Gifts and Curses
Chapter Three: Conspiracy
Please speak softly,
For they will hear us,
And they'll find out
Why we don't trust them.
Speak up dear,
Cause I cannot hear you.
I need to know
Why we don't trust them.
Explain to me
This conspiracy against me, yeah.
And tell me how
I've lost my power, oh yeah.
Where can I turn,
Cause I need something more.
Surrounded my uncertainty,
I'm so unsure.
Tell me why
I feel so alone.
Cause I need to know,
To whom do I owe.
Explain to me
This conspiracy against me, yeah.
And tell me how
I've lost my power, oh yeah.
I though that we'd make it
Because you said that we'd make it through.
And when all security fails,
We'd be there to help me through.
Explain to me
This conspiracy against me, yeah.
And tell me how
I've lost my power.
(I've lost my power...)
-Paramore
Marny was nervous the whole night and it seemed to be contagious. She hadn't said a word in the car all the way to Nicky's, despite Reid egging her on, she had been somewhere else. She thought maybe she would be able to distract herself once she was around Kate and Sarah, but Sarah seemed as suspicious of her as Caleb did and Kate seemed to pick up on the vibe. The two girls made polite conversation with Marny and then moved away to dance with their respective boyfriends, leaving Marny at the table alone as Tyler and Reid had moved off to play pool.
She thought about leaving. Just getting up and slowly making her way out of the bar. This occurred to her not as running away but as…well as running away towards something more comfortable. So she was sticking.
"See, I don't even know why you came." Kira sat down in the seat next to Marny, she had a soda glass in her hand and was sipping on it coyly while looking around the bar.
"I thought you had homework?" Marny looked over, she was happy for the company, even if she detested Kira at least she knew her. At least she knew what to expect from her and could play back accordingly. With Kira she was just a normal teenage girl.
"I finished it." Kira sent a smirk to Marny, her curly red hair swaying with her movement. "I couldn't pass up the opportunity to mock your pathetic attempts to snag a Son. Besides, Aaron's going to be here."
"So I get to mock your pathetic attempts to snag an ass?" Marny shot back with a smile, lifting her soda in pleasure. Kira smiled at her politely and started to stand from her seat.
"I don't have to try. If you have breast you don't have to try with Aaron, sweetie. You just have to walk by him." Kira lifted her soda in a toast and walked away towards the pool tables.
Marny glared, angry with herself. She couldn't even keep her teenage-enemy at the table she was sitting at. She was distracted and staring into the dark depths of her soda glass when Reid gracefully plopped down in the seat Kira had vacated. Marny only jumped a little in surprise when the fries smothered in ketchup were placed beside her soda. She looked over at his amused face with narrowed eyes.
"Garwin." She greeted coldly.
"I'm celebrating." He replied cheerfully ignoring her icy look.
"Celebrating what?" She asked before she could stop herself. Her curiosity always got her into trouble and she had a feeling she didn't want to know.
He just grinned, pleased with himself, and shrugged. "Guys code, not to sound cliché but, if I told you I'd probably have to kill you." He picked up a french-fry and stuck it in his mouth.
"I scared off all of your friends." Marny said thoughtfully, looking down at the food. Reid shrugged.
"-And some of our enemies." He added half-helpfully, nodding his head towards Kira.
"Actually, I think she just won…" Marny mentally tallied their conversation, sipping thoughtfully on her soda.
"So what is our friend Aaron thinking about?" Reid lounged in his seat, one arm over the back of Marny's chair. Were they conspirators? She wondered. She arched an eyebrow in his direction.
"He's thinking about sex." Marny relaxed slightly, "Please, at least challenge me." She nodded in Abbot's direction, "He's always thinking about sex."
Reid laughed, tilted his head away from their corner. No doubt looking for someone else to mentally spy on.
"Alright, what is…" Reid seemed to change his mind, his eyes meeting Caleb's from across the bar. Marny's guard went up when he leaned closer to her, whispered in her ear, "What is Sarah thinking?"
Marny looked at him for a moment, thought about looking at the grey hair in her bathroom mirror, thought about intruding on someone's thoughts for her own pleasure, and finally thought about the dream that Madelyn had interrupted only that afternoon. Her eyes turned white and she bowed her head to the food in front of them.
"Caleb doesn't like the new girl Reid is hanging out with. He wont go near her. Is she like Chase? I thought it was only boys-"
"Alright, that was a complete waste." Reid interrupted, her eyes cleared as she looked up at him and made him think of those Clear Eyes commercials- only instead of getting rid of the redness they cleared away the white so you could see the colour.
"Caleb's a dull influence on the girl, obviously." Marny said cheerily, sipping the last of her soda. "I should probably get out of here." She looked to her watch, "school in the morning and such."
