which was funnier, the fact that despite all of his abuse, Courtland was being protective of Dorian or the subtle sexual tension between Courtland and his begrudging one-night-stand, who clearly preferred Antha.
The Astorias left shortly after, Courtland standing in the door grinning and blowing Gerard kisses as he scurried away, shoulders tensed uncomfortably. That was the point when Pierce turned to Malakai, muttering, "God help you if you really intended on making that girl part of the family. How long are we supposed to play along with this anyways."
The boy in question, slumping in his chair suddenly as if the visit had mentally drained him, sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "I haven't thought it that far out yet. Until Suzette calms down or dies or something, I suppose."
Courtland scoffed, watching the boy as he languidly lifted himself and ambled over to the piano, lifting the cover and idly testing out the keys. "You might as well marry her, if it's going to be that long."
"I'll pass," the boy muttered very certainly, before his fingers launched into Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu. Armand, drawn in by the sound of the piano keys, settled behind him on a divan, watching the wild, rapid movement of his fingers in mesmerized fascination.
Courtland sighed, wincing. "Ack! Stop it, Malakai, it freaks me out when you start doing things with so much passion."
Malakai gave an uncharacteristically wry grin, his eyes still watching the keys. "How's this?" He stopped, readjusting his fingers, and began on one of Vivaldi's more unsettling pieces.
Courtland scowled. "Well now you're just being difficult! Quit it, this song is creepy."
The boy chuckled very lightly, relenting and moving gently into Clair de Lune, which seemed to at least pacify Courtland. "You're awfully brazen today," Pierce muttered meanwhile, eying him suspiciously, "What's gotten into you?"
The boy gave a light shrug, murmuring, "Dunno'."
Pierce's mouth opened again, likely to accuse him of something, but his phone rang suddenly and he snapped it open, still watching Malakai cautiously. "Mayfair House of Sudden Oddities, Pierce speaking. Oh, Uncle Remy. What? Yeah, he's here, but---hello? Hello?" He clicked the phone off with a strange look at it, tilting his head and murmuring, "Strange."
Three seconds later, the door opened and the cousins stared wide-eyed as Remy appeared in the door to the parlor, a shotgun slung over his shoulder as he sighed and narrowed his eyes at Courtland. "You'll have to pardon the rude intrusion," he murmured, drawing the shotgun down into his hands and snapping it open, loading it with two bullets, "But I have a threat to carry out. I am a man of my word, after all."
Courtland froze, a complicated look on his face somewhere between wild excitement and downright panic. "Let me guess," he said, very carefully, "Sera's pregnant?"
"Indeed she is," Remy muttered, snapping the gun closed again, "I did warn you, Courtland."
The boy shrugged, grinning from ear to ear, and in a flash was running for his life, Remy at his heels. Lawrence dropped his head into his hands, giving his most aggravated sigh as of yet. Pierce, leaning over the back of his seat and craning to get a look down the hallway, laughed until he couldn't breathe and then fell out of his seat. Malakai, in an unusual show of dry humor, stared strangely after them for a moment and then began playing the William Tell Overture. From the dining room, Courtland called, "You're not helping!" before a chair crashed and he skidded into the hall and up the stairs.
"Good lord," Vittorio muttered, shaking his head, just before a shot sounded upstairs.
Pierce, lifting himself from the floor, showed a flash of concern, murmuring slowly, "You don't think he'd actually...?"
The Mayfairs ran out of the room in a flash, just in time for Antha to throw the front door open in wide-eyed shock. "What in the hell is going on in here?! Was that a gun?!"
Breathlessly, Pierce paused long enough to motion up the stairs and stutter, "Sera pregnant. Remy gun. Courtland dead."
Courtland came fleeing back down before the Mayfairs had a chance to come to his aid, ducking frantically behind Antha with his arms around her stomach as if to hold her hostage. Remy, his shotgun shouldered, meandered easily down after him. "I think I've made my point," he said simply, returned to his usual easy, smiling demeanor, and then added before anyone could question him, "Oh, the bullets? Blanks. I had to do something for my daughter's honor, after all."
"Mon dieu, oncle Remy!" Antha screamed, her hand closed over Courtland's as if to calm him, "Was this really necessary?! You nearly gave me a heart attack!"
Vittorio, standing in the door to the parlor, gave his first flash of emotion, glaring sharply at Remy as he hissed, "No frightening the pregnant woman, I absolutely cannot allow it."
When these few moments had passed and he had regained his breath, Courtland peeked over Antha's shoulder to ask, "You're sure she's pregnant?"
Remy nodded. "Quite."
"And you know it's mine?"
"The timeline fits, and I don't see much alternative. She tried to blame it on Malakai, but that would be quite impossible."
"You're joking." Immediately, Antha was all venom and malice, narrowing her eyes at her uncle as he shook his head.
"At any rate, I think it's safe to assume the child's true paternity."
In the next instant, the boy lit up like a kid on Christmas morning, squealing as he tightened his arms around Antha and lifted her off of her feet, twirling her around. The girl shrieked for much different reasons, screaming, "Courtland, put me down! Putmedownputmedownputmedown!"
He did as he was told, falling instead on Jack with an arm around his shoulders, kissing his cheek. "I knew Adair had a hint of Sera in him. Let's see, it would be about...three months, right?" Remy nodded. "Only six more months, then. Ahh, but just think, Vanessa and Sebastien will have their own little carbon copy of me to play with! Evie! He'll come to live with us, won't he?"
"Of course," Antha murmured, sighing as she straightened her skirts back out and smoothed down her mussed hair, "Any son of yours has a rightful place in this house. Besides, my children will need a playmate."
"I can't see Sera being hard to sway," Pierce agreed, leaning against the wall and grinning.
Antha scoffed. "Hardly. Throw enough money at her and she'll sign over custody in a heartbeat. Laurie---"
"I'll have the papers drawn up," he said simply, already pulling out his phone and turning to the dining room, seeking quiet.
Courtland made a small sound of delight, running and throwing his arms around Antha, who quickly threw him off, and then went bounding up the stairs as if he couldn't stand still, calling, "Julieeeeen! Michaaaaael!" Intrigued, Remy followed him.
Armand cocked his head, staring after the boy. "Are we sure this is a good idea?"
Despite herself, Antha gave a small, satisfied smile. "He's going to be the most dysfunctional father in the history of the earth. But he is dead set on having custody of his son, and we've yet to talk him out of anything he's set his mind on. Besides, there will already be two children in the house, what's one more?"
"It opens the floodgates," Pierce murmured uncertainly, eyes flashing, "Remember that premonition? Courtland said it himself, 'for the love of God, don't wake the children, there are far too many of them.' Speaking of which, Malakai had children in the vision, didn't he? Courtland said something about 'little Michael' and how Malakai was just as much to blame for all the children in the house as the rest of them." He paused, grinning wickedly. "You never know, maybe he'll knock Sophie up."
Instantly, Malakai's face colored, his eyes wide in panic. This was the first he'd heard of it. "No chance," he said very emphatically, rapidly shaking his head from side to side, "I mean about Sophie, not...well, I mean maybe not that either, but...I mean..." He made a small sound, turning on his heel and running to hide in the parlor, his burning face the color of Antha's hair.
Sighing, Antha crossed her arms and turned her gaze on Cian. "I feel for you, darling, really. Three small children all under this roof at the same time...the chaos will be unimaginable. My poor darling." And she kissed his cheek in sympathy, before something seemed to occur to her and she glanced at the clock, flushing with that strange excitement that had possessed her lately. "Ah, speaking of which...Malakai! Stop hiding, it's four o'clock, I need your help."
He peeked out of the parlor, staring curiously at her. "What do you need my help for?"
Antha waved the question away, seizing Rynn's hand and running for the stairs, "I'll explain later, hurry up!"
Not that an explanation was quite as necessary when the three were closed in Marguerite's lab and Antha pulled the plastic sheet off of Alistair, roughly her age and nearly her mirror image.
"Antha, you didn't..."
"Of course I did," she said softly, sitting on the operating table beside Alistair as she lovingly brushed out the tangled mess of his own scarlet curls.
"But I---"
Antha turned on him, sharply, eyes narrowed. "You did it for Liesse. You can't pick and choose, Malakai, you gave up your morals for her. And now, Alistair needs you."
The boy flushed just slightly, staring down at his feet and clamping his mouth shut. She was right, that wasn't fair. And besides...this was his little brother. He'd always wanted a little brother. "Evie...this isn't like with Liesse. This is a lot more dangerous. And what's going to happen to your spirit when you die if he's alive?"
"Doesn't matter," she dismissed it easily, still preoccupied brushing her twin's hair out, "I need him here. So do you, and Vanessa and Sebastien. Just do it, alright?"
The boy groaned uncertainly but stretched his arms nonetheless, glancing at Rynn and murmuring gently, "Stand back."  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn couldn't tell why Liesse was sulking this morning, and--although he hated it admit it--the whole thing was bothering the hell out of him. In her own little world as usual, Liesse locked her hands around her tea-cup when Sophie-Astoria entered and barely looked up past that. Her cheeks were red as apples. Sophie tried to interact with her just once, and Liesse did not respond--merely hunched down further, until a sharp elbow from Rynn made her sit up and mutter something about it being perfectly understandable, no trouble at all. It was rare for Rynn to see her in such a sour temper--even rarer for Rynn to be the one who reminded Liesse of her good manners. But something was off about Liesse today--even the delivery of her school uniform could not prompt her into a better mood. She kept sighing and glancing across the table at their guests, her gaze lingering on Sophie the longest. It was an expression which longed to curse with vehemence. Literally curse, not just foul language.
Liesse didn't know what she had been expecting. For Malakai to stand up and name her as his lover, to denounce the relationships between himself and Sophie-Astoria as the farce which they were?
But as their pleasant little tea party went on, it became apparent that no outbursts of this ilk were going to occur. After all, Sophie made such polite conversation, and was from such a good family. Liesse could've stuck a butter-knife through her throat with sheer irritation. Perhaps it wasn't any fault of the other girl's, but Liesse found it very difficult to resist feeling rather put out. Nobody liked playing the role of 'the other woman' in a relationship.
Far from being attentive to the conversation, Liesse quite failed to recognize when the table's attention swung 'round violently in their direction once more. Even the promise of kitten-themed notebooks failed to grab her notice, although Rynn blanched as white as an ingenue on her wedding night. He was beginning to suspect that Courtland was just trying to stir up trouble, at this point. "No kittens!" he said sharply. "I'd like not to be a total laughingstock from day one." Since the school had uniforms, Rynn wasn't in danger from his own (questionable?) sense of style, but he was intelligent enough to know that a boy of his age showing up with adorable baby animals on his binder wasn't going to win any points.
Dorian, striding into the room, interrupted the beginning of Rynn's protestations by dragging his chair back, all a-rattle, and slumping into his seat at the table with aplomb. Vittorio's scientific diatribe was answered by the deepening of a ferocious scowl which threatened to etch wrinkles into Dorian's immaculate brow. Courtland wasn't helping anything by laughing, either. Suddenly, his imagination piqued by an evil idea, Dorian rose from his chair and draped himself across the carved back-rest of Courtland's. "You're absolutely right," he cooed into his cousin's ear. "Getting drugged could happen to anyone. And since it's still in my system, it could even…" His fingers crept across the wood and made contact with Courtland's shoulder, massaging the muscles which tensed under his grasp. "…possibly, who knows? make its way into yours right now. I certainly don't remember drinking anything last night, but there was a lot of touching. You might wake up in a day, or a week, or in forty years!--with a beard down to your ankles like Rip van Winkle. I don't suppose I've ever told you, but you'd look charming with a bit of scruff on you. "
He held the pose until Courtland jerked him off, and then spun away laughing. They intended to ostracize him for his disappearance? Dorian could play the eccentric very well, if that was the plan.
The family made good on their promise of an enjoyable afternoon hosting the Astorias. But as soon as the siblings were out of the house, Dorian threw his back against the door, the back of his hand to his forehead, and sank dramatically to the floor. "Finally. I thought they'd never leave."
Liesse was still hanging on to the crisp linen napkin from tea, although it had become badly creased on account of being consistently wrung for the past hour. She was not in the steadiest state of mind. Rynn settled a hand on her bare shoulder, trying to be comforting, but she did not listen to the murmured oddments that he presented into her ear, some vain attempt to console her, but pushed the well-wrinkled napkin into his fist instead and went to sit by Malakai on the piano bench.
Rynn clutched at Liesse's linen in a pale fist, blinking at their turned-away backs together and wondering how and when he had blundered into his sister's ill graces. Vivaldi's tinkering, off-kilter key-strikes threatened to set him off, although he couldn't count on whether he was prepared to go into a blind rage or leak pathetic tears. He left the room before either could happen first.
Remy passed him on the way out, carrying a long-barreled gun, but Rynn was oblivious. It was left to Dorian to sound the first little shriek of alarm upon seeing the firearm in his cousin's hands. And then the explanation was given, and Dorian's alarm turned into delight even as Courtland fled for his life. It seemed like all the family had been busy, hadn't they? He'd have to catch up with some progeny of his own, soon. Stepping with quick intent to the liquor-cabinet, he began to set out tumblers for the brandy. News like this called for a celebration. Celebrations in this household didn't happen without alcohol at least peripherally involved. Behind him, he heard Liesse gasp with fear as the first shot sounded above-stairs, followed by a tinkle of glass. Dorian didn't even look about. Courtland had survived into his twenties, which spoke somewhat for the older man's survival skills. He wasn't in the least concerned for his cousin's life.
The Calais twins were somewhat less lax. Rynn had nearly made his way back to Dolly-Jean's room before he heard the sound of a muffled shot through the ceiling. His immediate reaction was to backtrack the way he'd come, just in time to meet the rest of the family as they crowded around Antha at the foot of the grand staircase. Say what you liked about Rynn, he wasn't about to leave his sister to deal with a crisis alone.
Dorian came out of the room, his tray of brandy and glassware held aloft, just in time to catch Remy confess that the bullets had been blanks anyhow. At least they had drinks to steady their nerves already, although Dorian had to admit that he'd been looking forward to the fireworks. (He nearly offered the tray to Antha before he remembered she wasn't allowed to drink.)
Cian, who had followed Antha downstairs at the sound of gunfire, leaned against the stair-banister eagerly overlooking them all. More kids! At least Sebastien and Vanessa would not lack for playmates. He was in the perfect position to observe as Antha grabbed Rynn's hand--hard enough that his younger brother grimaced and pulled away, although knowing him that could just be the separation from Liesse--and told Malakai to follow, as she tugged towards the flight of stairs. He couldn't help but wonder what they were all up to, together.
(Dorian gave a small shrug, and downed two glasses in commemoration of their exit. More for him~)
Above, in the secret lab, Rynn's eyes opened wide at the sight of what they'd left on the operating table. How he'd grown. The flesh was no longer stiff and ill-colored by chemicals, but pale and supple. A mane of red curls stretched over narrow shoulders, arms covered by a fine mesh of ginger hair. The face was as fine-boned as Antha's, lashes laying thickly against the fleshy curve of the boy's full cheeks, the resemblance clear as Liesse's had been to Rynn's in the past. It was difficult to believe that, mere hours ago, this had been the body of a grotesque infant corpse.
The Calais scion approached, but did not quite dare to touch the new-made body. It was difficult, in fact, to resist the impulse to avert his eyes. Even though no soul yet inhabited this vessel, the chest rise and fell like that of a sleeping, living creature. It was impossible to think of him, 'Alistair' as a dead thing any longer.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Malakai was not entirely comfortable using his power, particularly not around Rynn. He was as normal as a Mayfair got, and things like this…they shattered the dream, that lulling illusion that he could, under just the right circumstances, lead a normal life. And he didn’t like the way it made him feel, that prickle of power pouring out of every cell in his body. But…
He glanced at Antha, staring down at the living, soulless shell of her twin. It was not often that he, or anyone else, managed to see the great and powerful Antha Evelyn Mayfair so vulnerable, so desperate. So human. This was her twin, her other half, he couldn’t let her take a chance on doing this on her own. She had asked for his help for good reason, because this step of reanimation was risky and only by his hand was it assured.
He looked down at Alistair. His little brother, with a face reminiscent of his and his own twin’s, the masculinely warped mirror image of Antha. His heart clenched and his stomach turned. No, it had to be done. “Evie,” he murmured, touching her shoulder, “Step back.”
The girl glanced back at him, her eyes wide and unusually soft, face showing lines of panic, but did as she was told. Malakai closed his eyes, taking deep, calming breaths. When his eyes opened again they were hazy, their golden hue muddled, staring unfocused at the body before him as he gently raised his hands, palm up, and the first flicker of light glimmered in the air.
It had always reminded Antha of Final Fantasy games, this show of Malakai’s power. It began as wispy traces of light as he focused, Aether slipping through his fingers like threads of glowing silk, and then as his eyes slowly opened and focused there came that flickering like an old lightbulb, millions of those tiny threads going on and off until he managed to make them stable, the clouds of shimmering spiritual essence floating through the room like fog. But that was the easy part, the disconnected, dissociative spirits of pure energy. Next came the slow visible formation of larger orbs of light connected in the network of wispy, shining spirits. These were the ghosts, the powerful beings of complex thought and memories, without the projection of their physical form, drifting around the room and vibrating with an excited chatter. Marguerite was in the corner, Lestan drifting idly across Alistair, and half a dozen unidentifiable ghosts hovering about the room.
“Evie.”
She stepped hesitantly forward at the soft command, nearing Alistair’s body, and the closer she came to her living brother the brighter the aura around her glowed. It was nearly blinding at first, until it began to shift and tremble and some of it seeped from around her, leaving her own spiritual essence intact as Alistair’s reluctantly released her, hovering with a shiver over his own body as Malakai stepped forward, pressing his fingers cautiously to the boy’s bare chest. It was like smearing on glow in the dark paint, Alistair’s spirit tangling with Malakai’s fingers and then imprinting on his physical body, leaving growing trails that swelled and spread and seeped into the warm flesh. Riskier though it might have been, it was at least easier than putting Liesse into her current body. No former residents to remove, no glitches or reluctance of the soul being placed in a body that was not meant for it.
Malakai’s hands were pressed carefully into the sides of Alistair’s abdomen when the soft, comatose breathing sputtered and stopped, the muscles going tense and rigid, and in the time it took Antha to work herself into the greatest panic, a great gulp of air broke the tension, raspy coughing. Malakai nearly jumped out of his skin when the hand beside him on the table flew up and flopped clumsily onto the coughing mouth, two eyes---as green as Antha’s if a slightly different hue, nearly as big as hers---fluttering open slightly out of sync.
“Alistair?” The boy squirmed as if he wanted to move, was trying, but didn’t quite know what to do with those heavy, pesky limbs. Ultimately, his head turned and lulled over to the side, those drugged-looking eyes trying their best to focus on Antha, fingers twitching furiously.
“Hold on,” Malakai said, as gently as he could, holding Antha back and laying his hands carefully back on Alistair. “I’m not done, everything’s not properly connected. Be patient, Evie.”
Patience was not something Antha knew much about under regular circumstances. Under ones such as these…she fidgeted uncomfortably, pacing the same several steps back and forth and watching Alistair with hawk eyes. He watched her in turn, eyes slowly following her movements, lips occasionally moving as if trying to form words, but for the most part over the next hour, Malakai gently held him still when he tried to move.
“I think that should about do it,” he murmured at length, the glowing spirits that filled the room flickering out of sight all at once, and Antha all but threw him across the room to get past him and to Alistair. Malakai stumbled, scrambling out of the way, and then turned to inspect the fruits of his labor.
With Antha’s assistance, the boy on the table rose, sitting with the crisp white sheet pooled in his lap, raising a trembling, clumsy hand to his throat as the uncertain coughing began again. The fingers convulsed, closing around his throat a little too tightly, and Antha rapidly pried them back off, whispering hastily, “No, Alistair!” He blinked as if he were confused, and then again in astonishment, just because he could. It was a small marvel to him, the ability to control his eyelids. “Big brother, can you fetch me some of Nicolae’s old clothes?” Malakai did as he was asked, ducking out of the room very quickly, and with her free hand Antha reached for a bottle of water sitting on the table nearby, unscrewing the cap and putting it to Alistair’s lips. “Carefully, Alistair. Swallow, don’t breathe.”
The boy made a small choking sound a second after the water passed through his lips, coughing it back up all over his lap, but managed to wipe it from his lips and chin with moderate success and beamed for that. His next attempt was better, though he took gulps that were too large and hurt his throat, but by the time Malakai reappeared he could successfully hold the bottle in his own hand as he greedily gulped down the last of it. “Can you stand?” He tried his best, though his legs were like jelly, and through a great deal of effort his siblings had him on his feet, leaning heavily against Antha.
“Rynn, help me hold him up,” the girl asked, with an odd tone of desperation as Malakai unfolded Nicolae’s clothes, and with the boy properly supported they managed to get him clothed. “He’s skinnier than Nicolae,” she murmured to her older brother, picking at the clothes that hung from her twin’s thin frame.
“Evie, he’s never eaten. Ever. He’ll fill out, give him time.”
The girl pursed her lips but accepted the answer, her hands softly closing on Alistair’s delicate face, and his hands uncertainly closing over hers as he gave an awkward attempt at a smile. He turned his head then, glancing curiously around him, and his gaze settled to inspect Malakai. He knew who it was, of course, he had all of Antha’s knowledge, and he beamed to look upon his older brother in the flesh. Malakai, holding his gaze with his own, hurriedly moved to wipe the tears from his eyes before anyone noticed them. Next was Rynn, who again Alistair knew through Antha, and his large eyes flashed curiously looking at him. His head cocked and his hand came out, two long fingers hesitantly touching Rynn’s hair, and the boy beamed with delight.
Quietly, Antha murmured a hesitant, “He likes your hair, Rynn. We don’t have many brunettes in our family.”
That made Alistair pause, slowly turning his head to look at Antha, and glance down at her stomach, laying his hand very carefully across it and looking questioningly back up at her. Antha smiled, radiantly, more pleased than Malakai had seen in a very long time. “That’s right, Vanessa and Sebastian are brunettes, like their father.” The boy lit up excitedly, glancing towards the door. He wanted to see Cian with his own eyes, and everyone else for that matter.
“Should we take him downstairs?”
Antha paused, gazing at Alistair, and something unspoken passed between them. “He may try to run down them himself if we don’t, and I don’t see that ending well.” She pulled an arm around his shoulder in compliance, but Malakai pushed her arm away, shaking his head. “Don’t overexert yourself, in your condition. Rynn---” He looked at the boy, pleadingly. “---can you help me help him down the stairs?”
Alistair made a valiant effort, they would give him that much, no matter how complicated he found the process of moving one foot forward and then down, and then the other, supporting his own weight the entire time, though having Malakai and Rynn hold him up was significantly helpful. Antha flitted around them in circles on the stairs as all of this went on, worked into a nervous panic, arms held out in case he fell. The usual noise was going on in the parlor, even more festive because Courtland had everyone all riled up, making loud toasts to his impending fatherhood and his adorable little hellion, Adair. By the time he noticed the creaking stairs and Antha’s nervous squeaks urging them to be careful, running into the hallway to see what they had been up to, the group had almost reached the bottom.
“Evie, what have---” He stopped abruptly, his hand falling at his side, and for a moment he simply gaped in astonishment at the green-eyed, red-haired, fair-skinned creature that so resembled Antha and her older brothers, mentally picking out all of the features the boy shared with Julien and therefore Julien’s other spawn, himself included. “Evie, is this…it isn’t…is it?” He was at a loss for a single moment, until very suddenly a slow, radiant smile crept to Alistair’s face and his hand came out before him, his fingers reaching for him, and Courtland lit up, squealing deafeningly, and ran at the boy.
Antha shrieked---which drew the other cousins into the hallway to share in Courtland’s initial dumbfounded confusion---striking Courtland as he grabbed Alistair up in his arms and stole him from Rynn and Malakai, twirling him around in his arms. He even moved to kiss him in his delirious excitement (this was really a big day for Courtland), but Antha slapped him soundly across the cheek, screaming, “You steal my brother’s first kiss and I’ll have your head!” Alistair didn’t mind, but that was beside the point.
Twenty minutes later found the entire household, including Julien, Michael, Remy, and Jacob, seated in the parlor as Antha explained as shortly as she could what she had done, retrieving Alistair’s body from the Talamasca and reanimating him. She conveniently left Rynn’s involvement out of it, because though her cousins could guess, she didn’t see him reacting well to Julien yelling at him. Though, Julien did surprisingly little of that. He lectured her as usual about the appropriate use of her power, her irresponsibility, the laws of nature and whatever, but for the most part he stared at his son’s big, innocent eyes. He had a terribly earnest gaze, the exact opposite of Antha’s flashing, secretive eyes, his attention focused and sharp like a knife.
The cousins watched him raptly, fascinated by the way the chains that bound them had warped, accommodating Alistair, drawing him into their circle under Antha’s rule. Pierce was staring at his hair, unblinking, already idly snapping a pair of scissors open and closed in his fingers. It was bad enough having Malakai running around with his untrimmed, unfixed hair and decidedly lax clothing, Alistair was…he shuddered. Hair first, clothes later. Just breathe, it’d be alright.
For his part, Alistair was utterly fascinated by everything around him. The room, which he had never seen in any great detail, and the faces of his cousins which he had never observed with his own physical eyes. Spirits saw things differently.
“Remy, would you say something to your wayward niece about her God complex, please?!” Julien hissed, turning on his older brother.
Remy only shrugged as if he didn’t know what to say, taking the cigarette Michael handed him and lighting up. “What’s done is done, mon petit frère. What should we do, put the boy back in his grave?” Antha tensed at even the rhetorical mention of such a thing, her eyes narrowing and arms wrapping possessively around Alistair’s shoulders. “Non. He is a Mayfair, and our sister’s youngest child. And besides…you had to have seen this coming, at some point or another. It isn’t like Antha to accept that anything is out of her control.”
Grimacing, Julien turned and stomped out of the room, though the Mayfairs all noted that it was with a great deal less animosity and dramatics than usual. Neverending source of trouble as they were, the man did have a soft spot for his children, the whole legion of them.
Jacob smiled as usual, going to stand formally beside the boy as he gingerly touched Cian’s dark locks in fascination. “I was just about to begin on dinner. Should I prepare a snack first?”
Antha’s lips owned as if she would reply, but snapped hastily shut as Alistair’s head turned, his eyes lighting up, lips moving uncertainly. When his voice came thickly rolling off of his unpracticed tongue, a low, smooth tenor, it was in the broken and carefully pronounced form of, “Please.”
Antha smiled. Courtland outright shrieked, throwing his arms around the boy and laying ecstatic kisses on his forehead. “His first word! He said his first word!” Jacob, with a warm, sweet smile, turned and headed into the kitchen to make him something to eat. Pierce groaned, anxiously clicking his scissors. “For the love of God, Evie, can I do something about that hair?! It’s driving me crazy!”
“I think it’s pretty,” Dolly Jean offered dreamily as Antha moved to brush Alistair’s hair out with her fingers.
The boy swatted very gently at her hand, taking it in his own, and nodded at Pierce who jumped so rapidly out of his chair that he knocked it over, rushing the boy with the scissors and inspecting him, tugging his hair every which way to see what looked best. “It’s just as well,” Antha sighed, her fingers laced with Alistair’s, “I don’t think we’d ever get it untangled anyways.”
“Hold still,” Pierce murmured, eyes narrowed in concentration as he made the first snip of Alistair’s heavy, vibrant locks. There was something to be said for red hair that had never been touched by sunlight.
“Shouldn’t Nicolae be here for all of this?” Jack murmured, leaning over the back of his seat and glancing unsurely at Antha. “I haven’t seen him in a while either…”
Malakai, seated beside his father, muttered lowly, “He’s busy,” and left it at that. Between looking for Vikteren and trying to run a dysfunctional new coven, his hands were tied. Besides…he was having a great deal of trouble facing a married and pregnant Antha, and even more so not killing her new husband and his little brother. Malakai sighed. At least his twin seemed to like Liesse.
Alistair looked a lot like Botticelli’s infant Christ with his hair cut, Armand thought. The boy was extremely pleased to be rid of all that heavy hair, it made it much easier to turn his head. Pierce, sweeping it up from the floor, breathed a satisfied sigh. “He’ll need new clothes, and special skin cream. Mon dieu, look at all of that brand new skin, never touched by the elements.” He pinched the boy’s cheek, which in turn made him grimace.
“Pierce, no. Ow.” These words were uttered a little less clumsily than his first one, with a little less obvious effort.
“Look at that,” Jack murmured, smiling happily at the boy, “Before you know it, he’ll be good enough to hit the bars.”
Antha gave Jack a sharp look. Alistair beamed. He was not Antha’s twin, and half-brother to a number of the Mayfair cousins, for nothing after all. He had practically been born for debauchery. “Oh come on Evie, it’ll be fine. We’ll just take him out, get him drunk, teach him all our tricks…actually, we can take Rynn along too. He has no charisma, he needs our help if he’s ever going to get laid.”
“Courtland!” Antha reprimanded him sharply, only to be grinned at before the boy moved over beside Rynn, slinging an arm around his shoulders.
“What? He’s sixteen, the idea’s got to be floating around in his brain somewhere. Besides, look at this face.” He gently pinched his cheek, still grinning. “How can you deny the poor girls of this city this pretty face?” He paused, glancing thoughtfully over to Rynn. “Boys? I’m not sure which way you swing. But then, how many witches do you actually know that aren’t at least a little bicurious?”
“Rynn,” Antha sighed, shaking her head as Courtland laughed, “Feel free to smack the living hell out of him. Lord knows the rest of us would.” Alistair laughed, which made Antha all but glow, folding her arms around his shoulders.

