Poor Unfortunate Souls, Chapter Seven: Wisdom of Sight
Chapter Seven: Wisdom of Sight
Contents and Warnings
Chapter 6: Anoxic
The next night we laid out our battle gear.
Technically, they were party dresses, but my eyes had recovered enough by that point that I could sort of see the mirage-like overlay of defensive spells covering them, and despite the fact that Allie and I were going to be dressed up like princesses on a budget, we both felt more like knights.
Somehow, I managed to fit the tuning fork, a whole wad of litmus paper, several pens, a tube of red lipstick, and my wallet into a tiny clutch purse with my cell phone. It wasn’t much in the way of weaponry, but confronting any potential mage was Allie’s department.
She didn’t need to carry anything with her in order to be dangerous against a mage.
She also went over the plan a little bit obsessively while I helped her get ready. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t already heard it.
“If Grey turns out to be a mage, and figures out that I am as well, you’ll have to get everyone else out,” she repeated, as I tried to cover the pair of double-horseshoe shaped scars on her upper arm with concealer. They were enough darker than the rest of her skin to be easily recognizable, and one thing we didn’t want to be was recognized.
“I’ll pull the fire alarm,” I promised her, and she twisted her neck around to give me an unamused look. “Believe it or not, I do remember how to keep out of the way when you have a disagreement with another mage.”
She made an impatient waving motion with her free arm. “People are going to panic a lot quicker if they start to actually see magic happening than they would at home. You saw how Kate reacted to levitating a table.”
“I’ll get everybody out, don’t worry.” I was sincerely hoping, however, that Grey was not a mage. If he was, though, Allie and I would need all the warning we could get: I very much doubted that Grey would care about harming his parents’ guests with stray spells. “And, though I can’t promise I can keep them from panicking, I can at least get them panicking in the right direction.”
Allie smiled at me as I finished with her arm. “Thanks,” she said.
“Just nervous?” I asked, as I moved on to dabbing at the quarter-sized brown scar on her right shoulderblade, just above her dress.
“Why would I be?” she asked, and I could just about hear her rolling her eyes, “I can guarantee you that this won’t be as impressive as one of Grandmother’s parties.”
The last time I’d accompanied her to a party at her Grandmother’s, it had been an unmitigated disaster, largely due to the fact that some bright spark had challenged her to a duel halfway through the roast pheasant, and the related fact that once she’d used magic to chuck him across the dining hall, we’d been plagued by politicians. Far too many people wanted Allie to become their mage, and were content to ignore the fact that if she ever decided it would be a good idea to live in a world that strongly resembled the Renaissance, her grandmother already had dibs. The only redeeming feature of that evening had been watching her try to squirm out of the arranged marriages being offered without offending anyone.
“I hope you’re right,” I informed her, “because if there are more than three forks, you’re going to have to show me what to do with them.”
Once we had finished with our preparations, we said our goodbyes to Leila, who was still installed on our couch. I felt vaguely maternal as I gave her a list of numbers to call in an emergency and told her she could eat anything out of our fridge that she wanted.
“I’ll just watch TV,” Leila said, “There’s got to be something on.”
“Just remember that you’re safest in the apartment,” Allie told her, neglecting to mention the fact that she’d quite recently added wards to the apartment and that as long as Leila was borrowing my clothes, she was borrowing the defensive spells that Allie had lined them with. We had ample evidence that they worked for at least some physical, as well as magical threats.
With that, we left.
Kate had been right: Grey Manor was as tacky as hell.
They’d put up a stage and a fancy tent - and I was quite glad that Allie and I had thought to bring a pair of shawls, because nowhere had it said that this was an outdoor event, and it was going to get cold, fast - and for some reason decided that a dark green carpet was the perfect thing to put on the grass, probably so that none of the guests got mud on their shoes. To me, it looked like they’d considered turning their lawn into a golf course, and the pink paper lanterns didn’t actually help.
What really got me, though, were the giant freaking ice sculptures, all six of them around a random checkerboard dance floor. In June.
“Money one, common sense zero,” Allie whispered in my ear as we ducked around a couple, being photographed as they emerged from a limo, and headed into the crowd. I stifled a laugh.
