Whenever they are home, Addy always takes the form of a shaggy, heavy-boned Irish wolfhound—the form they have decided to pretend is theirs.
It's easier than having to deal with the disappointed looks, the pointed silences, the hushed murmurs. There goes that Stone boy again. You know his dæmon still ain't settled? He's an odd boy, alright. They act like it's his fault that Addy isn't settled. Which, hell, maybe it is, but that doesn't mean there's something wrong with him; they don't have to act like there is. So it is easier to simply pretend, just like he pretends to be dumber than dirt in front of his family.
But when they are alone, Addy will flit from shape to shape as it pleases her while he sits and reads about art and architecture, fabricating aliases to publish under. It'll be hell trying to explain it when she really does settle (if she ever does). He imagines that his father will hate him even more for that, and Clara will growl even louder when she sees Addy.
Stone doesn't know why Addy isn't settled. She doesn't either, no matter how many times he asks her. When you are a kid, your dæmon changed shape. When you grew up, it stops. That simple. And yet, here he is, a grown man with a dæmon that still changed. "Can't you just...pick?" he asks.
"It doesn't work like that, Jake. Trust me, if I knew how it worked, we wouldn't be having this conversation," Addy sighs, becoming a three-toed sloth and hugging to his back.
Cassandra. Cassandra's a doll, and Cassandra is a doll, or at least, she reminds him of one. Pale and fair and delicate, like a strong wind might blow her over and she'll shatter into a thousand porcelain pieces on the floor. Except that he knows she's probably made of tougher stuff than he is, at least where it counts. Not many people are told that they've got a time bomb sitting in their skulls at 15, and probably fewer can keep it together the way she has and still does.
And she's like them. Her dæmon isn't settled either. Asten—as was her dæmon's name—is at first a milk snake curled around one of Cassandra's delicate little wrists like a scaled bracelet, but once she starts doing that thing where she speaks about a mile a minute with much flailing of arms and waving of hands, he becomes a glittering blue dragonfly, zipping here and there around her head like a satellite.
The first time he meets Cassandra Cillian, Stone knows that he's met someone special, even if he doesn't know her name yet. Addy actually plays with Asten. Addy didn't play with other dæmons when they were children, she certainly doesn't do it when they are adults, but she plays with Asten. She sneaks up behind the other dæmon, who's sitting beside Cassandra's feet as an afghan hound, and nips at Asten's tail with sharp little wildcat teeth. Asten jumps up with a little yelp, then becomes a wildcat as well, and the two chase each other around and around, wrestling around with mock snarling and playful snapping of teeth. And then Baird and Flynn ruin the moment by herding them along, telling them they have to get to the Library, and that smart-ass Jones making some acerbic comment by the way. Jones' dæmon is a grinning red fox named Zhu, and that tells Stone just about all he needs to know about the Australian thief.
Addy flits back up to his shoulder as a shrike, and Asten curls around Cassandra's throat as an ermine. The moment's gone, but the impression it left isn't.
What really gets him about Cassandra is that he finds it utterly impossible to stay angry with her. And he tries. Good God, does he try. He knows that he should be angry with her, shouldn't trust her, shouldn't... Hell, he can't even think angrily about her.
Thing is, he does trust her. And he isn't angry with her. After that first stinging hurt of betrayal faded, he realised that he hardly had room to condemn her. None of them did. None of them had been told they had a death sentence growing in their brains, unable to be cured or removed, that at any second, everything could be snatched away from them, that even seeing thirty is unlikely. Stone can hardly imagine living with that kind of knowledge day after day, and then suddenly being given the chance to see thirty. To get married. Have children.
"They lied to us, Jake," Addy insists, digging sharp little claws into his shoulder, before taking off and flying as far as their bond will allow.
"I know that," he answers softly, and decides that even if he can't be angry with her, he can at least be unhappy with her. That much he can do and will do. Still, there's a tugging ache in his heart that can't be entirely blamed on Addy trying to fly too far from him.
Stone catches a glimpse of red amidst the black-clad forms, turns and looks. When he sees Cassandra standing there behind Lamia, he is filled with that anger again, that stinging, burning, prickling feeling like he's swallowed needles coated with acid, roiling in his gut, twisting the barbed wire snarled around his heart. Except that Zhu is whining low in her throat and Karys is pressed back against Baird's legs and Loquis is curled so tightly around Flynn's neck like she wants to hide in his skin, the three of them staring at the redhead in a mix of horror and disbelief. It isn't until Addy starts whimpering in his ear that he realises she's speaking to him. "Her dæmon, Jake, where's her dæmon?" she whimpers painfully.