By the time Jacob called for dinner, Alistair seemed to have mastered the complicated art of moving his tongue and lips in order to form proper words and had taken to babbling in short bursts about nothing terribly important. But his cousins, particularly his brother and sister, listened to him dutifully. He wanted to see the roses, he said, but he wanted his first real look at them to be in the sunlight. He wanted to try Earl Grey tea and that ice-cream that Evie liked so much---he called her Evie so instinctively, it warmed her heart---and he wanted to see Nicolae. His hair looked so pretty and golden through Antha’s eyes, he wanted to see it himself. Dolly Jean’s hair had certainly lived up to his expectations, brilliantly silver. “And Cian’s hair has so many pretty streaks. I hope Vanessa and Sebastien have the same pretty streaks his hair does.”
Courtland, seated beside Cian and so nearly across from Alistair, shook his head. “Their hair was more like milk chocolate from what I saw. Antha’s eye color, though.”
Alistair smiled, still scarfing down his food. He was already on his second plate. “Airi, slow down. You’re going to make your stomach hurt if you eat that much,” Antha reprimanded him lightly.
“I can’t help it, I’m famished. You try never having eaten before.”
“Well your jaw’s already going to hurt from talking so much, do you really want to add stomach pain on top of that?”
“I don’t mind. I mean the pain hurts, but it’s new to me, too. I like all of it, all the new things, it’s exciting.”
Beside him, Pierce snorted his laughter. “Dear God, you really are twins.” And then, as an afterthought, added thoughtfully. “Evie and Airi…I like it.”
“Evie called me that when we were little,” Alistair explained when he had gulped down a particularly large bite of food, begrudgingly taking Antha’s advice, “She couldn’t pronounce Alistair, and she hated Al.”
“It sounded ugly,” the girl murmured, glancing off.
“This is really weird,” Jack said from down the table, with just a hint of a laugh. He liked weird.
Julien, who kept glancing to the boy and then back to his paper, murmured with a sigh of resignation, “A very big day for our family, to be sure. I’m certain Suzette will be thrilled, what with Courtland reproducing and another member of the main branch of the family appearing to continue our line.” He paused, glancing thoughtfully to Malakai. “Speaking of which, this means the burden no longer falls solely on you, Malakai.”
The boy flushed, though it was obviously nothing he hadn’t already thought of. Antha narrowed her eyes dangerously, going very still in her seat. “I hardly think that’s something you should be discussing so soon, Julien.”
The silence fell, as it always did when an argument between Antha and Julien was beginning to brew, but unexpectedly, Alistair clasped a quick hand to his sister’s wrist, smiling sweetly as he began babbling again, pointedly this time. “Evie, can we go to the circus tomorrow? I always wanted to see all the flashing lights with my own eyes. And the rides. Are they as much fun as they seem?”
Courtland grinned, already mentally plotting out all the wild adventures and debauchery he was going to get into with his new cousin. “Absolutely.”
Alistair grinned, in that very Mayfair way that reminded outsiders of the Cheshire Cat, and then turned his attention raptly to Cian. “You want to go to the circus again, right Cian? We could all go.”
“Antha can’t ride the carnival rides,” Vittorio muttered, his gaze flashing to her abdomen.
The girl pouted but didn’t protest, murmuring instead, “It’s fine, I have business to discuss with Nicholas anyways.”
Alistair lit up, much in the same way that Courtland often did. “Oh, Nicholas! With his pretty clothes and glitter and everything?!” Antha nodded. “I can’t wait to see him. Everything really is different when you see it in the flesh.”
“I can only imagine,” Lawrence replied with a small nod of understanding, “Spirits can only see the essence of things as opposed to the details, right? I’m a little surprised you saw any of this to begin with.”
Alistair shook his head, hurriedly removing his glass of milk from his mouth and wiping up where he had spilled it. He wasn’t completely in control of his motor skills yet. “I didn’t myself, no. But I saw a lot through Antha’s eyes. I never left her, you know, I had to protect her. She needed soooooo much protecting.”
Courtland, lighting up deviously and leaning eagerly forward, asked excitedly, “Did you get to see Cian naked?”
Alistair made a small sound of shock---he shouldn’t have been surprised, he knew that, he had at least that much of an idea about Courtland from following Antha around---while Antha narrowed her eyes at Courtland, sighing with exasperation. “We do have some barriers between us, you know. Unlike you, Airi has some idea of the concept of privacy.” The boy nodded in agreement.
“Ah, what a shame. Evie won’t let me see, either. But it’s alright, I figure one day, if I get him drunk enough---“
Antha slammed down her fork, hurling a dinner roll at Courtland and hissing, “Courtland, so help me God, I will stab you.”
Courtland pouted, holding a hand over his eye where the bread had struck him and turning childishly to Liesse, pointing at Antha and whining, “Do you see how she treats me?! I hope for Adair’s sake that Vanessa is sweeter to him than you are to me, Evie.”
Antha only smiled, with just a hint of deviousness, endlessly proud, and replied, “It’s not Vanessa you have to worry about, Courtland. It’s Bastien.”
Alistair, still excited from the concept of the circus, glanced around the table until his eyes fell on Liesse and smiled in his disarmingly sweet way as he fell back into babbling. He was very good about that, Lawrence noted, disarming situations with his innocent banter. “You want to go to the circus too, right? You’re like me, you haven’t seen much. Won’t it be fun? All the lights and excitement and the---ohmygod, cotton candy! Evie, can we get cotton candy?! And candied apples and funnel cake and fried ice-cream?!”
Vittorio dropped his forehead into his palm, shaking his head and murmuring, “Dear lord, he is her twin. Alistair, don’t tempt her, she doesn’t need that much sugar in her condition.”
“But on the other hand,” Courtland countered, “If she does eat that much sugar and calories, think how cute and pudgy Vanessa and Sebastien will come out. You want cute, fat little babies, right Cian?”
“No,” Antha said sharply, putting down her fork and sitting back, “No fat babies. Anyone who doesn’t have to physically carry them around doesn’t get a say.”
“Oh come on Evie, just think how cute they’ll be all pudgy!”
“Are you trying to say my children won’t be cute unless they’re fat?!” the girl demanded, glaring incredulously at Courtland as Armand bit his lip on his laughter. If there was one thing you never did around a new or expecting mother, it was say anything that could be taken as insinuating her babies were not the cutest ******** things in the world. Antha was no exception. “Jacob, bring me a butcher knife, this butter knife won’t cut through his throat right!”
“Antha, settle down,” Julien groaned, ignoring the serious set of her eyes as she stood glaring threateningly at Courtland, shrinking in his seat even as he grinned. He tried to hide behind Liesse as if she would shield him, but Malakai frowned with an uncharacteristic tone of disapproval and kicked him under the table.
“Sorry. Accident.” It wasn’t, and if there was any question then the unapologetic tone of his voice proved it.
Lawrence, meanwhile, was beyond exasperation. Watching Antha and Courtland squabble, and seriously beginning to believe she would stab him for the implied insult against her darling children, he turned to Vittorio with weary eyes and asked, “Shouldn’t she be on some sort of medication or something? I know pregnancy hormones are…intense, but this seems a bit much.”
Pouting, Antha muttered a short, “Shut up, Laurie.”  

[Okimiyage]

Liesse, surprisingly, was the only one who seemed impartial to Alistair's charm. The boy was white as milk, his mane as red-gold as a lion, and all others gathered around like moths to a blinding flame.
Rynn was quite pleased, of course, and it was all Antha could do to stop him from boasting about his involvement once their subject had been ushered downstairs. And that's the only term in which he thought of Alistair--'the subject'. For all his years, Rynn could still be surprisingly simple and child-like in certain ways. He seemed utterly immune to the lure of Alistair's charms, whereas all other members of the household gathered around the boy as though he were a newborn fresh home from the hospital. Which wasn't a bad way to describe it, actually, if you replaced 'hospital' with 'moldering laboratory upstairs'…In Rynn's eyes, it was a great triumph. The ancestors would have been pleased. To not just exist beyond death, but to cheat it freshly, with a new body rather than the ghostly corpus of ectoplasm…!
But to Liesse's nose, he still had the scent of the grave about him. No matter how wide his ginger-lashed eyes grew, she could not help but be reminded of that dark & hollow place beyond. Although he manipulated his fresh body with the ill-ease of an infant, pirating a ship when he had no experience of sailing, Liesse could not help but question how he could return from that world untainted. To exist in that place, dreaming fitfully through the waking eyes of your twin, how could any come away as wholesome as they were before? Even grass needed sunlight to grow. He might have watched the world for two decades or even longer and still not had the means with which to understand or communicate with it. It seemed impossible to expect that years of solitary confinement would have formed an able and reasonable personality.
So she shrank back from the excitement, the vortex which centered around Alistair. She did not attempt to catch his eye. The boy had enough to take in without one more stranger contributing to the chaos. But she felt the outline of his mind, like a blind person feeling the face of a new identity, and it was as keen as a blade. Sharp in the same ways as Antha's, and little wonder, if she was all he had observed throughout the years…Even if he spoke haltingly at first, it was simply because his tongue was a muscle which had never been used.
But no-one could find fault with him when he made Antha so happy, so clearly. She was as proud of him as she would be her own newborn.
It was Cian who had this thought, lingering in Antha's shadow, who followed it with, 'if only she would be around to see them.'.
He had yet to understand why this boy was here, much less how, but he felt reluctant to admit his ignorance. If Antha had kept him in the dark, perhaps it was for a reason. He trusted her, even if Rynn seemed far too involved for his liking. (He crowded the younger boy, eyes bright as a magpie's who has spotted a sparkling bauble, and looked like he was going to bite Pierce when Alistair began to have his tangled mane hacked away.)
Besides, the child was charming in the utmost, already gifted with a Mayfair's skill for flattery. Nicolae would be pleased to hear the way he was described, the sort of hopeless hero worship that the tone promised. And the Mayfair heirs, so jaded with wisdom, were delighted to have a fresh wit among their own to toy with. Rynn didn't like their jokes, too scared that he was being made fun of, and Liesse didn't quite grasp all of them yet.
Cian didn't mind admitting that he was more than a little bit envious of the way Antha lovingly folded her arms about Alistair's fresh shoulders, pale as cream, but nobody had ever accused him of being a possessive lover. (Although he was grateful to hear that Antha had reserved some privacy for the two of them. He'd been watched before--in his youth, his appetites had been perhaps more inquisitive than was prudent--but it always gave him an odd, false feeling, like he was performing rather than enjoying himself, and he didn't much like it these days.) He did feel the need to intervene, however, when Courtland started offering to take Rynn to bars. "Come off it," he said lightly, laying a hand around his little brother's arm and gently pulling him back. Rynn was turning scarlet from the other's implications. "We've just gotten one member of the family back from being abducted and possibly date-raped, sending our little brother out in all his inexperience now just sounds like asking for trouble. Unless that's what you're planning?" Admittedly, maybe getting into a little trouble of his own would loosen Rynn up a little.
The remaining Calais was grateful for the excuse to ignore Courtland's question. For a Mayfair, of course, being 'bi-curious' wasn't a big deal. Sex was something that Mayfairs did for fun, it seemed. They certainly bred like rabbits.
But Rynn couldn't shake off what had been impressed upon him since birth as his 'duty'--that is, the obligation to continue the bloodline. Which ordinarily meant that someone in the family would have chosen an outsider, far enough removed that their children wouldn't be inbred hunchbacks, to marry him off to as Malakai was being married off to Sophia Astoria now. He supposed he should have felt grateful that this obligation technically no longer existed, what with the collapse of their household.
Rynn didn't feel grateful. He just felt uncertain. His own desires had gone without consideration for most of his life. He'd never thought about engaging in a relationship strictly for the purpose of romantic pleasure; he was not a child who had been raised on fairy-tales' fated encounters between enchanted princes and their lady-loves. Perhaps the whole affair, and all the bar-hopping it entailed, ought to be avoided altogether.

