Cold Authority
Title: Cold Authority
Story Continuity: Battle For the Sun
Prompts: Blue Raspberry #20: under new management, White Chocolate #21: whimsy, Pralines & Cream #2: two cents
Extra: Malt (C - "we don't say that word")
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 3,556
Summary: Kristen asks the group to stop off at Strathclyde, city of vice, and asks Cyprian in particular to accompany her to visit her parents, both of whom she hasn't seen in ten years. Some parents only vaguely resemble the title.
We'd made it out of Wraybrook fine - no missed vampires making their displeasure about our extermination of their ilk known, relatively little trauma over fallen friends/lovers - and the subspace compartment in my backpack had recently filled with stolen goods. I was okay with that. Not like the dead and the fled were going to come back for them. Cliff, the one who suggested we loot the town, was the only one whose conscience was working him double time.
"The problem is, we're looters," Cliff said, voice cracking on the last word.
"We don't say that word, Cliff," Kristen said. "We say that we're good finders."
Cliff shot a slightly dirty look at Kristen, and Kristen in turn glanced at him with an almost feline level of disdain before looking away from him. Apparently, the honeymoon was over before it began. And then Kristen's eyes lit up like someone had shot off fireworks behind them. She'd spotted a road sign, so old and well-neglected it could only be on urban property, and walked right over to inspect it. "Look, we're coming up on Strathclyde!"
"What's in Strathclyde?" Jaida said, and if you needed proof she was self-involved, there it was. No Harlandish woman or man didn't know what Strathclyde was, or at least a little of what it supposedly had to offer.
"Strathclyde," I said, "is a den of sin and iniquity, or a children's amusement park, or the best place to catch a live show. It's every promise every town ever failed to keep. If you believe the vacation pamphlet spam."
"Right," Kristen said. "Or, you know, it could be the place where my family and my best friend lives."
Ah.
"It...could be, at that," I said.
"So can we go?" Kristen said, specifically looking at me. Which, by the way, no. I may have been the designated "responsible adult," despite having only recently stopped breeding cannabis for my own entertainment, but I was not going to be the designated leader just because Cliff and Jaida preferred the weather up their own asses to that of reality.
"What the hell are you asking me for?" I said. "If the others agree, I've got nothing against going."
"Man," Cliff said dreamily, "I haven't been to a skeezy peep show since I sneaked in to visit my Aunt Berenice when I was eight!"
"God, keep your disgusting, creepy fetishes to yourself, little boy," Jaida said, tossing her hair.
Cliff didn't get what could possibly have been wrong about visiting a busy aunt through a peep show window, and remained blissfully ignorant for possibly the rest of his life.
Strathclyde was Daldain magnified. It was a large, sprawling city, with a district for every sin. The skies always seemed to be a little darker and farther away inside the city, the buildings a little dirtier than the roads. Every type of pusher you could imagine lingered around the bends from the city's entrance; every pusher in Daldain had his or her roots here, and wished to one day return here. This was the city where the action was.
"My friend and mentor came here, about three years ago," Kristen said. "Mint Barr. She came looking for a better life. She was a big draw on Schoolgirl Night at Longbeard's Booty. Wonder how she's doing now..."
Seeing the contemplative look on Cliff's face, I said, "Not a chance in hell, Cliff. Don't even think about rescuing this one, too."
Cliff shot me a look that could probably have made a glacier shiver.
"Oh, Cliff would never be able to rescue Mint," Kristen said. "She loves the whoring life too much. That's why she came here - more opportunities for wealthier clients."
"So, what, your friend came to the city with a bounce in her step and a wet dream in her heart?" Jaida scoffed, and Kristen's lips thinned as she said, "I'm...not too sure that fits. A wet dream in her pubis, maybe. Mint never had much of a heart to speak of. If she had one, it would have been too small and shriveled to have any dreams living in it. The most generous thing I ever saw her do was charge twenty silver for counseling a broke friend. Two silver was all the girl had, and two silver was all Mint's thoughts were really worth."
A passing tween talking on her cell phone grabbed Jaida's attention; Jaida snatched the cell away from the girl, and kicked her when she protested. The girl made that vapid, indignant half-sigh, half-exclamation tween girls have a way of mastering, but slunk off without a fight.
"What the hell are you doing?" Cliff said, scowling as if it was a personal offense against him. He was so innocent. We all were; of course anything pretty, shiny, and new belonged to Jaida.
