Children behave
That's what they say when we're together
And watch how you play
They don't understand
And so we're running just as fast as we can
Holding on to one another's hand
Trying' to get away into the night
And then you say:
I think we're alone now,
There doesn't seem to be anyone around.
I think we're alone now,
The beating of our hearts is the only sound.

- Ritchie Cordell


Someone, somewhere, had put on a record. The scratchy, hollow sound followed Rezar through the hallways he had once called home, but the echo of the tinny music only served to amplify the eerie feeling of loss that permeated every strip of wallpaper, every board on the floor. Whoever had put needle to vinyl, he thought, it had probably been one of Leo's records originally - it certainly sounded like the other boy's idiosyncratic taste in music, all brash and bass and brass, the rhythm resonating through the cavernous space as though the Urnfield had developed its own irregular heartbeat.

He couldn't say that he had expected to feel nostalgic, but when the chorus hit, he thought it was almost as though the music had drawn ragged, ghostly fragments of strange childhood from the bones of the building. He could remember dancing to this song, with that reckless abandon that the very young have, before they learn better than to show their hearts so easily - a little group of orphans simply being children, doing childish things. Human, Rez mused. It was one of the most human moments he could recall from that period of his life.

The record player had been older than their father-who-was-not-a-father. It was a small miracle it was still working at all. He followed the music's path: up the servant's staircase, whose tenth step still bore the etching 3+7; down the Caravaggio Hallway, so named because it had, thanks to Adrian, been plunged into a permanent darkness alleviated only by the most powerful of light sources; past Zara's old bedroom, at very the front of the house, with the lead-lined containment unit she had called a bed for the better portion of her childhood left abandoned as though expecting her imminent return at any moment.

And here and there, there were the faintest reminders of Rez's own legacy imprinted on the building, some small reminder that he had lived here once upon a lifetime ago. Gold dust caked the sole of his shoes; aureate flowers, resplendent in their sheen, clustered lifeless and deathless in gilt vases; white gloves strewn here and there, as though in temper, and never retrieved, as though in shame.

Rez's gloves had always been white; Essi's had always been black. Opposing chess pieces, Rez thought.

The music was fading now, the voices warping as though lamenting their slow evanescence as Rez took the final set of stairs to the kitchen on the second floor. Now that the music was waning, he could hear the quiet murmur of voices from behind the wall - evidence of life, he thought wryly. Dusk was falling very hesitantly over the estate; a warm glow spilled under the door, pockmarked inconsistently by the intermittent shadows of someone pacing. Rez paused at the door without turning the handle, giving himself a moment to gather his thoughts. Truth be told, he had no idea what to expect from this little soirée - what could possibly require their reunion?

He pushed back the malicious voice at the back of his mind whispering he might be back.

It had been seven years since Mr Thorn disappeared. It had been seven years since he had left the Urnfield. It had been seven years since he had last seen his siblings.

It had been two years since he had last used his abilities.

He had a feeling that gold streak was going to be broken, whether he liked it or not.

The knock on the kitchen door was almost sardonic, muffled by the salt-and-sugar gloves Rez was wearing today - old habits break hard, he thought wryly. "Knock knock," he called dryly. "I'm not interrupting, am I?"

Without even glancing inside the room, he could have painted the tableau before him, all his siblings in their respective positions: Vanya pacing impatiently by the bay windows which overlooked that cemetery that gave the Urnfield its name, his features schooled into an impassive mask of contumacy; Zara at the head of the table, her shoulders held tense as though expecting an argument, stirring a cup of coffee with a violence that suggested personal insult; Adrian leaning against the fridge, his eyes flitting between first and third siblings, his expression suggesting that he had hoped to find something a little more hopeful when he arrived home. Rez could even identify precisely where the others would have taken their places - Leo would have alighted on the countertop or found a spot on the table itself, folding his limbs into a nervous bundle of potential energy; Essi would have found a place on the windowseat, where the wan light would have obscured the worst of the mutilation. Rez himself would probably have taken a chair next to Zara, swinging it back on two legs and putting his shoes on the table so he could feign sleep.

Even after seven years, he thought, when you know someone you know them.

And he stepped into the kitchen to find he had been correct on all counts.

Adrian, straightening up with an abruptness that shook the fridge: "Rezar, what did you do to your hair?"

Zara, with a sardonicism that could have dried the Atlantic: "Didn't I say I could smell something rotten?"

Vanya, mid-pace, framed by the etiolated dusk-light filtering slowly in through the bay-windows: stony silence.

That did, Rez thought, seem like typical Vanya.

"Evening, kids," he said, deadpan. "How have the last seven years been treating you?"

