iii. Headmaster revealed.

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Emily
VT:L Storyteller

Posts: 173
writes for: Beth Lyons (howshequakes)
writes for: Hannah Fein (smiledsobright)
writes for: William "Will" Byrne (anyothertale)
writes for: Rose Sterling (myoncepromise)
writes for: Molly Star (flashofthroat)

iii. Headmaster revealed. Oct 9, 2015 23:39:18 GMT -8

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Post by Emily on Oct 9, 2015 23:39:18 GMT -8

CAST: Storytelling (lyonsoffire@aol.com), Tucker North (hesitantlyyours@aol.com), Jade "Jaycee" Cooper (verdantclarity@aol.com), Alice Clare Donovan (wreckedships@aol.com)
SUMMARY: Alice Clare secures a rare appointment with Headmaster. Upon arrival, both she and Jaycee are surprised to recognize him from Council meetings, but say nothing. He takes statements regarding the previous weekend's doppelganger incident in Veitch Library and imparts much more than either of them or Tucker realize at the time.
TW: none

[Storytelling] It was six o'clock on Friday evening on the dot as Alice Clare, Jaycee and Tucker gathered in Shepherd University's central foyer. The central building also housed its administrative offices. There was no busy, cheeky Mrs. Thistlewaite to greet the trio; she'd been released from her workday early. Alice Clare had been given special instructions upon succeeding in her mission to secure an appointment with the reclusive Headmaster: bypass the reception area, take the stairs to the left. At the end of that stairwell was just one door, unmarked, but heavy. Its only real identifier were the runes that had been carved into the dark, wooden doorframe around it. They were years, perhaps centuries old, and unless one looked closely -- and knew what they were looking for -- it may have just seemed like another aging part of the school, damaged by students-now-alumni, that needed an update. The door was cracked, as promised. An eerie, green glow crept through it, but once our adventurers were inside they could see that there was no reason for eeriness at all. Headmaster kept an old, Kelly green banker's lamp on the great, antique chunk of highly decorative tree he kept as a desk. The figure with his back to them was slight; no more than Tucker's height, and slim. His shoulders held just the slightest slump forward, and the back of his head was a mostly grey salt and pepper. As he turned around, items to note were brown eyes that were lit with an intelligence that might seem familiar, and yet not. Their fire, however, had long ago been reduced to embers by the weariness of mortal existence. The brown cardigan he wore over a blue button-down was buttoned wrong, leaving one end longer than the other, and the penny loafers on his feet did indeed have pennies in them. Upon visual revelation, Alice Clare only greeted the man with a nod, and then she'd gone silent. "T-t-this is..." he struggled with words, as though his voice were foreign to him. "... a r-r-rare... t-t-thing, isn't it? I unders-s-stand that we have business, to... ah... disc-c-cuss. Sit."

[Tucker] The aftermath of last night still stung his flesh, though feeding nearly as soon as he had been injured had spared him the sort of prolonged agony and infection that Freya had suffered. The stab marks from his double's holy blade were nothing more than raised, pink lines now, and there was even a chance they wouldn't scar because he had acted with alacrity. Now he was meeting up with the unlikely pair of witches, Alice Clare and Jaycee, to make the appointment that they had scheduled nearly a week ago. He took up a position behind the two ladies, as though guarding their backs as the trio snuck through parts of Shepherd University that were alien to him--and he'd been there long enough now to know the vast majority of the place inside and out. So this was him. The reclusive Headmaster. Blues gave a placid blink, a smile, a glance over him, trying to analyze the figure. Smaller than he was, at least in terms of stature. Older, though Tucker couldn't possibly gauge his age. Dark eyes that--huh. Surely it was just a trick of his mind and the lingering memories of the clusterfuck that had been last night. He remained standing until Jaycee and Alice had taken their seats, and then if there was anywhere else to park himself, he'd do so. Otherwise, he'd stand. "Thank you for seein' us, Headmaster. I realize this is probably, uh, an unusual occurence." Because when he'd asked a couple of his friends in passing--Mackie and Tig--they said that they had never laid eyes on the man, literally ever. From what he could gather, not many people got the honor. It was flattering, but he would have rather had it happen for something a little more positive.