Dorian handed out the contents of his tray and drank for himself what was not taken, shrugging off disapproval from any who would label this further proof that he was a burgeoning alcoholic overdue for the rehab clinic, although Cian's reference to his recent escapades would have ordinarily been received as a call to fisticuffs. Rynn and Liesse tried on their uniforms--although if it had been up to the former, they would not have modeled them for the benefit of the whole family-- both meriting nods of stiff approval from Pierce. Although it did seem that Liesse's skirt was perhaps a half-inch shorter than was necessary, much to Rynn's secret dismay. The family took care of their newcomer in the parlor until Jacob rang for them all to gather in the dining room.
Around dusk, the rain began to fall. It made a pleasant pattering to complete the clinking of silverware and the boisterous hum of conversation and occasional shout of laughter. Even Rynn contributed, his interest captivated by Alistair's developing motor skills. The only person who seemed rather listless was Liesse, who occasionally glanced up at Malakai expectantly as though she thought to catch his eye. She wanted to say something to make him pay attention to her, to notice her despair, but what? She could think of nothing. Why did you kiss me?
But Courtland said something clever, and provoked a enthusiastic and vicious response from Antha, and any question from Liesse only sank deeper into her breast like a branding iron. Even when Courtland adopted the role of jester, begging for her sympathy, she only smiled weakly and let his question skim away unanswered. It brought her attention back to the conversation, though, at least long enough to catch Alistair's inquiry.
Perhaps it was cruel of her to be suspicious. He had such a dazzling smile, after all, such light in his eyes. There wasn't any chance that his heart had grown rotten over the years. She answered him with a shy shake of the head. "I've never been, either. But I've heard stories. They have elephants, right? And clowns, and rides. Ferris wheels? Is that the name? Or am I thinking of carnivals? What's the difference?" Her brow furrowed with legitimate concern.

Cian leaned back in his chair, cupping a flute of red wine in-between his fingers and watching the light play on its surface... Jacob had recommended the vintage to go along with their meal, and Cian liked to think that he'd misheard the date because their wine cellars really couldn't be that old, could they?
Then again, this was the Mayfair household he was questioning.
"Babies always come out pudgy at first, Courtland, you have nothing to worry about." he said mildly, putting his hand over Antha's before she could hold it up to receive a blade. Cian liked to think of this intervention as 'practicing diplomacy'. Lord knew he would certainly need it when the children came. Besides, she ought to think of it as setting a good example for Alistair. "And they'll be cuter than any other babies in the whole world, premonitions allow, and I dare you to try to keep Antha away from her funnel cake. But you'd better make your will out, first."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Surprisingly, Antha quieted at Cian's words, dropping back into her seat with a mute pout. Alistair, quietly observing Cian, first gave a slow blink of shock and then, gradually, the pleased smile broke out across his face. It was no small feat, soothing Antha in such an irrational, bloodthirsty rage, nobody knew that better than Alistair, but Cian had done it. "Try to deny me my sugar," Antha murmured irritably, picking up a nearby fruit tart and biting into it out of spite.
"Antha Evelyn, your idea of usual sugar consumption is no less than two-hundred grams a day. The recommended daily amount is ninety grams for an average person, never mind a slight little slip of a thing like you. It isn't good for the children."
The girl's eyes narrowed, flashing with anger again, and the cousins breathed a collective exasperated sigh that Vittorio had antagonized her again. They were only barely spared another outburst by Alistair hastily grabbing up her hand, closing his clumsy fingers over hers, and giving that easy smile. When she turned to glance at him, he shoved the rest of her fruit tart hastily into her mouth and that was the end of that. "Choke me, why don't you?"
"It was hardly that much."
"You don't know that."
"Yes I do."
"You could have killed me, I'll have you know."
"Eviecide? Never!"
"Au contraire! Have you ever wondered what death by smart mouth must be like, Airi? Because you seem quite keen on finding out."
The twins grinned at one another with dark amusement through their lightly threatening banter, the cousins watching them with odd, silent amusement until their speech tumbled abruptly into something that was not any language the cousins had ever heard of, something twisted and childish with stilted words, heavily dependent on intonation and small, expressive gestures. Julien in particular glanced around his newspaper and quirked an eyebrow. Dear God, they spoke twin. As if instant, unreadable telepathy didn't make their communication hard enough for outsiders to decipher, now they had their own damned lexicon.
"Children," Julien interrupted with a little groan of frustration, to which Antha and Alistair both paused to glance identically at him. He would have been lying if he said he was not at least a little unnerved. "No idioglossia at the table, if you please."
The twins glanced thoughtfully at one another, as if they were considering it. "Evie saygo?" Alistair asked questioningly.
Antha shrugged her shoulders slightly, tilting her head. "Sham. Kiki lye?"
"Alo."
Julien groaned anew. "Antha Evelyn! Alistair---" He paused, unsure of how to continue. They really needed to give him a middle name. "...Alistair."
With another flash of a glance at one another from the corners of their eyes, something seemed to come over the twins and they grinned identically, both leaning forward in mirrored unison, putting their elbows on the table and resting their chins lightly on their folded hands, eyes narrowing tauntingly at Julien. Unnerved, the man threw his newspaper down on the table and abruptly rose to quit the room. When he was gone, the twins fell back out of unison, both laughing.
"That was fun," Alistair murmured happily, beaming at Antha.
"That was creepy," Courtland corrected him, though he was grinning himself, "You freaked me out for a minute there. That whole twin speak thing wasn't for real, right?"
The twins glanced at him, blinking curiously for a moment before the whimsical, teasing grins came to their lips. "Oh, no, that was real," Antha informed him, leaning back in her seat, "When I was little, I had a very hard time picking up languages. I only had the spirits to learn from, and they spoke all sorts of different ones---English, Latin, French, Russian, Mongolian...so I managed to mesh them all together and mispronounce them and form a working vocabulary out of that. Naturally, Alistair picked it up."
"It was the only language I knew, for a while," the boy added, nodding very seriously, "Imagine my surprise when she started learning real languages. I thought they were the ones that were made up, it threw me for a real loop. I could only speak twin until Evie was six."
"Lilten," Antha murmured, teasingly.
Alistair gave her a sharp glance, that grin spreading back to his lips. "Evadur. Evie way anna."
Antha hmph'd, glancing impetuously off towards the windows. "Airi saygo."
"Evie, please." Alistair rolled his eyes, grinning, and Antha dropped the argument. Of the Mayfairs gathered, not one could remember a time that she had simply allowed someone else to win an argument. Though, they couldn't say they knew exactly what the argument was...
The astonished and subtly unnerved Mayfairs resumed their chatter, spurred on by Alistair's childlike excitement with everything. Antha was oddly silent, even when prodded for reactions. She didn't even respond to their teasing, which set them on edge, only sat pushing her food around her plate looking progressively more and more tired. Her head swam, though she didn't notice at first, her vision blurring. She was only keenly made aware of it when she felt that slight thump deep within her, one that was not physical, her power rattling the bars of its cage. The door hadn't completely closed since she had finally opened it the other night, and the power didn't fit quite right back into its cell, it kept prodding at it, pulsing within it. Antha had hoped---assumed, even---that when she brought Alistair back it would somewhat diminish her power, take away that hint of otherworldly power from being a remaining twin. It had not, it was all still boiling there beneath the surface, but now she had used it again to raise Alistair.
"Evie?" Alistair knew something wasn't right. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, because even Antha wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but he was worried.
The power wasn't content, it was meant to be used, and Antha was too tired to keep it at bay any longer. She could feel her control slipping even as she was dimly aware that her hand had slammed down on the table to support herself, her head falling into her other hand, her cousins all around the table rising in alarm, stepping towards her. The thunder outside stopped them, unnaturally loud, rattling the entire house, followed by a strike of lightning that crashed into the road outside the window and an even more deafening clap of thunder as the lights flickered dangerously.
Julien was the first one beside Antha, his hands roughly grabbing her shoulders as he went down on one knee, gazing up into her hazy eyes. "Antha can you hear me?" She couldn't, it was all a garbled mess in her ears, but she listened through Alistair. "Antha...Antha! Take control! You've held it in for twenty years, you can take charge of it now."
"This is different." For the first time in his remarkably short life, Alistair looked very serious. His eyes were sharp, focused, his thoughts racing visibly through them at the speed of light. "It's not just her power anymore."
No, that was it, Alistair had figured it out where she couldn't. Her power had always been the hardest to control when it was in close proximity to other sparks of promising power, and now there were two other such powers residing in the very same body as hers. That was the variable, the trigger, and now...
Another bolt of lightning crashed into the street, not ten feet from the first, and even when the accompanying thunder died down the house still trembled and groaned, quaking angrily with every board. The chandelier clattered its crystals and then, with no warning, dropped in a deafening shower of sparks, sending the Mayfairs screaming to the edges of the room. Courtland, Pierce, and Michael had gone to Antha beside Julien and Alistair, tried to calm her, to reach inside her and help push the power back down, but all hastily recoiled from the sheer amount of it they found there. Malakai stood staring in terrified silence at his sister, standing between Liesse and the chandelier, his arms still loosely around her though they had initially grabbed her so tight when it had crashed, sending razor sharp shards of crystal and glass raking down his back, but he didn't notice that.
Finally, Courtland and Julien found themselves hastily pushed out of the way by Alistair's pale arms, standing aside and watching as he went down on his knees before his sister. His hands found hers first, her fingers tensing around his, then curved slowly over her cheeks. "Evie." Her hands came up unsteadily, grasping his shoulders, and when their eyes locked something seemed to pass between them, something that the other Mayfairs could physically feel. The chain that bound Alistair to Antha, as it did the other cousins to her, rattled violently and then tightened, straining against the pressure, and finally the quaking of the house died down, the storm outside soothing into something lighter.
Antha let out a long, wispy breath and then abruptly went limp in her seat, unconscious. Courtland panicked, screaming her name, but Alistair shushed him. "Cian," he called softly, turning his gaze to his brother-in-law, "Can you carry her upstairs? I don't have the strength."
"Is she alright?!" Courtland pressed, his voice high with panic.
"It's fine now," Alistair assured him quietly, his gaze still locked on Antha's closed eyes, "She just needs to rest."
"I'll be the judge of that," Vittorio murmured, and followed after Cian and Alistair as Antha was taken to her room.
It didn't take long for them to return, Vittorio pressing the point that Antha needed to rest, undisturbed. Cian could stay, he said---should stay, in case something happened---but God help him if he disturbed her sleep. "She appears to be fine. I'll take her to the hospital tomorrow morning, just to be sure, but none of the damage seems to be physical."
"What was that?" Courtland asked hesitantly, holding the dustpan for Jacob as he swept the shattered crystals up.
It was Alistair, brows furrowed and eyes dark, who answered lowly, "Her control slipped, just a bit. She worked her magic too much and couldn't push it back."
"That was 'a bit'?" Pierce questioned, his tone thick with disbelief, "Don't get me wrong, I've never questioned that Antha was powerful beyond anything I've ever seen, but that..."
Alistair's expression further darkened, his gaze set longingly on the stairs. "Antha could make hurricanes, if she wanted. She could bring volcanoes up from the ground. She could set plagues loose on the city and kill everyone. But once that power gets out...it never goes back down completely."
"Don't you have the same power?" This from Jack, somewhat uncertainly, very nervously. "You have the same blood she does, you're a second-generation witch born of witch blood."
But Alistair shook his head solemnly. "No, not the same. Similar, but not equal."
"You're certain that she'll be alright?" Julien pressed, eyes glancing narrowly between Vittorio and Alistair. They both nodded very surely. "And the children?"
"They're fine. As I said, nothing physical."
Julien let out a low sigh of relief, massaging his temples just in time for the back door to slam violently shut. Glancing up and towards the kitchen, where all of the cousins now stared, he managed to groan, "Where is that boy running off to now?"

Outside, Malakai ignored the slamming door and tromped across the back patio, throwing the screen door hastily out of his way and came to stand on the edge of the pool, staring down at the glowing blue depths, and abruptly dropped down into it. He lingered there for a while, floating idly in the water and blinking his eyes against the harsh chlorine, glad for something to burn away the tears, and then surfaced with a great gulp of air, brushing a hand back through his dripping hair. He floated for another moment on his back then, running his fingers through the cold water and staring up at the stars through the gaps in the leaves.
He couldn't stand being still. Lifting himself out of the pool, he traced the old, familiar path through the orchard, past Suzanne's statue, and up to the tree house, climbing the worn old boards with an agitated vigor. Once carefully sheltered in the tree house, surrounded by limbs and leaves and blooming vines...that was when Malakai broke down.
He sobbed; he kicked his legs childishly at the opposite wall; he tore leaves from the tree and ripped them up, throwing the shreds with all his might; he pulled his wet arm over his mouth and he screamed, and finally collapsed onto the rough old floorboards, hands balled into fists that he pressed against his eyes, and cried.
He had never seen his sister as vulnerable before. Never seen her as anything but all-powerful and omniscient, a living god, never to be undone. He had always been terrified of her death, always worried incessantly about her well-being and terrible life decisions, but this...
She was going to die, and watching her struggle under her own power had forced him to realize it. Sweet little Antha, who had followed him in every step for months when she had come to live at Mayfair Manor. He had read her bedtime stories, let her sleep snuggled up in his bed, run around on playgrounds with her, kissed her scraped knees. Antha had always loved him without exception, without limit, had looked up to him when they were younger and protected him as she grew into her own. He was her only brother she could call just that, not a lover, just her big brother.
She was going to die. Gone, dead, all of that blinding light snuffed out. She was going to leave him forever, in the most horrific way, and there was nothing he could do, no way he could forestall it. He couldn't bring her back as he had Liesse and Alistair, both because there was no way to call in that overpowering spirit and because she had absolutely forbidden it. Never mind the mess his life was going to turn into without her, he was helpless when he was left on his own.
Something like a breeze touched his cheek, indescribably cold, flicking a tear hastily away from his cheek. Malakai collected himself, rising to sit and wipe his eyes, his back hunched against the tiny wall. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have---"
A soft breath of air shushed him, the air stirring, and Malakai glanced up into kind, sparkling blue eyes, a reassuring smile that reminded him distantly of his mother. (What very little he remembered of her, that is. He might have made that part up.) "Hush, angel." Again that cold touch of air like a breeze, something reminiscent of lips brushing his forehead, and then the ghost drew back again, sitting back on her heels with her elegant skirts pooled around her, the long coils of her black hair cascading beautifully over her shoulders.
Angelique Mayfair had really been more like Antha than anyone gave the current designee credit for. A princess, beautiful and charming, full of laughter and light. She had unified the two distinct branches of the Mayfair family with her influence, and marked the occasion by building Mayfair Manor. Her life had been a long succession of parties and lovers and unabashed adoration from the city. But Angelique's temper had been nothing compared to Antha's, nothing more than girlish tantrums, and she had not had the same spark of insanity. Funny that such a woman could produce a granddaughter such as Marguerite.
There was the softest, sweetest laugh to accompany that dazzling smile, the gentle whisper, "No more tears, mon petit."
Childishly, which somewhat marred his point, Malakai murmured, "I'm not little."
Angelique continued to smile, her head tilting just a few degrees. "But you were just the other day. Time does move so strangely, when you are dead. Now why the tears, precious boy?" His eyes diverted, his head turning to glance out through the trees at the curtains of Antha's bedroom, and Angelique's eyes flickered knowingly. "Do not fret for the dying; fear for the living. While you all must suffer her loss, we shall take care of her on the other side."
"Have you seen it?" His voice cracked halfway through, the tears starting fresh. "Her death? The blood, and the pain---the whole gruesome mess?"
"The act of death is fleeting. Brief moments tucked between a lifetime and eternity. She has lived well for so short a time, don't you think?"
"I don't want to be this helpless. I don't want to have to accept this, to let her go off to her death one night and never return." The boy shook his head, hastily wiping away the tears that glistened on his cheeks, and for a moment sat silently staring up at the sloping ceiling of the small, suspended gazebo. He had never dared to ask before, never wanted to hear the answer, but for the first time in his life Malakai muttered lowly, without hesitation, "Where's my mother?"
That much made Angelique pause for a few moments, her smile wavering thoughtfully. "Around, usually. She was never exceptionally strong of spirit, you know that. It was why she tried so hard to create a great source of power for her successor---power that carried over into you and your brother before it settled within Antha. And she did not die here, it isn't easy for her to linger as we do."
Malakai let the silence stretch on for a few moments, idly picking at the cuff of his wet sleeve. "I'm barely even a Mayfair, you know that right? I don't have any of the social graces, none of the charm or confidence, just the blood and name."
Angelique's laugh this time was full and unrestrained, full of sweet amusement. "Are you saying you must be certifiably insane to be a true Mayfair these days? Well...you might be right. But aren't you insane in your own right? To go against the grain, this...fashion of insanity, amongst our blood. To be a creature all your own, unique in this web of similar threads, takes a certain amount of insanity, don't you think?"
For a moment, Malakai just stared strangely at the ghost, still smiling so prettily at him. And then, abruptly, he laughed. It felt good to laugh, it had been too long. "You and Antha will be good company, I'm sure. I wish she could see you, too."
Her demeanor brightened at having successfully lifted the boy's mood, Angelique gave her usual passing laugh. "Ah, not everyone can be as open as you, angel. Everyone is always so preoccupied, their magic employed here and there. They only see what is readily apparent." Her pale, slender fingers came out to pinch his cheek affectionately, though there was not enough matter present in the form with which to make contact. "You are our special boy in that regard. It is how you do what you do. Now..." Angelique's smile widened, growing just a touch mischievous as her eyes focused a little more intently on Malakai. "Tell me about the girl."
Malakai blinked his eyes curiously at her. "The girl?"
An exasperated sigh followed his confusion, startlingly like Antha. "The girl, mon petit, the girl!"
He instantly reddened, his eyes taking on those familiar panicked tones, then somber ones. "Oh, you mean Liesse."
"Of course, angel, the girl! Tell me! Oh, I do miss the romantic entanglements of the living world. Evie darling has been my shining light in that regard. But oh, when it's the real thing...ah, it's so lovely, isn't it? So go on, tell me!"
Malakai, his cheeks still colored, stammered and tried to find his words. "She's Cian's sister, you know. I had to bring her back from the other side."
"Oh yes, I saw her suspended there, poor darling, dead but not one of us."
"She's all light. Not like Antha---blinding and searing, twisted with darkness. Her light's gentle. She..." He threw a hand up to shield his eyes, bashfully turning his head away from Angelique. "I don't know, I don't want to talk about it!"
Angelique gave another light laugh, cooing and patting his head. "Then tell me about the brother. Cian's, I mean."
Malakai glanced curiously up, blinking his confusion, but Angelique only smiled and nodded her head in the direction of Antha's window. Understanding flooded in. "Ooooo~h...they're like dragons. They're essentially the same on some level, they're still dragons, they just look different. They snarl and snap and butt heads just because they can. But..."
Again that slightly mischievous smile, the quiet tone of revelation. "You think it should have been him, don't you?"
Instantly, Malakai's head shook vigorously from side to side in fierce denial. "No. Cian's better for her. He's good to her---he loves her. He'll be a good father. And he's kind to us, he actually likes us. Or at least I think he does. Rynn hates us, all of us. I think he might try to kill me if he finds out I kissed his sister. He thinks I'm like all the others." Uncharacteristically, Malakai scowled. "I hate that. I hate being compared to them. Never mind that it's unflattering, but I'm not like them. It would be easier if I were, but I'm just not. I don't want a hundred lovers and crazy, drug-addled adventures. I want naps. I want someone to nap with. I want my rose gardens and my poetry and music. Good music---classical and jazz and that old bewitching lounge music, none of those harsh songs Jack is always blasting, or Rowan's inane pop music." The boy found at about this time that he was running out of breath. He was not used to talking so much at once, not even to Antha. But the words kept coming, pouring from his lips, so he took a deep breath and kept going. "Why is that so much to ask? Why do I have to pretend to be involved with a psychotic lesbian stalker just to get the family off of my back? When do I get to make my own choices for myself in life? I can't even bear to move out, or tell Suzette to leave me alone, or tell Julien to shut up, that there is romance left in the world---there has to be, otherwise it's just too sad---or tell Rynn I'm not afraid of him. The last part I can't say because it's too childish and I'm an adult, I'm not allowed to say things like that, but everyone else can because they refuse to grow up. And I just wish he'd stop making up his mind about utter nonsense, and then telling Liesse the nonsense. I'm not like them. I just..." The boy ran out of steam abruptly, a soft sigh escaping his lips before he slumped back, taking deep, carefully measured breaths.
Marguerite gave another small, passing laugh, something more like a 'hmm'. "It is a shame you can only be so open with the dead. Imagine if you could say all of this to the people who count."
"You count, Angelique," he murmured gently, "None of us would be here without you."
"Oh, sweet boy, hear that? You do have Mayfair charm after all."
"Nothing like Antha, or Courtland. Everybody loves Courtland. He could charm a cobra, or a honey badger. I think he's even starting to get into Rynn's head. Even if he's not...well, that's where all of his energy is right now, and he never gives up."
"No?! Oh, that boy! Incorrigible as ever!" Her laughter continued to ring through the small space. "You have to admire that sort of dauntless spirit, don't you think? No rules, no restrictions, no fear...imagine if everyone could live that way."
"Fire," Malakai murmured shortly, "Fire everywhere, and population spikes to overrun the world in a generation."
Angelique just continued to laugh, settling down only to touch an affectionate hand to the boy's cheek, just beginning to cool down again. "You could stand to take at least one lesson from him, mon petit. No fear. Go get the girl!"
"It isn't that simple!"
"Is it not? It certainly is for Courtland. If so for him, then why not for you?"
Malakai had nothing to say to that and eventually, her energy exhausted, Angelique dissolved into nothingness. Malakai remained, sitting still and dripping dry, pondering the words of his deceased ancestor.
She could really be too much like Antha when she put her mind to it.