"Sarah only sat here five minuets." Reid looked shocked.
"What?" She was confused. None of them had sat at the table very long. She didn't see anything odd about Sarah.
"Well, the dullness is obviously contagious."
He was mocking her, she thought dryly. "Ha." She gathered her things, spared a glance over towards Kira, who had found Aaron, and was currently on the dance floor, and stood.
"Are you going to walk, or ask Kira for a ride?" He drummed his fingers on the table- she noticed he had started doing this since asending- not that he had been overly still before, but it was more noticeable now. She wondered if giving up magic was harder on him than he was letting on.
"I was hoping, since you were the one that demanded I come here, that you would give me a ride." Her eyes narrowed down at him.
"Actually, I gave you a choice." He still looked completely comfortable. It was unnerving her since she was starting to believe he would actually make her walk.
"Fine. I'm sure Tyler will give me a ride." Reid just laughed, looked down at his fingernails. Marny briefly wondered if he had them done in a salon, and if he would be overly upset if she were to smash them in a door at some later date. "I'm missing a joke?" Her voice was dry and her eyes still narrowed.
"Tyler, is severely creeped out by you. I'm sure he would give you a ride, but he wouldn't enjoy it."
"I think your lying." Marny hoped he was lying.
Reid just shrugged his arm still over the back of the chair Marny had been sitting in.
"Then I guess I'm walking." She had only taken a step when she noticed Aaron walking towards her with Kira, she rolled her eyes and dropped back into her seat.
"You must be pretty great to keep Garwin away from the tables." Aaron sneered down at them, Kira just smirked. "If I had even noticed her I might have given it a shot myself. She's not your general type." Aaron gave Marny a look that made her feel like taking a scalding shower. Kira laughed.
"I'm hardly shocked you've taken an interest in my general type, Abbot, we've been keeping the tables open on your sexuality." Reid leaned forward in his seat, his elbows propping his weight up on the table, "I figured you were straight, that you and the doormat here were a real fucked up couple. Pouge and Tyler guessed a queer." He turned his head to the dance floor and yelled out, "Guess you win this one boys."
Marny watched the two boys watch each other, expecting Aaron to throw the first punch as his jaw was clenched and his hand tight around Kira's arm. She didn't move however, didn't look between Reid and Aaron, she just watched Aaron.
Nicky knocked the baseball bat against the counted twice and pointed it in their direction. Aaron nodded his head at him, and looked down to Reid with hatred.
"You'll get yours Garwin. Nicky wont always be around." And Aaron walked away, pulling Kira behind him.
"I'll drive you to the dorms." Reid's voice broke her from her thoughts. Her eyes had gone white with Abbot's threat. She looked to Reid now, her head tilted- not confused over Aaron's thoughts, his were predictable of an angry over-controlling teenage boy; but confused at her own thoughts, and her own lack of control of her powers.
"What?" He asked, pulling on his leather jacket. He only seemed vaguely interested.
"Nothing surprising, again." Marny half smiled and slid her own coat on.
Marny permitted the silence halfway to the dorms before speaking.
"Do you have any pets?"
Reid's brows furrowed for a moment, the first time she had ever seen him completely thrown off guard, and he looked at her. "Pets?"
"Yes. Do you have any?" She repeated. Marny felt the blush creep up her cheeks and cursed her pale complexion.
"No." He answered. "I'm never home. What about you? Have a cat at home named Crookshanks?"
She looked at him stunned. "You've read the Harry Potter books? Enough to memorize a character's cat?"
"You didn't answer the question." He evaded, as if all of his concentration was on keeping the car on the road.
"No, not a cat. I have a…dog. Named Cian."
"Original."
"Is it hard?" She looked over at him.
He started laughing.
She blushed, dark red this time.
"Giving up your magic I mean. All at once." He was still laughing. "Haha, Miranda made a sexual innuendo, lets giggle." This caused him to laugh harder. She glared out her window and crossed her arms over her chest.
It was raining outside, the start of another storm. She didn't feel completely comfortable in the classic car that looked like it should be in a show instead of on a road in the middle of a Massachusetts's storm. His laughter slowly quieted to the sound of the music coming from the radio in the dash, she recognized the song from the bar, Funny Little Feelingby Rock and Roll Soldiers. She had them on a mixed CD somewhere.
"You're lucky." He said finally, she could still hear the trace of humor in his voice, but even more there was the sound of anger, of regret.
Marny looked over to his profile, his face serious and shadowed- looking ahead. That little twist of guilt clutched at her, ripped at her, and she thought she might be ill.
"I'll walk you to your room."
She looked outside her window to notice the school, the dorm hall.
"An actual chivalrous act from Reid Garwin," she joked.