Cassandra has both arms clutched around herself, digging fingertips into her arms as if to hold herself together, pale and trembling. Asten isn't there. Asten is not there, she is alone, and he's going to be sick. It's only by sheer force of will that he doesn't retch. Jones isn't quite so strong, and he snatches Zhu up off the ground and presses her to his chest, hiding her inside his shirt. Baird's hand is gripping Karys's fur white-knuckle tight, probably hurting but neither caring. Even Flynn, pale and clammy as he is, looks nauseated, reaching up to run his fingers over Loquis's back.
She looks up at them with eyes that are haunted, perfectly gaunt in her face, and in them is such a depth of emotion that Stone is almost certain he could drown in it. Sorrow, desperation, pleading, agony, regret, and longing, so much longing. "I-I can't," she mumbles out.
The Brotherhood thugs don't move, but Lamia steps forward, extending one arm so the edge of her katana rests against Cassandra's delicate throat. Her black snake dæmon is curled around her wrist, taunting Cassandra with his presence. "You will. Or we'll just have to start cutting until you decide the point is made." The way Lamia rolls the word in her mouth makes it abundantly clear that she isn't talking about physical injury. She doesn't say it outright, but Stone can picture the glittering silver blade anyways.
Cassandra sways a little on her feet, and Stone is certain she'll pass out, but then she opens her eyes again and says in a dull, flat voice, "It's High Enochian." Lamia's eyebrow twitches upward. "It's a mathematical language. A code."
"And can you crack it?" asks the dark-haired woman.
"I can. Just..." She pauses, shivering. "Please...don't hurt them."
"Who does and does not get hurt is entirely up to you," Lamia answers smoothly, retracting the katana and sheathing it neatly. "Get to it."
As the redhead shuffles past them, Stone is closest, he reaches out and catches her arm. "Cassandra...don't do it."
She shakes her head, tears are glittering on her lashes when she answers. "I have to. They'll cut you. All of you. I know they will. They showed me the room."
"Hands to yourself, darling," Lamia hisses, coming towards them.
Stone retracts his grip, sitting back on the floor. Addy has become a mouse and is curled in the breast pocket of his shirt, pressed to his heart, but he can feel her aching to reach out and nuzzle Cassandra's hand in comfort, held back only by the taboo, because she is so very alone and it hurts them both to see. As she steps past them, Addy, with superior hearing, can just hear the redhead whisper in a heartbroken voice, "I'm sorry."
They know she means it.
The gate is opened, the Serpent Brotherhood has released magic back into the world. Sort of. The Library is gone, because apparently it isn't a part of this dimension at all and thinking about the physics of that make Stone's head hurt and Addy's fur ruffled, so he doesn't bother. They find Cassandra, but Asten still isn't here. The leader of the Serpent Brotherhood has him, taken away when they ran for it. She is alone and she is so far from her dæmon and she is still functioning and it is impossible. How is she still vertical?
Stone has to remind himself over and over again that he's supposed to be mad at her, that he's can't just forgive this kind of transgression, no sir. It's hard to do, though.
When she gives up the chance to save herself, get rid of that death sentence growing in her frontal lobe, she doesn't take it. She gives it to Flynn even as the Librarian lays dying and tells her to take it, Loquis becoming hazy around the edges as she begins drifting into Dust. She gives up what might be her only chance to live a full life to a man she's known for barely a day.
Addy giggles a little breathlessly, slaphappy from the lack of sleep and surplus of adrenalin, and leans against Stone's neck.
Whatever superhuman endurance that's kept her on her feet and moving so far must've run out, because Cassandra's legs fold under her, and she's halfway to the floor before any of them realise it. Stone catches her around her waist, pulling her back upright and swinging her up into his arms bridal-style. She hardly weighs anything, like feathers and air instead of flesh and blood. Her head lolls back boneless on her slender neck, exposing the pale line of her throat to him, and he lifts her closer, angling her up so that her head instead rests against his chest.
He has no idea what to say, but he knows without knowing that Cassandra's about to give up entirely and that she simply can't, not now. So he dips his head so his lips are close to her ear and whispers, "Glory be to God for dappled things." Her lashes flutter a little, so he blunders on, Addy whispering the next line when he forgets in his worry.
