LGC had started as a couple of small businesses, shattered by war and recession. Now it was a very prestigious international company, producing very, very high-end cosmetics, fragrances, and skincare. The driving force behind much of this was the 'L' in the firm, Elizabeth Lascelles. To the business world, she was a reclusive figure. Most people thought the beautiful blonde woman who helmed board meetings to be her daughter. They would have been severely shocked by the sight of her now, sat within a circle of half-burnt candles, a figure of skeletal rot, wreathed in banners of smoke.
The Blutruf, the Blood Call, was difficult, required intense concentration and power. It could only be performed by hexenbiests of the Lascelles line. The crystal in her necklace is old, an intricate family magic. She can feel the distant presence of her son, cool, contained, a sea green/grey like his eyes. Her eyes glow blue in the darkened room, and the smoke rises and circles, moves and splits like questing snakes. Follows the other thread of power she can feel. Before her, the crystal on the chain begins to bleed a thin trail of purple into the grey...
The child is his, then. Equal parts annoying and delightful. She's entirely pleased at the idea of a granddaughter, far less so with the identity of the mother. He had always had such horrible taste in women. She'd ripped him up one side and down the other for taking anything made by that Schade hag or her trollop of a daughter. How he had thought that would help events, she did not know.
("I should have skinned her back in Vienna. I didn't realise she was in Portland."
"She's dead now, a Grimm got her."
"Good. Yours?"
"His mother," He'd allowed himself a tight little smile at her expression.
"But her daughter...really, Sean.")
And then he'd given the child to the Grimm to protect, which beggared belief on many levels.
Approaching any Grimm would be immensely dangerous. Kelly Kessler-Burkhardt is in a class of her own. Finding that she is still alive would be a nightmare come true for many wesen, probably extremely briefly. But she hasn't thought to hide the child by any arcane means, as yet.
The ringing of her phone is a shock, pulls her concentration away. The backlash of power is enormous, blowing every candle out in spatters of hot wax. She wipes the blood from her nose, and swears. She might as well answer the call, she won't be able to do the spell again for another week.
"Sean?" It isn't like him to call randomly.
"Hello, mother. Would you care to explain why I've got a strange British woman sleeping in my spare room?"
"You're at the house? What are you even doing there?"
"I was tired of the hospital. I...couldn't sleep."
It is far from ideal. He wasn't meant to even know about the woman. Instead, he'd blundered right into the last place she needed him to be, and now he was going to have to be very careful, because having her committed would be a serious setback.
"She's a transfer from the London office. She's going to be living there for a while."
"A bit of warning would have been appreciated, considering recent events."
"I didn't think you'd be living there, too. Sean - she's kehrseite. You'll have to remember not to woge in front of her."
There's a mumble on the line.
"Darling..."
"I said that it's a bit late for that."
"...You've already told her?"
"I didn't have much choice. She was staring right at me, and..." he pauses, "she asked me if it hurt."
Elizabeth frankly stares at the phone, lost for words. That is not a typical reaction.
"Well, if she hasn't run screaming, you'll have to make the best of the situation."
"What am I supposed to do with her?"
"An apology dinner at a nice restaurant might be a start. Your autocratic arrogance might be all very well in a bedroom, but you should probably make some effort to be charming outside of it..."
Renard squawks with a filial embarrassment that transcended species, an undignified noise for a grown man. His mother sighs.
"Really, try and be an adult about it. You've exposed her to our world, now you'll have to keep her safe from it. Now, I have to go, darling."
Shuts the call on his spluttering. She can't tell him what it is all about, not over an open line. He has odd fits of morality sometimes.
She'd been quite fond of Frederick, in all honesty, aside from the power of his position, he was ruthless and cunning. She found it ironic that his bastard son by a hexenbiest had turned out to be the offspring with a vestige of conscience and compassion – she wasn't sure where Sean had inherited that from. Eric had been a cruel child, and a truly dangerous man. The rest of the ostensibly pure human members of the Seven Houses were as vicious and treacherous as any coven.