"I'm not opening your door." He commented back before sliding gracefully out of the car. He's better suited to Madelyn, she thought with a hint of jealousy for a moment.
He walked her to her room, watched her unlock the door and left with a smirk before she was all the way into the room. She stood in the threshold, one foot in and one out, silently wishing he had leaned towards her, and silently knowing she was already in far too much trouble.
She walked in, turned on her light by her bedside table, and noticed that Kira hadn't returned yet. Her homework was open on her bed, a quote glaring up from the page.
"For one human being to love another:
that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks;
the ultimate, the last test and proof,
the work for which all other work is but preparation.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
Marny shut her textbook close and slid onto her bed. She had only met the guy yesterday- she not only couldn't be in love with him, but she really couldn't be in love with him.
She heard the clapping of hands but didn't see the source. Someone, was in her room.
"Alright…why don't you come out and face me like a…thing." She said quietly. She wasn't really surprised, she had seen the note this morning, she was expecting someone.
Cian appeared at her side, his fur standing on end and a growl coming from deep within his throat.
Her eyes slid white, slowly as though she wasn't worried though the goose-pimples had started their rise along her arms. She only saw the man, perhaps ten years older, and he was invisible to everyone but her. His eyes were pitch, and his smile was quite pleased.
"Who are you and why should I care?" Marny asked testily, her hand resting on the top of Cian's head.
"Chase. Chase Collins." He sounded relaxed as if he wasn't invisible to people, as if he hadn't broken into her room, as if this was all normal- natural.
She knew him. The moment the recognition set in the fear set with it. She had sat next to him in Government- he was the first one she had been told to take careful notes on. Only he was much older looking now, and she had been told he was dead. And he had been the one from her dream, the face she knew but didn't recognize.
Denn die Toten veiten schnell.
"Miranda, don't be rude." An ancient looking man stepped out of the small bathroom the room held. She didn't have to use to see him, she knew she would be able to see him with her naked eye, but she was unwilling to take her gaze from Chase who was still using to stay invisible; she was outnumbered.
"Mr. Collins, you'll use all of your energy with silly tricks such as that; then what use will you be to us?" Marny's grandfather looked to Chase, his eyes cleared and he became visible. Marny relaxed her own eyes- the white fading.
"I wondered if it were true- and how I could have missed you" His voice was guttural, or husky some girls would call it. It could have been attractive if Marny hadn't been so petrified by him. If Marny didn't know what he was capable of, what he had tried to do to the Son's of Ipswich.
"I've been hearing that a lot lately. That I'm easy to miss, that is." Marny looked from the boy to her father's father.
"You can send your guardian home; he's wasted here, why you even bothered to summon him when none have done so for centuries is beyond the whole Golden Dawn." Mr. Taylor looked distastefully down at the creature.
"I think he'll stay here all the same, thank you." Marny kept her voice carefully polite but determined.
"If you must." Mr. Taylor smiled kindly. "I've matters to discuss. Have you become closer to the Covenant of Silence?" He dusted her computer seat off with his hand before sitting in it. Reid had sat in that chair hours ago.
"Yes. Quite close." Marny confessed. The little twist in her stomach tightened and she ignored it.
"This is Chase Collins, by the way." Her grandfather motioned to the boy and she spared him another glance. He had a playful smile on his face and was sitting on Kira's bed comfortable. His comfort made her think of Reid yet again and she felt uneasy.
Her dream, of this Chase and Reid came to the surface of her mind. The blood and the thick ink like substance. She looked to the tops of his hands and noticed they were not tattooed- a warning than, that he had joined her Covenant.
"He broke a number of rules, Grandfather." She turned her attention to her grandfather.
"It's been forgiven." He waved a hand airily in dismissal. "He's one of ours now. You will, actually, be quite interested in his purpose with our Covenant as it has quite a lot to do with you and the deal put towards you."
"I've not forgotten. I'm here; I'm doing what you asked." Marny clenched her fist, her fear of the two men momentarily forgotten in her anger.
"Yes well, we couldn't have you marry just anybody. We have no idea yet how these powers are going to affect you in the long run, how they'll affect an heir. Mr. Collins generously agreed to marry you and give up his possible heir in return for a full pardon."
"I have no say in this?" Her voice raised an octave.
"Really, Miranda, you were given your choices. It was against all rules for him to have given his powers to a son- for him to have given them to a non-blood relative, a female for that matter…If you do not comply with our wishes, you will be destroyed."
"The Covenant that holds the world together calls for opposites: the dark and the light, uniformity and chaos, bodied and disembodied." Marny quoted in her defense.
"Oh, do stop quoting that fool Gaimen at me. I've read his works. If you were meant, if females were meant, to have the power- you would have been granted it." Mr. Taylor stood from his seat and took a menacing step closer, he was tall and thinly built; the kind of man you could see in a suit and top hat, a cane in his hand, but she wasn't fooled by his physique. He was cold, and he was strong in his power.
