Nothing but Vain Fantasy
The bar isn't on the fashionable side of town, but the building itself is swanky enough to draw patrons from both sides of the tracks. The hazy lighting and wood paneling says "speak-easy," but the music is synthetic and indistinct, and Alix appreciate the gentle blurring of lines. Liminality is her domain; her mixed heritage has never allowed for anything else.
"Another?"
She glances up at the server. Strange eyes. Round ears. No one here can check just one box on their race identification sheet, of that she can be certain.
"No. Thank you." She swirls the last of her chardonnay—it's not as dramatic as the red wines some of the other patrons sip with bloodless smiles, but she's not here to make an impression—and he leaves with a slight nod.
This is no sports bar, no place for casual dining, and it's not gauche enough to have televisions in plain view. It's an unspoken rule in these places (there's a whole genre of them, and to visit one is to sample a hundred) that entertainment must be brought in the form of a companion, and the solitary patrons must stare at the wall and sip their drinks in quiet dignity. Screens are crass. Low class.
Alix props her elbow on the table, phone in hand, and scrolls through her newsfeed.
"Rebellion suits you."
Her eyes don't leave the muted video of a gang altercation, though the subtitles don't tell her anything new. "You're late."
"I do not recall setting a time."
"You were supposed to walk in when I was on my second glass, but now I've had three." She looks up, finally, meeting steady, pale eyes. "Don't worry, I've cut myself off."
"I am glad to hear it," Kandomere says without an ounce of humor.
She does him the service of assuming it's there, buried deep.
The elf slides into the chair across from her, his crisp suit unwrinkled despite the late hour and her suspicion that he has come straight from field work. Where the dim light hits, his hair shifts from gray to blue. It adds to the mercurial atmosphere of the room.
Alix rolls the stem of her glass between her fingers, quirking up a smile that she hopes is suitably vague. There's not enough magic in her blood to really reach peak Fae potential.
"Business or pleasure tonight?" she asks, trying for coy.
The joke is that it's always business. Elves don't generally stoop to law enforcement—even at the federal level—without personal vendettas or tabs to settle. It's a broad generalization, sure, but with the world at their fingertips, what other motivations could they have? Certainly not the desire for justice. Their justice can be bought.
Kandomere has the hungry look of someone who's been crusading for too long.
"You have Seen the girl."
No foreplay. Typical male.
"I see lots of girls. Hats off to two working eyes." Alix settles back into her chair, feeling a touch too languid.
Perhaps the third drink was a mistake.
Kandomere's stare is unblinking. "You did not bring me here to play sophomoric word games."
"My word games are collegiate at least," she says, hand over your heart. "But no, that's not what brings us together tonight. That's just kismet."
Watching Kandomere's expression shift in frosty increments, she feels a bit like she's pulling at the tail of a dragon. The end result is inevitably a burn, but the danger is half the fun.
"Kismet… is an address texted from your number, and the word "tonight?"" His teeth flash in the low light; he's losing patience.
"I moonlight as the hand of Fate." She shrugs. At his glacial look, Alix sighs. "Also, you-know-who is going to resurface by solstice."
Kandomere's ears actually shift back with the intensity of his focus. His eyes burn brighter than the votive between them. He leans forward, lips parting to shape his next question, but she heads him off.
"Winter solstice."
He sits back again, mouth flattening. "You revel in the illusion of power this situation lends you."
Ah, and there's the expected burn.
"And you hate that I hold all the cards during our engagements, but we both have our parts to play." She tries not to look too put out.
There's a moment of grudging silence.
"Indeed," he says finally, jaw flexing.
The Sight doesn't generally afford Alix much more than headaches and traffic anxiety—too many variables, too many possibilities—but on a rare occasion, it provides entertainment.
Ruffling pretty, serious elves is the kind of quality amusement that borders on sadism, but if those mirrored eyes are going to flay her apart and lay her innermost pieces out like the grisly aftermath of an autopsy, she'd like half a chance to get under his skin, too.
She might, possibly, be nursing a crush.
The realization strikes like a stray pitch at a home game, and Alix has to admit that she's acting like a grade schooler on the playground. Looking at Kandomere's hair, she can't deny that she kind of wants to tug it, and not entirely for g-rated reasons. It is not her finest drunk moment.
She straightens, hoping to regain her mental footing.
"Look, it's far enough out that anything could happen, but it looks like your girl—" Meaning the pale waif with the wand. "—is going to join up with the Shield of Light."
His eyes narrow. "The local branch?"
"No idea."
She can see the cogs spinning in his brain, but he's utterly still, no physical tells to his distraction other than the ghost of movement behind his eyes.