"Sorry, your little girlfriend can't come to the phone right now, she's having her murder cherry popped," Jaida said into the phone. A high-pitched, unintelligible voice said something on the other line, and then Jaida said, "Oh, you're her mom? Betcha you didn't see this coming when the pee stick turned blue, huh? Really must go, we've got a body that needs dismembering! Ciao, bella!"
"So who's signing us up at the hotel?" Jaida asked, thumbing through her new phone. Cliff frowned and said, "I was thinking we draw straws on it. With Kristen immune, of course, since she's got family and all..."
"Oh, no," Jaida said. "I'm out, unless you want to get in the way of a girl and her compulsive gambling problems. When the girl has a very sharp, very untested knife she's eager to try out, I can't really say I'd advise it, but, well, you never really struck me as the intelligent sort, Cliff."
"I'm smarter than some," Cliff said, glaring at Jaida, who smiled sweetly at him briefly before dialing a number on her cell. Cliff sighed, then turned to me and said, "Well, Cyprian, that leaves you and me. Looking at the two of us, this can only mean that you drew the evolutionary short straw, so you get to register us with the hotel. Good luck, man."
"I applaud your effort, but no," I said. "Take three thousand silver and register us with Float Inn. You "accidentally" forget to register me and you sleep in a dumpster tonight, by the way."
Cliff glared - which he did unnervingly well - and said, "I hope you all appreciate me as much as you should," and turned foot and walked away.
"Cliff," I said. He turned around, eyebrows raised and face distorted in what was probably meant to be an impatient, inquiring look. It came off as a mix of constipated and surprised. We can't all be impressively expressive, I guess. I fished around inside the trench coat I'd filched from Sorensen's, found what I was looking for, and threw it at Cliff. "The money's in there," I explained. "Room and board ain't free here, either. Register us all under Knight."
Cliff may have said "Thanks," but his eyes clearly said, "Go fuck yourself on a naginata, dickweed."
His face was shit for communication, but those eyes were the pictures that said a thousand words. Each, even.
"See you guys," I said. "And whatever you do, don't go near Vanitywell Street after midnight."
"You're going?" Kristen said, and I noticed she looked a little off. Not sad or worried or secretly seething, just - I might have said scheming, if I knew her only a little better. "Where?"
"There's a bar that sells arcana absinthe on Main and a decent greenhouse in Little Velestia," I said. "I was thinking I'd get hammered and buy some seeds. Maybe chat up the sales clerk, if he or she's pretty enough, which, if I've got enough arcana in me, they will be. Why, you got a better idea on how I might occupy myself?"
I was lying about the sales clerk; it just sounded less sad. I might have had a tendency towards chatting up plants, however. That's not something you tell other people, though, because they think you actually want to cross-pollinate, if you catch my meaning. Venus flytraps are lovely company, surprisingly mild, and don't mind a little drunken, awkward interspecies flirting. Which, on arcana, even regular Joe humans sometimes engage in that particular pastime. Arcana - good arcana - makes you a little...mentally handicapable. You're incapable of doing anything right, or sanely, but you usually get it so spectacularly wrong that it actually becomes its own brand of right.
"Well...I'd be honored if you went with me to see my parents," Kristen said. "I'll see Mint alone, but ma and dad...I don't know what they'll say to me after all these years. When I was...taken, I was so young, barely fourteen. And my dad, he knew where I was, I think. I don't think that's a very good sign."
"Take Cliff, he's the one you've been making eyes and knight in shining armor puns at," I nearly said, until I remembered Cliff was souring towards Kris, and on hotel duty besides, and that left Jaida and me, which essentially left just me. I sighed. "This is going to be like the time I had to translate that hardcore Gaea-Judeo priest's speech to his fantastically flamboyant soldier son, isn't it."
"Oh, I'm sure it won't be that bad," Kris said lightly, and we began walking together. "Maybe you and mom can exchange gardening tips, or something."
I snorted; "Right, because a mundane human woman could tell me something about botany I don't already know, or couldn't get at by asking one of my plants themselves. I can see how immensely likely that might be."
Along the way, I noticed a running theme in the political posters we passed; they typically read like hip magazine ads, and most used a variation on the phrase, "This town needs a better class of politico, and Mayor Seane Pryors is gonna give it to 'em!"