Speaking of Antha, the girl was not entirely alright. Physically she was fine, but her mind...she stirred and shifted fretfully in her sleep, her brow occasionally creasing with concern. Her fingers twitched and her breath hitched, returning as a shuddering sigh.
Voices everywhere, from every direction. In the dark mental space of sleep, she had no idea which way to turn, or how to turn. Taking advantage of this particular helplessness, the darkness descended upon her all the more and at the core of it, there was Nero with all of his vile, foreign hissing, his very certain threats.
In the parlor below, pressed down into the couch, Alistair shuddered and paled, clenching his eyes shut and willing with all of his power, Go away. Stay away. No more.
It almost worked, except that it was Antha's head and Antha was afraid to let the slightest hint of her power surface lest it overwhelm her again. But Alistair brought her close enough to the surface for her eyelids to flutter, to give her a flash of light, enough consciousness to murmur Nicolae's name before spiraling back down into the darkness.
It had probably been too much to hope for that Nicolae would not come chasing after her when Nero arrived to claim her life. He had been there before, in some of the flashes of premonition, but not always and Antha had hoped to keep him out of them for good. But now he was in all of them, all of the subtle variations, always struggling in vain not to let the inevitable take its course. Foolish boy, she thought...she had bound the family to him precisely to stop this from happening, to stop him from trying to follow her into the grave. But she was realizing too late that the slim chance of saving her was worth more to Nicolae than the entire family, or Rynn and Liesse and Cian and the various witches and vampires of the city.
Foolish, terrible boy.
As with Malakai in his moment of distress, the ghosts stirred for Antha, first in the dapper, fair-haired, blue-eyed young form that had come to visit with Cian once already, incredibly long legs stretching down over the side of the bed as Louis smoothed down Antha's hair, running careful fingers over her slightly fevered brow. Surprisingly, she settled slightly at that---enough for Louis to pull the sheets up over her bare legs for a moment anyways, before she fretfully kicked them back off and the phantom ventured a small, affectionate smile before turning his attention gently on Cian. "It looks good on you," he murmured simply, with just a hint of a smile as he tapped his own lapel where the diamond heart pin that Antha had given to Cian was recreated in ghostly shades. Then his attention was back on Antha, with all the loving, concerned devotion of a father, his intangible fingers idly stroking her hair.
The next ghost came moments later, with a great deal more effort, first flickering and then drifting into transparent being on the other side of the bed, leaning across it to touch careful fingers to Antha's hand.
Louis scowled without looking, his voice sharp as he said, "You have no right."
The ghost---a woman, dressed in a considerably modern dress of black satin that fit tightly to her shapely form and tastefully decked out in a number of lavish jewels, her fine white-blonde hair loosely curled and pulled over to spill down one shoulder---scowled right back at him, her china-blue eyes as sharp as Antha's in one of her fouler moods. "I have every right. More so than you. It isn't easy for me to reach into this plane, so I will ask you to kindly shut your mouth."
Louis's eyes sharpened in response, full of disgusted indignation. "More so than me, you say? I raised her, my darling girl, every bit as dear to me as my own daughter, and she loved me as the father she never had---that you deprived her of. Look at what you left her to and tell me you have any right to come lingering near her, Mary Beth."
Mary Beth's hand clenched into an angry fist, the lamp nearby flickering with her anger, but then her own image flickered with it and the effect was somewhat lost. As Angelique had mentioned, Mary Beth did not have the kind of power to easily bring herself into the land of the living, and her energy paid a heavy toll. So, instead of bickering with Louis as she had when she was alive, the woman turned instead to her daughter, reaching for a stray curl against her cheek until Louis slapped her hand away. "If she senses you, it will only disturb her more. For once in your existence, Mary Beth, stop haunting her."
Again, Mary Beth did not bother responding to him. She chose to spend her energy instead turning to look at Cian, gracing him with a small, regal smile. The resemblance to her children was readily apparent, if the coloring was off, as well as to Julien. It was easy to see how, in life, she had been the most elite of socialites. Between her beauty, her refined air, and her elegant movements, she was perfectly groomed for the part. "You must be my son-in-law, then," she purred, and it very nearly could have been Antha speaking, her polite, knowing smile that couldn't help but to be both charming and a little daunting, "They say such awful things about my mothering, but see how my daughter has taken after me?" The woman moved in that wispy, fluid way of an unpracticed ghost, standing before Cian to lay an affectionate hand on his cheek. "Ah, yes, you do remind me of Michael. He was so handsome when we first met, such a gentle soul. He faced the family for me, as an outsider, as you have for Antha Evelyn."
"And look at what you did to him," Louis hissed, turning with a sharp glare to Mary Beth, "Abandoned him here with Julien's b*****d children and ran off with a mortal man to bear him more of Julien's bastards." Louis scoffed, shaking his head and turning his gentle attention back to Antha, though he still managed to murmur venomously, "Did you ever love anyone other than yourself, Mary Beth? Certainly no one that we knew of. Not even Julien, the poor, miserable soul, consumed with his obsessive love for you."
Mary Beth turned, a little unsteadily, reverting back to her indignant rage. "How dare you accuse me of not loving my children! Everything I did, though you all found it so distasteful, I did for them. Look at what I have made! Look at the power Antha Evelyn possesses!"
"She didn't need power," Louis rounded on her, turning with a razor-edged glare, his voice uncharacteristically raised, "She needed a mother! She needed a proper upbringing! Yes, Mary Beth, look at what you have made! She is ruined with power, crazed with it! Very soon, it will be the death of her! Look at your sons! Nicolae, with all of his abandonment issues, forever starved for female attention to the point that he lost the only girl he ever loved for it! Malakai, the poor meek, lonely boy, terrified of being rejected as his mother rejected him! And Alistair...you didn't even name him, Mary Beth! He was left to die, a nameless infant, buried haphazardly in the swamps without any of us ever knowing he had existed!"
"I wonder if perhaps there isn't a better time and place for this back and forth, Louis?"
Louis just continued to scowl, eyes narrowed at Mary Beth. "Non. I'm glad that Cian could hear this. No one else dares speak it so plainly, and he should know. He should see you at least once, hear this at least once, so that he can know more precisely the root of his wife's problems. I want him to be able to understand why, out of his brother-in-laws, one is manic with his need for attention and the other fears rejection too greatly to ever even try. I want him to know just why it is of such dire importance to Antha that her children have their real father and that they never have to question her devotion to them. I want him to see how, with one woman's selfish acts, lives were permanently ruined."
For a while, the ghost of Mary Beth could only stand staring at Louis, aghast. But then Antha made a small, fretful sound, her brow furrowing and fingers twitching uneasily, kicking at the covers by her feet, and Mary Beth vanished as if she had never been, leaving Louis to soothe her daughter. When she was calm again, he glanced at Cian from the corner of his eye, still stroking Antha's hair as he murmured lowly, "I am sorry you had to hear that, Cian. This house, this spiritual sphere, is not Mary Beth's place and I have not gotten the chance to see her since she died. You can't imagine how I've longed to give her a piece of my mind all these years." Louis sighed, gently cupping Antha's pale cheek, and continued with a great amount of gravity, "Never let them forget, Cian. Your children...never let them doubt that their mother loved them above all else, even herself. She cannot help what she is---sick with power, crazed with her own abilities. Ah...hush, ma fifille." He laid the back of his cold, phantom hand across her forehead, silencing her feverish stirring. "Death is not far from her, it moves across continents and oceans even as we speak, seeking her out. She will be with us soon, but she will be content so long as her children are safe from it, so long as they know their mother loved them."
With a last fleeting smile at Cian, Louis leaned down to lay a kiss upon Antha's forehead, whispering, "I'll be waiting for you again when the time comes, ma petite fille." Then he flickered and faded, leaving Antha still and quiet, her breathing soft and even.
She stirred long enough to turn on her side, eyelashes fluttering, murmuring a groggy, "Cian?" and then falling back into easy unconsciousness. Downstairs, Alistair's lungs expelled all of their air in one great sigh before his eyes slid shut and he joined his sister in her deep sleep, sunk listlessly into the couch. Courtland, giving a gentle, amused smile, planted a quick kiss on his forehead and covered him with a blanket. "He's all tuckered out, poor thing. But Antha must be alright, if he can sleep like that."
Pierce, who was not quite the optimist his cousin was, stared at the boy with rapidly darkening eyes and murmured a low, "Or he's conserving his energy."
"Oh hush, everything will be fine."
Pierce rolled his eyes. "When is everything ever fine with Antha? Not since before I can remember, certainly." he ave a small, humorless laugh, still staring down at Alistair. "No, something's always after her. I would be, if I wasn't family and didn't love her. Hers is power worth dying for, don't you think?"
"Pierce," Vittorio snapped sharply, sitting on a loveseat to the side with a still teary-eyed Dolly Jean, trying to comfort her.
"What, am I supposed to pretend it's not? You've seen those little flashes of it over the years the same as I have, stronger than anything any of us have, and that's only the surface. Think about it, if you didn't love Evie because she's family...could you really sit by and let someone else just walk around with that kind of power? It begs to be stolen, or destroyed. Even if it's hopeless, there are always reckless bastards like me who will still try, consequences be damned." And then he turned to Rynn, making a gesture for him to join the conversation. "Tell me you wouldn't try if you had the opportunity, Rynn."
"He already has," Vittorio reminded him, patting Dolly Jean's head as if he weren't paying attention to the other cousins, "For whatever reason it was."
"Yeah, I was never perfectly clear on that," Courtland added in a thoughtful murmur, "Something about trying to sacrifice Antha? She's never really said anything about the particulars, now that I think about it. Whatever it was, Nicolae won't let go of it. But ah, qui vivra, verra. He's our darling little boy now."
Pierce, smirking tauntingly, purred simply, "Boy, yes. Darling? ...well, he's a bit venomous to be darling, don't you think?"
For once, it was Courtland to administer the smack in the back of the head, pouting fiercely at Pierce. "You're breaking the rules! Don't you remember what I told you?!" Still pouting, he threw his arms possessively around Rynn, pressing a fleeting kiss to his cheek. "How do you expect him to love us if we don't force our love on him first?!"
Jack, watching with hazy eyes from over the back of the couch, murmured uncertainly, "Courtland, that sounds dangerously like rape..."
"It's not rape if it's just love!"
"I'm afraid of what your policy of forceful 'love' is going to turn into when you see him in his school uniform again..."
Abruptly, Pierce was all serious business. "Courtland, if you mess up that uniform, I'll kill you. I don't want to have to go taking his measurements all over again, and those things are a nightmare to have properly fitted."
Courtland just whined, releasing Rynn and impetuously stamping his foot. "Why does everyone think I'm going to rape him?! I'm not! Since when do I have to resort to rape?!"
"Rape's not so much about need as it is power."
Another frustrated whine, gesturing angrily at Jack. "That's what I have Jack for!"
The boy in question just nodded easily, murmuring, "It's true, I'm rather fond of chains."
Armand, seated in the corner chain smoking, called abruptly, "Stop. Just stop right there, we don't need particulars. And for the love of God, someone go get Malakai, I'll feel terrible if he's drowning himself."
"Wait until Antha wakes up, she owes him one save from drowning."
Again, Courtland was the one to dole out a smack on the back of the head. "He would be dead by the time she woke up!"
"Oh for heaven's sake, he's not going to drown himself. He's too responsible, he has children to help Cian raise. It's Malakai, he's in the garden. Malakai is always in the garden, stop fussing over him!"
"He's also a terribly miserable soul at the moment, so pardon us if we're worried, Tori."
"What does he have to be miserable over?!"
Armand sighed, rolling his eyes at Vittorio. "You're so unromantic, Tori. How do you put up with him, Dolly Jean? Malakai has already lost his mother to death and his twin to half-death, and is about to lose his darling, precious little sister to slaughter. He finally fell in love---I say finally with great gravity, in case you didn't notice---and it's turning out to be quite a messy, awkward affair for him. And, poor boy, he just wants a quiet, picturesque little life, but he's trapped in the body of a Mayfair, stuck with wondrous powers that he has no interest in. Ah, and I think we've given him something of an inferiority complex."
"Rubbish."
"It's true, it's true! Poor meek little boy, he feels things so deeply. He's endless material for my novels, you know."
Jack, bored with Courtland and Pierce's bickering nearby, turned with piqued interest towards Armand. "How so?"
"Don't you know? Women love sensitive, gentle little creatures like Malakai, with his flowers and poetry and classical music and those damned sweaters. Men like Courtland and Dorian make for a good romp in the beginning of the story, but they want it to end with a little gentleman like Malakai."
"You don't say?"
"Certainly. How many women in this city have lusted after us, wanted us for a fling, tried to trick us into unprotected sex to cash in on the Mayfair fortune?"
"All of them."
"Precisely. Now how many have tried to seduce Malakai into marrying them?"
Jack paused with a thoughtful pursing of his lips. "...all of them."
Armand grinned with the satisfaction of having proven his point. "There you have it. And that, my dear cousin, is the formula to my own fortune as an author."
"Smut peddler," Courtland corrected him in passing, only pausing from his argument with Pierce.
"Romance! I write romance! Don't add to the conversation when you are not listening to it!" And then, giving a small sigh of annoyance, diverted his attention purposefully to Rynn. "Speaking of which, you'll have to watch yourself from now on. You were relatively unknown before, but now the floodgates are open and the vultures will begin to swoop in. There are women out there who will do anything for a little financial security. They'll do whatever they can to trick you, so you have to be very cautious."
"Why does Rynn have to be cautious? He's family, but he's not a Mayfair, he shouldn't be a target."
Armand quirked a curious eyebrow, his lips parting in a slow, amused grin. "Oh, don't you know?"
Courtland and Pierce paused for the irresistible allure of a secret, glancing over to Armand. "Know what?"
He chuckled to himself, settling back in his chair cradling his glass of bourbon and observing his cousins, relishing the moment. "Oh, this is lovely. I know something you don't know. Something about Antha, no less."
Courtland and Pierce rushed forward all at once, accosting him with the cries of, "Tell me, tell me, tell me!"
He held out a hand to press them back, drawing his silence out for several satisfying minutes. "Alright, alright. Promise you won't tell?"
"We promise, we promise!"
Still grinning, he pretended to mull it over for another moment and then finally graciously relented. "Antha's cut Rynn and Liesse into the legacy."
For a moment, no one said anything. The boys blinked at him, confused, while he sat enjoying his moment of superiority. "She did? For real?"
"Oh yes. They're in for as much as any usual Mayfair, and Cian is cut in for as much as a mainstream, plus the governing of Vanessa and Sebastien's allowances until they turn of age. Barclay told me the other day when I was at his office. She wrote it up the day before the family meeting, before Julien became head of the family and had the power to oppose it."
Courtland laughed, shaking his head. "As if that would stop her. It's her money, it all belongs to her, if she wants to give Rynn and Liesse an allowance from it, Julien can't very well do anything about it."
"It's a little surprising, though," Pierce murmured thoughtfully, "And it's not like they need it."
"You think so? I'm not surprised at all. And, as I understand it, she's hoping Rynn will go to college. Education is expensive, you know." And then, with a sharp, teasing grin, "Or maybe you don't. Irregardless, it's enough that child support would be pricey for Rynn, making him a suitable target."
Courtland gave small sigh, shaking his head as if he were disgusted witht he idea. "Oh, these shameless women. You may as well just get yourself fixed, Rynn. It's a terrible hassle, being constantly on the watch for them."
"No, no, no." The boys all gave a start, turning to look at Alistair as he stirred on the couch, a hand to his forehead as he murmured, "Vanessa and Sebastien would be so upset. They want Calais cousins, and he's the only one left with the blood for it."
"Calais cousins? That sounds dandgerous. Wait, how do you know what Antha's unborn children want?!"
The boy groaned, sitting up straight and glancing over the back of the couch, bleary-eyed. Jack, sitting a little ways away on the couch, reached out to idly stroke his pretty scarlet curls. "Antha is in my head, and I'm in Antha's. We're connected. Vanessa and Sebastien exist within her, they're in her head, so they're in mine, and I'm in theirs."
"Too complicated, moving on. Why do they want Calais cousins."
The boy shrugged, cocking his head as if it were a stupid question. "They're half-Calais, they want Calais cousins."
"Why not half-siblings? Seems like that would be better."
Alistair immediately and emphatically shook his head. "They wouldn't stand for it, they refuse to accept that Cian could ever be with anyone but their mother. Evie's tried reasoning with them, she said they should be happy for their daddy if he finds someone when she's gone, but they refuse. So to their minds, Uncle Rynn has to give them Calais-blooded cousins."
"That just sounds dangerous," Pierce murmured, "Knowing even a little of the Calais legacy."
"They have it under control."
"They what?"
"Their Calais blood, they know how to control it. They say it'll be harder for the Calais heir to control, but they know how to deal with it, so they'll help their little cousin."
Yet again, Armand sighed, calling, "Please stop, this is all starting to freak me out." And then, with a smaller, wispier sigh, "They're going to be every bit as precocious as Antha, aren't they?"
Alistair only gave a half-laugh and an affectionate smile. "Quite. Especially Bastien. Evie teases him that he takes equally after her and his Uncle Rynn."
"I thought Sebastien hated Rynn?"
"He did," Alistair admitted slowly, and then shook his head, "I mean he would have, if Antha hadn't changed the course of things. If they'd kept on fighting, if Antha hadn't taken him back from Cyrus, then Bastien would have hated him. But Antha didn't like that, so she changed things before that could happen, before Sebastien developed enough to start forming opinions."
"Is that why she was so fiercely set on getting Rynn back from that bloodsucking creep?"
Alistair hesitated. "...partly. Anyways, Antha wanted her children to love their Uncle Rynn and they do."
"Vanessa doesn't have any problems with him, then?"
"Vanessa doesn't have any problems with anyone or anything. She takes after Angelique, a sweet little princess, all light and bubbly. Antha says Vanessa is the family's reward for dealing with her own vile temper and wild behavior."
"So they're aware of being Calais, then?" It was clear by the rapt attention the boys were paying groggy Alistair that they were getting a real kick out of this, the secret look into Antha's head and her unborn children, who they loved with all their hearts already.
"Keenly. They're Mayfairs before all else, but half of their heritage is Calais and they know it. They even told Antha they want to keep the Calais name."
"Really?"
"Yep. Vanessa Aria Calais Mayfair and Sebastien Asher Calais Mayfair." The boy beamed, eyes shining happily. "Vanessa's middle name is after me. Airi and Aria, get it?"
"And Bastien's middle name is the same as Nicolae's..." Pierce gave a snort of laughter, shaking his head. "That's not going to raise awkward questions or anything."
But Alistair shook his head in that emphatic way. "They look enough like Cian, it won't be an issue. When their paternity is in question---as it will be, because it's Antha---it's Rynn they're going to suspect."
Again that laughter, more abrupt this time. "Oh, that's rich. Rynn and Antha." Reaching out, Pierce ruffled the boy in question's hair, grinning. "You're not that much of a stud. Not yet."
"It would be a God among men who could tempt Antha away from Cian now," Armand murmured thoughtfully, and then covertly watched for the expected reaction from his cousins.
Jack and Pierce both quirked an eyebrow, glancing slyly to one another. It was hard to ignore such a challenge, but Courtland stamped his foot and rapidly shook his head, yelling, "No, no, no, no! That's terrible! Don't even think about trying it, we love Cian! No cheating!"
"Court, you're the one who's always trying to get Cian into bed. You're hardly on moral ground to tell us not to try and tempt her into extramarital affairs."
"That's different! Antha told Cian he didn't have to be monogamous! Cian said no such thing to her!"
"...he didn't not say it."
Courtland outright slapped Pierce, who then snickered and clutched his cheek. "If you hurt Cian, I'll kill you."
"I won't, I won't...it's not like I was going to tell him over breakfast 'by the way, I nailed your wife.' I've slept with enough married women to know how this goes."
"Pierce, look at me." Courtland clapped his hands down on his cousin's shoulders, holding him still and making gestures between their eyes, his very serious. "Do you see these eyes? Do you see how ******** serious I am? Don't even try it." And then, turning abruptly to pierce Rynn with the same serious gaze, pointing a finger at him. "You either. I don't know what you two do up in the airship and the laboratory, but don't try anything!"
"Court," Jack sighed, rolling his eyes, "Stop treating Rynn like Pierce."
"Why not? He treats Malakai like Pierce, it's only fair." And then, that sharp gaze returning to lock to Jack. "You either, you don't try anything, I'll chain you up for a week and won't let you go." And then, eyes flashing uncertainly to Alistair who quirked a curious eyebrow, "I don't know about you."
Alistair only shrugged his shoulders, leaning his head into the gentle stroke of Jack's fingers on his hair. "I practically am Evie. What would be the point?"
"Good, good...as long as we're all clear here."
Pierce scoffed, shaking his head. "Like you don't want just one last go at Evie. You remember that thing she does with---"
"That's not the point!" And then, his fierce pout wavering, "And it's kind of hard to forget. Shut up, don't remind me."  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn felt the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen and rise before the first bolt of lightning even hit. Cian saw the blood drain away from her cheeks, as Antha slumped down beside him, and the family collectively rose, united by abrupt concern. The room began to fill with an unearthly groaning—child of necromancers, Rynn could not help but be reminded of the distressed souls help captive within the Calais’s own thaumaturgical constructs, but it was practical Cian whose gaze went to the elaborate moldings above their heads as the chandelier began to quaver. Lightning flashed outside—a chunk of sculpted plaster hit the shoulder of his jacket—and instinct seized hold of his actions. Antha’s husband grabbed by both shoulders and yanked, quite without thought of tenderness, her limp body beneath the table. The Calais family had stored their magic in architecture for centuries, building their manor on a foundation etched in runes, every sun-baked brick warded as an amulet would be. When their father had the rare occasion to work spells, the entire house trembled wrathfully. It was like being inside of a giant amplifier, one made of mortar and glass and timber instead of metal. As a result, the Calais youngsters had been well-instructed on what to do during severe tremors if one should happen to find oneself inside.
He had not pulled Antha into his arms a moment too soon. The chandelier hit the table with a colossal ringing of noise—china shattered, glass flew everywhere, and a long pointed spike of cut crystal went straight through the wooden panelling on the other side of the room. Jacob would never be able to get the wine stains out of their linen. Cian barely noticed. He couldn’t stop the panic from welling up in him, hard and fast as the lightning—his mind was racing, impossible to think straight, desperately searching for the familiar presence within her body which he had come to recognize as Antha, Evie—but there was nothing in her, not a whisper, until Alistair laid his hands on her. Cian felt the lump in his throat dissolve as the tension, the raw stench of power, drained from the room. Liesse’s kittens would be absolutely traumatized, wherever they were.
Rynn was under the table, too. His breathing was rapid, his pulse high and throbbing in his throat, but when he noticed Cian looking at him he put on his best impression of serenity. “This house needs to be reinforced,” he muttered, glancing down at the lavish Persian carpet beneath his knees and surreptitiously unknotting his fingers from the lush threads.
He crawled out from under the table and stood up, brushing fragments of glass off his trousers. When he saw Malakai—more like, when he saw the way Liesse’s fingers clenched into the back of his shirt, as he stood between the scene of destruction and Rynn’s twin—well, it was a good thing that the other boy bolted. Cian, by this point, had gathered Antha and her skirts in both arms, like a much-disheveled prince at the end of Snow White. Something in this moment felt like a premonition, although he refused to think of what, to wonder whether they would even have a body left after— to put in a casket and cover in flowers— or burn, and scatter ashes across seven continents like stardust, if Antha preferred—
He forced himself to watch for the shallow rise and fall of her breast as he carried her upstairs, just to reassure himself that she was still breathing. Their bed had been made; he laid her down upon the mattress as tenderly as one would a child, and sank down to sit next to her. Upstairs, out of sight of the family, his broad shoulders bowed with despair, and his hand—wedding band glinting—twined slowly into hers. Cian did not have long to dwell on his thoughts, however. There was a familiar prickle in the air which he could recognize as a manifestation, even before he looked up into the translucently blue eyes of Louis Mayfair once again. The woman who accompanied him, Cian could not have recognized—but it became apparent, after a moment of their conversation, what role—or lack thereof—she had played in Antha’s life. The ghosts bickered; Cian bore witness patiently, with incalculable reservation of judgement.
When Mary Beth disappeared, he slowly turned his face towards Louis. The expression he wore brought to mind the years which had yet to settle upon his features. It wasn’t his place to intervene—and his mind was too scattered at the moment to formulate a specific argument, anyways—all he could do was nod mutely to Louis’s instructions, ‘Never let them forget’—
But in the back of his head, he could not help but think of what it must have been like, that woman’s life. He did not know her story, but he could guess it from the frailty of her power, masked in feminine mystique. What must it have been like to be born into a family such as the Mayfairs, tangential witness to all that magic but with none of your own worth speaking of? What she had done to make Antha, he could not imagine, but he knew well the reason why: so that Mary-Beth’s child would never have to feel as she must have, all but a mortal living in a pantheon of gods. Every parent tried to give their offspring what they had never achieved, to better their lives in some way. From a certain skewed perspective, Mary-Beth had made herself into a sacrificial offering for her children. One which had twisted them, yes, had left them with complexes that the rest of the world could barely begin to fathom—but also had left them with the one gift Mary-Beth considered truly worthwhile: power. And in return, the family reviled her unto death. Even now, there was nobody who would forgive Antha’s mother.
Cian wouldn’t pretend to understand, but he did believe being in her shoes would be rather similar to being in a state of permanent hell.
All that went out of his head, however, the instant that Antha stirred and spoke. Relief washed over him in like a tidal wave; the butterflies in his stomach rose up through his throat and into the open air.