“Your Gran at least has actual taste,” I replied, “You may have to take back everything you ever said about her being an interfering old busybody.”
“Not quite everything, but a good deal of it, yes.” Allie was eyeing the glittering crowd. “Think we should split up?”
“Probably,” I replied, then gestured towards the nearest gate to the dance floor. “Meet you back by melty the swan in half an hour.” I managed to pry the tuning fork out of my purse and hand it to Allie, who raised her eyebrows, not that I could properly see it behind her mask.
“And what are you going to do?” she asked.
“Use my eyes,” I replied. Then, catching her look, I added, “don’t worry about it.”
We headed in different directions, swallowed by the crowd of suits and dresses.
There couldn’t have been too many more than a hundred people there already - more arrived by the minute - but due to the press of suits and the glitter of jewelry and the talking, it already seemed crowded enough, especially when I was glancing over the edge of my glasses every so often to scan the moving blurs for any odd glow or movement that didn’t match what I saw through my glasses. Most people had ditched their masks after they had come in from the drive, which made me feel a little less obvious keeping mine tied to the zipper of my purse. It had lasted all of a minute until it had been too obnoxious to wear over my glasses.
I smiled and nodded at the few people who stopped to talk to me, headed towards the food tent, until a very young woman with a pointy face and short dark hair abruptly grabbed me by the wrist. I yanked my arm away quickly, and she didn’t seem to notice.
“Hi, I’m Mia Grey,” she chirped, bouncing up and down in her ridiculously pointy heels, “You have such a lovely necklace, how much did it cost?”
I blinked at her, and grabbed at my necklace. My brain was struggling to try and hear that sentence as “where did you get it?” and failing miserably. The key, hanging from its chain around my neck, dug into my sternum.
“Lindsay Pilot,” I replied, “And I’m sorry, but that’s not actually any of your business.”
“Oh, but I absolutely must know, it’s so avant garde!” She clasped her hands in front of her and looked at me with an expectant expression.
I certainly didn’t see what was so unorthodox about wearing an ordinary-looking old key on a simple silver chain, though it certainly was different from the prevailing theme of diamonds and pearls. More to the point, it was mine: Allie had given it to me long enough ago that I often forgot I had it on, and I certainly didn’t appreciate Mia staring at it as if I should offer to sell it to her.
“It’s an antique,” I said, hoping she would also hear it’s not for sale. Damn it, I hated talking to people who threw money around when Allie wasn’t there to be insufferably haughty right back to them.
“And the earrings too?” she asked, inspecting my cubit zirconia studs curiously. Then she dropped that idea and flounced in place. “I got these pearls for my eighteenth birthday,” she said, stretching her neck up to display them. “Anyway, that’s not what I came to talk about: will you help with the auction?”
Given that being visible at this party was the last thing I wanted, no.
“Thank you, but no,” I said.
She pouted, ridiculously. “But it’s for charity! Coping Together is a great organization. How could you not want to help with the auction?”
“Because I have no idea how to help with an auction and you’d be better off having planned it with someone who knows what they’re doing,” I replied. “Also, I don’t make a habit of agreeing to anything before I know what exactly I’m agreeing with.” That, I hoped, would be the end of that conversation, but a tallish, bland-featured young man stepped up just at that moment and handed Mia a drink.
“Sean, darling, this is Lindsay, and she’s going to be in the auction,” Mia said to him.
“I most definitely will not.”
“Don’t worry, all you have to do is stand there!” Mia said airily, “Who knows, you might even get a boyfriend out of it! You’re certainly pretty enough, they’ll pay a lot.”
“Wh-what!?” I spluttered. Given a few more moments to speak, I would have asked what an auction has to do with dating, but Mia ignored my tone.
“Of course, that’s assuming you don’t have a boyfriend here, but since I don’t see one -” she shrugged and kept talking. “In any case, it’s all just fun, and you should be flattered that -”
“Actually, I have to head back to my date,” I interrupted Mia, completely out of patience. “Goodbye!”
I turned on my heel and headed back towards the driveway as fast as I could. Sure enough, I found Allie leaning against a tree out in the grass, where she could keep an eye on the new arrivals as they stepped out of their cars and were mobbed by paparazzi.