There's so much Alix wants to say—that this union may not be a destructive one, that it will likely become necessary in the coming dark days, that he looks like he could use a drink, and that she'd like to talk about something other than this, that the ebb and flow of evil is inevitable—but half of her job is discretion, so she keeps her wine-loose tongue trapped behind her teeth.
"Anything else?" he asks, perhaps cottoning on to the tide of words caught low in her throat.
Alix shakes her head and wishes she had more wine to wash them down.
He looks unhappy, but it's not directed squarely at her. His eyes flick past Alix's head, and she hears the server just as he steps up to her shoulder.
Quiet, that one.
"Your check, madam." Also, observant.
A black folder appears at her elbow, but before she can reach for it, long fingers whisk it away.
Alix raises her eyebrows at her… companion? But he only slips a gleaming card into the sleeve and hands it back to the other man without a break in expression.
She feels off-balance suddenly, as though the gravity in the room has shifted.
"Your generosity is… appreciated," she says slowly. The words "thank" and "you" are not to be uttered.
"It is nothing."
It's unexpectedly hard to meet Kandomere's gaze, as if by picking up her check, some other tab has earned a tally with his name. Alix has enough murk (and magic) in her blood to sense the push-pull of power shifts, and this one makes her uneasy. Fae blooded creatures aren't keen on debts.
"Consider it payment for your services," Kandomere says after a long moment.
Alix has no doubt that he can see the proverbial bristling of her fur from across the table.
It seems he likes playing dangerous games, too.
Still, his words soothe the ringing in her bones, a feeling like a chord plucked. She's not sure she likes its tune.
No, debts are no good at all.
"Well, this has been a treat, but I think I must be going." Thank god she's human enough that the glib lie slips off of her tongue with hardly a twinge of discomfort. "Until next time, Kandomere."
"Always a pleasure," he says taking her hand.
Alix blinks.
He is far too elven for such blatant falsehoods.
"…Indeed," she says, parroting his earlier statement. His hand is cool to the touch, and she lets go as soon as is polite.
Alix makes a show of walking with great sobriety—much more than she feels—to the exit, but Kandomere stops her at the door anyway, one hand hovering just over her lower back.
"Do you require transportation home?"
Her smile is as false as her laugh. "I'm afraid if I climb into one of your government vehicles, I might never be seen again."
It's a real concern, the Sight being an uncommon and highly sought-after gift, but it's not one she fears tonight. She's more alarmed about the prospect of being alone with the elf beside her—really, truly alone—and what she might say in his presence. Alix would be lying to herself if she thought that his interest is unfeigned, but hers is not, and she keeps many secrets simply by virtue of being who and what she is. Glamours may be a thing of the past, but she's not sure what the difference is between Fae magic and alcohol combined with heavy attraction.
She is certain that she doesn't want to find out.
Kandomere examines her face, and Alix isn't sure what he finds there, but a rare smile ghosts over his features. His expression leans more toward furtive than kind, though, and she feels well and truly sunk. The lifeboats are all gone, and she has only her own (very poor, preternatural abilities aside) judgement to keep her afloat.
The hand over her back makes contact, and as the light pressure zings through her, Alix gives herself over to the tides.
Self-preservation is overrated, anyway.
"Yes, a lift would be appreciated," she hears herself saying as he steers her out of the establishment and into the warm summer air. "If it's no trouble."
"It is no trouble." She is probably not imagining the faint amusement in his tone.
There is no inherent discomfort at his words, so she takes the offer as one freely given. No tiny barbs of commitment, no gossamer threads of implied repayment. Although, there is something, a niggling at the base of her skull.
Alix opens her mouth to question whether Kandomere feels it, too, just as he looks to her sharply and says, "What—"
And then her world implodes.
Where the water once lapped at her toes, it now surges to her waist. It didn't bother her when it was hardly a dark strip on the horizon, but now it is here, and she is bound to this place, tied and shaking against the fathomless cold. It is not the tide that scares her—though drown her, it may—but what lurks beneath. She feels it like an eye upon her, somewhere below the surface.
The ocean rises and falls, and she is powerless to stop it. It would be folly to try. But her fingers claw at shell and sand, keeping them from the grasping hands of the sea, and she realizes this, the erosion, can be stopped.
A wave breaks across her face, and the salt is like fire in her lungs.
It is coming, it is coming, it is coming—
"—do you See?"
Two hands on her shoulders. Sunlight—no, streetlights, and the steady hum of traffic. Overpriced bar. Federal agent. Fey eyes.
Alix makes a concentrated effort to meet those eyes, tongue rolling in a suddenly tacky mouth.
"I think," she croaks, "that we may not have until Solstice."
Her nosebleed is heralded a build and release of pressure. She tastes salt and copper.
"Not to be dramatic, but I think it's the apocalypse."