[Jaycee] Unlike the others, Jaycee wasn't around for some of the fallout of the dopplegangers. She hadn't seen her awful clone in the last few days, and as far as she was concerned, that's how she liked it. Of course... Maybe it was because she had stayed in her room, called in sick to her classes, and rid her room of all the mirrors (she had set them outside her door in hopes that somebody would just take them). Now, though, she had a thing to do. Alice Clare had made mention of it, and Jaycee knew that they needed to do this, so... The teenage witch made he way out of her room to meet with the other Chosen and her older-brother figure. It was quite the trek, and Jaycee had stayed quite quiet the whole time. Now, things were a little bit different when they stepped inside the office. She knew the man. She knew the man relatively well, actually. Her eyes widened for a moment in recognition, but then cast downward. ... To his mis-buttoned sweater. Tucker might have been fixated on his eyes, but Jaycee was fixated on that button. "I uh..." she started, squinting a little bit and getting distracted. "Yes, there's... a problem..." Don't say 'with your button'... "With your... The. ... The mirrors," she said, looking up and looking at his face, instead. "The mirrors on campus." Thank you, Jaycee, for your addition to the conversation.

[Storytelling] Headmaster fixed an evaluative gaze right into the mind behind Tucker's blue eyes that lasted an awkward moment before he stepped closer, reaching out to cup a pat over his left deltoid. One, two. Most people pat three times; him, just two. This is him, then, said the flicker of a smile that tugged at the old wizard's smile lines. This is Moreau's boy. To Alice Clare and Jaycee he afforded the same dip of chin that Alice Clare had afforded him, and despite their definite acquaintance, he maintained the idea that this was the first time he'd ever spoken with either. Gesturing to a leather loveseat in the corner, he repeated himself. "Sit, p-p-please." Because Alice Clare is Alice Clare, she made herself comfortable on the floor. It seemed to amuse Headmaster. Every mirror on campus had been covered just after the scheduling of this meeting; just after Alice Clare's hysterics about mirror men and magic shadows had marched right past Mrs. Thistlewaite and met with Headmaster's ears on the second floor. Whether or not they stayed covered was entirely up to the student population. "Y-y-yes, Miss C-c-cooper," and he began a slow shuffle toward his desk, where eventually he sat in front of an open, blank-paged volume bound in leather. His right hand started to tremble, then started to twitch, then started to move as though he were already writing. "F-f-forgive an old man's t-t-tremors," he smiled at both, thin-lipped and gentle. "T-t-tell me what you saw." A pen just appeared between his thumb and index finger, point pressed to paper. Away it began to scrawl, scribble, sketch.

[Tucker] Tucker looked more like his mother with those striking blues, but the aura was there, if one knew what to look for. The last thing he'd expected was to be touched by the Headmaster, and he merely smiled his way at that while elderly fingers came into contact with too-hot skin. With Alice parking herself on the floor, Tucker sat on the love seat and gently guided poor, poor Jaycee down to sit beside him. The poor thing was looking to be the most traumatized out of everybody thus far. "Well," he began, figuring that he and Jaycee could share the honors of telling the story. "It was in the library on Sunday night. Somethin' started comin' out of mirrors. People who looked just like us, but they weren't even close to being us." He was thinking of his own, of Jaycee's, and of Jasper's, the ones that he had been most keenly aware of being completely fucking wrong. "The one that looked like me was a priest or somethin'. I'm sure you, uh...you know what I am, sir." Because the Headmaster, of all people, had to be aware that he was in the presence of two witches and a cambion. A nod towards Jaycee. She could pick up from here, right? With the fighting and whatnot? His hand was resting on her shoulder, while his boot gently nudged the leg of Alice Clare, to make sure she was doing okay while she was NPC'd like a motha'.