“That was awful,” I told her by way of greeting.
She looked curiously at me. “Time to meet up already?”
“No, I’ve just given up on socializing because the hostess’ daughter decided to put me in the auction without my permission,” I replied, joining her with my back against the tree.
“This is a bit too pretentious of a party for them to be shanghaiing guests to announce auction items,” Allie agreed peaceably, still staring at the driveway and, beyond it, out across the distance, the sun headed across Lake Washington to set behind Seattle.
I laughed harshly. “Not working in the auction, in the auction! Going once, going twice, the lady in red sold to the gentleman with the moustache!”
“What?” Allie asked.
“Exactly what I said,” I replied. Allie reached out and stilled my hands, because I was still playing with my hair and necklace. “I think it’s one of those buy a date auctions, but I was too offended to stick around and find out,” I added, “Nor did I want to actually be in it.”
Just that tilt of the eyebrows and just that flare of the nostrils, and I knew that Allie’s irritation at these people had transformed itself into a challenge. If these people wanted to be pretentious, she could out noblesse-oblige them any day of the week. “How classy,” she said, dryly. “Let’s not split up again then, shall we?”
We waited there by the tree until the biggest limo of all, shiny and grey in the reddish evening light, pulled up and was mobbed by photographers before the doors even opened. Out stepped a couple that looked like an advertisement for auto wax.
Christian Grey didn’t match my mental picture of him. For one thing, he was ostensibly human. It was obviously him, though - he was exactly like all the pictures in the internet tabloids, wearing a bored, sneering smirk and a grey suit. Even the mask that he was wearing couldn’t disguise his expression.
The woman clinging to his arm was, despite the shiny, bedazzled shoes and the equally shiny mask that covered her face, obviously Anastasia Steele. She was wearing a gown that looked made of clingy tinfoil, and shivering in the evening air. When the photographers flashed their bulbs, she flinched towards Grey as if afraid of the light.
I dug my elbow into Allie’s ribs. “That’s them,” I said, “we need to get closer.”
We edged our way along the lawn, back towards the tents and the crowd, and managed to catch up to the throng hanging out by the entryway because Christian kept pausing for more photos. Eventually, we got close enough for me to get a really good look, and I all but yanked down my glasses.
It was worse than I expected.
Anastasia Steele’s aura, whatever color it had originally been, was entirely covered by Grey’s, which streamed out away from his body in long, hungry grey tentacles. It darted viciously against the electric green aura of a female photographer, swallowing the gold sparks right out of the edge, while another greasy tendril snaked out towards a young woman in a pink party dress and a misty, lavender aura. Other greasy tendrils hovered in the air, searching the crowd, but most of his aura was mummifying Ana. Unlike Sophia’s aura, though, there was no turmoil, no movement, just a sense that his aura was plastered to her like cling wrap, trying to sink into her skin. In fact, as he turned and dragged her along by the elbow, a few tendrils of his aura reached back and grabbed her, by the throat and around the waist, in a parody of a sinuous caress. All around, a kaleidoscope of colors and textures, motion and smells were attached to the rest of the partygoers, but everybody else had an aura that kept its hands to itself.
Someone knocked into me from behind, and I nearly fell over.
“Watch it!” Allie said sharply, and stepped into my line of sight to steady me. Before I managed to readjust my glasses, I saw her own cobalt blue aura, so unfathomably deep and brighter, richer than the watercolor of everyone else’s aura. Then I saw her face. “You okay?” she asked, standing between me and anybody else who might want to trip over me.
“Yeah, let’s sit down,” I replied, a little dizzy, and held tightly to her arm as we navigated our way out of the crowd. Somehow, Allie managed to communicate to a man serving drinks that we wanted some, all without saying a word, and I stared at the yellowish wine in my hands for a few moments after she had located a chair for me.
“The good news,” I told her, “is that Christian Grey is definitely not a proper mage.”
A bit of tension that I’d never even noticed fled from Allie’s shoulders. “Good,” she said, and I shook my head at her.
