Satis House

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha was glad she was turned away from Rynn as he spoke, that he couldn't see the muscles tugging at her lips, trying to force her to smile and laugh. Rynn would hear what he wanted to hear she reasoned, and there was no use in telling him she would never apologize for saving him. Instead she forced the careful neutrality to her expression, turning to Amadeo as he brushed her legs and lifting him in her arms only to have him crawl to her shoulder again. She thought perhaps he liked to be at eye level with people---she knew it would be a comfort to her if she couldn't converse with them---but found herself suddenly in need of something to occupy herself.
However much she didn't want to show it, Rynn's question had somewhat disturbed her. It was not the way he had said it, the out of character words, these were things she could easily forget, but the idea itself. What was she to do with them? "You should really decide what you would prefer to address me as and stick to it, monsieur Calais," she murmured, plucking an old volume from the shelved that lined the walls and cracking it open in her arms for no more reason than to pace slowly across the floor with it, her eyes perusing the faded pages with a complete lack of interest.
It had occurred to her that Jack, having been the medium for the thing to enter Antha, knew what had taken place that night. It occurred to her also, with a much more distinct edge of horror, that in his weakened state Julien would learn the truth from him. More than anything, Antha did not want to deal with Julien that morning.
"Absolutely nothing," she murmured finally in response to the question, half to the brothers and half to herself, "My level of involvement has already exceeded what is safe. You two are lost little souls all of a sudden, and lost souls should never be involved with a Mayfair. The family never fails to drag them in, either to tear them apart or swallow them and make them ornaments on the web that is our family tree." She sighed once, touching her fingers to her temple and setting the book aside.
It was then that the phone began to ring, as she knew it would, echoing shrilly throughout the house. To herself, she sighed, "Good morning, oncle Julien." To the phone, when she had scraped together the will to answer it, her back to Rynn and Cian, she said, "Salut," and quickly moved it away from her ear. The words he screamed at her were perfectly audible from a foot away, so she saw no reason to let it damage her ears. "I will not," were the next words from her lips, after a considerably long stretch of silence on her end, "It's enough that I dragged Claire Leonelli to Mayfair Manor on some whim of yours, I'm content that I have pleased you enough to satisfy my conscience for ten lifetimes." There was another long pause, then finally the rapid flow of French as she argued with him, briefly, and then slammed the phone down upon the receiver.
When she turned back to them, she was perfectly composed. Fighting with Julien was nothing new, and it had long since ceased to bother her. "Of course, you're welcome to stay as long as you think you could bear it," she continued, as if the phone call had never actually taken place, "I should think I owe you at least that much."  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn was playing with his brother's hair, stroking his hands back through the thick brown curls. Cian bore it well enough, and watched Antha with zen and tawny-green eyes as she crossed the room. Rynn said, "Considering that you lit our house on fire--yes, perhaps you do." He glanced down at his hands, quickly, and in a murmur that became a mutter described in words that dropped from his mouth like hard grey river stones, he began--"We could get it back, again, don't you think? The land's still there. Liesse's body is still in the land. The land obeys me--it damn well had better, at least--and we could get in, and get out quietly enough that the ancestor-spirits--" he was laughing here, knowing that he was being ridiculous now, treading into the absurd with these hypotheses, "--they'll never notice we were there, right? They'll never see us coming. We could get their bodies, and from there it's only a step and a half to--well, you know as well as I what our library contained." Rynn laughed again, sounding slightly on the edge of hysteria, and swiveled around to face Antha. "We'll try not to be a bother while we're here. Just give us--a roof to sleep under."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