She'd known that Sean was likely to be wesen from an early age, though not with the absolute certainty she would have had with a daughter. The mere fact that she'd borne a son indicated that something in the Royal bloodline was - different. And for whatever reason, he is a true hybrid, his heritage an uneasy struggle. He has the strength, the heightened senses, the instinctual knowledge, but not the full abilities. (Probably as well, if he could have choked people, or thrown them across the room with a thought, things might have gone very badly in his youth.)
Whilst the female of the species tended to seductive beauty, the male side were dominant, aggressive, alpha males. They were possessive, territorial, and whilst Hexenbiests quite often formed covens, which at least concentrated the feuding and murder in-house, zauberbiests were often solitary, kingmakers, viziers and occasionally murderous despots on their own account. They were all attracted to power.
Her son had done well, carving out his own fiefdom in North America. He will always be her little boy, though, no matter how big and strong he had grown. Only his wesen heritage had kept him alive, if he'd been wholly human, he would be dead. And now she has to find a way to keep him alive and healthy. She's slightly regretful of the price to be paid for it, but not enough to stop her in any way.
He doesn't throw the phone across the room, because he is a reasonable adult. It seems that he has a house guest. He makes his way downstairs, pauses in the entryway. Looking at her this morning, he can't see why he would ever think she might be a hexenbiest. She doesn't have that air of glamour about her, an ageless outfit of jeans and a t-shirt gone soft with wear, long hair swinging in a simple high tail. There's no artifice to that face. Attractive, but there's a tilt to her chin and a set to her brows that indicates a certain stubbornness, without that coquetry. And she doesn't have that conscious air of deliberately drawing the eye, she's simply moving about his kitchen as if last night never happened. She turns and sees him, though, and suddenly there's a little spike of tension in the room again. At least he doesn't get a box of tea to the face this time.
Isabelle had heard him walking down the stairs, but only just. He is very quiet on his feet. He looks better, like he slept. And showered and shaved, in a crisp shirt and dark slacks, he's definitely handsome, even looking like he's contemplating a little light murder before breakfast. Maybe he just wasn't a morning – whatever he was.
"Good morning," she says, cautiously, "I'd offer you coffee, but I'm not sure how the machine works yet, and I can't find the beans anyway."
There's a magic word in there somewhere, because the scowl lessens slightly, and he scrubs a hand back through his hair.
"Good morning to you, too, um, ...?"
She never had told him her name, had she?
"Isabelle."
"Sean. The beans are on the top shelf there."
"Of course they are," she sighs, looking up, "Come and be a tall person and get them down, please?"
He blinks at her, gives a sudden tentative half-smile that makes him look suddenly younger and a lot more approachable.
There's an awkwardly polite little breakfast ballet, sorting coffee and toast and juice, and they end up settled at the table, eyeing each other carefully. A decent night's sleep, a shower and clean clothes, and he feels that they are both more prepared to deal with events.
"So," he begins, "you work for LGC?"
Isabelle gives him a level look over her mug.
"Look, I know exactly what I saw last night, I remember the conversation very well, and the world is a very much weirder place than I ever expected it to be."
He sighs.
"I – am sorry about that. I really wasn't expecting anybody to be in the house. I was planning to stay here until I found myself somewhere closer to work, but if you are really frightened of me..."
"We're both adults, we can share a roof for a while." She considers, "Unless – you've not got any nasty, uh, dietary habits?"
"Excuse me?"
She blushes, flaps her hands.
"Well, I don't know what your...species does. You might eat housepets, for all I know."
"I have never eaten a housepet in my life," he says, with offended dignity, "What do you think I am?"
The scowl is back, but she can see a hint of hurt in there, too. Touches his arm lightly.
"I'm sorry, but I really have no idea. 'Fairytales are real' might be comforting when you're five, but once you get out of Disney and into Del Toro, it all gets a bit more Grimm, if you'll pardon the pun...what?"
"Grimms are real, too. They hunt down wesen."
"Oh, this keeps getting better." She settles her elbows on the table, fixes him with a firm gaze. "So, now I've found myself in an Angela Carter novel, tell me what I don't know, before any of it turns up to maybe literally bite me in the arse."
He nearly snorts his coffee. This is nothing like he expected it to be. Certainly not how mornings with a pretty woman in his home normally proceed.