Apparently, no magic use at all was allowed. There went my night of getting plastered with arcana; the drink was made primarily of, not with, magic. That was what made it so fun - no hangovers to speak of, although you still had to worry about remembering what you did last night and why you're naked and wrapped between sticky sheets with your neighbor's dog.
So apparently Kristen's parents lived in the same house they did when Kristen was still with them, a two-story, broken white picket fence affair, alarmingly enough with a mail box with three bullet holes in it - "Looks like dad's had another run in with Mr. Eggars," Kristen had remarked blithely, like it was a fucking letter of complaint and not an extra bullet hole. Regardless, I remember thinking it was good the Morrows hadn't moved, because considering the neighborhood, we were lucky some Errol Nottista-wannabe drug lord hadn't moved in. Kristen's mom answered the knock, and it was apparent Kris didn't get her looks from her mom's side of the family. Not to say Mrs. Morrow was ugly, far from it - but the curly blonde hair, the angular, sharp face, and the general shortness of her stature ensured that it was Papa Morrow that had contributed to Kris's soft beauty, which quickly and mind-breakingly conjured up the image of an innocent man-maiden blushingly courting this hard woman, and so I forced my brain to shut down, because the visual was about a half-step below zombies eating my face off on the "terrifying shit I hope never to see" list.
She glanced at me for a moment too long - longer than she'd taken to evaluate her own daughter - and said in both of our general directions, "May I...help you?"
Quick tip. If someone pauses between "May I" and "help you," what they're actually saying is, "I want to slam the door in your face/kill you, but the neighbors are watching/it's not polite/I like to delude myself that I'm a more important and good human being than you."
"Mom, it's me, Kristy. I'm home," Kristen said, looking more awkward and ashamed than genuinely glad to see her. Huh. "I'm...I'm okay, mom. How - how are you?"
"A little surprised," Mrs. Morrow said. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again. Forgive me for not being more welcoming, it's just - we thought you were dead. Won't you come in, Kristen? Your...friend, too, of course."
And come in we did. The house was unremarkably suburban, and I don't even remember most of what it was, though there was a fireplace, and a mounted dagger resting atop the mantle. Mrs. Morrow ushered us into the kitchen, but offered nothing. Kris found some green tea ice cream, anyway, and helped herself to it.
"My favorite flavor and brand," Kris said, smiling. "You and dad hated it. I'm glad you thought of me enough to keep some."
Mrs. Morrow, keeping with the emotional range she had shown up until now - roughly that of a coffee pot's - did not react. I was beginning to suspect garden gnomes had stolen her heart and replaced it with a steel bolt.
"Mom, this is Cyprian. He - um, he was a botanist, but I guess now he's sort of given that up? He saved me and this nice man I met from death by don. Also, he talks to plants and doesn't consider himself human despite being human-shaped, but somehow he's not crazy."
"Vampires don't put up with this sh- abuse," I said. "They're human-shaped and they talk to dead people, but I haven't heard one person call them out on their crazy. You know why? They're not."
"Yes, well," Kristen said, "There's so much more to call them out on, it tends to skip most people's minds."
"Why have you brought a mystic into my house, Kristen?" Mrs. Morrow said suddenly. "Why?"
"I didn't think it would be a problem," Kristen said. "He saved my life. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"It means you're alive, and you're here with that thing," Mrs. Morrow said, glaring briefly in my direction, which was actually tame compared to my thoughts on her, so I kept quiet. "So much has changed since you were gone, Kristen. And when you left - there's so much you don't know. You think you know, like every child thinks they know. Honey, why didn't you stay in Daldain?"
Kristen's eyes widened in surprise. "Mom," she said, "I - I don't know what you think I was doing in Daldain, but someone sold me to Don Reynaldo. I didn't run away in a fit of adolescent rebellion."
"Your father needed new eyes," Mrs. Morrow said. "Eyes that could see. I stood by his decision."
A pin dropped at that moment somewhere in the ruins of Wraybrook. I know because I heard it, sitting there in that room. It sounded a lot like something breaking.
"Mom," Kristen said, and apparently, that was all she had to say. Mrs. Morrow was frosty cool, surveying her daughter for...I don't even know. Maybe she got a thrill from the pain in Kristen's eyes. Wouldn't have been the first time a mom got off on her offspring's misery.
"Your mom's sort of a demonic hag," I said to Kristen. "I hope it didn't pass on to you."
"How dare you insult me in my own house, you abomination!" Mrs. Morrow said, which, wow, really? That was the thing that damaged her calm most?
