Debut

[takecourage]

It should be fairly straight forward: she just needs to find the effluvia, the thing personal enough that it'll let North track down Tara on the other side, beyond the veil. The retainer should do the job; what could mean more to the pretty blonde girl that Tara had been than the possibility of perfect teeth? Alex fills the sink with water and drops the retainer into it. A pale hand grasps at it and, when she looks up, North is holding it, his perfect lip wrinkled with distaste.

"You wanted effluvia," says Alex, with the barest shrug.

The man in the doorway, not a gray but a man, living and breathing and furious, startles her. SHe opens her mouth to speak but it's too late, he's already charging at her, barelling into her and slamming her back against the wall. Her head cracks against the windowsill and she sees stars, shock singing in her ears. His thick fingers curl around her throat and Alex claws at him, black spots already dancing at the corners of her eyes.

Not like this, she begs. Not like this. Not like this.

Van Nuys girl to the end, she jabs her fingers into his throat, like she'd wanted to do to Darlington that day he'd set Lethe's jackals on her. His grip loosens, which lets her suck in enough of a breath to slam her knee up between his legs. When he doubles over, Alex shoves past him, hurtling into the hallway but, shit, she can't remember where the fucking door is and he's right behind her and it shouldn't have been possible for him to be this quick but here he is and she has the chance to think portal magic before he's on her again, and he's broken her ribs, she knows that he has and every breath screams with pain. Before she can get past him again, he has his hands around her throat again.

"Nowhere to run, bitch."

North is at the edge of her vision, shouting, though all she can see is the working of his mouth - from this far, she can't hear a word. He wants her to let him in, doesn't he? It's the only chance she has. She reaches out her hand to him. She lets him in.

Everything after that is a blur. She hears his bones crunch: his fingers, his knees but he still manages to punch her hard enough to send her crashing to the floor. Even North's strength can't keep her standing. She goes under. And she's only dimly aware of Turner there, with his badge and his gun, saving the day. Her pain is like a time-lapse photograph, blooming all in one go, and Alex can barely keep herself standing. She just needs to get back to Il Bastone. She just needs to get back to Lethe, and then everything will be okay

Except Darlington won't be there, will he? So maybe everything is never going to be okay again…

She hears Dawes' voice, barely stumbles up the stairs to the armoury and props herself up against the side of Hiram's Crucible. It vibrates softly, gently. Alex keeps herself standing while Dawes strips her down and then she crawls into the crucible, sinking down into the liquid that's warm as a dream. As she closes her eyes, Alex wonders if the crucible could burn away her past, her present, make it so she would never have to see another gray. Is that what she really wants?

Hurting so deeply, Alex closes her eyes and lets herself sink.

Comments

[maloscuridad]

"Full of milk," Nova adds, darkly amused. "Was it whole or skim?"

For once, the ancient, rickety elevator comes in a timely fashion and Nova gestures for Alex to go in. "I'm on the eighth floor. This is the second." She can walk, if she wants, but like hell he is.

[takecourage]

"Goat," says Alex. "Don't ask me why, but it was. I might need to wash my hair." She ruffles the damp ends and wishes that she had a hair elastic so that she could knot it back. "Right."

A gray catches the corner of her eye, and she flinches, looking back at Nova deliberately.

[maloscuridad]

"Goat," Nova repeats. It makes as much sense as anything else, though in his mind, goats belong in stew first and foremost. Never mind the creepy one that roams the countryside that may or may not be a literal devil. He steps onto the elevator and pretends not to see Alex flinch. He wonders what she sees, because she must see something. Anyone lying in a bowl of milk naked to heal probably does.

"Going up," he says, hitting the button for the eighth floor.

[takecourage]

Alex braces herself in the corner of the elevator, her eyes closed until the doors slide shut and she's safe with just him. Safe is a strange concept - she's never seen him before, but she trusts him. Or she thinks she does.

"So what else do I need to know?"

[maloscuridad]

"This city brings you here. It doesn't let you go until it's ready. You might leave soon, but you probably won't," Nova says, because there's no point in spinning it. There's nothing that'll make the truth easier to swallow. "You get money every month and it's a'ight. Pays the rent. Won't get you far after that."

He waits for the elevator to shudder to a stop and for the telltale ding of the old thing.

"You want coffee?"

[takecourage]

"God, yes," says Alex, and she doesn't think she's ever meant anything so much in her life. "And, you know - pants. If you have any that'll fit." She frowns. "Is this like...a fucking pocket universe or something?"

Her stomach lurches sickly, and all she can think of is Darlington.

[maloscuridad]

"Yeah, pocket universe is a pretty good summary," Nova says. "As far as I know, there's no ritual, no magic, no science, no nothing that works."

Fishing out his keys, Nova unlocks his apartment and gestures for her to go in, following shortly after. "Clothes first or coffee first?" Glancing around, he finds a pair of sweatpants on top of a pile of laundry that he cleaned and never put away, over a week ago.

[takecourage]

Darlington is still on her mind and all that she can think about is how much he would hate that - that there's no concrete answer, no way to manage this situation.

"Definitely clothes," she says, conscious of her bare legs. "And if you've got a towel for my hair, that would be awesome too. I probably ought to shower before i start to smell like yogurt, but that can wait, right?"

[maloscuridad]

"Bathroom's there," Nova says, pointing the way. "It looks from the inside." As far as he's concerned, they're well past that, but he can think of plenty of times a white woman got uppity about that kind of thing and none of those instances ends well for him.

Not waiting for an answer, he tosses her the sweatpants and then starts rummaging in the hamper for a clean t-shirt or something.