By the time he finishes the poem, her eyes are open, if dull and shadowed, looking up at him. "You gotta hold on for me. Just a while longer, and then we'll get him back, Cassie, darlin'. We'll get Asten back," he promises; she makes a sound like a sob and buries her face in his chest.
Her voice is almost stifled by his shirt, but Stone can still make out the words as she mumbles them, half-delirious: Lamia has the cage.
Flynn's gone to find the Library, he's appointed them all Librarians-In-Training. Baird essentially bullies Jenkins into letting them use the Annex, Karys bristling and showing his teeth up at Menerva, who has yet to say a word to any of them, perched on the suited man's shoulder austere and silent. Cassandra is hardly a shadow of herself, and Stone is a man on a mission.
Lamia isn't actually hard to find. He doesn't stop to consider that she might be purposefully doing that, leading him into a trap, doesn't think about the fact that he's solo on this one, the others don't know where he is. He sees her standing there all smug and grinning, in her all-black femme fatale outfit with her black snake dæmon curled around her throat like a necklace, and all at once, he's full of so much rage that it burns in his throat and his stomach. Addy is pacing beside him as a jaguar, her harshest and cruelest form.
"Good to see you again, lover." Lamia starts to talk. He doesn't want to talk. Not now, not with Cassandra dying without her soul. He doesn't even realise that he's got his hands around her throat until she's squeaking and trying to gasp in a breath, pinned against a wall. She doesn't fight him, though. Not because he could take her (he can't) but because she can't. Her snake dæmon was forced to slither off her throat when he grabbed her, and Addy has seized him in lightning-quick falcon talons. Now she's a banded mongoose, famous for their hunting and killing of poisonous serpents, and she has her sharp-toothed jaws clamped on the other dæmon's neck, ready to thrash the life out of him in a second.
"Let. Him. Go," Stone growls, giving Lamia a rough shake with each word to make his point clear. "Right now. Let him go."
The pseudo-assassin's eyes are huge. Clearly, she hadn't been expecting this one. No doubt she had a witty comeback for anything he could say to her, but there's nothing to say to a pair of hard, work-callused hands wrapped around her throat or the sharp mongoose teeth still digging into her dæmon's neck. Lamia might not be the sharpest katana in the weapons kit, but she knows that Stone means business, that his peculiar dæmon will certainly kill hers if she doesn't obey.
So she fumbles in her pocket for the stone that Dulaque gave her. It's a magic artifact, one of many they've collected over the years, only it hasn't ever worked until now, with the ley lines reactivating. A dæmon stone, one of the few forces that can separate a person from their dæmon, other than Severance or the Witches of the North's arcane rituals. She throws it to the ground, and it shatters like black glass, a swirl of golden Dust escaping its pieces, swirling together into a solid shape: a pale, quivering Asten, huddled on the pavement.
Stone squeezes her throat just a little, almost tempted to actually do it. But Addy has already released Lamia's dæmon and is fawning over Asten anxiously, nuzzling him and murmuring to him softly.
He drops her to the floor unceremoniously and turns on heel, striding away back towards his car. Lamia is still coughing and rubbing her throat with one hand whilst nervously stroking Murwi's glossy black scales with the other. She watches as his dæmon becomes a baboon, gently scooping up Asten off the pavement and carrying him in one arm, leaving her alone to explain to Dulaque how one thick-skulled cowboy from bloody Oklahoma got the better of her.
She thinks that the red-haired bird, as pathetic and weak as she seems, must really be something to have that man twisted so tightly around her little finger.
They have Asten limp on the passenger seat, driving back to the Annex as fast as speed limits will allow. Addy is curled around him as a wildcat and is gently licking behind his ears, trying to soothe him as they drive. Asten is hardly moving, eyes almost shut, barely breathing, and he's grey, pale. Stone wants to do something, anything but sit there and drive, and he presses a little harder on the gas pedal.
"That poem…" Asten whispers after a while, hoarse and croaking. "The one you told Cassandra…"
"'Pied Beauty'? That's Gerard Manley Hopkins, published 1877. I always liked his works, most of it, anyways," Stone answers, happy that Asten is at least talking. When the other dæmon only sighs in response, he recites the poem again:
"Glory be to God for dappled things —
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him."
Asten is quiet, but then he speaks again, softly. "I'm sorry. We…are sorry. We shouldn't have…"
"Hey, hey, don't worry about that now, okay. It wasn't your fault. I mean…hell, you deal with something like that hanging over your head every second of the day, then someone gives you a way out…I don't know if I could've said no, either," Stone cuts Asten off. It is considered good form not to speak to another person's dæmon. That's what one's own dæmon is for. People speak to people, dæmons speak to dæmons. But given that Cassandra isn't here and Addy is still busily cuddling, he is the only option.