To the comment about burning their house, Antha said simply, "You challenged me," as if that were all the explanation he would ever need and the things that had taken place between point A and point B were irrelevant. It was when he began babbling, mad things she thought, ideas that were wholly unsafe, that the tone of utter seriousness swept back through her. Of course, there was an easy way to dispel the nonsense. She had half hoped Cian would realize it and say it aloud, but when it went unsaid she whispered cautiously, "Rynn...they burned." Nothing about how one could not escape the sights of spirits, how the best possible idea was that neither of them ever return to that place, just the simple fact that they had burned. There were no bodies left behind, just ash and bones that had certainly been crushed under earth and stone.
She had the horrible urge to take care of them suddenly, as if they were small children who had become lost and injured, and she found herself struggling against it more than she thought she would have to. It was not worth risking, not with the family that loomed over her like some great tangible shadow. They would be fine around her she reassured herself, under her roof. It was only her life she needed to distance them from.
"I need to get cleaned up," she said finally, shaking her head to ward the thoughts away, "Come along, I'll show you to your rooms." With that she turned on her heel, setting Amadeo down on his little feet, Upon exiting the library she made a vague motion towards the door at the end of the hall, behind which Amadeo had vanished, "That's my room. These two along the hall---" She turned the corner and motioned now to the two doors on the right, separated only by a hallway. "---are yours to inhabit. There are clothes of all sizes in the closets if you want them. They're just things that Nicolae and Courtland and Thorne and whoever else left here, they won't be missed." Briefly she vanished behind Amadeo into her room, reappearing with the old shirt of Nicolae's locked in her arms as she swept down the hallway. "Bathroom's here," she added errantly, swinging the door open, and then, "Now, if you will please excuse me."
She locked herself away then, leaning back against the door with her eyes closed as if being alone was the most beautiful thing in the world. And then, abruptly, she was struggling to be rid of her dress. The stain of Liesse's blood upon it felt like some curse that would seep into her very flesh if it were allowed to exist any longer. But she let it do just that a small while longer, while she scraped the dirt and soot of the Calais vault from her skin. It was only when she sat on the edge of the tub, her hair darkened with the water that clung stubbornly to it, swathed in Nicolae's shirt like an old favorite blanket, that she decided to burn it.  

[Okimiyage]

If Antha listened, she would have been able to hear shouting. Rynn and Cian had been left alone and unsupervised for a short period of time. To anyone else, it would have been--utter meaningless nonsense. "Get your hands off--Cian!--you will not--get it off--" The squeaking and sliding of shoes on smooth-waxed floorboards echoed down the hall. A moment later, a producer of the sound became apparent. Rynn fled their rooms with no apparent concern for the fact that he was half-clothed, and that his hair was still wet, or for any other reason. All that mattered was that Cian was behind him, having found what was probably the most grotesquely tacky shirt in the entire wardrobe--leopard-patterned red silk polyester blend--and if Rynn did not get away in time, his brother was going to make him wear it. He was seriously starting to consider spells of teleportation or decomposition if this continued onward. Luckily--unluckily, rather--he never got that far--Cian caught up with him. He swooped down around his younger brother, pinning Rynn and step-locking his arms piece by piece into the sleeves. He proceeded to do up the buttons of Rynn's shirt; they were garish with rhinestones. Or they might have been diamonds; the Mayfairs were notoriously eccentric for their taste in clothes. When he'd successfully wrangled his younger brother into it, he looked over his handiwork admiringly, gave out a low wheet of an appreciative whistle, and turned to walk jauntily and self-satsifactorily down the hallway. Rynn yelled after him, "When do I get to take this off?"
The unheard reply was something enough to make him blaspheme inventively.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