Dorian was testing the edge of one of the crystal shards from the chandelier with one finger, eyeing Alistair with a distinctly wary expression as he explained himself. Dorian wasn’t certain what to think of the new addition to the family, regardless of how darling his manners or how closely his face resembled Evie’s. Appearances could be deceiving. Liesse, abandoned by her beau, clasped her hands behind her back and met Rynn’s gaze evenly. After a moment he looked away, as though to pretend he hadn’t been watching—like a cat who’s lost a staring contest. When the rest of the family filed into the parlor, Liesse stayed behind, picking up bits of crockery and wine flutes off the floor. Her hands were trembling, but after such an event, she either had to give herself something to do or collapse into a nervous wreck.
If Rynn had been a cat, his tail would have been lashing like mad. However, in lieu of a suitable expression of emotion, he stuck both hands deep into his trouser pockets and wandered out after the rest of the onlookers when Alistair retired into the parlor. He found an empty armchair, which gentlemanly honor made him offer up to Dolly-Jean, and settled for leaning on the back of the plush velvet seat as the cousins bantered back and forth. When Vittorio turned the conversation to Rynn, it caught him off-guard, & took a moment before the boy offered up his response, albeit one of careful diplomacy “A person in a position of power ought be tested regularly by others. Power will come to rest in the most capable hands. When authority is usurped, it is generally because the previous authorities were incapable of defending their throne—and that is no kind of leadership to allow.” He recited as though he were reading lines off a blackboard, finishing off with a gently indifferent shrug. Rynn had made his pass at Antha’s position and been rebuffed. Perhaps he would try again after she was dead, but he had no real desire for the sort of magic that induced seizures at the dinner table. Luring Antha to the Calais manor had been a last-ditch attempt to hold everything together. And then, as though he realized he hadn’t really answered the question, Rynn added, “And yes, I’d set the whole chessboard up again in a heart-beat if the play had actually worked. But not for the thankless task of ruling—that was never the point.”
Rynn had been about to deny his ‘venomous’ nature as well, but when Courtland flung both arms around the other’s shoulder, the intake of breath that occurred sounded too distinctly hissy to deny. Might as well embrace it. “I will bite you,” he threatened.
Although knowing Courtland’s history, that might not be as much of a threat as Rynn would like to pretend. Ducking out uncomfortably from the latch of the others arms, he backed a few steps off. “Anyways, there’d be no point. It’s not as though there’s a possibility of procreation.” It took him a moment to understand what Armand meant by ‘vultures’—but once he did, he gave a small chuckle. “Oh. You won’t have to worry about me. I mean—er—“ Girls were nice and all, and Rynn knew how to charm them when he had to, but…”I’ll be vigilant.”
The real reason, the one he wouldn’t cop to, that sounded awful even in his own head, was that Rynn had always imagined he’d be betrothed to someone from a suitable family eventually. A witch family. That was his duty as the heir; Aedan had even mentioned at one point that Father had sought out a suitable match for him during all those extensive business trips. All the paperwork was lost in the fire, of course, but Rynn had always assumed that—when the time came—he’d be able to sort something out on his own, with the aid of the ancestors. It was at this point that Dorian began to give him the side-eye. "By any chance, pet, you wouldn't happen to be a virgin?"
The other man had a smile like a sly tiger. But it made Rynn stutter, much too loudly: "n-NO--it's none of your business anyways--" and then, grateful for the change in topic, focus his attention 100% on the news Armand had just decided to break. “Wait, what? She did wha—WHY.“
Alistair explained. Hearing himself referred to as ‘Uncle Rynn’ made him cringe a little bit—god, was this what it felt like to be an adult? But his hackles were quickly soothed by the talk of his potential niece and nephew. Another odd topic to consider.
He didn’t know whether he was looking forward to the experience or not, yet. But he was about to interject on the subject of Antha’s fidelity when Courtland did it for him. “Hey!” he protested, hands flying up with open palms. “I wouldn’t—I’m not—“ Flustered, he cleared his throat and went on deadpan. “I reserve the right to kill the first man who makes an attempt.” Not the nice kind of killing either, like a duel-at-dawn with pistols drawn, but more like something out of a campy gore fest made in the 80’s.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For several moments following Rynn's last sputtered words, the cousins were collectively still and silent, watching him with very slowly spreading grins, their eyes lighting up by degrees. Like wolves that had just discovered a bear hanging helpless by its feet between them.
They pounced, closing Rynn in a loose circle between them as they all gave their Cheshire grins, sharply observing his every reaction. "Do you now?" Courtland purred, thoughtfully stroking his chin, "That's an awfully powerful reaction, particularly coming from you."
"Quite kind of you," Pierce chimed in, leaning against the back of the couch, "Truly. Almost a little too kind, if you know what I mean."
"No," Jack responded in insincere curiosity, hanging over the back of the couch, "What ever could you mean? You couldn't possibly be suggesting...no, not sweet, innocent, perfectly rational little Rynn?!"
Courtland grinned all the broader. "Me thinks the gentleman hath done far too much protesting. Misplaced passion, perhaps?"
"I'm astonished we never thought of it before," Armand murmured, his tone laced thickly with irony, and then sighing dramatically, "My, my...this house is taking quite a turn towards Wuthering Heights, don't you think?"
"Yes, indeed," Pierce agreed in a low purr, folding his arms as he continued to regard Rynn with those taunting, sparkling eyes, "Such a tragedy. Particularly since I always despised the novel."
"This is better," Courtland declared, giving a little lift of his eyebrows as he glanced at Pierce, "This is brothers."
Armand, quickly growing bored of the game, reached for a book on the end table and cracked it open, murmuring simply, "I knew he was in love with Antha."
"We haven't proven that yet," Courtland pointed out, his grin widening by degrees, "Though their sexual tension is goddamned ridiculous."
"Seconded," Vittorio murmured, sitting beside Dolly Jean and trying to soothe her.
"He's sixteen," Jack added, his tone sympathetic, "And a virgin. You can't know what you want under those circumstances."
"You're right!" Courtland agreed with a great amount of zeal, pointing between Jack and Rynn as he gleefully voiced his revelation, "So I propose the theory that Rynn doesn't even realize it yet! With everything that happened, his mad, passionate love for Antha got mixed up in all of the confusion and the horrible, raging hormones of adolescence and he doesn't even realize it himself!"
Behind Rynn, Armand glanced up long enough to furrow his brow and voice curiously, "How did we come to this conclusion again?"
He went ignored. "Alistair!" Courtland shouted, rousing the boy from his apparent daze to glance behind him with wide, curious eyes. "You think Rynn's in love with Antha, don't you?"
The boy gave a single, listless shrug, turning back around and sinking into the couch. "I don't know. Probably."
Courtland, eyes narrowing when he didn't get the answer he hoped for, changed his tactics. "Is Antha in love with Rynn?"
Again that vacant shrug of his shoulders. "I don't know."
Courtland and Pierce were immediately on the offensive, taking half-steps closer to the boy as Jack stared raptly between them. "Yes you do. You know everything about Evie's mind, right?"
A third shrug. The corners of his lips twitched with the strain of not grinning and the cousins realized very suddenly that he was toying with them even as they toyed with Rynn. "Who could say? Even if I could say---and I won't say whether or not I can say---I wouldn't say, because what fun would that be?"
Courtland and Pierce only blinked at him, eventually voicing a slow, uncertain, "...what?" Alistair merely grinned, eyes closed as if he would fall back to sleep.
But he didn't. He drifted, clawing at the darkness that separated him from Antha in the space between their heads, trying not to alarm his cousins. Where the hell had her mind gone?
Courtland, sensing the subject was best laid to rest, pulled an arm around Rynn and murmured so the others would not hear, "We're only teasing, Rynn. Though, I still have my suspicions..." The boy grinned, pressing a kiss to Rynn's temple and then murmuring lowly, suggestively, "Go on, bite me. I dare you." And then he laughed, shaking his head, his arm still around the boy's shoulders. "I imagine you don't appreciate being our much needed distraction from all of this...mess. But it can't be helped---you're family now, when are you going to get that through this thick skull of yours?" His fingers rapped against the side of his head, feather-light, followed by another low, airy laugh before he grew relatively serious. "I think you owe Malakai a 'thank you,' no matter how you've twisted what you saw in your head. Your precious sister might be a great deal less pretty and a fair bit bloodier tonight if it weren't for him."

Rome was burning. The smoke was thick, black, the screams deafening, the heat of the flames searing. That was the most jarring thing of all---the pain. Antha shouldn’t have felt it, shouldn’t have had to recoil from the crumbling buildings and the sting of the fire, but she did. Was it not a dream? The girl glanced down at herself, clutched the folds of her pale, floral-print sundress in her uncertain fingers. It had to be a dream. If she was just as she had fallen asleep, surrounded by screaming people in tunics, their hair unwashed, the streets crudely paved, then it had to be a dream.
A boy bumped into her on his way fleeing frantically down the street, stumbling back in a daze, and then continued running. She had felt it, the sting of his metal cuff as it scraped her arm, felt the warmth and perspiration of his skin. This was no ordinary dream, or else was not a dream at all. How could that be?
Amid the chaos, someone laughed. It was not a safe sound, nothing of the sort, it was a wild screech, darkly pleased with itself, and Antha knew on instinct not to turn. Nothing good could come of turning around, of looking at the creature that had laughed. But then she heard footsteps, unnecessarily loud on the smooth stones, and she couldn’t help herself. Her breath hitching, the world moving in slow motion, Antha turned. Her mind took in, before anything else, the dull metallic gleam of armor, a breastplate over a sullied and bloodied tunic, the helmet dangling from long, pale fingers. Next was the hair, as black as ink, wild and free and flowing in mussed tangles, brushing the tops of rustic shin guards. Then the smile, sharp and knowing, the teeth---startlingly white against the soot-covered face---accompanied by two elongated canines, and the flash of those crimson eyes flickering in the firelight.
Antha ran. Through the chaos, she ducked and darted around bodies and across screeching crowds. The screams were more pronounced behind her, she thought, and when she glanced over her shoulder---why did she look again? She knew better---she could see bodies being snatched out of the crowd, necks torn open, blood splattering every which way before the corpses were tossed aside and the vampire continued advancing towards her, a veritable juggernaut.
Panic set in. Turning, she shoved her way through several dumbfounded onlookers, their faces marred with soot, and spilled into an alley, glancing all around her as she ran for another turn, somewhere to throw him off the trail, but nothing was safe. A chunk of a nearby building crumbled and crashed into the street very near her, bringing a startled shriek from the girl, and the quick, echoing footsteps resumed in her direction.
The girl moaned helplessly, throwing her hands up to the sides of her head, and made what she had already deemed an unwise decision by ducking into a smaller pathway between buildings, fleeing frantically through two walls of flame.
She didn’t know what was real anymore, or how to distinguish the idea of reality from her current predicament. All she knew, with a horrifying gravity, was that she couldn’t be caught. If she was, it was all over.

Alistair was not sure what was happening in Antha’s head. She felt…removed, very far away, or else very deep inside of herself, and he couldn’t reach her. He couldn’t breech the walls of her mind and the link between them was impassable. It had to be bad, whatever it was, but he hadn’t the slightest idea what to expect.
Vanessa and Sebastien, on the other hand, had a better idea. They didn’t know the particulars---Rome or the blaze it had become, the game of cat and mouse taking place in back alleys as the Visigoths sacked the eternal city---but they could acutely feel their mother’s deranged distress, they could hear the subtle cracking of her sanity and knew, distantly, that she didn’t know how to get out. Therefore, they decided jointly, in their shared mind of pre-existence, it was their responsibility to rescue her.
Only they couldn’t. They were only feeble spirits, unborn, residing within her body. So they took a calculating look around them. Their father was of no use---a decision based in no way on emotion, they loved him already, but he didn’t have the sort of power for these things. Uncle Alistair was already suffering from her distress, they fed into one another's mental states. Uncle Courtland? He was almost a wise choice, but he was too unreliable, a jester, a wildcard, he couldn't be trusted to keep a cool head and do what needed to be done. And so the twins decided, with utmost certainty, on their Uncle Rynn. Uncle Rynn was powerful, and he could be vicious, relentless. It had to be Uncle Rynn.
This was how, in much the same way as Nero had invaded their mother’s mental space, the Mayfairs within the parlor vanished abruptly to Rynn’s vision, leaving in their wake only two teenagers. Their appearances, at least in this psychological construct, were borrowed from premonitions, what they knew they would look like at fifteen. It was better, to their minds, that they were on an equal level with their Uncle Rynn, they needed to be his age. Vanessa, lithe and delicate, with her soft waves of flowing chocolate brown hair and Antha’s massive eyes, darkened very seriously, was seated demurely on the couch opposite Rynn, quietly observing him. Sebastien, already startlingly like Rynn with touches of Antha's features here and there, tousled curls cropped at his earlobe, his countenance stern and posture very prim, stood beside the sofa, staring at him identically.
"Uncle Rynn." Vanessa’s lips pursed and then very slowly formed an angelic, if uncertain, smile. "Uncle Rynn, you have to go get mommy."
Beside his sister, Sebastien nodded sharply. "Ma mere will never wake up if no one goes to get her."
"It has to be you," Vanessa added, very seriously.
"We can’t do it."
"But you can drag her back."
"Back to the waking world, that is."
"You can force her back to her senses."
"Back to her sanity. She’s forgotten, you see. Forgotten that it’s not real, that it’s in her head."
"That she’s in her head. Someone has to go tell her it's a dream."
"But it can still hurt her. He can still hurt her. That’s why she has to get out."
The twins, though they spoke haltingly, made a very fluid speech on the whole. It was how the words of one ended in such perfect unison with the beginning of the words of the other, as if they knew the exact timing of one another’s speech. The first time in which they seemed to speak independently was only at the end of their plea.
Quietly, her eyes pleading, Vanessa whispered, "Please?"
Sebastien shook his head, casting his gaze thoughtfully to the floor and then up, his eyes staring into Rynn’s unnervingly, as if he could see through all of the flesh and bone and straight into his soul. "However you have to do it…she needs you to help her."
Vanessa rose in a very fluid, elegant series of movements, going over to Rynn on his level, gently taking his hands in her pale, nimble fingers, repeating quietly, "It has to be you." Then her lips pressed sweetly to his cheek and because the twins were the veritable gatekeepers of Antha’s subconscious, they vanished and took the parlor with them, leaving Rynn in the riotous, smoke-obscured streets of Rome.