"They promised…not to hurt anyone. We just had…to give up the crown." Asten sighs out again, as if speaking is a concentrated effort. "When they hurt Flynn…we tried to leave…and they put me in the cage."
"Don't worry about it anymore. It'll be okay now. We'll get you back to the Annex and Cassandra and you'll be just fine. Don't worry about it," Stone mutters. He probably won't be fine. Baird is likely going to murder him for running off on his own so recklessly.
Asten can't find the will to rise to his feet, so Addy instead becomes a lynx and gently clamps her jaw on the scruff of his neck, lifting him up and carrying him like she would her own cub. He doesn't protest it, either, pulling his legs in and curling his tail up to his belly like he is a kitten to be carried.
When the doors of the Annex open, Cassandra is sitting there at the table waiting for them. In an instant, Asten is springing across the distance between them, instantly revitalized, and Cassandra falls to her knees with arms open to him. Girl and dæmon embrace ferociously, passionately, both sobbing and saying each other's names. Stone doesn't want to intrude, and he sits down on the steps, with an arm around Addy, scratching gently behind her ears.
"Jake," Addy murmurs as they watch the pair, and he grunts questioningly. "I don't think that I'll be changing anymore."
Stunned, he looks down at her. She is in the shape of a Siberian lynx, richly furred and sleek. In the soft lighting of the Annex, her fur gleams lustrous silver-grey-white-tan-black-gold-ash-steel, dappled to perfectly blend into the snowy environment of Siberia, tufts of soft black fur on her ears, her silvery-hazel eyes rimmed in black like an Egyptian priestess. A ruff of longer fur frames her face like a short mane, and her broad, well-furred feet are made for easily traversing deep snow and moving quietly. Stone can't help grinning and leans in to bury his face against the thick, rich fur.
When he sits upright again, Cassandra's standing there in front of him with Asten clutched in her arms, teary-eyed but smiling. She bends to set Asten down gently on the floor, then lunges forward and all but tackles him in a fierce hug, knocking him back onto the stairs. Stone hugs her back, even though he's not quite used to physical contact, coming from a family that didn't do the whole hugging thing. Her long hair spills over her shoulder, falling into his face until all he can see is red, all he can feel is her, the smell of her skin, the warmth of her body. He doesn't know how long they sit like that, but he knows he won't be the first to pull away. This feels…nice. Very nice. He thinks that Cassandra needs this almost as much as he does.
Finally, she loosens her arms but doesn't let go entirely, sliding around until she's practically sitting on his lap. Asten is pressed up against Addy, weaving between her legs, rubbing her flank along his. He's in an interesting form, one that Stone's never seen before, sleek and slender, having a catlike build with large gold eyes and rounded ears, silvery-brown fur dappled with dark spots and a white-and-black ringed tail as long as his body, fully twice the size of a normal housecat.
Before he can ask, though, Baird comes striding in with Karys bristling along at her heels, fluffed up in his anger. She opens her mouth to start berating him for being so stupid, running off like that without telling his Guardian where he was going, without a contingency plan or backup of any kind. But then Karys nips her hand sharply, no longer bristling, and she notices that Cassandra is smiling and Asten is snuggled comfortably against the mathematician. Baird closes her mouth and sighs quietly, though her eyes promise that she and Stone are going to have a very long conversation about his admittedly reckless behaviour.
Later, though.
As Baird walks off and leaves them, Stone hears Cassandra mutter, "Really? Today, of all days?" He looks down at her in confusion, but she isn't talking to him. She's addressing Asten, grinning up at her with sharp teeth behind his long, quivering whiskers.
"What's today?" he asks, puzzled.
"Oh, nothing. Just Asten finally deciding to settle about 15 years overdue," she answers quietly, still resting her head on his shoulder, and doesn't that feel nice?
Stone blinks rapidly at that, struck at the sheer magnitude of the coincidences. Or is it not a coincidence at all and just the universe's slightly twisted sense of humour? A mix of both? Fate, even? He's not entirely sure, but it surely has to mean something, because it's just too strange not to.
As if reading his mind, Asten speaks up quietly from where he has slid out of Cassandra's lap to curl against Addy's side. "There is a theory," he says, low and soft, "that dæmons do not settle when the body reaches physical maturity, but rather when a person knows who they are, when they have found themselves, so to speak."