If Rynn had had time to look about him at all, he might have noticed Antha standing half in the bathroom doorway, watching mutely. It was only after the struggle had ended and Cian had walked away that she approached Rynn, taking the shirt from his shoulders with far greater ease than his brother had placed it upon him. "Lovely timing," she murmured airily, wadding the shirt up with her dress, "I was just on my way to have some things burned." With that she continued down the hall, back towards the library. If she had any problems with being seen a little less than half clothed, she didn't show it. Rather, she looked a little more at ease, as if this was the natural way of things. Being Antha, it probably was.
The clothes emitted a faint stench when she threw them into the fireplace in the library, like some halfhearted warning that they weren't meant to be burned. In response she fished out her cigarettes from the pocket of her shirt, lighting one to drown the scent of unnatural things being burned.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn crept down after her; Cian was probably getting into his 'dapper' mode, which he did whenever he had not imbibed suspicious substances of late. Less suspicious, anyways. It was important to leave him alone for this.
Rynn gathered his courage and made his way into the room. He was still only sixteen, but his bones were as fragile as his sister's and he would probably never fill out his brother Erin's height and breadth--but he had his own sort of awkward, fleeting moments of grace, like a very young animal learning how to walk for the first time. In amongst his person, he had no tattoos, no scars in particular except that which slowly scabbed over on his cheek. His white skin was as unmarred as marble. The firelight cast some kind of warmth to his cheek--perhaps that was why she liked firelight, and candlelight, and building these massive great bonfires in her monstrous great house. He went to her, set his hands on her shoulders, shook his hair back from his face with a grin. "Antha," he said, seriously, "I'm not sure whether I want to slap you or make violent love to you on the floor of the library right now. I won't say that we shall be friends, but I am rather delighted that we met." He pressed his hand to the small of her back, making her hips jut out provocatively.
And then his fingers danced up her spine, and lifted away.
"Together, Miss Mayfair, we could take this city by storm. Has that occurred to you?" he whispered--and the night air from the unlatched window in the library stirred his hair, and the flame caught and crackled in his hazel eyes.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Generally, Antha was not much surprised by displays such as these from men. It was something about her, the way she drew out the dark side of hearts. But from Rynn, it did draw out some amused sort of puzzlement which showed in her eyes. "Can't it be both?" she questioned innocently, in contrast to the wicked grin that came to her lips. And then, in a light sort of seriousness, "No one is really friends with anyone else, Rynn, not in this city. We are all either enemies or co-conspirators, back and forth like the rise and fall of the tides. The politics of it are positively, delightfully wicked." The girl laughed then---more of an ironically dark giggle, really, that spark of her normal self---and tilted her head to the side, blinking her great emerald eyes at him. "But mon cher, didn't you know? I already took this city by storm when I was fourteen."
As far as his 'advances' were concerned, she came just short of responding to them. She rather wanted to see what he would do when left to his own, for Rynn had the singular talent of truly intriguing her. He was, in all likelihood, the only person she had encountered outside of the Mayfair family that very truly reminded her of herself---a clever monster wrapped up in a disarmingly pretty package. Wasn't he the one who had said they were two of a kind?  

[Okimiyage]

"Hahh..." Rynn plucked the cigarette from her hand as she spoke, took a brief drag, and handed it back to her, his eyes sharp with nicotine.
"I find politics boring, in general. They involve far too much planning to really be enjoyable to me right now, certainly. Anyways, I don't really care about any of the issues of this city. The Calais family has always been its own faction, loyal to itself and nobody else. If that means Cian and I up against all of Osiris CIty ganged up one on top of the other and all of 'em just itching to get at us, I don't really care." Rynn's eyes were not quite the green wells of Antha's, but their mottled browns and golds and greens all came together in the firelight something like moss, and when Rynn smiled he was unearthly and beautiful in that rampant way of the incandescently young.
"I don't find it interesting, whatever you do from this point forward. I don't consider myself to owe any allegiance to you. But..." he paused, and looked deeply into the flames; a small frown etched itself across his brow. "Cian does seem to like you, and for that I suppose your presence must be tolerated. Certainly you entertain him, or at least he derives some form of amusement from your existence..." Rynn shrugged the problem off, and tossed a wicked grin over his shoulder to Antha. "Be kind to him. He was never the most lucid of my brothers. I think your brother mentioned breeding at some point...?" and his eyes flashed in the firelight, like breaking mirrors, and he laughed.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha grinned to herself, listening in silence. Sometimes, he seemed too great a fool to be real. But something he had said did seem to strike her. "Would you like to know a little secret?" she purred, going to the library doors and closing them as if to have some sense of privacy. As if there was something Antha Mayfair didn't want people to know.
It was then that the humor and amusement in her countenance turned cold and dark, some warped and twisted form of what it had been. "All the talk of my necessary marriage, of the heir I must bear our family...these things are all hollow motions. For there is a fact that those in the inner circle of the family have known for some years, ever since the disturbing recurring glimpses into the future have began to plague us. It is the end of our family, wholly and completely, because without a proper Designee of the Legacy the curse will come to claim those of Mayfair blood, and what we know for certain is that the dawn of my twentieth birthday will not see me alive." Silently she neared him, a dangerous glint to her eyes, and gave that final whisper to sum up her entire point, "Sometime in the next five months, I am going to die."
She was silent again then, for the space of time it took her to walk to the fireplace and let the warmth seep into her skin. She knew by the eyes of the spirits that she quite liked the image she presented then, her figure vaguely silhouetted against the flames, beneath her brother's shirt, the glow of the fire casting a bright shine upon the pretty scarlet hair her family was so proud of. "Since I am apparently so unpleasing to you," she continued, and that cold, dark humor was gone as she glanced at him over her shoulder, replaced by something quieter and infinitely more somber, "Perhaps you will be glad to know that it will be the messiest of murders you can imagine. That I will not have a drop of blood left in my cold body when it is over. That when it comes down to it, I'm actually quite...terrified for that day to come, as it invariably must."
It was the first time in over two years Antha had spoken directly about the day of her demise. There had been the once with Vikteren, when the vision had plagued her for what seemed the thousandth time in the form of a nightmare and she had awoken screaming, but that was the closest she had come to mentioning it in all this time. Nicolae certainly didn't want to talk about it, think about it, imagine it. Malakai went rigid and fell to sobbing whenever the faintest hint of her grim future was suggested. And Julien...he chose to pretend it was all truly a bad dream, rather than a future set firmly in stone. "I don't know why I'm telling you all of this," she whispered, her eyes still locked to the roaring flames, "You, of all people. God knows you are no friend to me, nor kin nor lover."  