[Jaycee] She took her seat when Tucker urged her down beside him. It was good that they were sitting down, though, because now she couldn't see the messed up buttons on the Headmaster's sweater. She still knew it was there, and it still bothered her, but out of sight, out of mind for the moment. They were here to talk about the mirrors and not about fashion faux pas. She let Tucker start, nodding a little bit as he recounted some of the basic facts of what had happened that night. "It was as if the mirror people were... Our opposites, of sorts. They were us, but they were... Well, mine was definitely not the same person as me. We had, ah... Different thoughts on what constitutes appropriateness and ah.. modesty." She sort of tugged at her sweater, right at the hem, to pull it away from her body in case it had gotten a little clingy. "Some of the mirror people became physical with their ... real people." Was that the phrasing she should have used?

[Storytelling] He didn't need to recognize facial features or read auras to know what he knew. Headmaster's relationship with Sebastian Moreau stretched back... well. It stretched back. There were very few things about very few students on his campus that Headmaster hadn't looked into prior to extending the invitation to attend. That was part of why he nodded at Tucker's assumption that he knew what he was; only part. "I d-d-do," he confirmed, expression blank, but tone heavy with double, maybe triple meaning. "It w-w-would app-p-pear that the universe has a s-s-sense of... humor." Alice Clare chill as fuuuck, mayne. Actually, she probably looks a bit nervous, and she's uncharacteristically silent, but those keen blue eyes of hers were all ears, so to speak. She reached out to slap at Tucker's nudging boot like he'd just goosed her at church. Scrawl, scribble, sketch; Headmaster's nose was practically buried in his journal's binding, though he did lift his head to raise an eyebrow at the modest young Jaycee. His hand continued its work without his direct attention. "P-p-physical?" He'd already known that, too, of course. "We have three students in the... in the inf-f-firmary," this must have been the most he'd said out loud in quite a while. "... h-h-hysterics. S-s-something about... b-b-beating themselves up." Obviously he'd decided that the incident in the library and the reports made by those three students were related. "H-h-have any of you enc-c-countered your... doubles... s-s-since?" Alice Clare shook her head.

[Tucker] Boy, did the universe ever have a sense of humor. More than Tucker knew, really, but he took the Headmaster's words to have no meaning further than just the part where there was a priest-Tucker and a skanky-Jaycee running around campus. Oh, and a terrifyingly evil Alice Clare, which was infinitely scarier than the sort of capriciousness that the real version displayed. He smiled. He smiled because it was funny. Sort of. In an Alanis-Morissette-irony kind of way. "Yeah," he echoed, agreeing with Jaycee. "Physical. I got in an altercation with mine. Burned me with a crucifix. I think Will got into a scrape too...Will, uh, I dunno what his name is. And I've seen mine since. It, uh, it hurt my half-sister Freya Black. Burned her with a crucifix too. And then last night I got into a fight with it. I think it's dead. Or I thought it was dead. When I went back today to see if the corpse was still there...gone. Nothin'. Just a little smear of blacky-ink. They bleed black, y'know." His head angled back towards Jaycee. "How about you? Have you seen yours since...y'know. Since the weekend?"

[Jaycee] She nodded as well, indicating that he'd heard right. Physical. She listened as Tucker explained that he himself had gotten into an altercation with his clone and that it had hurt him as well as his half-sister. And there was Alice Clare, of course. Jaycee looked down at her and remebered the black blood all over the other witch when she had bit the nose off of her. She looked back up at the Headmaster. "I haven't seen mine, but to be honest, I've taken measures to stay away from her. I took the mirrors out of my room and I ... I haven't been going to classes this week. I ended up breaking a mirror in the library that night," she said, holding up her hand to show him the bandage that was still around her hand. Witch though she may be, she didn't exactly have accelerated healing.

[Tucker] "Y'ought to be goin', Jaycee," Tucker murmured. "Hidin' ain't helpin'."

[Jaycee] She just pressed her lips into a straight line and said nothing in response. She did, however, lower her head.

[Tucker] Aw. He rumpled her hair a little.

