I N F E R N O

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Seven

:i:

In most stories, Monsieur and Madame Fowl would have come home early, found the stained glass windows shattered, the garden reminiscent of Versailles's during the French Revolution, and Butler a surprisingly poor liar.

Fortunately, this story considers Monsieur and Madame Fowl to be irresponsible parents who consider honeymooning a fine recreational activity, and Artemis had plenty of time to clean up after the Party.

Juliet had coined the term over dinner: "Young people are expected to have parties while their parents are away," she had said suddenly. "Loud, wild parties."

Artemis frowned at his risotto. "Debauchery, I should hope, is not expected of me by Father."

Juliet ignored him, rambling on. "Fowl Manor would be a wonderful place for a party. A bit of a drive, perhaps, but people will drive a very long way for a good party."

Artemis scowled. His risotto was waving a white flag. "I don't know any 'young people' who would willingly engage in such things. All the 'young people' I know are fellow wunderkind who think alcohol is for the organic chemists and copulation for the biologists."

Juliet smiled dreamily. "You can discover many things about yourself at a party: whether you prefer blondes or brunettes, your favorite type of contraception, your tolerance level – very useful for bars, mind you—"

The risotto contemplated suicide. "There will be no parties at Fowl Manor, and that is final."

For some reason, the Manor denizens took to calling the assassination attempt 'the Party' after this conversation.

After, Artemis stalked about the Manor looking for some task that would settle his restlessness. Dom, increasingly paranoid about Manor security after the Party, spent much of his time pruning the defenses rather than the flowers. He found Holly in the library. He considered going in and lecturing her on her table manners that night – it had been Holly's first exposure to Italian – but then desisted. She needed every book she could read, he concluded.

The restlessness pervaded him: his eyes, normally on 'roaming' mode, were now somewhere between 'wandering' and 'I want to get lost now, damnit!' He found himself plagued by the sudden desire to crack his fingers, a revolting habit he was very vocal about. Perhaps worst of all, he found that his steps echoed in the hallways: if he was not distracted by some thought, he would find himself tracing the interference patterns in the air.

Irritated with himself, he went out into the grounds into the night. The night air was cool, even cold: as he took a breath it was as if the bright, sharp stars from above were piercing his throat and lungs. It was a surprisingly pleasant sort of pain. He took several such breaths and looked up, tracing constellations. He recited their names to himself, and recalled their myths. Medea probably did that every night, tracing the crown of Corona Borealis, or following the sinuous curve of Draco, or perhaps watching the flight of the Pleiades from Orion the Hunter.

He shook his head; the cold air was a slap to the face. The stars were stars; most of them were already dead by the time their light reach Earth. Why care for petty patterns imagined by people half-mad with wine?

He considered Aldebaran, the blood-shot eye of Taurus. Medea does.

Startled with himself, he blinked, though nobody was there to see. That's not a reason, that's a statement.

He blinked again. That's not even a statement, it's an extrapolation.

Thoroughly disgusted with himself, he began walking through the garden. That's not even an extrapolation, it's a guess. For all I know, she's an imbecile with a laptop and some very rich parents.

He passed chrysanthemums; they were out of season but Dom could… convince the flowers to do some remarkable things. Especially for his sister's sake, considering her marked partiality towards them.

If my IQ was twenty points lower, I might be stooping to her level. I might be the one chattering on the IM like Keats introduced to Homer, I might be the one buying halfrate assassins and praying that they can follow my plans, I might be the one tempting fate by meeting my rival in the Louvre.

To his left, daffodils; Juliet was a fan of the Cranberries. She had planted them rightbefore she left, thinking he wouldn't catch the worthless reference.

Medea can't be such a fool. Surely, she knows who she's facing…

To his right: a tortured bonsai tree. Dom had planted it when his sister was born, as expected with a prospective pupil of Madame Ko. Juliet had never cared for bonsai, but seeing her every decision laid out in those carefully warped branches made her mind what she did.

What is her goal? Does she merely wish to torment me? She has the original Fragonard, so why does she want me dead? Is it a preemptive strike, is it revenge for some slight against a family member, or are the two events entirely unrelated?

He took an abrupt left off of the main path; being so linear troubled him somewhat.

Good God, why is this irritating me so much? I haven't obsessed over anything this badly since I was fifteen and swore off crime for good. I couldn't concentrate for weeks…

He stopped. He was in the rose garden; he remembered the events with an unexpected lurch of the stomach. Disgusted with himself, he looked around: the statuette had enough chips to convince anyone of antiquity, the grass of the lawn was decidedly tousled and some of the roses were too dark to justify yellow-pink…

Does Medea want me dead?