In the parlor, Rynn dropped as surely as Antha had and Courtland only barely caught him before his head slammed on the floor, hoisting the boy up and looking wildly around at the other cousins as they rushed in to help.
"Okay, what in the hell is going on around here?!" Courtland screeched, fumbling to get a better grip on Rynn, "Is this turning into Sleeping Beauty's castle?! I'm not okay with this!"
"Lay him down on the couch," Vittorio instructed hastily, which Pierce and Courtland abruptly obeyed, and then sat down beside the boy to begin inspecting his vital signs. "It's just like Antha," he murmured at length, still checking his pulse, "Physically he's fine, but he's completely unresponsive. Like a coma."
"A coma?!"
Vittorio nodded, gently laying Rynn's arm down alongside his body, arranging all of his limbs so that he was laid out straight. "It's magic, I can tell you that much. I have no idea what kind, or how or why, I just know it's magic."
Courtland, standing over Rynn and peering down at him in concern, pulling his arms around himself, muttered quietly, "What do you think's going on in there?"
Pierce, likewise inspecting Rynn, shook his head. "Who knows?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

While the cousins flitted anxiously about the parlor, whispering their concerns and fretting over Rynn---Courtland had tried to find his way into the boy's mind only to find it oddly...empty, like Antha's, Vittorio had checked all of his vital signs, and once that was done, Jack had covered him with a blanket and nestled a pillow under his head, tucking him in as if he were only napping, and now sat on the edge of the couch beside him, guarding him with all the loyalty and fruitlessness of a cat guarding its house---Alistair had stirred with a quiet jolt and slipped out in all of the confusion, snaking one of Antha's secret packs of cigarettes hidden behind a painting in the hallway and ducking soundlessly out the front door. He only went as far as the top stair on the other side of the porch, settling down easily and lighting up a cigarette. His first, though he hadn't recalled that until the smoke hit his pristine new lungs and seared the delicate flesh.
It was believable as he took those first few slow, deep drags and shuffled his feet on the stair beneath him that he had only stepped out for a moment of piece, a breath of fresh air. But then, knowingly and without caution, without alarm, his eyes sharpened and his gaze slid up, landing precisely on the vampire just outside the gate, grasping one of the ancient oak trees that had turned the sidewalk into a jigsaw puzzle of shattered concrete around its snaking roots. The boy sighed errantly, easily, putting the cigarette briefly back to his lips and blowing out thin blue ribbons of smoke. "We had really hoped that would be the end of it. We knew things are never that easy, that one problem always leads into another, but we had hoped it was over. That when she pulled Cyrus's dead, blackened heart through his ribcage and shredded it in her very fingers, that was the end." The boy's lips tugged up on one corner in a vague attempt at a smile despite himself. "It's never that easy, is it?"
Rising as if he were terribly weary, his malnutritioned body as heavy as lead, the boy ambled languidly down the last few steps and came to stand on the flagstones between the brightly lit porch and the wrought iron gate worked with the Mayfairs' various magics, connected to the spells on every stone set so carefully into the ground, every painstakingly bespelled plank that the house had been built of, the bodies dumped deep down in the soil and the flora whose roots fed from them, all forming a circuit which fortified the grounds. Standing amidst this intricate system of protections as if they meant nothing to him, the boy gave a wispy sigh and murmured, his gaze still locked to Vikteren, "What have you done, and what are you turning into?" It didn't occur to him for a brief while that Vikteren did not know him, not his existence or resurrection, the link that had made it impossible to tell where Antha ended and Alistair began. Because the boy knew the vampire every bit as much as Antha did, felt every bit as strongly for him as she did.
"Nicolae's out looking for you," he added as a side note, as if it wasn't terribly important, "And Khayman. Antha might have gone searching for you herself, but..." He paused, idly tracing the inside of his lip with the tip of his tongue as he thought of how to phrase it. "Evie's not here. Physically, she's tucked all nice and tight into bed upstairs. But her mind..." He put a finger to his temple, turning it as if it were a key in a lock, and then gave a rapid flicking gesture. "Her mind went somewhere, a place that even I can't reach. Some dangerous, manic place that smells of smoke and blood." He knew that much. Even if he couldn't penetrate the distance that had been placed between them, he could smell the smoke and the blood.
The ground squished uncertainly beneath his feet, the gate creaking and rattling as he folded his arms around the bars and leaned his weight against it, smoke floating around his fair face from the cigarette hanging between his lips. Though they were fraternal twins, their genders opposing, and naturally there were distinct differences to their faces, Alistair's eyes made him nearly identical to Antha when they sharpened as hers did. They were the dominant features of their faces after all, equally massive and just as brilliantly, poisonously green, fringed with the same, thick, dark lashes. They both flashed with the rapid workings of their minds, both hinted at their veiled thoughts. Alistair didn't explain himself, didn't directly mention where he had come from or why, only stared at Vikteren with Antha's eyes and unchained that low, deep growl of his power, slightly lesser but frighteningly similar to Antha's, and gracefully pierced the shell of the vampire's mind. He didn't like what he found, and in consequence hastily withdrew the probing power, thoughtfully clicking his tongue as he continued to stare him down. "Ah, that's no good," he murmured, taking one last drag of his cigarette and crushing it out in the palm of his hand as if he couldn't even feel it. His blood, identical to Antha's down to the overwhelming vampiric content, sealed the wound in a matter of seconds and he brushed the ash easily from his porcelain skin. "We don't approve of this little parasite, whatever it is. Doesn't it know you're ours? Evie won't let it have you, just like she wouldn't let Cyrus have you." He lifted up on his arms just slightly, rising to the tips of his toes like a child trying to see over the gate, and said very seriously, "This isn't the time to mess with her. All of that power she's been holding back this whole time...it won't go back down anymore. It just keeps growing and growing, threatening to consume everything. It's unhinging her, making her more and more dangerous with every passing day. Nero isn't helping matters---he wants to drive her over the edge, he's actively trying to make her explode in some fiery kamikaze of sheer power that swallows everything. He's afraid of her, you see. He thought he'd just waltz into town and kill her, toss her out of the way, and that would be that. But it's a grave mistake to make, underestimating Evie. You know that." His attention shifted with the last sentence, his eyes refocusing to make it clear that he had been speaking to what was within Vikteren first and then added the last for the vampire himself before his eyes narrowed and he spoke to the foreign entity again. "He's afraid that if she's still intact when he arrives here, she might be far-gone enough with the haze of power that she won't mind risking the lives of everyone she holds dear, that she'll actually choose to try and end him, and as it turns out, even the original vampire doesn't trust that he could take Antha in a fight."
Again that shift, his attention diverting back to Vikteren as his expression took on coercing notes of concern. His head cocked slightly to the side, his teeth idly catching the inside corner of his bottom lip, another gesture innately reminiscent of Antha, and he was just close enough to reach out and brush a gentle finger along the curve of the vampire's ivory neck, coming away with a trace of dark blood. "No...this isn't you at all. You're not like everyone else, you don't drain innocent girls to death in dark rooms. You're...special. Proper, honorable, conscientious. We won't let some parasite ruin you this way, no." No, certainly not. Because Antha loved him, in her peculiar little way, and so did Alistair, in differing ways.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn spun about, facing cousin by cousin as they teased him. “All of this is nothing more than basest speculation,” he declared. “Regardless of how much gossiping you old biddies do—even if I do end up ‘family’, it’s none of your beeswax.” It was impossible to disguise the fact that they’d hit a nerve. If he’d been a girl, he might have stamped his foot. He felt like punching someone instead, but also knew that was unlikely to lend credence to his argument for maturity. “Anyways, what does it matter if I’ve lost my virginity or not?” he demanded, crossing his arms. “I know what I like, and what I don’t, and—when I’m ready for it. Just because I don’t go around flirting with anything that’s got a pulse doesn’t mean I’m some kind of—“
He began to realize that nobody was paying attention to what he was saying. Rynn scowled, blew out an indignant huff of air, and slouched in defeat. “You can all go to hell,” he muttered. Maybe not Malakai. Unless he tried to put “the moves” on Liesse, again.
It was then that he began to realize that nobody was talking. Or rather, their lips moved—but made no sound. And the room had begun to fill with a white fog.
Two children, who bore familiar features but whose faces were unrecognizable as a whole, stared purposefully at him from the couch, and Rynn began to feel his chest fill with unease.

Vikteren—the thing that wore his face rather, that cocked its head with amusement at the young boy that ambled down the steps of Mayfair Manor and looked at them so familiarly, with the eyes like a woman’s—ah—and one that was dear to the host’s heart. She was the reason why, even unconsciously, his feet had recalled the path to this house so well.
Vikteren was not quite so easily recognizable as the other.
The vampire’s eyes were riddled with tendrils of gold, flashing like yellow roses in the green briar-patch of his natural iris. His once-bloodless lips were flushed, and the color rode high in his pale cheeks. It was nearly possible to imagine what he had looked like as a human, with the bloom of youth on his skin—except for his eyes, burning inhumanly in their sockets.
What did he see? It was nearly impossible to describe—the house, not brick and mortar but a brilliant network of lines, like the grid blueprint for a 3D computer model, but all drawn with a flickering electric thread. Alistair, as he advanced, was all but obscured by the light that radiated from the slim human-shaped silhouette, his face unrecognizable behind an incandescent-red mane of hair.
Vikteren could feel the black beneath him, the sweet unconscious night that rose to swallow his consciousness, endless and enduring. He felt his balance slipping, his feet grow unsteady beneath him—but then the voice behind his left ear said no, and you will bear witness. He realized that the shirt he wore was dyed rust-red and stiff with ichor; that the fingers which scraped troughs into the tree’s bark had left a smear of blood behind. The blood was a dizzying crismson, as bright as Alistair’s hair, and Vikteren suddenly jolted away in the realization that it was not there at all. In another instant his hands were clean and pale and smooth as ever. His nails gleamed like clipped opals. He felt like laughing in relief, or perhaps weeping—but his face showed no such response, still and mask like as it turned again towards the approaching boy.
The entity was not so foolish as to step foot inside their gate. The little red-haired creature burned with the desire to defend its property. For some reason it had laid claims upon this body. That-which-binds was all tangled around his body, like spider-threads stronger than steel. The entity opened Vikteren’s mouth, and made a “Ha-ha-ha,” sound. Her consciousness was all stars and abyss. What was human morality to something which had never been human?
It sighed deeply, to show reluctance. “I would pass through all these wards and kill you for your insolence if doing so would not reduce this body to cinders and ash. And I think that is not what you want.” The voice was uncanny, but it was difficult to place why—after a moment, it became apparent. Vikteren’s voice had been deep before, clipped with a cultured and vaguely European accent. Now, there was something…extra. A higher note. A woman’s voice layered itself over his every word; the effect was something like that of a harmony between two singers, and off-putting in the extreme.
The thing in Vikteren cocked its green-gold eyes at Alistair and made a charming mockery of a smile. “In other circumstances, I might applaud your good taste.” It stretched out his hands, those long and flawless fingers, and appeared to admire itself for a moment. “This is a beautiful body. I will take excellent care of it, as I took care of the others whom I have given patronage to over the years. You needn’t fear.” And it smiled at Alistair then, and stretched out an entreating palm. “You must realize, I mean you no harm. The owner of this—“ it indicated itself, the stolen body, “—is quite attached to your family. He would never forgive me for such an offense.” And the entity planned to remain with this host for—oh—centuries. Cyrus’s progeny appeared to be quite powerful, if rather too dull-witted to deserve the full extent of its abilities. The possessing spirit inside of Vikteren had subjugated the will of those who carried it before for great lengths of time, but it was always such a unpleasant and tiresome process, and rife with resistance. A willing partner in crime was much better.
“In fact, I intend to aid you, in all ways that I am able,” it announced, with a sudden air of magnanimity. Vikteren straightened, and gave a rather theatrical bow. “Look, I have already found sustenance and provided strength for this body. It will fight well for you, better than it ever would have on the meager hermit’s rations which was provided for itself before. Himself.” The thing was proud of itself for remembering. “And believe us, we could be very helpful to your cause.” It cocked its head at Alistair, eyes gleaming. “That is what you want, isn’t it? That’s the reason why Nicolae is out, searching the city for this corpus.” Eyes became narrow slits, brow furrowed with annoyance. “If I wanted to, I might bury this creature in a pit mined from its own delusions. I might shatter his consciousness utterly with but a nudge, reduce him to a blank-eyed mannequin. Is that what you would rather have? Because any attempt to oust me like an unwanted guest will result in such. He owes his life to me, after all—or whatever you would call this resemblance to it.” The woman’s voice had colored with pride.
Inside the snare of his own body, Vikteren watched with slurring vision as his body stepped forward, recklessly close to the boundaries of the Mayfair grounds. He could feel the sting of wards from here. Even through the haze of possession, Vikteren felt dimly the significance of her confession. She took responsibility for his existence. Was this what had given Cyrus his knowledge of magic, the power to control what had once (in vanity, Vikteren had believed) been called the largest coven of vampires in the West?
Somehow it didn’t seem so far-fetched. Whatever had stolen his body had a mind like nothing Vikteren had ever felt before—not human or beast, neither alive nor dead. The closest thing he could get to describing it would be hive activity. But a hive made up of a thousand intelligent souls, rather than a horde of mindless insects. He could not sense the creature’s intent, whether it spoke truthfully when it stated the intent to aid. But he did not think Antha, or any of her representatives, would be content with that.
He pushed at the entity’s consciousness, got its attention. His body cocked its head to one side, as though listening for something in the distance. After a moment, it translated his thoughts into speech. “It is his wish to see her, your fearless leader. I, too, would love to know what woman would defend a vampire.” It was not often, after all, that prey came to the rescue of the hunter. Funny, too, that they called the possessing spirit a parasite while failing to recognize the resemblance any vampire bore to a blood-sucking leech.

Rynn was only conscious of the fall, descending as though in slow motion to the lush Persian rug below. He did not feel the impact when his head hit the ground.
The scent of smoke filled his nostrils; he began to realize that the room’s white fog was thick smoke, and in the distance, he could hear shrieks, keening, and the crackle of flames. He recognized the foul stench, like the base-note to a rank perfume—human flesh, reduced by an inferno to bare, blackened bone. The city around him was burning. A thousand souls fled from charred husks into the night sky, rent by screams. The city burned. But what city? Where was he?
The children had spoken of Antha. No matter where he was, he knew—with the insistence of a fever-dream—he had to find her. He picked himself up off the cobble-stones, smearing his hands with grey ash as he did so. Footsteps approached—a woman—all her earthly belongings slung upon her back, her face creased with despair, clutching a limp child to her chest—who ran down the street with bare and bleeding feet. Rynn caught sight of something in her eyes, pressed himself against the side of a stone wall and felt his body dissolve into invisibility. It was not a moment too soon. The woman did not make it to the end of the street before an arrow thudded into her lower back and felled her like a tree. A figure wrapped in even more ragged and dirty garments than she followed to collect her sack. It kicked the woman and her dead child over in order to pick a silver necklace off their corpses.
Rynn thought, how despicable and for a moment wondered—perhaps if he’d been raised on superhero comics he would have felt the need to enact some sort of vigilante justice. But he pondered too long, and the looter slipped away before he made a step from the wall and let his invisibility shed and fall aside.
Again, Rynn was alone, in this distant hell of a city. He set off down the deserted road. The direction did not matter; if he overthought where his feet were headed, they would not know where to go. This was like a dream, he told himself. Rynn knew how dreams worked. Some of them had messages, and designs—they led you along by the hand until you got the point. Trying to control what was happening only muddied the waters.
If Rynn looked towards the skyline, he could see a great arena in the distance, the sky stained crimson by the inferno around it. The stone structure did not burn, but it was there that the screams echoed loudest.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For several minutes, Alistair said nothing. His eyes narrowed at the puppet Vikteren, quietly observing the golden threads that botched his own. And then, gradually, a polite smile spread across his full red lips, diplomatically sweet. "It is good to know that, despite your lack of decency, your manners are at least passable. It's intolerable to deal with creatures who do nothing but snarl and hiss threats. Rather like petulant cats, I think." The boy smiled as if he had amused himself with his little joke, but it didn't touch his sharp, poisonous eyes. "But I can't help to wonder what you are. You have no hint of human consciousness, not even animal. What are those words we use to describe such beings? A divine? A demon? A God?" The smile sharpened, almost imperceptibly as it happened, while behind him the house metaphysically shook, the power licking down the outer walls as something trickled from its place in the attic---the thing, which could not resist coming when it was mentioned. It swirled violently around the house, invisible power that condensed the air and distorted physics around it before its sense of consciousness rushed in around the Mayfair boy, rearing up like a cobra as it observed the thing which had sprung up outside of its resting place.
"Hush, precious," Alistair cooed softly, heedless of his patronizing tone as his eyes stayed locked to those before him, "We're not here for battle, not tonight." The thing gave a responding shiver that was difficult to decipher, backing off while still winding anxiously around Alistair as he returned tot he conversation at hand. "I should be frank. This---" He made a vague gesture around him that was reminiscent of Antha's movements, indicating not the house but rather the city around it, "---is our territory, and we don't want you here, whatever you are. And this---" he spoke just a bit more pointedly, gesturing now at Vikteren's form, "---this isn't yours. If you must have some physical host of flesh and bone, I suggest you find one elsewhere, or else you will have war on your hands. Irksome, don't you think?" Around him, the thing gave another odd shudder and Alistair turned sharp eyes to the general space in which it seemed to occupy, murmuring, "You should return to Evie."
It paused, seeming to mull over his words, and then all at once accepted the suggestion and withdrew back into the confines of the house. "That consciousness you have in there," he said moments later, when the press of power had receded again, gesturing briefly at Vikteren's head, "We're prepared to defend that with everything we've got. And if you destroy it..." The boy stepped easily back, turning his palms face-up and giving a languid shrug of his shoulders, "We'll send the body to oblivion with it, and we'll never let you have another one. I just wanted to be clear on this situation. Now, if you'll excuse me." He turned smoothly on his heel, as if he had had all his life to master the movements of his physical counterpart, and called out as he glided up the porch stairs, "You have until Evie awakens to decide your course. She jumps at the idea of war far more easily than I do."
The boy nodded his head politely at the creature as he turned in the doorway, shutting it behind him and slipping quietly back into the parlor as if he'd never left. Spread across the loveseat against the wall, his eyes gazed steadily at Rynn's slack expression, gently probing the space where his consciousness should be. No one was quite in sorts at the moment, were they? With Antha comatose upstairs, Rynn comatose downstairs, Malakai passed out in the treehouse, and everyone else worked up into a panic, it was indeed beginning to feel a bit like Sleeping Beauty's castle. But Alistair said nothing, only watched his cousins fret. Anything he told them could only make things worse.