"Mom, if you won't apologize to me, apologize to him! He's gone through enough this month!"
"Are you kidding me, Kris?" I said. "Really? I lost the love of my life so far. You discovered your mom sold you into prostitution and turned into a religious zealot."
"Zealotry has nothing to do with this," Mrs. Morrow said. "Magic is evil! It corrupted this city! Do you remember Mayor Nogales? He was caught brainwashing voters before the election! What's to keep you from doing the same to me?"
"Basic mystic decency, I suppose," I said. "And you think Nogales just decided on a whim not to also brainwash the person who found this out? Really? I don't buy it. Kris, come on, it-"
And then the distinct sound of a gun being cocked made me realize that Mr. Morrow approved of me just as much as the missus. Fuck my fruity pink hair, fuck every strand and all the powers they imply. While I dislike guns, and I especially hate when I can't make the things explode. This was some dude pointing a weapon at me, yes, but it was also Kristen's father, whom she probably loved in spite of everything, and for some damn fool reason, I didn't want to hurt Kris even inadvertently.
"Freeze right there," Mr. Morrow said. "Police. I'm calling the Venefice Unit."
Venefice Unit. I knew that phrase well enough that I knew better than to stick around for whatever asinine, likely upsetting dialog might happen between father and daughter.
"Animsolvus," I muttered, intending to make Mr. Morrow faint for two hours so I could escape with Kristen, and we could leave all this behind and chalk the day up as wasted.
What actually happened was that I woke up two hours later in a dank cell that was about twenty times less hospitable than the drunk tanks I've had experience with plenty enough times before. Kristen was nowhere in sight, but about three other guys and a woman - specifically Jaida - occupied the same small cell as me.
"What the hell are you doing here, Jaida?" I said, because if I expected Jaida to end up in any jail cell, it would be one with other women, for one thing, and two, I'd expect her to be wherever they put the people who started involved games of drunken football matches using two-month old babies as the football. Probably not the drunk tank, but also probably not in the same cell as a mystic and three guys who looked like they tried to break the world record for "total number of people shit-kicked in a single weekend" for fun every other week.
"Oh, you know me," Jaida said, "I got arrested for reviving this dumb shit who says I raped him. We had a little rough sex, I may have choked him into unconsciousness because the idiot was too dumb to come up with a safe word first. He wakes up and starts wailing like it don't happen all the time. You believe the nerve of these jerks? He climaxed first, what the hell did he want from me, to just wank for the next few hours? I guess the magic was a little overkill, but good lord."
"He had you arrested because you revived him?"
"Where the hell have you been? Have we met? Of course I didn't magically revive him when I have a perfect set of lungs and a great set of lips and a tongue. I got arrested because I cast a Pavlovian erection spell on him."
"So why are we in with them?" I said.
"We tried to kill Red here's sister's punk boyfriend with a lightning spell," one of the less muscly men said, shoving his finger vaguely towards a red-mulleted man. His scowl appeared almost as carved permanently into his face as the deep scar that ran from his forehead to the tip of his nose. "Didn't take." He eyed me. "This here's death row. What's a fruit like you doing here?"
"I'm a mystic," I said. "Which of course means I can't help myself. Also, I'm only half a fruit. I prefer to think of myself as more of a tomato."
I noticed a poster on the wall that looked like it appeared on every wall in the block. It read something like:
"HA! HA! HA!
You may have thought yourself smarter than the law, but the joke is entirely on you. By decree of the mayor, no magician, mage, or mystic shall be allowed to live. If you have broken your government's trust and cast unlawful magicks, you shall be executed thirty-one (31) days after your imprisonment under the Nogales-Barr statute, with no trial.
Have a nice day!"
Every word was precisely printed, spelling impeccable. That was the sort of thing Whelanists were big on: they'd triple spellcheck the notices no one but death row prisoners would ever set eyes on, they'd cheerfully slaughter mystics and human mages without stopping to think why, but they'd almost never show the mercy they prided themselves on. Exact, polite, thoughtless, kind to their own, merciless. Of course, there had been no prison set on my execution that had kept me in to term, even if that last escape was all Sorensen and Hellene Bismarck, and I didn't plan on letting myself get comfortable here, either.
"So, which of you boys are up for a little game of bruise the tomato?" Jaida said, clapping her hands together. As one, my cellmates took a long, appraising look at me.
I'd find a way out if it killed me. Or someone in that cell, anyway. I was personally hoping for all of them.