[takecourage]

"Thank you," she says, because she might be an asshole a lot of the time, but she also definitely knows when someone's doing her a favour. She waits until Nova tosses her a t-shirt and then disappears into the little room, shutting the door behind her. She doesn't bother locking it - it's not like he doesn't know she's in here. She stands under the hot water for a long time, letting the crucible wash off her skin. She soaps her hair with shower gel, combing it through with her fingers and then rinsing away the suds.

Eventually, she climbs out, drying herself off, pulling on Nova's clothes and wrapping her hair.

"Thanks," she says, her voice pitched to carry when she opens the door. "That really helped..."

[maloscuridad]

Nova hasn't hooked up much in Darrow, had people stay over even less. It's equal parts startling and amusing to pick up the scent of his own shower gel as it carries on the rising steam. Grinning to himself, he enjoys the image for half a second, and then pushes it away. Alex seems like the kind of person to spot it on him.

"Coffee's there," he says. It's a tiny cup of sugary, bitter cafécito. His own cup is half drained and topped up from the open can of condensed milk between them.

[takecourage]

Alex sits down on the sofa and then reaches for the cup, cradling it between her hands, letting the warmth leech into her. Climbing out of the crucible left her cold, but the coffee and the shower are helping.

"So what else do I need to know?" she asks. Her eyes flicker towards movement in the corner of his apartment; a young woman, about her own age, is standing at the window, crying and brushing her hair.

[maloscuridad]

"You go to the train station," Nova says. "They'll give you a creepy-ass file with an ID and bank card and shit. You'll get money in your account every month and it'll pay the bills."

He sees Alex's eyes slide away from him and Nova turns, following her gaze to an empty corner. Instinctively, he hooks his index finger into the beads of his prex and forces his eyes away from that corner. They land on the statuette on his windowsill, above the kitchen sink, instead. Sinmagos might see Jesus but Nova mouths a silent, unseen prayer to El Papá instead.

[takecourage]

"There's only one," she says, almost reflexively, because that would have been the next question out of Darlington's mouth. "I'll get rid of her if she does anything but stand there." She watches him touch the necklace. "Are you Catholic?"

[maloscuridad]

"Catholic?" Nova repeats, making a point of sounding insulted. Then his mouth crooks into a grin. "Nah, but I can blend in if I need." Slowly, he extracts his hand from the necklace and lets it fall against his chest. There's no rosary hanging from it, just an elegantly pointed crystal.

"You have the gift of the veil, then?"

[takecourage]

"Don't look at me. I'm Jewish, I don't know the difference," she says, and gives him a flicker of a smile. She's never heard it described as a gift before, even if Darlington have been unreasonably jealous when he first found out.

"Something like that," she says.

[maloscuridad]

"Brujo," Nova says, shrugging. Seeing as Alex has already more than shown off her own nature, Nova deems it fit to lay his cards out on the table. Expending the tiniest amount of power, he summons light to his fingertips, draws a smily face in the air. It lasts only a few seconds before starting to fade, but why prove himself with something big?

"I knew a few people back home who had it. It's a rare gift." Not always an easy one.

[takecourage]

"That's...witches, right?" says Alex, grasping at her Spanish, which is imperfect at best. She smiles despite herself when he draws the smiling face in the air. It's a neat trick. "I don't know if I'd call it a gift."

[maloscuridad]

"Of a kind," Nova agrees. It's a matter of classification, of types of magic, but that doesn't keep them from clinging to that identity, equal parts cultural and religious as well as magical. Brujos are witches but not every witch can be a brujo or bruja. He settles back into this seat, focuses back on Alex and forgets the shade behind him for a moment.

"That's what we call it but I've only ever spoken to my dead the one time and they all told me to fuck off." He considers his blackened fingers a moment. "Long story. Not worth telling."

[takecourage]

Alex has never spoken to her own dead; she never saw Hellie on the other side of the veil, let alone Len or Betcha or Ariel. She hadn't been able to make Darlington out, either.

"They don't normally speak," she says. "Not on this side of the veil."

[maloscuridad]

"But you can see them. Her," Nova says, considering the ghost at hand. It should probably creep him out more but death and brujería go hand in hand. If there are spirits in his home, he just hopes they don't mind the jars of consecrated graveyard dirt and knucklebones. "Hard to filter, I'm guessing?"

[takecourage]

"I can see her," says Alex, her eyes flickering again. "And, yeah, it can be really hard to filter out. She's the only one here right now, but sometimes it can be a lot."

[maloscuridad]

Nova's mind casts back to an old canto that his grandma used and he stands up, going over to the hall closet. He's pretty sure it's actually supposed to be used for linens but he's not exactly the type to keep them. Instead, there are several glass jars that match the scattered others in the kitchen.

He picks two. One with more graveyard dirt, another with dried marigold stems. "Must not get a lot of quiet," he says, opening the marigold stems first.

[takecourage]

"I had a bunch of warded places in New Haven," she says, with a roll of her shoulder that tries to be casual despite the pinched paleness of her face. "Guess I'm going ot have to figure it out here." It's not that she doesn't know the rudiments of placing wards; she sort of does. It's that she only knows it in theory because Darlington had always been there to do it back home.

She wonders when she started to think of Yale as home.

[maloscuridad]

Nova nods. "I'm a little surprised she's in here, but I wasn't really putting up precautions against spirits." Most of his wards are for the Mal de Ojo or simple banishing cantos to push away bad luck. To him, there are scarier things than the dead, especially when it seems like this one's been here for a while and not caused any trouble.

The marigold stems are woven into a circle and Nova sprinkles it with a little bit of his consecrated dirt. There's a scab on the back of his arm from the last time he used his own blood that he reopens now. A drop or two, a recitation in the Old Tongue. A protection spell like this is small magic, but Nova can feel the ache through his fingers. It's the sensation of falling asleep but down through his veins.

"Wear this. Might help a while."