Stone thinks about how Addy first played with Asten the day they met, though she'd never done so before, how he is so utterly incapable of staying mad at Cassandra, how he feels more at home here, in the Annex and in the Library, than he does in the house he grew up in, how he at last feels free to be himself and not act dumb as dirt, how he feels safe here, safe as nowhere else has ever made him feel. "I think I can buy that," he murmurs, one arm settling comfortably around Cassandra's delicate shoulders, holding her close to his side.
Addy purrs low and rumbling, and she licks Asten's ears with her long raspy tongue. "So can I."
Tomorrow won't be so peaceful. Soon they'll go to sleep and wake up the next morning to deal with a completely new life, a life of mystery and misery, of adventure and loneliness, an opportunity to make a difference and save the world every week. Twice before Friday.
Stone and Addy will take Baird and Karys chewing them out over being so stupid, going after Lamia alone, both knowing and silently agreeing that they would do it again, just to see Cassandra smiling and happy again, Asten weaving between her ankles.
Cassandra will find out that she and Asten are like the Northern Witches of old, able to be a great distance apart from each other without feeling pain. Not separated, just...stretched.
Jenkins will grumble acerbic witticisms and snarky comments at them as Menerva eyes up Zhu and sharpens her talons with a certain thoughtfulness whenever the fox and the thief pass him by.
Karys will herd the other dæmons together as Baird puts them through practice drill after practice drill, trying to convince them that even though she's the Guardian, they shouldn't rely strictly on her.
Stone will try and fail multiple times to get the globe to work the way Flynn did, Ezekiel will steal his wallet, and Cassandra will have to separate them before he throttles the annoying little Australian bastard.
Karys and Menerva will watch and shake their heads, and Baird will wonder what she's ever going to do with them as Jenkins offers sarcastic offers to kill them and dispose of the bodies through the Back Door.
But that all comes later.
For now, Stone and Cassandra sit on the bottom steps of the Annex with their dæmons and muse together on the inexplicable science of settling.
Jacob Stone – Adrasteia, called "Addy," Siberian lynx, Lynx lynx wrangeli. A solitary animal, the lynx is usually a symbol of mystery, secrets and privacy. It was also believed that the lynx had the powers of clairvoyance and possess a clear-sightedness that surpasses man's. They are superb hunters and, as cats, also signify magic and otherworldliness. Adrasteia is a Greek name meaning "inescapable" and is an epithet of the goddess Nemesis, who delivered righteous punishment upon the guilty.
Cassandra Cillian – Asten, common genet, Genetta genetta. Genets are part of the Viverridae family, one of the feliform (related to cats) families. They are solitary animals that usually only come together to breed and have excellent hearing and vision, and are expert climbers, adept at hunting. Asten is an epithet of the Egyptian deity Thoth, associated with the arbitration of disputes, the arts of magic, the system of writing, the development of science, and the judgment of the dead.
Ezekiel Jones – Zhu, red fox, Vulpes vulpes. Foxes are symbols of cunning and wiliness as well as mischievousness, but they aren't always evil. In ancient Peru, the fox is seen as a warrior that uses his mind to do battle. A Finnish myth features a fox's intelligence besting both the malevolence of the wolf and the brute strength of the bear. Zhu is Chinese for 'vermillion,' a bright shade of red.
Col. Eve Baird – Karys, Siberian husky/grey wolf, Canis familiaris/Canis lupus. Dogs have long since been symbols of fidelity, companionship, and protections, man's best friend. Wolves, being the genetic predecessor of the dog, have many of the same connotations, though with the notable addition of a wild and savage nature. Karys is Lithuanian for 'warrior.'
Flynn Carsen – Loquis, river otter, Lontra canadensis. The otter symbolizes mystical wisdom, hidden information, and secret knowledge. Otters are also very playful animals that have been known to play tag with each other and slide down snowy slopes on their bellies. The name Loquis comes from the Latin root 'Loqui' which means 'to speak' or 'talk' because we all know how much he likes to talk.
Jenkins/Galahad – Menerva, snowy owl, Nyctea scandiaca. A nocturnal animal, owls often have access to secrets, occult knowledge, and hidden information, hence their long-time standing as a symbol of wisdom. However, they were also symbols of witchcraft and magic; the Italian word for 'owl'—strix or striga—is synonymous with 'witch.' The name Menerva is the Etruscan equivalent of Minerva, the Goddess of Wisdom.