Story Continuity: Battle For the Sun
Prompts: Blue Raspberry #20: under new management, White Chocolate #21: whimsy, Pralines & Cream #2: two cents
Extra: Malt (C - "we don't say that word")
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 3,556
Summary: Kristen asks the group to stop off at Strathclyde, city of vice, and asks Cyprian in particular to accompany her to visit her parents, both of whom she hasn't seen in ten years. Some parents only vaguely resemble the title.
We'd made it out of Wraybrook fine - no missed vampires making their displeasure about our extermination of their ilk known, relatively little trauma over fallen friends/lovers - and the subspace compartment in my backpack had recently filled with stolen goods. I was okay with that. Not like the dead and the fled were going to come back for them. Cliff, the one who suggested we loot the town, was the only one whose conscience was working him double time.
"The problem is, we're looters," Cliff said, voice cracking on the last word.
"We don't say that word, Cliff," Kristen said. "We say that we're good finders."
Cliff shot a slightly dirty look at Kristen, and Kristen in turn glanced at him with an almost feline level of disdain before looking away from him. Apparently, the honeymoon was over before it began. And then Kristen's eyes lit up like someone had shot off fireworks behind them. She'd spotted a road sign, so old and well-neglected it could only be on urban property, and walked right over to inspect it. "Look, we're coming up on Strathclyde!"
"What's in Strathclyde?" Jaida said, and if you needed proof she was self-involved, there it was. No Harlandish woman or man didn't know what Strathclyde was, or at least a little of what it supposedly had to offer.
"Strathclyde," I said, "is a den of sin and iniquity, or a children's amusement park, or the best place to catch a live show. It's every promise every town ever failed to keep. If you believe the vacation pamphlet spam."
"Right," Kristen said. "Or, you know, it could be the place where my family and my best friend lives."
Ah.
"It...could be, at that," I said.
"So can we go?" Kristen said, specifically looking at me. Which, by the way, no. I may have been the designated "responsible adult," despite having only recently stopped breeding cannabis for my own entertainment, but I was not going to be the designated leader just because Cliff and Jaida preferred the weather up their own asses to that of reality.
"What the hell are you asking me for?" I said. "If the others agree, I've got nothing against going."
"Man," Cliff said dreamily, "I haven't been to a skeezy peep show since I sneaked in to visit my Aunt Berenice when I was eight!"
"God, keep your disgusting, creepy fetishes to yourself, little boy," Jaida said, tossing her hair.
Cliff didn't get what could possibly have been wrong about visiting a busy aunt through a peep show window, and remained blissfully ignorant for possibly the rest of his life.
Strathclyde was Daldain magnified. It was a large, sprawling city, with a district for every sin. The skies always seemed to be a little darker and farther away inside the city, the buildings a little dirtier than the roads. Every type of pusher you could imagine lingered around the bends from the city's entrance; every pusher in Daldain had his or her roots here, and wished to one day return here. This was the city where the action was.
"My friend and mentor came here, about three years ago," Kristen said. "Mint Barr. She came looking for a better life. She was a big draw on Schoolgirl Night at Longbeard's Booty. Wonder how she's doing now..."
Seeing the contemplative look on Cliff's face, I said, "Not a chance in hell, Cliff. Don't even think about rescuing this one, too."
Cliff shot me a look that could probably have made a glacier shiver.
"Oh, Cliff would never be able to rescue Mint," Kristen said. "She loves the whoring life too much. That's why she came here - more opportunities for wealthier clients."
"So, what, your friend came to the city with a bounce in her step and a wet dream in her heart?" Jaida scoffed, and Kristen's lips thinned as she said, "I'm...not too sure that fits. A wet dream in her pubis, maybe. Mint never had much of a heart to speak of. If she had one, it would have been too small and shriveled to have any dreams living in it. The most generous thing I ever saw her do was charge twenty silver for counseling a broke friend. Two silver was all the girl had, and two silver was all Mint's thoughts were really worth."
A passing tween talking on her cell phone grabbed Jaida's attention; Jaida snatched the cell away from the girl, and kicked her when she protested. The girl made that vapid, indignant half-sigh, half-exclamation tween girls have a way of mastering, but slunk off without a fight.
"What the hell are you doing?" Cliff said, scowling as if it was a personal offense against him. He was so innocent. We all were; of course anything pretty, shiny, and new belonged to Jaida.