Vanya didn't need to answer. Rez felt confident he could hazard a guess at what his older brother had got up to during their separation, but even without such conjecture it was evident that the Abyss had been using, overusing, abusing, his abilities. Something serpentine writhed beneath the tan skin of his forearm, like a worm was trapped in his flesh and pressing to break free, to taste the air. Whatever it was, a colony of them thrashed around his cheekbone; something sharp within him, something with talons, pressed against the thin surface of his throat, and twitched occasionally, as though close to waking.

Zara's green-grey eyes were as sharp as ever. "Better now for seeing you, Fortune," she said dryly. "We were just taking bets on which flotsam would float up next."

"Oooh," Rez said lazily. "Which bastard have I won money for?"

Zara inclined her head towards Adrian, who still seemed rather fascinated by the new state of Rez's hair.

"I expect a cut," Rez said simply. "Fifty percent should do..."

Vanya resumed his pacing, and Rez took his predicted seat by the stove, kicking back to put his brogues on the table, gold dust filtering from the soles onto the wooden surface in little glowing clouds. "Caffeine?"

Adrian slid a cup across the table, steam billowing from the surface; Rez caught it by the handle without even looking. The simple motion irritated Rez more than he could articulate. Clearly he hadn't had much luck leaving the little parts of the Urnfield behind. Even the first sip of coffee was familiar: Zara's particular homebrew was strong, dark, and as bitter as Vanya. Not bad, Rez thought reluctantly. He didn't think he'd found its equal in the outside world just yet. You could replace your siblings with dogs and cats, he mused wryly, but good coffee was a little harder to approximate.

"Now, I don't know about you good people," Rez continued, setting the cup back onto the table with a decisiveness. "But that fucking message was one of the creepiest things I've seen in a while, no?"

Adrian nodded. "I found the letter in my shoe," he said slowly. "Which means someone was in my house. While I was asleep, while my sister was asleep..." Vanya paused in his pacing and turned to look at Adrian with something unreadable in his expression. The younger man took only a moment to realise his mistake. "Oh, it's not... I didn't... I went back to the Zavalas."

"Ah, domestic bliss," Zara said caustically. Rez didn't think he was imagining the faint traces of hurt in her eyes. The family may not have been together for the past seven years, but he supposed it would still hurt to feel like Adrian had replaced you in an instant. "Mazel tov."

Adrian looked like he was about to respond when Rez interrupted. "We all got the same fucking communiqué, then?" Come home. It's urgent.

"Miss Loss, I presume," Zara said, inclining her head to indicate her agreement. She didn't bother to tell Rez to watch his language. It was a lost cause at this pint. "It would make the most sense."

Vanya cocked an eyebrow. "It was probably Leo," he said. "We all know it was probably Leo."

Zara didn't look entirely convinced. "Last I heard, the Haruspex was in White Feather."

Adrian blinked. "The asylum?"

"I think they're called psychiatric facilities nowadays," Vanya said, slightly distractedly.

"Don't tell me you didn't see that coming," Rez cut in. "I'm surprised the little shit didn't end up there sooner."

Adrian shook his head. "Even so." He glanced down at his shoes. "If I had known..."

Vanya laughed under his breath. The things under his skin curled as though with mirth. "What? You would have visited?"

Zara and Vanya didn't often agree, but the older girl's eyes were cool and steady as she nodded. "After what happened?"

The corner of Adrian's lips tightened and curled. "Maybe," he said stubbornly.

"You think you're a better person than you are," Vanya said bluntly. He turned to the other siblings. "If there's four..."

"There will be seven," Rez finished. "God willing... provided none of our beloved brothers and sisters have met a grisly end since last we met."

Vanya's gaze was unamused.

Zara nodded, and stood. In the few minutes they had sat there together, the lines of their body tense and still, the sun had disappeared beneath the horizon and left only the memory of its bloody light behind, as the pale white stars began to peer through the cracks in the clouds overhead. "I don't know about you guys," she said dourly. Rez thought his words had stirred something in his sister - a reminder of why they had split in the first place, perhaps, or an unpleasant imagining of what could have befallen their ragtag family in the interim. "But I'm going to get some sleep. If we don't get answers tomorrow... I'm out of here."

Adrian glanced up at his sister with sadness brewing behind his eyes, but said nothing as Zara left the room, shutting the door firmly behind her.

Vanya shrugged. "Can't disagree," he said simply. And then he fractured, as only Vanya could, and it was easy - he was already etiolated, his colour drained wan by the dim light that permeated the unlit kitchen, so it was easy for him to crack and to vanish as he typically did. His skin flaked away, becoming hoar feathers which became gold grosbeaks and pygmy falcons which became dust, and his hair fell as black ash. His eyes fell as beetles and his teeth, white and sharp, melted into snowflakes and ice which fluttered down onto the tile of the kitchen in an impossible breeze.