Her eyes went white with power; Cian growled and stepped toward him again.
"Now, Miranda, don't do anything foolish. The Golden Dawn would hate to have to punish you again. I'm not sure your mother could take it." She ignored him, only expelled more of her power, to keep herself safe in a shimmering bubble. "The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us. No choice is simple, Miranda, and no one can know what the future holds."
"You obviously have never seen me at work." Chase was watching quietly from the side, not willing to step in, curious to see what the grandfather would do.
"You will do what you're told." Mr. Taylor was very careful about using at his age; he had his power almost perfected, and always very much in control. "You will be sent orders by Monday, we've made a promise to Chase on the fate of the eldest son of the Covenant of Silence- and Miranda, my dear," his eyes burned black in a flash of fire and his power pushed into her own bubble, turning the glowing light towards her. She narrowed her brows and pushed against it urging her own power to be stronger in its way. "If you ever ignore one of our memos again, I'm afraid we'll have to replace you. And that would be such a waste. You really are a very interesting creature. We'd hate to see the only girl in the Covenant turn out to be a mistake made by a foolish dying man."
Marny sobbed out and pushed her energy towards the breaking point, it spurred past Taylor's before she fell to her knees, her eyes still white.
"Mr. Collins, I believe introductions are concluded, we'll show ourselves out Miranda." Her grandfather moved to her dorm door and stepped out.
"Rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven, Chase?" Marny looked up quietly, her hand still clutched at the fur around Cian's neck, the silver charm on his leather collar digging into her palm and giving her just enough pain to keep her eyes focused.
"I'd say you're the villain in this comic, Miranda." He said the sentence sweetly and she could almost see what had caused Kate to swoon over him; he said her name mockingly, and brought all the shame she felt at betraying the Covenant of Silence to save herself to the surface. And he followed her grandfather out her dorm door.
Her eyes didn't just clear as they normally did. She couldn't see anything for a moment, as if the magic leaving her eyes had taken her sight with it. Then she felt horribly dizzy. She barely managed to get to the toilet in time to remove all semblance of food from the bar from her stomach.
"I wasn't the only one that got completely loaded then." Kira's voice said cheerfully from the toilet door. "I got that when you're done." She slid slowly to the floor and leaned her head against the cold porcelain of the sink.
Marny used the back of her hand to swipe the cold drip from her nose and pulled it away to see dark blood.
"Ew." Kira giggled cheerfully despite her obvious disgust at the nosebleed. Marny wasn't very pleased about it either. Kira slid towards the toilet when Marny stood uncertainly and moved to the sink to splash her face. "Never seen a drunk caused by being nosebleed." Kira said thoughtfully and shrugged. Marny half laughed pitifully.
"I'm nobody's doormat – am I?" Kira asked uncertainly. Staring down at the swirling water in the bowl of the toilet.
"If you had a middle name, it would be 'Welcome'." Marny said on a sigh. "But then, I wouldn't worry about it, I'd have that middle name too."
TBC
Authors Notes::
Thanks again for the reviews. It's been a while I know, but it came down to me writing or me passing Probability and Statistics…I really didn't want to have to take that class again, so I had to put aside anything remotely fun for the semester. That's over; I passed, on with the yummy Reid-ness.
I'm soooo ready for a chapter with a bit more of the physical but I'm trying to figure out how to do it and still fit it in…
Plus, this chapter was difficult to get going again after the break. I had already started it before putting it away, so I switched on my playlist for this story, and the Covenant on DVD and just tried to figure out where I was going. I wanted to stop and leave it at a clif-hanger so many times its absurd but I have other plans for the next chapter and therefore had to pull this one through.
Overall, I'm quite pleased. It actually started getting creepy there at the end. Mr. Taylor scares me…But, I don't think Marny was Mary-Sueish…She was afraid and she did try, but you know...Sometimes even when we think we're going to pull through we end up sucking.
Enough. I'm out, time to get working on the next chapter.
Tell me if you enjoyed it :
References::
1) "Alright…why don't you come out and face me like a…thing." -Buffy
2) "Who are you and why should I care?" –Futurama
3) 'Denn die Toten veiten schnell: The Dead Travel Fast' -Dracula
4) "The Covenant that holds the world together calls for opposites: the dark and the light, uniformity and chaos, bodied and disembodied." -Neil Gaimen, "The Books of Magic"
5) "The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us. No chose is simple and no one can know what the future holds." –Babylon Five
6) "Rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven" –Milton
7) "I'm nobody's doormat – am I?"
"If you had a middle name, it would be 'Welcome'"
-Batman, "Harley and Ivy"