"Sorry, your little girlfriend can't come to the phone right now, she's having her murder cherry popped," Jaida said into the phone. A high-pitched, unintelligible voice said something on the other line, and then Jaida said, "Oh, you're her mom? Betcha you didn't see this coming when the pee stick turned blue, huh? Really must go, we've got a body that needs dismembering! Ciao, bella!"
"So who's signing us up at the hotel?" Jaida asked, thumbing through her new phone. Cliff frowned and said, "I was thinking we draw straws on it. With Kristen immune, of course, since she's got family and all..."
"Oh, no," Jaida said. "I'm out, unless you want to get in the way of a girl and her compulsive gambling problems. When the girl has a very sharp, very untested knife she's eager to try out, I can't really say I'd advise it, but, well, you never really struck me as the intelligent sort, Cliff."
"I'm smarter than some," Cliff said, glaring at Jaida, who smiled sweetly at him briefly before dialing a number on her cell. Cliff sighed, then turned to me and said, "Well, Cyprian, that leaves you and me. Looking at the two of us, this can only mean that you drew the evolutionary short straw, so you get to register us with the hotel. Good luck, man."
"I applaud your effort, but no," I said. "Take three thousand silver and register us with Float Inn. You "accidentally" forget to register me and you sleep in a dumpster tonight, by the way."
Cliff glared - which he did unnervingly well - and said, "I hope you all appreciate me as much as you should," and turned foot and walked away.
"Cliff," I said. He turned around, eyebrows raised and face distorted in what was probably meant to be an impatient, inquiring look. It came off as a mix of constipated and surprised. We can't all be impressively expressive, I guess. I fished around inside the trench coat I'd filched from Sorensen's, found what I was looking for, and threw it at Cliff. "The money's in there," I explained. "Room and board ain't free here, either. Register us all under Knight."
Cliff may have said "Thanks," but his eyes clearly said, "Go fuck yourself on a naginata, dickweed."
His face was shit for communication, but those eyes were the pictures that said a thousand words. Each, even.
"See you guys," I said. "And whatever you do, don't go near Vanitywell Street after midnight."
"You're going?" Kristen said, and I noticed she looked a little off. Not sad or worried or secretly seething, just - I might have said scheming, if I knew her only a little better. "Where?"
"There's a bar that sells arcana absinthe on Main and a decent greenhouse in Little Velestia," I said. "I was thinking I'd get hammered and buy some seeds. Maybe chat up the sales clerk, if he or she's pretty enough, which, if I've got enough arcana in me, they will be. Why, you got a better idea on how I might occupy myself?"
I was lying about the sales clerk; it just sounded less sad. I might have had a tendency towards chatting up plants, however. That's not something you tell other people, though, because they think you actually want to cross-pollinate, if you catch my meaning. Venus flytraps are lovely company, surprisingly mild, and don't mind a little drunken, awkward interspecies flirting. Which, on arcana, even regular Joe humans sometimes engage in that particular pastime. Arcana - good arcana - makes you a little...mentally handicapable. You're incapable of doing anything right, or sanely, but you usually get it so spectacularly wrong that it actually becomes its own brand of right.
"Well...I'd be honored if you went with me to see my parents," Kristen said. "I'll see Mint alone, but ma and dad...I don't know what they'll say to me after all these years. When I was...taken, I was so young, barely fourteen. And my dad, he knew where I was, I think. I don't think that's a very good sign."
"Take Cliff, he's the one you've been making eyes and knight in shining armor puns at," I nearly said, until I remembered Cliff was souring towards Kris, and on hotel duty besides, and that left Jaida and me, which essentially left just me. I sighed. "This is going to be like the time I had to translate that hardcore Gaea-Judeo priest's speech to his fantastically flamboyant soldier son, isn't it."
"Oh, I'm sure it won't be that bad," Kris said lightly, and we began walking together. "Maybe you and mom can exchange gardening tips, or something."
I snorted; "Right, because a mundane human woman could tell me something about botany I don't already know, or couldn't get at by asking one of my plants themselves. I can see how immensely likely that might be."
Along the way, I noticed a running theme in the political posters we passed; they typically read like hip magazine ads, and most used a variation on the phrase, "This town needs a better class of politico, and Mayor Seane Pryors is gonna give it to 'em!"
Apparently, no magic use at all was allowed. There went my night of getting plastered with arcana; the drink was made primarily of, not with, magic. That was what made it so fun - no hangovers to speak of, although you still had to worry about remembering what you did last night and why you're naked and wrapped between sticky sheets with your neighbor's dog.