[Okimiyage]

"So have a child," Rynn said, mildly, as though he is surprised the idea has not occurred to her. "Tonight. You only have five months, but your family--hah--your family--" and there was more than just a hint of bitterness to the words, "--has enough connections, money--power, magic, whatever it is that you require that they would see that child live."
He sat down by the fireside, drawing his knees up to his chin and stretching his hands out to the coals. "Use--Cian, or myself if you'd like. God knows certainly he'll be in the mood tonight, if you left that bottle of bourbon where he can get to it." He approached her properly, standing and putting his hands formally behind his back. "Antha, your options are not--wholly limited in this, I choose to believe."

Cian clattered down the stairs. He didn't like being left alone in Satis House in the same way and for pretty much the same reason he had never liked going it alone in Llyr's Court. He was walking among throngs of ghosts. He whispered, urgently, purging the words from his tongue, "Please, please~ don't insist~" And privately, Cian laughed to himself--it was the lyrics to a popular song amongst the trendy downtown hipster crowd he used to buy drugs from, mostly as an excuse to observe their fascinating, flamboyant and dramatic lifestyles. He was strangely infatuated by them even as he found them vaguely repulsive as a whole.
He stepped into the library, following light and voices. Mutely, he crossed over the threshold and into the gentle illumination of the flame.
Cian had turned out dapper for the evening. He wore a crisp, sharp-collared black shirt under a vest put together out of scraps of a deep blue damask fabric, as intricate and ornate as a Rococo palace's decor; at his throat he wore a cross necklace, of what looked to be quite expensive and high-quality make.His pants were black, and sharp and crisp--the starched lines of them were unforgiving in their perfection, and his shoes--well, somewhere he'd found the shoes of some dead,forgotten, dying great uncle or some such who had enjoyed 'cutting a rug' to put it nicely. But on him they looked--suitable, somehow, and charming. Rynn's eyes flicked to the door and he whispered, Ooh. Well done. This was worth all the tickling earlier. to his brother.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

To this, Rynn's suggestion, Antha laughed. She saw no alternative in the matter. "With you?" she questioned, the humor sparkling in her emerald eyes, "Darling, please. Let me start first with the fact that a father to the Designee of the Legacy must always be swallowed by the family, an ornament on the twisted, criss-crossing web that is our family tree. I do not imagine that you or your brother would consider such a sacrifice worthwhile. Second..." She went to face him then, the taunting smile to her lips as she said sweetly, delicately, like one would to a child far beneath Rynn's years, "You're a child, really. Far too young to be saying such things." It was not difficult to see the tone of mocking to her sweet expression, she made sure of that.
With the arrival of Cian, teasing Rynn suddenly ceased to amuse her. She looked him over once, grinning, and finally purred softly, "Charming. You do clean up well, mon cher." And then came the laughter again, more subtle this time, because she was imagining how Nicolae would react when he awoke. Her brother had considered Cian a rival for her affections before, but when night fell again, Cian would do well to watch his back.  

