How Owen Joined the Terces Society…
There aren't nearly as many stories for the Secret series as I would like. That means I must add some of my own. Even if they make no sense and are totally random. Oh well. Disclaimer: I am not Pseudonymous Bosch, whoever he may be. I do not own: Owen, Ms Mauvais, Dr L, Pietro, the Terces Society or the Midnight Sun.
I had always been left out.
The weirdo.
Immature.
Pretending. Pretending to be a famous actor. A secret spy.
Not that that got me anywhere.
As soon as I got out of High School, I had no where to go. The theater school I had been going to since I was a kid didn't teach adults. They wouldn't take me for professional courses at various Universities. A career as a secret spy didn't seem any more likely than my acting one had been. I was forced to take a job as a waiter in a fancy restaurant. Years passed. I continued taking drama courses for small-timers at the café next-door.
That was before. Before my dreams came true. Before the mysterious couple came into the restaurant.
It all started on a Saturday night. On Saturdays all the families came, here on a no-work, no-school time. That was the main reason the couple stood out among the screaming children and the embarrassed-looking parents. But they would have stood out in a crowd at Cinderella's ball. The woman exhibited a waist-long blonde mass of waving hair; matching her golden knee-length dress and five-inch tall high heels. She had a skinny waist that would be the envy of any Barbie doll. The only thing she lacked that would make her look even more beautiful was a smile. Her face was frozen; her cold blue eyes darted from one side of the room to the other, inspecting the diners.
The man was equally attractive. He had an exotic look to him; very tan face, perfect smile, silver hair pushed back so that not a single strand covered his face. He was wearing grey two-piece suit with a pearl-color tie. They both had an unnatural look to them, like they were aliens from another planet and this was their interpretations for human beings.
They stood there, at the doorway, holding hands and just looking. Hands, that I noticed, were covered in white silk gloves. The woman's were embroidered in gold along the edges. The man's were plain, as if made so as to not be noticed. Then, as if by some unknown command, they let go and started walking towards the manager sitting in a chair by the kitchen door.
I watched all this from a vantage point at table three, where I was serving a family of three. I had decided to try out a new character. I put on a Dutch accent, a wig of cropped blonde hair and a mustache. I also modified my eyebrows so that they would match my hair color, and used the new nose I bought at the bazaar next door to make myself unrecognizable. By now, my boss was used to me coming as a different person every day and didn't even tell me off for it. He didn't understand why I did it, but he knew I wasn't going to stop doing it.
The couple finished making their order, so I walked off to the kitchen, picking up the empty plates of another family on my way there. When I neared the kitchen door, I took another good look at the mysterious couple. They seemed to be terrorizing the manager. I couldn't help overhearing part of their conversation.
"…the musical sphere, where is it. I know the man with the bushy mustache was here yesterday asking about it. What did you tell him?" The man was shaking with fright. I couldn't linger any longer; if I walked any slower, I might attract their attention. Well, I was probably already attracting their attention; I was staring straight at them.
I turned around just in time to notice that I was bumping into the doorframe. Just as I did, I slipped on a puddle of water that probably been spilled by an unaware waiter. I flew backwards, arms flailing, and fell right on top of the golden woman. One of my arms landed near her head. It got tangled among her silky curls. When I tried to jerk my arm free, the whole mane of hair came free, revealing the head underneath. It was bare. She was completely bold. I felt disappointed for a moment at the fact that her most beautiful feature had been a fake.
Then I realized the full horror of what had happened. This woman and her husband had been threatening the manager. That had been suspicious enough then, but now… What were they? Were they even human?
At the same time as I ripped off the wig, the plates I had been carrying came crashing down on top of the couple, staining their spotless white gloves with a red sauce. The woman shrieked. She grasped at her head. She ripped the wig out of my arm as I tried to get up. She put it on, looking around the room, probably hoping that no one had noticed. Unfortunately, my spectacular fall had attracted the attention of most of the diners. The small children were laughing at pointing at us.
The golden woman then noticed her gloves. As if she couldn't stand wearing anything dirty or in any way imperfect, she stripped them off and replaced them with a new pair she had in her golden handbag. The man settled for hiding his gloved hands in his pockets. In the short moment that her hands were uncovered, I noticed something shocking. Her hands were wrinkled. So old they were nearly transparent, showing everything underneath. This new image did not match with the woman that had walked in merely ten minutes ago. I didn't like this. But I had to find out. This was why I had wanted to be a secret spy when I was a kid. I couldn't stand not knowing. I got up as if nothing had happened, said sorry and walked in the kitchen.
With any luck, if she ever bumped into me again, she wouldn't recognize me because of my disguise. I bowed to never use it again. I peered through the window at the door until the couple left. They didn't stay there for more than three minutes. Everyone else in the room ignored what happened. The woman might have had cancer, for instance, and tried to hide it. They hadn't seen what I had. That couple wasn't human. What they were, I didn't know. But I would find out. I wouldn't stop until I did.
A week passed. I didn't make any breakthroughs. No one else that looked strange entered the restaurant. During my free time, I researched how old a person could reach and how they could seem younger. Many anti-age treatments came up, but nothing close to what I had seen.
Then one day, an old man came to my apartment. He had a bushy grey mustache and same-colored, wild-looking hair. He had chocolaty brown eyes that twinkled, as if their owner were always smiling. The man asked if "Owen" lived here. That was me, of course, but I wasn't willing to tell him that just then. He might look friendly, but the couple at the restaurant also looked friendly (well, they did when looked at from a distance. Sometimes…) that didn't mean he meant good. Then I noticed he wasn't wearing those menacing white gloves. He couldn't be like them. His hands looked old, it's true, but not as old as the woman's. And his face was wrinkled, unlike the mysterious couple.
I grudgingly let him in, introducing myself as Owen. He, in turn, told me he was Pietro. He had a distinct Italian accent. Could he be faking it? No, I would have noticed. Putting on fake accents was a specialty of mine. I knew everything about it. We both sat down in my living room and he explained everything. About his secret society; about the mysterious couple and their equally mysterious society, the Midnight Sun; about the Secret… I wondered why he was telling me all this.
"You know too much," he responded. Well this sounded ominous. I started to get up, to flee. The man put a hand on my arm, stopping me. "We need people like you. We are short on members, and people with your skills are very hard to find. But you must get rid of your past. The Midnight Sun knows about you. They might remember you with a different face, but they will not stop until they get rid of all witnesses. Would you like to join?"
And I took the oath of Terces, right then and there. I never liked working at the restaurant anyway. And this meant I could get to be a secret spy and an actor at the same time. It was a long time until I was trusted with the location of the Magic Museum or my first mission, but I was prepared to wait. This was the life I had dreamed of, I wasn't going to spoil it because I didn't have patience. With time I came to respect Pietro. And come close to him. Our relationship resembled friendship. But it would never be that. We both hid too many Secrets.