So apparently Kristen's parents lived in the same house they did when Kristen was still with them, a two-story, broken white picket fence affair, alarmingly enough with a mail box with three bullet holes in it - "Looks like dad's had another run in with Mr. Eggars," Kristen had remarked blithely, like it was a fucking letter of complaint and not an extra bullet hole. Regardless, I remember thinking it was good the Morrows hadn't moved, because considering the neighborhood, we were lucky some Errol Nottista-wannabe drug lord hadn't moved in. Kristen's mom answered the knock, and it was apparent Kris didn't get her looks from her mom's side of the family. Not to say Mrs. Morrow was ugly, far from it - but the curly blonde hair, the angular, sharp face, and the general shortness of her stature ensured that it was Papa Morrow that had contributed to Kris's soft beauty, which quickly and mind-breakingly conjured up the image of an innocent man-maiden blushingly courting this hard woman, and so I forced my brain to shut down, because the visual was about a half-step below zombies eating my face off on the "terrifying shit I hope never to see" list.
She glanced at me for a moment too long - longer than she'd taken to evaluate her own daughter - and said in both of our general directions, "May I...help you?"
Quick tip. If someone pauses between "May I" and "help you," what they're actually saying is, "I want to slam the door in your face/kill you, but the neighbors are watching/it's not polite/I like to delude myself that I'm a more important and good human being than you."
"Mom, it's me, Kristy. I'm home," Kristen said, looking more awkward and ashamed than genuinely glad to see her. Huh. "I'm...I'm okay, mom. How - how are you?"
"A little surprised," Mrs. Morrow said. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again. Forgive me for not being more welcoming, it's just - we thought you were dead. Won't you come in, Kristen? Your...friend, too, of course."
And come in we did. The house was unremarkably suburban, and I don't even remember most of what it was, though there was a fireplace, and a mounted dagger resting atop the mantle. Mrs. Morrow ushered us into the kitchen, but offered nothing. Kris found some green tea ice cream, anyway, and helped herself to it.
"My favorite flavor and brand," Kris said, smiling. "You and dad hated it. I'm glad you thought of me enough to keep some."
Mrs. Morrow, keeping with the emotional range she had shown up until now - roughly that of a coffee pot's - did not react. I was beginning to suspect garden gnomes had stolen her heart and replaced it with a steel bolt.
"Mom, this is Cyprian. He - um, he was a botanist, but I guess now he's sort of given that up? He saved me and this nice man I met from death by don. Also, he talks to plants and doesn't consider himself human despite being human-shaped, but somehow he's not crazy."
"Vampires don't put up with this sh- abuse," I said. "They're human-shaped and they talk to dead people, but I haven't heard one person call them out on their crazy. You know why? They're not."
"Yes, well," Kristen said, "There's so much more to call them out on, it tends to skip most people's minds."
"Why have you brought a mystic into my house, Kristen?" Mrs. Morrow said suddenly. "Why?"
"I didn't think it would be a problem," Kristen said. "He saved my life. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"It means you're alive, and you're here with that thing," Mrs. Morrow said, glaring briefly in my direction, which was actually tame compared to my thoughts on her, so I kept quiet. "So much has changed since you were gone, Kristen. And when you left - there's so much you don't know. You think you know, like every child thinks they know. Honey, why didn't you stay in Daldain?"
Kristen's eyes widened in surprise. "Mom," she said, "I - I don't know what you think I was doing in Daldain, but someone sold me to Don Reynaldo. I didn't run away in a fit of adolescent rebellion."
"Your father needed new eyes," Mrs. Morrow said. "Eyes that could see. I stood by his decision."
A pin dropped at that moment somewhere in the ruins of Wraybrook. I know because I heard it, sitting there in that room. It sounded a lot like something breaking.
"Mom," Kristen said, and apparently, that was all she had to say. Mrs. Morrow was frosty cool, surveying her daughter for...I don't even know. Maybe she got a thrill from the pain in Kristen's eyes. Wouldn't have been the first time a mom got off on her offspring's misery.
"Your mom's sort of a demonic hag," I said to Kristen. "I hope it didn't pass on to you."
"How dare you insult me in my own house, you abomination!" Mrs. Morrow said, which, wow, really? That was the thing that damaged her calm most?