[Storyteller] The raised eyebrow he had aimed at Jaycee stayed aimed at her. "I'm aware of the b-b-broken... mmmirror, b-b-but a thing is just a thing. Y-y-your edu... education, Miss C-c-cooper, is p-p-riceless." It was a very Headmastery thing to say, wasn't it? Funny, too, that it was this incident he'd chosen to take student statements regarding. He hadn't bothered with any of the others. His nose fell back into the spaces on paper between inked nonsense. "That sounds like q-q-quite an incident, Mmmister North," he continued, then paused. All of him paused, even the tic that bounced his knee and the force that guided his hand. He did not, however, lift his head. "I assume that y-y-you visited your Mmmiss Lyons afterward." The loveseat that Tucker and Jaycee were planted on was close enough to Headmaster's desk that the jagged words and large drawings of things that had transpired and things that had yet to were not secrets. They were remarkably like other drawings that the aforementioned Beth had shown Tucker, once; large gems and every possible interpretation of the word 'blue.' These were of constellations of unconnected dots, of shadows standing behind faceless figures in reflective surfaces. A grid on which it looked like he'd begun a family tree full of nameless twins half-existed and was half-erased. Alice Clare finally added something more than super convenient narration and capriciousness to the scene. "Byrne. Will Byrne. And yes, black, blood like black ink. It didn't get inside me." She seemed relieved about that. Headmaster did, too, but he was still on some edge or another, awaiting Tucker's response.

[Tucker] "See? Headmaster agrees with me, he does. C'mere." And Tucker pulled Jaycee into a hug. He was planning on talking to her about more, about how she needed to suck it up and go to her classes or he'd withhold her dirty chai from her. But then the Headmaster said something that brought his head up and made his eyes give a blink. "Yes. Yes, sir." Simple as that, because he had. Well his options were kinda either do that or die, and he was sure that if he did die, Beth would summon his ghost up just for the sheer pleasure of yelling at him for not coming to see her. His head leaned closer, and his eyes narrowed when he got a glimpse of what was being drawn. Memories flickered into life, hunched over a candle with Beth, sitting on a table, their heads together literally and figuratively as they tried to make sense of the Sphinx. Remembering himself, he looked back up at the Headmaster. "Is that an issue, sir? I had to do what I had to do. I didn't harm her. I ain't never harmed another student. I promise that." The Headmaster didn't think he was a monster, did he? Now it was he who was seeking comfort from the youngest in the room, looking to Jaycee like he was begging her to vouch for him. "I ain't no monster."

[Jaycee] Admonished by her brother figure and the Headmaster. Really? "I..." She opened her mouth to argue in her defense, then thought better of it. She wasn't exactly in the proper company to be doing so. She sighed again, and sort of slumped against Tucker when he gave her a hug. "Yes, sir," she said in response to the priceless nature of her education. She sort of stayed quiet after that, though, because the majority of the questioning was directed towards Tucker in regards to Beth. She did, however, perk up a little bit when Tucker seemed to seek her approval here. "No," she said, moving her glance from him over to the Headmaster. "No, he's never hurt anyone." And then it occurred to her. "Headmaster, Sir... When we were leaving the library, there was this sort of voice on the wind... It said something about setting lions free by opening the gates. ... Or was it closing...? No, it must have been opening."