He clutched at his wrist, almost instinctually. He hadn't thought there had been an arterial spray, especially to the extent the cluster of dark flowers implied. When he took his hand from his wrist, he looked down; the scar was paler than the stars, paler than the moon.

Does she want to be alone—

is that why she seeks to kill a genius?

envy, fear or spite, that's the only question now…

His hands clenched. His every thoughtbaseless! circuitous! What was happening to him?

He sat down heavily at a bench; the marble was cool to the touch. He felt intensely aware of everything: the bright, cold points of stars, the great marble slab of blue-black above, the pale, nebulous blurs of the roses, the sharp snap of the airand the sound of his own breathing, steady despite it all.

He was alive.

He looked up at the stars. Invincible.

He closed his eyes; the world felt so rational, so clean. Medea was not rational; he had been trying to treat her as a rational being, like himself. Doing so had driven his thoughts to irrationality. Simple, really, so simple, like thread through the eye of the needle.

He would eliminate Medea, of course.

He smiled, thin and ghastly like a cat. Yes, he had so many things to take care of—

—on his chest, warmth spreading, a laser pointer

He flung himself to the side blindly, bruising where he collided with the bench but he continued with a roll, against the hedge now, trying to think of an escape but finding none, looked up—

—and breathed in sharply.

No one.

…but he had felt the laser pointer on his chest, the subtle warmth to it, Dom had made sure of that, just in case…

Cautious, he stayed flat to the ground, and moving as little as possible tilted his head up. On the hedge wall a red dot manifested itself among the leaves at chest level. Whatever it was, it was stationary.

He stood up, wincing at the grass stains. Two suits ruined over the course of a day. Terrible, even by criminal mastermind standards—and for the respectable genius, blasphemy.

But he was distracting himself. He projected the laser's source and followed it to the statuette's headthe source being one of those ridiculous laser pens, and furthermore, a ridiculous laser pen that he had clearly not noticed upon his entry.

He plucked the pen from its perch. Strange, how it had not fallen during the Party earlier. It had been balanced rather precariously, no?

He frowned. The pen had not been there earlier; it had been placed sometime between this morning and his entry—but how could he miss something as ridiculously obvious as a red light when all was tinted blue and black with the night? It had been placed there, thus, when he had closed his eyes. The grass was soft, and he had not been on the alert. A gag by Juliet, or perhaps Holly. An insensitive gag, perhaps, but a gag nonetheless.

He breathed in, letting the cold air sharpen his thoughts and mind. He had been so ridiculous tonight; first engaging Juliet in a frivolous argument regarding parties, then his inability to concentrate, and then a remission to his former self! Even now, his thoughts were scattered to a wind that had no intent on giving them back.

…but the laser light, had it been a gag? Juliet and Holly, both of them, would have wanted to watch something like that; he would have heard them giggling off in the hedges somewhere. It would be rather insensitive, even for Juliet.

On the other hand, why would Medea have a laser pen put there? To mock him? No respectable criminal mastermind would put a pen to tease. An assassination attempt was considered a respectable jest in most circles, or at least a bomb threat.

Not a laser pen.

He shook his head. Whoever had put it there, it was getting too cold. He could question Holly and Juliet in the morning; if neither of them did the deed, then Dom could review the security tapes for him.

He began walking out; then stopped. If the assassin had put a laser pen there, what had he taken in return? Some people liked give-take jokes; perhaps Medea liked her humoresques in pairs.

It didn't take him long; of the cluster of bloodstained roses, one of them was missing.

His mind spun with possible symbolisms; yellow rose for friendship, did she know it was him on the IM?dried blood, an old crime of passion of some sort, staining a friendship that could never be?—blood, passion, maybe this is her way of attracting his attention—taking a flower, taking the joy from his life?

He stopped. What was the symbolism of a laser pen?

He began walking out, shivering a bit in the cold. He was making much ado about nothing. He would talk to Medea Atreus in the morning; clearly, his reasoning facilities were atrophied.

:i:

What do you think? It felt kinda lurchy to me, but hey, oh well. I'm trying to be funny, and it's not working out. I should probably stick to angst.

Sorry about the long delay; I've been having fun with oneshots lately. In any case, I hope it was interesting, if rather uneventful. Another Medea-Artemis conversation next chapter, which will set things going again. Maybe some Monsieur. I just have this vague idea in my head now as to how many chapters between so-and-so event and such.