"Mom, if you won't apologize to me, apologize to him! He's gone through enough this month!"
"Are you kidding me, Kris?" I said. "Really? I lost the love of my life so far. You discovered your mom sold you into prostitution and turned into a religious zealot."
"Zealotry has nothing to do with this," Mrs. Morrow said. "Magic is evil! It corrupted this city! Do you remember Mayor Nogales? He was caught brainwashing voters before the election! What's to keep you from doing the same to me?"
"Basic mystic decency, I suppose," I said. "And you think Nogales just decided on a whim not to also brainwash the person who found this out? Really? I don't buy it. Kris, come on, it-"
And then the distinct sound of a gun being cocked made me realize that Mr. Morrow approved of me just as much as the missus. Fuck my fruity pink hair, fuck every strand and all the powers they imply. While I dislike guns, and I especially hate when I can't make the things explode. This was some dude pointing a weapon at me, yes, but it was also Kristen's father, whom she probably loved in spite of everything, and for some damn fool reason, I didn't want to hurt Kris even inadvertently.
"Freeze right there," Mr. Morrow said. "Police. I'm calling the Venefice Unit."
Venefice Unit. I knew that phrase well enough that I knew better than to stick around for whatever asinine, likely upsetting dialog might happen between father and daughter.
"Animsolvus," I muttered, intending to make Mr. Morrow faint for two hours so I could escape with Kristen, and we could leave all this behind and chalk the day up as wasted.
What actually happened was that I woke up two hours later in a dank cell that was about twenty times less hospitable than the drunk tanks I've had experience with plenty enough times before. Kristen was nowhere in sight, but about three other guys and a woman - specifically Jaida - occupied the same small cell as me.
"What the hell are you doing here, Jaida?" I said, because if I expected Jaida to end up in any jail cell, it would be one with other women, for one thing, and two, I'd expect her to be wherever they put the people who started involved games of drunken football matches using two-month old babies as the football. Probably not the drunk tank, but also probably not in the same cell as a mystic and three guys who looked like they tried to break the world record for "total number of people shit-kicked in a single weekend" for fun every other week.
"Oh, you know me," Jaida said, "I got arrested for reviving this dumb shit who says I raped him. We had a little rough sex, I may have choked him into unconsciousness because the idiot was too dumb to come up with a safe word first. He wakes up and starts wailing like it don't happen all the time. You believe the nerve of these jerks? He climaxed first, what the hell did he want from me, to just wank for the next few hours? I guess the magic was a little overkill, but good lord."
"He had you arrested because you revived him?"
"Where the hell have you been? Have we met? Of course I didn't magically revive him when I have a perfect set of lungs and a great set of lips and a tongue. I got arrested because I cast a Pavlovian erection spell on him."
"So why are we in with them?" I said.
"We tried to kill Red here's sister's punk boyfriend with a lightning spell," one of the less muscly men said, shoving his finger vaguely towards a red-mulleted man. His scowl appeared almost as carved permanently into his face as the deep scar that ran from his forehead to the tip of his nose. "Didn't take." He eyed me. "This here's death row. What's a fruit like you doing here?"
"I'm a mystic," I said. "Which of course means I can't help myself. Also, I'm only half a fruit. I prefer to think of myself as more of a tomato."
I noticed a poster on the wall that looked like it appeared on every wall in the block. It read something like:
"HA! HA! HA!
You may have thought yourself smarter than the law, but the joke is entirely on you. By decree of the mayor, no magician, mage, or mystic shall be allowed to live. If you have broken your government's trust and cast unlawful magicks, you shall be executed thirty-one (31) days after your imprisonment under the Nogales-Barr statute, with no trial.
Have a nice day!"
Every word was precisely printed, spelling impeccable. That was the sort of thing Whelanists were big on: they'd triple spellcheck the notices no one but death row prisoners would ever set eyes on, they'd cheerfully slaughter mystics and human mages without stopping to think why, but they'd almost never show the mercy they prided themselves on. Exact, polite, thoughtless, kind to their own, merciless. Of course, there had been no prison set on my execution that had kept me in to term, even if that last escape was all Sorensen and Hellene Bismarck, and I didn't plan on letting myself get comfortable here, either.
"So, which of you boys are up for a little game of bruise the tomato?" Jaida said, clapping her hands together. As one, my cellmates took a long, appraising look at me.
I'd find a way out if it killed me. Or someone in that cell, anyway. I was personally hoping for all of them.