“The bad news,” I added, after a second, “Is that I have no idea just what Christian Grey is. His aura is like nothing that I’ve ever seen. It… sort of attacks other people’s auras and feeds off them, and judging by Sophia, it does that even if he’s not anywhere near them.” I hesitated for a moment, then added, “His aura on Ana is a lot like what I saw on Sophia, at least… it feels mostly the same.” The same kind of disgusting.
Allie nodded, but she was keeping her eyes on the crowd still. “You don’t have a headache or anything?”
“No, I’m fine,” I assured her, “though there’s a lot of auras around here to look at, so I doubt I’ll do that again anytime soon.” Allie gave me a speculative look, and I received the impression that she was absolutely fine with that.
Everyone was headed towards the food tent, so we followed the crowd to our seats, and read the menu, which made me more or less instantly disgusted.
“Foie Gras?” I said to Allie in a low voice. “The poor duck.”
She was staring much further down the menu. “Eggnog,” she said, biting back a laugh, “They’re serving Italian eggnog.”
“Which one is that?”
“Sabayon,” she said, “There at the end next to the maple ice cream.”
“Maple ice cream?” I shook my head: someone here must have a thing for it. Then I nudged Allie with my foot. “Is the French thing up top that salmon-on-crackers thing?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “I thought you said you hated seafood?”
“Mollusks, Allie, I won’t eat mollusks, and you know why.” Salmon, on the other hand, was the fish of the gods.
“Try not to barf on anyone -” Allie started to say, but she was cut off by an entirely unnecessary microphone crackle as a man wearing a gold mask with a truly massive nose stepped up to the podium. When he began to speak about the event and the charity, I was still focused on the nose, and when he left the stage, still wearing the mask, to approach Ana and kiss her on both cheeks, he took exaggerated care not to poke her in the face with it. Then, the ritual envelope of monetary offerings was passed around, and Allie and I coughed up a few bills for charity.
After that, there was a dramatic pause while the far end of the tent was rolled up so that the guests could watch the sunset over Lake Washington while they ate. I shivered in my shawl and applied myself wholeheartedly to the salmon crackers while Allie watched the guests. After that, I arranged the four wineglasses in front of my plate in order of size, and moved the silverware around until Allie kicked me under the table to make me stop.
The rest of the food was good, if oddly chosen, and no one at our table noticed anything amiss about my table manners, or the fact that we spent most of the time watching the main table, with breaks to smile and nod when the other diners tried to draw us into conversation. In fact, we were lulled into a false sense of security until the auction. An assortment of objects that I paid absolutely zero attention to were sold off, while I folded my menu into a paper crane and watched the table closest to the stage. Meanwhile, Allie had dug the pen out of my purse and was bent over, furiously scribbling on the back of her own menu and auction card, ignoring the disapproving looks that the middle-aged couple across the way were sending her.
Anastasia Steele won a bid on a weekend in Aspen, and then there was a minor… commotion at her table. I couldn’t hear what was going on, but half the diners near it turned to look at Ana and Christian Grey with looks of quickly disguised disgust, right before the last item of the auction was sold to resounding applause.
Allie looked up as the clapping died down: her papers were absolutely covered in tiny, jagged writing and diagrams.
“Now,” she told me in a voice that was almost smug, “It’s time for some magic.”
Chapter Eight: Rotten Houses
[Notes]* Lindsay’s a Midwesterner. It’s a food tent, not a marquee, because this event is barely a step up from the county fair.
** I looked up the recipe for Sabayon, and I have to say, it seems more eggnog than pudding to me, especially when it’s served in a glass. (And I know that it’s supposedly pudding, but… do you see any pudding in this recipe? I see mostly eggs and alcohol.) If someone here has actually made or eaten it and it is not in fact some variation of eggnog, I do apologize for Allie getting it wrong. J
*** Four different wineglasses is canon. Yes, they set out a separate glass for each wine on the menu and they’re sitting there, cluttering up the table. In the name of sanity I let the coffee cups and multiple plates be brought out with the individual courses.
Fair warning: I've caught up to my editing buffer (blame my thesis) so you're going to get another week of no update... after next chapter. I am getting this whole party out there no matter what.