Antha didn’t know how long she had been running, only that she couldn’t escape those haunting footsteps. They had chased her relentlessly through a very large portion of the city, marking the trail with a string of corpses, and she was very acutely aware by now that she was being toyed with. He had the ability to move faster than that, to catch up, but he liked to watch her flee. Her only hope, though it was slim, was to lose him somehow. But she was tired---her feet ached, her head was pounding, her eyes and lungs were stinging, and the heat of the flames had damaged her skin.
Something cracked and Antha shrieked, scrambling out of the way as a nearby building collapsed, sending a torrent of dust and debris swirling down the alley, lit with glowing embers. The footsteps paused uncertainly---even vampires were vulnerable to fire, even Nero---and Antha took her chance and ran as fast as her feet could carry her through the mixed medium cloud. She turned, skidding on the debris covered path, grasping the corner of a building to keep herself from falling, and immediately screamed for the searing sensation on her palm.
She kept running. She had no idea how long, only that the footsteps had faded off elsewhere and she had kept running until she spilled out onto a pavilion filled with more screaming, frenzied people. The Romans mixed with the Visigoths, the latter slaughtering the former, setting more fires, ransacking houses. The Pantheon stood tall before her---stout, proud, even as the invaders looted the sacred treasures from within it and the city burned around it. Through the billowing smoke, the pristine new Colosseum rose over the rooftops, smoke curling and twining between its arrangement of pillars.
There was a small wall beside the Pantheon, not three feet high, blocking off a recess surrounding the building. Antha all but collapsed onto it, her legs stretched out to relieve the pressure on her feet, cradling her burned hand in her uninjured one. Her palm was bloody, already blistering, the skin raw and shiny and red, and as she sat blowing the dirt gently from it, the first tears began to spill over. She didn’t notice at first, until the first saltwater drops splashed onto her burn and she clenched her teeth with pain, sticking her hand out further from herself, and continued to cry. In her pride, she blamed it on the smoke and dust, that the tears streaming down her face, cutting lines on her sullied cheeks, were only her eyes watering.
Around her, no one seemed quite aware of Antha’s presence. They acknowledged her as far as skirting her, occasionally bumping into her, one soldier running towards the wall and then purposefully moving several feet over to avoid her before he jumped the small stone partition, but other than that they ignored her. She had no place in the sacking of Rome, so they had no business with her.
For a while---or at least a few minutes, which might as well have been an eternity for how gratefully they were received---Antha sat trying to catch her shallow breath. She tried to run a hand through her hair, but found it tangled and frizzy from the heat, her curls swelled up to twice their usual mass from the sheer chaos of their condition. To top everything off, her hand healed at the rate of a mortal---that was to say, not at all. In the real world, the vampire blood in her system would have mended it already and so Antha didn’t know how to deal with these trifling wounds. It stung, infinitely more painful than any cut or stab, and so the tears kept coming.
Tap, tap, tap. The footsteps thudded distantly from the way she'd come, drawing nearer, and Antha knew she'd had all the rest she could afford. In a heartbeat, glancing briefly at the alley with wide, panicked eyes, she rose and took off running again, this time through the pavilion and down busier streets, along the canals and bridges where she had escape routes if she needed them. The Colosseum was looming steadily larger, bit by bit, but there was a ways to go and the footsteps were growing louder.
Frantically turning a corner, dodging a fleeing merchant from the nearby forum, Antha was somewhat surprised to find herself running headlong into someone else, giving the smallest shriek of surprise as she fumbled for a nearby post to keep her balance, though she fell anyways, and then, hesitantly given the circumstances, her gaze flickered upwards.
Antha couldn't quite say she'd ever been particularly happy to see Rynn, considering the circumstances whenever he'd shown up. But now, gazing up at his sharp eyes, she wasn't sure she'd ever been this glad to see anyone else in her entire life. "How..." Her wide eyes blinked rapidly, her brow furrowing with incomprehension before, all at once, some piece of her deep down assured her that it was Rynn and then, without warning, the relief hit her so hard that the girl gave a small, pitiful cry of hysteric relief, bolting up and throwing her arms fervently around Rynn’s neck. She was relieved enough to kiss him---did in fact, fully and ecstatically, the force of her lips nearly enough to bruise his. “I never thought I could be so happy to see you,” she whispered, drawing back only far enough to look into his eyes, wiping her own hastily with the back of her hand as if she didn’t want him to know that she’d been crying. Not that she could hide it at this point, the marks had been made through the soot down her cheeks.
"But if you’re here…" Her expression darkened instantly, the terrified thoughts racing visibly in her eyes as her arms drew away from his shoulders, her gaze dropping to her marred palm. "Dreams can’t hurt you. But this…this isn’t a dream." Her eyes darkened nearly to black, her brow furrowing with worry. "There’s death to be had here, whatever it is."
Something thumped beside Antha, bumping lightly into her leg, and yet again she made the mistake of looking to see a face marred with terror, the eyes glassy and jaw slack, the neck a short stump topped with red where it had been severed from a body. Reflexively, Antha jumped away and that same voice sounded, the same dangerous laugh that brought her gaze up and over the pavilion to find Nero standing against the backdrop of ruins and flames with a bloody, terrifying grin.
For several eternal seconds, the vampire and the witch girl stood staring at one another across the frenzied traffic. Then the echoing footsteps resumed and Antha turned abruptly, her skirts flaring around her and her uninjured fingers wrapping hastily around Rynn’s, seizing his hand. "Run!"
She took off again, ignoring all of her aches and pains, running with Rynn across the rough streets, now covered with ash and running with veins of blood around the stones. The forum was only around the corner, a shredded marketplace settled at the foot of the great stone steps that they took, fleeing through the long building and out onto another pavilion, and from there to more alleys, skirting fire and debris and the clash of swords that paid them no heed, the Colosseum looming larger and larger until the witches stood at its base, Antha pausing to glance behind them as gladiators spilled out of the arena in full armor, clashing with the invaders. She could still hear the footsteps, a little more distantly, but Nero was nowhere in sight.
"In here," she murmured, urgent and breathless, yanking on Rynn’s hand and heading into the Colosseum. It was not as lively within as the chaotic streets were outside, though soldiers from either side darted here and there, their swords clanging together as they grunted and made their furious war cries. Again, no one cared about the mismatched outsiders and Antha darted and ducked around them, navigating the labyrinthine halls as if she knew them. She didn’t, but she was willing to bet that neither did Nero and hardly ten feet passed without another turn and four more doors. It was to one of these doors that she fled at random, shoving Rynn inside and slamming it shut behind her, fastening the rustic latch before she stopped to catch her rapid, heavy breath.
"He’ll know we’re in here somewhere," she murmured, her voice not quite drowned out by the sounds of battle outside, collapsing onto the nearest stool, "But he can’t know exactly. We can’t just keep running, and if we have to hide…this would be the place to do it, at least for a little while."
As she spoke, she spied a bucket of water nearby and a folded piece of linen. She took stock of the room: a small, barred window set high in the wall, one chest, one wooden mannequin frame, and what might have once been a table but had been converted into a bed. This was a gladiator’s lodgings. "I can’t keep running," she sighed at length, taking the linen from the side of the bucket and setting to work cleaning off her wounded hand, wincing as she did so, "I was never physically strong, I was always a wrecked and ruined little thing." She paused just long enough for her eyes to flicker up towards Rynn, narrowing as she studied him. "It doesn't matter how you got here, not right now. The only important thing is that we have to figure out how to get out of here. Our magic doesn’t work, we might as well be human, ********!" The linen dropped abruptly with a plop back into the water, Antha cradling her hand as she muttered obscenities. “How do people deal with these ******** things?! The pain just doesn’t stop, does it?! Jesus ********---“
A loud crash sounded from elsewhere in the Colosseum, crumbling stone and the deep cries of soldiers, and Antha flinched and fell silent, watching the door with sharp, panicked eyes. "We need a plan. Like, right the ******** now. We can’t just keep running, we need a way out. Knowing Nero, he didn’t make it easy, but there has to be some sort of…I don’t know, crack, or something. Somewhere that this construct isn’t quite welded up right. We just need…" The girl fell abruptly into thoughtful silence, only the sounds of the war raging outside pervading the small stone room. "What do we have? If we're without allies in this place and we can't use magic, what do we have? There has to be something. We can't fight him, it's no use, but there has to be a way out..."
Thoughtfully, glancing around herself and then narrowing her eyes at the window, she questioned musingly, "Where even are we? Rome, obviously, while it was being sacked. But this world, this place...what is it? If we could figure that out, maybe we could find a way out of it."
But that was easier said than done.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn stumbled over broken amphorae, uprooted stones and scattered limbs. The street was cluttered with debris, and the smoke was getting thicker as he continued. The heat was stifling, inescapable; Rynn had to cover his mouth with his sleeve in order not to choke on the rancid air. His shoes, wingtips like those his father had worn, had faded from their smart shine to dullness by the time he made his way to the outskirts of the Colosseum.
He nearly stumbled over Antha, but for the unfamiliar whimper of a living thing. He nearly did not recognize her, covered in filth and ash. Antha, ordinarily-so-poised, cowered amongst rubble like a quaking urchin. At one point he might have found it amusing, might have laughed and kicked her off and strode on thoughtlessly. But then he thought of the dark-haired girl whose eyes bore such an uncanny similarity to Antha’s, and her brother who had stood beside her, and the children who Antha now carried in her belly.
She bolted to her feet before Rynn had a chance to help her up. She kissed him; within her grasp, Rynn grew indignant and stiff as a cat stroked the wrong way, but he did not jerk away. She was distraught; he could feel the sob in her mouth, swallowed hastily.
It was a great temptation to comfort her, but Rynn was steadfast. This was his brother’s wife. His sister-in-law, if not in blood. And no matter how familiar this position was to him, she was no Liesse. He would not know the words that might soothe her; only the words that would goad her.
He gave her a reproachful look as she withdrew, and began to speak—but there was no time, not for even a breath, before Rynn was seized again, by the hand, Antha staring wide-eyed with terror over his shoulder. He felt something strike his back, and fall to the ground with a muffled, wet thump. When he glanced down, he found himself staring into the lifeless black eyes of a decapitated head.
The presence behind him made itself known without Rynn even having to turn to look. It felt as though a shadow had moved across the sun. Even though the city burned around him, and sweat dampened his brow, a shiver of cold rattled through Rynn’s spine.
Antha nearly jerked his arm out of the socket when she took off, with nothing more than a command to follow.
“Run!”
She squeezed through the smallest gaps in the crowd while Rynn struggled behind, knocking into other terrified refugees. More than once, he felt his stride hit flesh rather than cobblestone, and--in a scant moment of empathy--wondered how many bodies lay trampled underfoot in this herd.
The cold thing was watching him now, as they fled through the city—lazily, a cat considering whether a mouse was worth the effort of pouncing on. He didn’t like the shape of the mind that regarded him. It was reptilian. Rynn had never experienced anything so old, not even the ancestors. And if that were not enough to foster immediate distrust, the creature stank of blood. It was a little like the vampires that Rynn had met in the Mayfair houses, but a thousand times more so. Those bodies merely contained the scent of blood. This body was inundated in it.
The thing pursued them across alleyways, beneath fallen beams and collapsed doorways, flames licking at their heels. At some point Rynn felt himself stumble, and put out a hand to steady himself—cinders flew into his face, as his palms brushed against a wooden post which glowed with embers. Hot sparks hit his cheek, spattering pain on the skin. He made a noise in-between breaths that was too thin and ragged to be a cry, and pushed on through the smoke, wiping the grit and soot away with the crook of his elbow. No time now; he’d attend to whatever harm was done when they could rest.
Antha was bleeding too, he noticed. Her hand was gashed open, and her blood marked his palm red as hers. Healing had never been Rynn’s forte, but he wondered that she had not repaired herself yet; it was an awful amount of blood that was coming out.
Without warning, Antha and Rynn darted out of the maze of low, smoky architecture into a large gallery; gracefully carved pillars lined the walkway, and abandoned carts and crates spoke to the commerce which had once freely flowed through this street. Ahead, the Colosseum rose in a foreboding, man-made cliff face. Even over a thousand years later, Rynn still had no difficulty recognizing it; the growing suspicion which had been dancing about the edge of his mind now lodged itself with abrupt certainty. They brought me to Rome, he thought, in disbelief. But not the nice, vineyards-and-sculpture Rome, no—that would have made things far too pleasant. This looked like a city caught in its death throes.
Antha led them through a maze of twisty passageways, all alike. Rynn could hear the clang of metal in the distance, and wondered what sort of fighting pit continued their commerce when the city around them burned.
Well, at least, he hoped that was the explanation. Considering the alternative led to some rather worrying speculation.
At last Antha darted into a room ahead of him, threw Rynn into it and latched the door behind them both. Rynn collapsed against the bare walls, heaving breath—partially of relief, partially because he was sorely winded from the chase. Antha didn’t look at him at first, shredding linen into scraps, but Rynn was staring when she turned around. The cinders had left a pattern of red welts across the bridge of his left cheekbone; the whites of his eyes were red from the smoke. He was not quite as in bad shape as she, but they were both looking a bit ragged around the edges. Especially watching Antha trying to bandage up her wound, like she did not remember what it was like to be injured for more than a second’s worth of pain any longer. After a moment, he snapped. “Don’t you even know how to—?” Rynn rose off the wall, and advanced towards her. Seizing the fabric from the water, he wrung it off roughly, wrapped it quickly around the worst of the are and the broad of her palm, then tightened the ends into an efficient knot.
“Look,” he said, as brusquely as he could manage. “I don’t know how you found a way to drag me into this—as far as I’m concerned, congratulations! we’ve made it to Hell. Maybe we both deserve it.” He narrowed his eyes up at her, and released her hand. Rynn had hardly realized that he’d been holding it this entire time. “I have no idea what you were thinking, pulling me in here. Constructs of this variety aren’t my forte of experience.” The Calais family practices were all founded in necromancy, not oneiromancy. Unless they were both dead, Rynn wasn’t certain what Antha wanted him to do.
No, he rather wanted to keep believing that this was exactly what she said it wasn’t—‘just a dream’. If his magic worked here, he could have raised an army out of the dead strewn about the city and marched a militia of flaming zombies on Nero. If he’d been able to feel the ancestors at all, he could have called on their power to aid in his time of need. But this place took all of that away. Rynn had never felt more cripplingly isolated before.
He glanced around the room, taking in the pitifully meager belonging that lined the walls. Pallet bed, chest, armor rack, window. If this was a different sort of story, there would be something useful in the chest, like a sword or a potion to fling at the approaching monster. The mannequin would have supported a suit of magic armor. The window-bars would be easily scraped out of their settings. The boy turned away from Antha, searching for something other than she that would occupy his attention, and began to rifle through the trunk. Mostly, it seemed to be clothes—a satchel of herbs attached to a leather thong, a small pouch of coins, and a dullish knife were rolled up into a bundle at the bottom. Rynn looked at his findings without bothering to disguise his disappointment, then shut the lid again and dragged the chest over to the window, using it as a step-stool to look out the small opening. The sky was scarlet overhead; he could see vultures wheeling around the plumes of black smoke as they rose into the atmosphere.

((I’m gonna leave this here
because
i am tired beyond belief.
i will make more words soon after work tomorrow.))  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

When Rynn came and took her hand, Antha's half-sobs quieted to nothing more than a few deep, unsteady breaths. Idly stroking the linen pulled taut around her palm, she managed a low, "Thank you," before falling back to silence, taking another scrap of linen and washing the grime from her face the best she could. Modern make-up was a little less easily removed, but Antha paid little attention to the black smudges and streaks beneath her eyes. There were larger issues at hand.
It was easy enough, for a few moments, to pretend that she hadn't heard Rynn. Her jaw clenched subtly as she scrubbed soot from her cheeks, her fingers tensing irritably as she ran the sullied cloth down her neck. She thought she would feel better without the thick layers of ash and specks of blood plastered to her face, and in a way she did, but as always, Rynn had ruined everything. The girl stood, folding the blackened scrap of linen and dropping it back into the bucket, then more suddenly than she could blink, she felt herself snap.
She was hardly even aware of making the decision to shove Rynn, to send him toppling off of the chest and to the floor, she only knew that she had and that afterwards, she could hear herself laughing without meaning to, madly and helplessly, could feel her fingers sweeping back through her hair and pulling just a little too forcefully. "You little brat," she found herself murmuring through that unhinged laughter, turning and taking a few meandering steps around the room as if she couldn't bear to stand still, "What, Rynn, we're not in a bad enough situation already? You're not satisfied by all of this---" Her arms swung out wildly, gesturing around them, "---so you have to go picking a fight with me, too?" She shook her head, slowly, as the laughter bubbled unbidden from her lips again and her hand pressed tensely to her bowed forehead. "Ah, I'm sorry, I forgot. The universe is always conspiring against you, isn't it? Everything and everyone is always looking for ways to ******** you over." With a small sneer, she continued in a thickly sarcastic tone, "I can't imagine what that's like. After all, clearly I wanted to be here. Clearly I wanted to be stalked, attacked, trapped...and then I thought, 'hey, do you know who else might enjoy this? Rynn.' So, despite the fact that I can't get the faintest spark of my magic to work here, here you are."
Another few moments passed in relative silence, Antha giving that soft, mad laughter beneath her breath and the war and fire raging outside, before her anger finally boiled over and she turned, eyes narrowing hysterically as she lost all control and started screaming, "How the ******** do you think I could have done this? And why, Rynn? Of all the people I could have brought if I had the power to do it, why would I ever choose you? All you ever do is b***h and whine and pick fights! You're no help---you don't even help yourself, when you can, you just keep whining!" As if she couldn't contain herself, couldn't get a handle on the sudden rage that turned her stomach and tensed her every muscle, her hand came abruptly to the old wooden mannequin and threw it violently to the floor, the wood splintering and skidding across the floor, and Antha threw her hands helpless to the sides of her head. That much seemed to calm her a bit, at least to her previous state and the mad laughter as she dropped down onto the cot and her head fell into her hands, murmuring, "You know what, I bet you're right. This is Hell. We've both died and this is our eternal punishment---having to deal with each other while we're helplessly hunted through the streets like common prey." More laughter, even quieter, something sounding beneath her voice as if all she wanted to do was break completely down and sob until there was nothing left in her. "Find your own way out, you selfish little brat. I give up, I don't care anymore. Even if I did make it out of this alive, how many months do I have left before he comes for me in the real world? Three is it?" Her hands slid over her face, her shoulders shaking vaguely, and even she couldn't tell if she was crying.
Something happened in her mind then, deep down in the physical recesses of her brain. It was a small, sharp pain, something she was not quite used to, and for a split second everything seemed to waver, a tiny piece of the fabric of the world cracking. Lifting her face an inch from her hands, her eyes wide with disbelief, she managed only to whisper a confused, "...Airi?" But that crack had brought their location to attention and before she could even process what had happened, it was gone and a sudden rapid clatter in the hallway culminated in the splintering of the door, the bloodied Nero throwing it open and taking a split second to stand in the open doorway and narrow his eyes at the witches.
He went for Rynn first, as the closer of the two and an identified nuisance, grabbing him up by the collar in the blink of an eye and baring those threatening fangs, his sense gone the way of a wild animal. Antha screamed, throwing herself into motion, and felt the instantaneous flip of a switch that dictated her every moment as if on auto-pilot. She threw herself between Rynn and Nero, and knowing better than to try and move the immoveable vampire, she pushed Rynn hard enough to tear the fabric of his shirt and knock him out of Nero's grip, shoving him hard towards the door and repeating her earlier cry with an even more alarmingly dire intonation. "Run!"
Nero had her arm before she could even finish her scream, the bruises blossoming immediately beneath his iron grip. But even if Antha didn't have her magic, and even if she had never been particularly strong, she was clever enough to never leave herself without protection and the knife that always appeared in her hands like magic flashed in her fingers, showing up a little less magically than usual. It buried into the side of Nero's neck before he could stop it, slicing his fingers clean off of his hand as he tried (too late) to do so. The vampire roared in pain, enough to make Antha's blood curdle, but before she could frantically break free of the hold on her arm, the dagger vanished from Nero's neck and she took a sharp intake of breath to feel a sudden excruciating pain just beneath her ribs on her left side, glancing down to the sudden spill of blood down her dress from around the knife stuck halfway into her flesh.
The girl's mind registered, as it shut down into survival mode, that there was no time to pay attention to what was potentially a fatal wound. Instead she yanked the knife hastily out of herself, turning in the vampire's hold to bury it in his chest and drag it as far down as she could as fast as possible. Another roar that shook the very Colosseum and his fingers released her in shock. Taking advantage of the sudden freedom, she took the brief window of opportunity to kick him squarely in the stomach so that he fell against the wall and then dropped, clutching at the wound on his neck which was already beginning to heal.
Antha ran while she could, ignoring the overpoweringly sharp pain in her side. She turned into the hall and put everything she had into running. She had precious few moments before he healed and set after her, she had to make them count, she had to lose him before then.
When she found Rynn in the hallway, she grabbed him desperately by the arm, taking a sharp intake of breath before whispering direly, "I think I know a way out." It was what he said, actually, that had given her the idea. That and the sudden crack in the fabric of this particular universe. This wasn't a dream, as she had said, but it wasn't entirely in their minds, either. This was Hell. But there was no time to explain at the moment, every second counted, so Antha kept running. When she came upon a small lounge set just past a burning mannequin that had probably shown off some prized armor at one point, she knocked the fiery figure down so that the flames barred the hallway, hastily throwing a table on top of it to catch fire, and then kept running. Anything to buy a few minutes.
When they spilled out of the Colosseum, back into the chaotic, fiery mess of the city, she took one half-second to catch her breath and barked sharply, pointing a finger at a cluster of buildings set high above most of the city, "There, we need to get there! Capitoline Hill!" And then, again, she kept running, ducking into back alleys and taking every available turn, trying to mask their path.
She was getting pretty sick of time dictating her entire life lately.