"He does love," Rez said thoughtfully after a moment. "To make a dramatic exit, doesn't he?"

He stood and went to the door without waiting for a reply. "It's nice to see you again, Rezar," Adrian said, and Rez looked back at his brother and said, "I wish I could say the same," and the silence afterwards followed him like a phantom all the way back down the stairs and through the hallway and towards the foyer.

He couldn't articulate what made him veer away from the door and a return to normality, but he found himself walking across the oriental rug in the eastern antechamber and towards the drawing room, which had been something like a living room for the children in their youth, when some of them were still too suspicious of Mr Thorn and Miss Loss and their ash-and-dust siblings to risk sleeping alone on a higher floor. There had been a piano. If Leo was in the right mood, he would play. It was strange the things Rez had almost forgotten.

The drawing room was drenched in shadows, but even in the thick gloom that clustered around him, Rez could make out the faint silhouette of a small, lean figure curled on the couch. Her dark hair was strewn wildly, her breathing almost imperceptible even in slumber. Stepping closer, straining to stay quiet, he found familiarity in the ease with which he veered around those floorboards most likely to rasp and complain. As he drew nearer the couch, he could see more clearly that the wide eastward window had been picked and cracked open to a tiny slit; the pane was speckle-stained with the rusty claret of blood. Their mysterious visitor had crawled in like a thief in the night. He couldn't say that was out of character.

Rez would have recognised her anywhere, even after all those years - she was his sister, after all - but she seemed unfamiliar nonetheless, a faded childhood memory replaced by crisp reality, all the soft edges of childhood worn away and replaced by the sharp features of near-adulthood. She had a dagger-like shape, narrow waist and hips and shoulders, and limbs that seemed too long and lean for the rest of her, as though they had been taken from some other girl. Her customary black gloves were still firmly in place, he noticed, but one finger was hollow, without flesh to fill it. Dark shadows had been carved out under her eyes and the stress drew all her skin tight and taut over all the sharp bones of her face. She had bruises on her cheekbones, blossoming blue-and-black like a storm-cloud. Blood that was not her own painted her neck and collarbone crimson.

The youngest of the orphans. The seventh of seven. The Butcher.

A low zephyr was ghosting across the room, carrying with it a gelid chill that stirred the hair and ruffled the clothing, swirled dust motes in the air in a morbid reminder of the Reckoning and lifted the folio of strewn books as though a phantom hand were rifling through the pages. Rezar didn't stop to consider his actions for long; after casting about the room for an instant, he moved on fraternal instinct to pull a dark gray eiderdown from one of the armchairs and settled it gently, very gently, over the smaller orphan, hoping it would not disturb her. Even in sleep, Essi's expression never seemed entirely at peace. He supposed it came with the territory. He wondered what savagery she had perpetrated on the world since he had last seen her.

He didn't intend to linger - she may have been his sister, unfamiliar and altered by the passage of time and yet irrefutably, undeniably, his sister... but the memory of the last time they had seen one another hung heavy and oppressive between them, even in sleep. Rez stepped back out of the drawing room with something that felt like lead in his heart, wondering exactly what any of them had hoped to achieve by coming back here. He could, should and would leave once again in the morning, before he could get caught back up in the chaos and tragedy of being an Urnfield orphan once again, before Mr Thorn's wraith could ensnare him once more.

And yet, stepping out into the foyer, Rez realized that was much easier said than done, because in that instant, he observed that, quite silently, a dirty white ice-cream van had materialized from absolutely nothing and found itself wedged firmly within the wall over the front door, brick fused irremediably to steel as though it had always existed so. Its front wheels were still spinning; Rez imagined if he stepped outside to check, he would see that the back ones were doing the same. There was the unmistakable scent of burning rubber and overcooked oranges.

Oranges, Rez thought, and as though on cue the door of the van burst open and out tumbled Leo, with singed curly hair and shards of broken glass embedded in his forehead. He landed on his feet. He always did.

"I heard," the Haruspex said, his hoarse voice somewhere between dazed and expectant. "That there was a family reunion afoot?"


Number One: The Thin Man - Zahara "Zara" Al-Yatim
Number Two:

Number Three:
The Abyss - Ivan "Vanya" Kinzhalov
Number Four:
The Fortune - Rezar "Rez" Orval
Number Five: The Haruspex - Leontios "Leo" Kelly
Number Six:
The Shadow - Adrian "Fire Kid" Zavala
Number Seven:
The Butcher - Esther "Essi" Graves


Please review! It motivates me so much. Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who has given me their thoughts so far! I hope I am doing the characters and story justice.

I hope you like this chapter! Let me know what you think of the characters and their dynamics so far.