[Okimiyage]

Cian watched her from behind a thicket of lashes. He would not smoke, not inside her house without precedent or permission, but he had been--as his brother predicted--drinking, and there was a good chance that he would be engaging in recreational procreation before the night was out. He was the kind of man, at present, who had that kind of aura.
Rynn breathed, "No. No, Antha, not with me."
It did make him respond, though, when she called him a child. He was angry about it, in a way only sixteen-year-olds can be--proud of being sixteen, furious and alive and hormonal and depressing and generally ******** up even if you weren't turning up on the streets of Osiris City at three in the morning in all the best dives in town, but somehow never seem affected by it, never got caught, was never touched by the long arm of the law. He shifted on the floor--drew up into himself, and his face, before it turned into flame-lit profile, flashed for a brief instant contempt--she was just like all the other adults, mis-judging him because he was young and--well, so what if he did not know any better, he had never possessed a proper teacher!
Rynn glowered sullenly at the flames, settling back down again.
Cian, ignored by his brother now, approached Antha. In the firelight, he pulled the collar of her dress aside with a trace of his hand, layed gentle, smooth kisses against Antha's pearly throat; stood behind her and touched his lips to her jawline and his tongue to the velvet furls of her ear, gently whistling an old tune, an old record he'd found, scratched and filthy, so much that he was surprised the record even played--but Aleric had made improvements to some of the manor's remaining items of technology the previous year, hadn't he?
As I would ramble
Down by the water
I spied in sable
the landlord's daughter
produced my pistol
and my saber
to make no whistle
or thou will be murdered--
The thief in the ballad proceeds to go on to force a kiss or two from his captive rather than have her ransomed for gold or silver, but he had no intention of using Antha so contemptibly. All he knew was the warm buzz of bourbon in his mind, and that Antha reminded him of the Cat whose name he had somehow never quite caught, and he wanted a warm body next to him tonight even if it wasn't for sex. He felt--absurdly lonely.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Quietly, smirking with that deeply satisfied pleasure of having plucked some raw, sore cord within another person, Antha put a finger gently against Cian's lips as if to say Wait.
And then she went to Rynn, settling onto her knees behind him so that the worn hem of Nicolae's shirt came to rest dangerously high on her long legs, her arms sliding over his shoulders and around his neck, and in her eyes there resided that look, the one that said she was infinitely pleased for less than kind reasons that he had reacted in such a way. He had, after all, seen some quiet and secret piece of her that she hadn't wanted him to, a cruel and crippling darkness that lived in the deepest depths of her heart, and he had to be punished for it. Even if it was, as she would admit, her own fault. But, she had reasoned, it was not a matter that warranted any great show of vengeance, just some small hurt, and now she was satisfied.
It was then that she leaned in close, her lips brushing his ear, and whispered oh so softly, "I should think we both know how little of a child you really are, just as I was no child at your age." She still remembered all too well the agonizing frustration of being sixteen and, in fact, not being a child, as she was supposed to be. She had lived through more than the very great majority of people would in their entire lives, bore more responsibility than they would ever dream of in their most hellish nightmares, and held an entire city under her thumb. "Try not to be so sensitive, alright?" And she brushed his dark hair aside, laying a fleeting kiss upon his uninjured cheek, and then was gone from beside him, gone to stand in the middle of the floor and stretch her back in a very feline manner, her arms high above her head. "I love to be awake when the vampires have fallen to their daily death," she sighed with content, drawing her cigarettes back out and tossing one to Cian before she lit her own, "It makes me feel free."  

[Okimiyage]

Cian could be patient; had been patient before, for other girls. Rynn, however, was no such gentle lover. He was violent in his passions, though, and he stood there--in the library--his hands clenched, briefly, and book spilled from their shelves--The wind blew the carapace of the house clean as well---the shingles shone as glossily as beetle's wings by the time this wind would blow its last leaves across the guttters of the rooves.
And then Cian took Antha, by the hand, and left the room quietly before the scene began. Before Rynn got really into it, speaking in tongues and so forth--knocking books off the shelfs, sweeping gusts of wind making it impossible for you to--get anywhere along the library, vicious and fathomless--almost like possession, really. Cian takes her out of Satis House, gesturing pleadingly with her to come along. "I can't explain it now, but you'll be thankful for this later--" Rynn screams, in Cian's voice, from inside--