In the Mayfair Manor parlor, as everything continued to quietly play out in frantic whispers, Alistair went very still on the couch, eyes narrowing warily. There was a knot in his stomach, a growing sense of heat as if he'd swallowed fire, all making him suddenly very uncomfortable. He didn't know the feeling and he really didn't like it. What...
He curled up, pulling his arms tightly around his abdomen, and tried to stifle his small groan. But as always, nothing escaped Vittorio. "What's the matter?" he called sharply to his cousin, diverting his attention away from Rynn as he observed the younger boy's tensed features.
"Stomach hurts..." He whispered, helplessly, turning to bury his face in the couch cushions.
Courtland, still staring down at Rynn, only murmured distractedly, "Antha told you not to eat so much."
But Alistair rapidly shook his head, clutching at his chest. "It's in my chest, too. And my head. I don't like it, it's terrible, and it hurts."
Vittorio rose rapidly, going to inspect the boy no matter how he tried to push him off, whimpering quietly to himself. And then, before he even knew what was happening, his vision flashed white and he was turning, his sullied arms reaching out and roughly shoving Rynn from atop a trunk where he had been observing the wild, flaming city outside of the barred window.
He blinked rapidly, bolting up on the couch and then doubling over, clutching at his stomach as he whined, "I don't like it, all this rage. It's hot and sharp and I feel like I'm going to explode from the inside!" Glancing up, a few tears quivering against his eyelids, he managed to whisper, "I didn't know Evie had this kind of anger."
Immediately, the cousins were at attention, trying to swarm the boy asking what he meant, he he shoved them aside, breaking through their ranks and pacing the floor. It had just been a moment, but he had gotten enough of the anger from her to turn his stomach and bring the sharp, stabbing pain all through his body. He didn't understand, not one bit, and reaching out to her didn't do anything, he couldn't feel her anywhere---
A small, sharp pain went off somewhere in the back of his head, something cracking around him, and a bunch of images hit his head all at once. It would have made him collapse, this overload, if he hadn't been suddenly hit by a large, impossibly sharp pain in his side, just beneath his ribs, the sudden acute sense that it was life or death in this exact moment, and then the connection was gone again.
Dolly Jean screamed and the boy glanced down to his side, touched trembling fingers to the blood that rapidly soaked Nicolae's white shirt and poured down his abdomen. His other hand stung and, sparing it a glance, found it bloodied and blistered, the skin raw and shiny and red. The cousins rushed him, all shrieking with concern, Vittorio rushing off to find the first-aid kit, but Alistair was in a daze, throwing them off and pushing through them, his feet moving automatically into the hall and up the stairs as fast as he could move them. He stumbled, falling on the stairs, but completely ignored the sharp pain of all those hard edges slamming into him and got back up, scrambled up them and kept running as fast as he could into Antha and Cian's room.
Cian's presence didn't register to Alistair in that moment, bursting through the door clutching his bloodied side. Nothing did---not sound, not sights, not the cousins that came screaming after him, only Antha laid peacefully on the bed, utterly unresponsive. He ran to her, scrambling clumsily up onto the bed beside her, and hastily inspected the section of her body that corresponded to his stab wound. Finding nothing, he grabbed up her hand and checked for a burn on her palm, then anywhere else, but found nothing. She was pristine, and Alistair was relieved enough to cry hysterically, doubling over so that his head laid on her stomach, anxiously clasping her hand in both of his.
"What in the hell is going on?!" Julien roared from the doorway, barging into the room only to stop still when he saw the blood staining Alistair's shirt. Courtland and Jack went to the boy, tried with gentle fingers and soothing words to pry him off of his sister so that Vittorio could look at him, but he screamed bloody murder and threw his arms around him, holding her tightly enough that they couldn't possibly drag him away. "Awar Evie!" he screamed desperately, kicking at Courtland as he tried to take hold of him, "Awar Evie, awar Evie!"
"Airi." The boy quieted, glancing from the corner of his eye as Malakai appeared in the door and then quietly crept forward, easing himself down onto the bed beside Alistair and taking his injured hand in his own. It was already healing, thanks to the transfusion of Antha's blood, riddled with vampire blood. "Alistair...what did you see?"
The boy glanced through the fringe of scarlet curls at his big brother, his eyes hazy and hectic, still clinging desperately to Antha. After a moment, when his panic had settled a little, he dredged up that wild mess of images he had received with the wounds and all but flung them out for his cousins to take, letting them to the work of separating them out.
None of it was pretty. Through Antha's eyes, they watched the city burn. They watched her scramble frantically through fiery alleys, saw the spill of tears on her burned hand. They watched her glance down at the severed head hitting her leg, saw her eyes flickered to the feral, bloodied soldier standing across the plaza, and heard her dire whisper---Run!---before she grabbed Rynn's arm. They watched her shove the boy, heard her hysteric laughter as she cracked under the pressure, and finally watched as she threw Rynn out of the creature's hold, felt the cold press of fingers painfully on her arm as she glanced down at the knife stuck into her side.
For several moments, no one moved and no one said anything. They stared helplessly at Antha, deceptively peaceful beneath Alistair's desperate hold, until Courtland took a sharp intake of breath and finally spoke. "We have to do something."
"Do what?" Jack whispered, eyes downcast.
"I can't reach her," Alistair murmured, clutching desperately at her shoulder, "She's not in here...she's somewhere else. That thing is keeping her away from me..."
"Rynn's with her," Lawrence murmured thoughtfully, his mind racing visibly in the flashing of his eyes, "If they can keep from fighting, maybe they can help keep each other alive."
Shaking his head, Courtland merely repeated, "We have to try to help."
Irritably, Vittorio repeated, "How?"
"I don't know," Courtland murmured, turning rapidly on his heel and heading back towards the door, "But we're going to figure it out."
Dutifully, the cousins tromped rapidly after the interim leader up the stairs and into the attic. Lingering at the back, Jack stood in the doorway and stared anxiously at Malakai. "...are you coming?"
The boy stared with quiet intensity down at his little sister for another moment, touching a finger to her pale cheek. "...yeah." Filled with an unusual determination, Malakai rose in one fluid movement and followed his cousins up to the attic where a door slammed, all of them abruptly vanishing from the house.
"Evie will be back..." Alistair murmured, still sprawled out across her, holding tightly to her.
From the doorway, Julien whispered with false confidence in response, "Of course she will." Quietly, he went to sit beside the boy on the bed, hesitantly stroking his vivid curls and whispering almost to himself, "God help me that I let things get this far."  

[Okimiyage]

When Antha attacked him, it caught Rynn totally off-guard. Staring out the window at that red sky, his fingers wrapped futilely around the iron bars, he could see the fire creeping closer across the rooftops. They were trapped. This entire city was a death-trap. It was the sort of plan that Rynn could half-admire, mirror-twin as it was to his own intentions, at one point—but the mirror was broken, all brilliantly fractured, to the point where a cohesive reflection was hardly visible at all.
Antha’s first blow hit around mid-kidney, and Rynn toppled off the chest like a bowling-pin, with an oof of surprise, landing flat on his back on the hard packed-earth floor. “Great,” he growled, picking himself back up. His voice was dripping with sarcasm: “Thank you very much. If someone else doesn’t get to us first, we can kill one another instead. At least it’ll be a fair fight, here—just you and me, a bunch of dead Romans, and a raging inferno all around us. What else do we need? what are you—ah, right—” The wooden body-frame shattered, splintered across the room. Rynn picked up one of the wooden fragments and inspected it with a false air of approval. “—good thinking!! We can use these toothpicks as stakes when your blood-sucking nemesis comes through the door.” Rynn threw up his hands. He would have laughed, but there was no need to make extra noise when they were trying to hide. Instead, he viciously kicked the pile of linens out of his way, and sat down on the lid of the chest.
“It’s really ******** rich that you’re trying to blame me now for not being helpful.” he muttered. “Anyways, you have to be the one who brought me here. Who else would have invited me in? What, you think the thing that’s hunting you decided that it needed more of a challenge?”
He didn’t look up until he heard—an intake of irregular breath, a pang in Antha’s voice. Something not right. It was the note in her voice when she said, three months.
He hadn’t realized it would be so soon.

Rynn wasn’t given more than a moment to ponder this new tidbit of information. As he sat there, running his thumb over the grooved wood of his ‘stake’—as preposterous as the idea was, it was still a better weapon than anything else that was available—the door flew open, burst to pieces, and the hunter bestowed a triumphant smile upon the sight of his prey.
Rynn was the closest to the door, and most obvious choice to go for first; he was the wildcard, not the intended prey, and the weaker of the two witches. He did not see Nero step across the room; one moment he was in the doorway, and the next, Rynn’s feet were being lifted from the ground. A burst of adrenaline hit the boy—panic and fear coursed through his body in an instant. He couldn’t die here. Without thinking, the hand holding the ‘stake’ arced through the air, jamming his only weapon as hard as he could in the hollow between Nero’s collarbone and throat. He felt the wood penetrate, Nero’s ancient skin give way, but there was no time to admire his handiwork. For all her talk of leaving him to die, to find his own way out, Antha sprang between them. Rynn couldn’t stop the thought, idiot! She should be the one running. She should already be out the door. Rynn wasn’t the focus of this hell; he was a distraction, a pawn thrown into a game of chess, giving his king time to get out of check. Antha shouldn’t be trying to save him.
But something in the back of his head, some meager intuition, told him to follow her orders here. This was her dream, hers and Nero’s, and there was no escape in that room other than the way they’d came.
He have to trust her to follow.
The halls were filled with bodies. There was no trace of the clang of fighting which they had heard before. Had Antha’s vampire slaughtered the entire Colosseum?
It certainly felt like it. Flames danced in their braziers unattended, weapons lay abandoned on the ground, inches from lifeless fingers. There were trails of blood all about the hall.
Were they really in Hell? He’d been mocking when he said it, but even his tenuous connection to Liesse was strained, he couldn’t sense her at all. This was what it had been like before.
Maybe he was dead. He’d always believed that the end of his life would have been more interesting, though. But if he was dead—or dreaming—and Liesse was still alive, or awake—there ought to be—
He glanced down at his hand, and turned it to and fro in the flickering light, searching for the thread that connected the twins.
But there was nothing.
He was about to give up, when Rynn felt the faintest of tugs on his left ring finger. He almost couldn’t tell whether it was imagined or not, but his heart leaped nevertheless. Even if he couldn’t see it here—maybe, maybe—
but then Antha bowled into him, and seized his hand, and took off like a mad fox with a pack of hounds at her heels, and he didn’t get to finish the thought. Even though he’d been almost positive that she would get away, his heart still filled with a flurry of relief. But there was no time to talk; even if there had been, the spreading dark spot in Antha’s side made their escape imperative. He didn’t have to ask what had happened; the answer was obvious, and Rynn thought, that should be my wound. If she hadn’t helped him get away, he would be bleeding out instead of her.
There was less of a crowd in the streets now, but Antha was still difficult to follow, ducking and darting through debris, abandoned stalls and burning homes.
As they fled through of of the city’s many archways and alleyways, Rynn caught sight of an overturned cart, the broken amphorae inside filled with a dark liquid. Tethered and trapped within the wooden harness, desperately tossing its head, a shaggy-faced mule bared the whites of its eyes at them. It was the first living animal Rynn had seen, which is why it stood out; it seemed as though its owner had “parked” it there and never returned for any of his property.
“Come on!” Rynn exclaimed, suddenly hitting on an idea. “This way!”
He leaped into the open back of the cart, clambering over clay jars and shoving them off behind him. Some shattered on the street, spilling tarry black contents onto the stone, but Rynn didn’t have time to get them out of the way before he untied the mule. It gave a ferocious kick, splintering the wooden seat of the wagon, and it was all Rynn could do to make it off and out of the way in time. He landed badly, felt the bone in his leg jar, but couldn’t waste even a single limping step. He grappled with the mule’s head; it gave a great heehaw kind of wail, but settled and did not kick again, choosing instead to strain at the rope halter that wrapped around its jaw, nose and ears.
Rynn didn’t offer much of an explanation, just looped the tether into a rough set of reins and put them into Antha’s hands. “You can’t run with that,” he stated, matter-of-fact, nodding his head at her side. It would be harder to hide, but frankly Rynn didn’t figure hiding forever was a workable solution anyways. Now, at least, as Antha guided them to Capitoline Hill, she wouldn’t be bleeding out the whole way. Or would bleed less, anyways.
Rynn’s shirt was torn already, so it didn’t seem to matter much if he lost more of it. Ripping a sleeve away, he pressed the fabric against Antha’s wound as he put his hands around her waist and lifted her up onto the back of the mule.
“hup”—and he clambered up behind her. He had good timing; one more instant was all it took for the mule to realize that it was no longer held in place, and bolt.
Nobody could say that it was the most elegant method of travel, but it was certainly quicker than carrying Antha on his back. As they rode through the burning streets, Rynn kept pressure on the open wound with his shirt-sleeve, until the damn thing was saturated in blood. It was a good thing he had two sleeves.

Back at the manor, Liesse had been summoned to Rynn’s side. Malakai and the rest of the cousins were gathered ‘round as well; Cian was upstairs, pacing the bedroom—she could tell from the repetition of creaks above their heads. He could disguise his worry at least somewhat in front of the cousins, but on his own…well, he had one or two nervous habits.
The cousins stood around and talked, trying to hide their own concern, but the fear rose off of them like a mist from morning dew. The whole house stank of it. Liesse did not pay attention to the conversation; when they rose en masse and departed above-stairs, she sat and folded her hands around Rynn’s limp fingers. Their intwined grasp looked so different now. Even their skin tone—Rynn’s was rosier than hers now, and she missed the freckles that had speckled the back of her knuckles from hours digging in the gardens, watering her roses. She kept searching his body for—what was it? his consciousness, his soul, but it was an empty vessel now, though he still drew breath. Even his hand felt cold. And she could find no trace of his spirit, no matter how she searched, no matter how desperately she called out for his presence in his mind. He was gone. Fear rose in her throat, choked a tear from her eye.
Above, Cian heard the percussion of approaching footsteps, and stopped his pacing. Family flooded the room, gathering around the bed in a hushed semi-circle; Cian didn’t know what they were planning, but they turned in unison and departed for the attic, and did not return.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Time. Time, time, time...Antha was sick of rushing, sick of fighting a concept, sick of not being able to do anything about it. Fleeing frantically through the streets, her foot caught on one of the rough stones and she toppled over, instantly clutching her wounded side with one hand while the other held her up off of the bloodied and ash covered pavement. Her hair coiled on the stones, providing some cushioning as she bowed her head and gritted her teeth, biting her tongue on the pained groan that threatened to explode from her throat. She couldn't breathe without excruciating effort, and even when she did it was all smoke and heat, burning her lungs.
She pulled herself back up. There was no time to stop, no time to be injured, he could catch up to them at any moment.
Still, when Rynn harnessed the mule and pushed her onto it, she couldn't help the small protest that spilled from her lips---"You're kidding..."---before she deemed it wiser not to argue and set to the truly frustrating task of trying to steer the creature.
When they reached the foot of the great hill, Antha glancing up at the great set of stone steps set into the side of the incline, it was made clear very quickly that the animal was not amenable to clamoring up them. Antha didn't waste time trying to force him, she slid off as gracefully as she could and bothered to pat the creature's head, wishing it luck before taking Rynn's hand and beginning the arduous task of climbing the many, many stairs.
Besides the sheer agony of just running up the stairs, the witches were jostled as they made their way up, Roman citizens fleeing for their temples and the palace of their emperor as their last ray of hope. "It had to be a on a ******** hill," she moaned helplessly, gazing up at the broad, powerful building high above with despairing eyes, "The highest ******** hill in Rome. Can’t worship Jupiter at ground level, can you?" But despite her protests, when she had regained her breath she began as fast as she could up the stairs, muttering lowly in French. It was almost too bad Rynn didn’t know the language---the curses were rather inventive.
Just past the first landing, the stairs and the entire hill, in fact, shook. Antha halted, reclaiming her balance, and glanced around herself in bewilderment. The sky flickered with light, and she had thought for a moment that it was lightning, colored red from the burning city. But then the black clouds parted in small gashes and the heavens poured forth with massive globes of fresh flame to rain over the city. Antha outright screamed, throwing herself against the statue at her back as a fireball clipped the side of the staircase nearby, crashing into houses below. "Are you ******** kidding me?!" The shrieks of the city grew louder, more astonished and terrified. Antha didn’t know if it was Nero or simply the nature of the construct---which would have explained why the city was so overrun with flames to begin with---but she didn’t want to take the time to ponder the idea. If they didn’t start running, they were likely to be hit.
"Run. Runrunrunrunrun." Her frantic words were punctuated by her hand grasping his a little more firmly before she took off again, up the stairs until they could spill out onto the piazza at the very top, facing the behemoth building of imposing columns and intricate reliefs. The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Antha clutched a statue nearby, trying to keep her balance while she caught her breath as the entire earth shook beneath their feet from the multiple impacts. Before the witches, a fireball the size of a car hurtled down and crashed into the rustically paved marble of the piazza,skidding and smoking and plowing through the people who tried desperately to flee from it.
Again, Antha started running, dodging through the crowds of the faithful on their knees all around the temple, praying to Jupiter for an end to the madness. Taking the few broad steps up the the temple doors,she burst into the cavernous room of stone and marble and began physically throwing the frightened worshipers out, leaving the people confused and stumbling on the steps before she threw her weight on one of the massive doors, pushing with all her might, feet slipping. “Rynn, help!” she squeaked, the door only budging under her weak pressure. Life was terribly difficult without magic, she was realizing.
Within the temple when it was empty and the doors were closed, the noise and chaos sounded very distant. It echoed vaguely through the high halls like terrible hymns, drifting around statues and icons, and Antha was grateful enough for some hint of peace that she all but collapsed onto the nearest stone bench, clutching her bloodied side and breathing heavily. There was blood trickling from between her lips, but she wiped it away before Rynn could notice.
"This is Hell," she repeated, very quietly, staring down at the marble tiles beneath her feet, "I mean that, Rynn. Did you notice? Those soldiers...they were Visigoths." She paused, catching her breath as she shook her head. "The burning of Rome happened at a completely different time from the Visigoths sacking the city. And the Colosseum, the Pantheon...they weren't built until even later. And these people, the way they act..." Another pause for breath, though it was halfway to collect her thoughts and try to organize them into words. "...they're dead, Rynn. Everyone we've seen here, they're real, but...they're dead. They were all here, at some point. Some of them when the city was sacked, some when it burned, and others even later. You can tell by their clothes. But they were all here, and they died, and this...this is their hell." Her trembling fingers reached out for the nearby column to help her to her feet, the girl struggling down the main hall and towards the massive statue situated at the far end. Jupiter with his curling hair and beard, draped in his traditional toga, seated in his throne, thunderbolt in one hand and eagle perched upon the other. "Nero was here, too. He was a soldier, he attacked the city. That's how he can enter this plane of his own accord, because he had a place in it. But it wasn't just him." Her hands laid flat against the altar, the girl lowering gratefully to her knees and turning her face to look up at the stern stone face of the Roman God. "Doesn't it look familiar?" she whispered breathily, her voice nearly shaking, "That face...like the one you saw in Satis House that night." She was referring to the Mayfair familial spirit, the guise he took on when he wanted to look at someone. Whether it was staring Rynn down at Satis House, facing Cyrus, or simply appearing in Cian's dreams, he always had the same face. The face of Jupiter, Zeus, Odin, and even the Christian God.
"If I'm right," she murmured, leaving no room for it to be argued that she wasn't, "We're not in a dream, we're not in our heads...this is a sphere of existence between the world of the living and the land of the dead. Purgatory, in the sense that these spirits cannot move on to the other side. Our own spirits are literally removed from our bodies right now, that's why we don't have our magic. So..." She glanced back up at the face of the statue, her eyes flashing darkly. "He should be able to make his way in here. He exists in the same space between worlds, he existed at the time that all of this was happening. If Nero can do it, then..."
But as always, it was easier said than done. There was no telling how difficult it actually was to break the barrier of the construct, much less for the Mayfair spirit to hear them. "You have to help me," she said suddenly, her voice determined as she turned on her knees and held her hands out for Rynn to take, "We have to get through to him. Our thoughts can't get through to our twins, they're in a completely different realm, but together maybe we can at least get them through the barriers of this place. If we can do that, he'll hear them, he'll come for us. And then maybe he can take us back. Or at the very least, he'll have some power here. He can keep us safe until we find another way out." Again she proffered her hands, her palms laid flat facing upwards. There was no time to waste---even if Nero didn't find them for a while, she was sure to bleed out soon.

In Mayfair Manor, which was very suddenly eerily quiet without the presence of any of the cousins, Michael stood silently staring up the stairs of the attic. His face was pale, his fingers trembling slightly in the pocket of his coat. He glanced through the bedroom door to his right, quietly taking int he sight of Alistair clinging to Antha, Julien stroking their hair and Cian anxiously pacing. The front door opened, slammed, and Eleanor and Cyrus appeared at the top of the stairs, running past Michael and up the stairs to the attic. The door to the airship had hardly even slammed behind them when the front door opened again, Thorne barging in and following the same path. None of the cousins were going to simply sit by and do nothing, it seemed.
Michael turned, taking slow, easy steps down the stairs and turning into the parlor, gazing darkly down at the unconscious Rynn. His eyes flashed at Liesse, noted her presence, but he said nothing. Several minutes passed that way, the house quiet enough for him to hear the ticking of the grandfather clock out in the hallway. The hands struck the hour and the bells chimed, bringing Michael out of his daze at least enough to walk over to Rynn, anxiously adjusting the blanket around his shoulders where the cousins had disturbed it. When he moved away, his fingers gently brushed the top of Liesse's head, trailing through several strands of fine hair.
"They'll figure something out," he whispered when he was situated in the nearby armchair, his hands clasped together to keep from shaking, "The cousins will help." And then, glancing at Liesse with a shadow of a smile, "Really, who would ever want to face Rynn and Antha together in a fight? They're terrifying creatures on their own, but together...I imagine they'd keep trying to outdo one another. It's certain death for anyone that stands against them."
The door opened again and Michael glanced behind him, his eyes narrowing at the pale figure in the doorway. "Dad," Nicolae murmured, as if it was all he needed to say to demand answers from Michael. But the man shook his head and Nicolae vanished, appearing instead in the upstairs bedroom staring down at his sister, trying to find some spark he knew, some familiar hint of Antha. When there was none to be found, he pressed his lips briefly to her cool forehead, vanishing even further up into the house and through the same door as the others.
There was a clatter in the kitchen, something falling, and Michael ran to see what had happened. Jacob was on his knees, his hands shaking violently as he tried to gather up shards of broken teacups between the steaming puddles of spilled tea. "I thought I'd make tea for everyone," the boy whispered, his voice quaking to match the tears he blinked rapidly away from his eyes, "I-I thought it would help with n-nerves..."
Michael sighed silently, leaning down to gingerly hoist the boy to his feet. He recognized keenly with a witch's senses the mark of fear gripping him. "Come on, Jacob, to your feet. Come sit here." He led him over to the table, gently guiding him into a chair, and then went back towards the cabinets, ignoring the mess for the moment. "I'll make the tea." Jacob just continued to shake, and Michael was almost glad for it. It was something to keep his mind off of his own fear, calming the boy's nerves.