[Storytelling] "No," he directed toward the trio, though Alice Clare was only a jumble of thoughts and a chew on her bottom lip. "No, he is not his... f-f-father." And he just let that hang in the air, as light as though it didn't matter at all but punctuated by a brief, pointed glance at Tucker. "Your p-p-personal life is no c-c-concer of mmmine, I assure y-y-you. It is g-g-good that someone other than yours-s-self c-c-can c-c... verify your whereabouts, should anyth... anything ab-b-bout your... attack, b-b-be r-r-rep-p-ported." The lie was for Jaycee's benefit and the old man's stutter was getting worse. Headmaster began to move, again -- began to scratch, again. He sent a stare diagonally, into the far upper right corner of his desk, where a statuette of a lion reclined in oiled bronze, as the littlest Chosen spoke. "F-f-free the lions, you say?" That seemed to be the end of the conversation, for him. The pen that was in his hand excused itself from the scene, as he was about to do. "Thank-k-k you," Headmaster choked out, rising to open the office door that had closed behind them. Alice Clare got to her feet with a pull on the loveseat's arm and was the first out the door. "P-p-please inform Security D-d-director C..." Oh, he wasn't even going to try. "August. If you... h-h-have any other t-t-trouble. I t-t-trust that your att-t-tendence will improve, next w-w-week, Mmmiss C-c-cooper." Yes, there was a definite dismissal in progress. A somewhat hurried one.

[Tucker] Thank you. The words were mouthed at Jaycee, with a warm smile and a pat to her shoulder. She had vouched, and tha was what he needed to hear. He was not a monster. He was not a...what? His head lifted and he stared at the Headmaster a moment, like he was piecing things together and getting the wrong image to complete the puzzle. Beth? Should he talk to her? Would he even know what questions to ask the brainy little Lyons girl? "My whereabouts can be verified, yeah. There's almost always somebody else 'round. Quad-mates, girlfriend, friends, coworkers..." It was really too bad they couldn't talk to Clemens. He could always vouch for the cambion's comings and goings. When Jaycee spoke up about the part that had slipped his mind, he nodded his agreement with her words. And his eyes followed the Headmaster's, towards the brass lion. Lion, to book, to man, to book, to lion. His eyes narrowed. Wait just a fuckin' second... And the he was being escorted out before he could ask any further questions, with directions to speak not to the Headmaster, but to the director of security if anything else came up. He held out his hand to Jaycee to help her stand, and followed Alice Clare. Somehow he was leaving with more questions than answers.

[Jaycee] She knew better than to overstay her welcome, and given the fact that very, very few people actually got to see the Headmaster -- at least... in a Headmaster sort of fashion -- then she knew that staying wasn't advisable. It might ruin any other chance to speak with him once more in this capacity. Her cheeks turned a soft pink color. "Yes, Headmaster, Sir," she said, perhaps a little bashfully before taking Tucker's hand to stand and heading on out with him and Alice Clare.

Last Edit: Oct 9, 2015 23:42:00 GMT -8 by Emily

Emily
VT:L Storyteller

iii. Headmaster revealed. Oct 17, 2015 1:19:17 GMT -8

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Post by Emily on Oct 17, 2015 1:19:17 GMT -8

CAST: Tucker North (hesitantlyyours@aol.com), Alice Clare Donovan (wreckedships@aol.com), Beth Lyons (lyonsoffire@aol.com)
SUMMARY: Beth and Tucker sit down to discuss his recent adventures underground and are interrupted by the arrival of Alice Clare, who blows the lid off of her recent discovery that Beth's oft-mentioned Uncle Thomas and Shepherd University's mysterious Headmaster are one and the same.
TW: none

[Tucker] Thursday night at Joe's, dessert rush. Tucker had been manning the register and mixing up caffeine for regulars and new faces alike for the last couple of hours, but the rush was starting to recede, and that meant that he could catch his damn breath. The cambion refilled his coffee and doctored it in his standard fashion, cream and a few pumps of whatever syrup looked appealing in lieu of sugar, and scored himself a piece of chocolate cake. Andy was starting his shift, and the two of them hung out together behind the counter for the time being, with the much taller Andy leaning down to look at the photos on Tucker's phone. Pictures of Lucy the kitten, to be specific. "She's a rotten little thing," Tucker remarked. "Always misbehavin' and gettin' into everythin', but she looks so sweet you kinda have to forgive her." Since the incident beneath Lily Hall over the weekend, Tucker had resolved himself to do...absolutely nothing. Nothing at all, until he spoke to Beth and they put their too-smart heads together to come up with some potential answers, or to at least assess what they knew and what they needed to know.

[Beth] "That's no way to talk about a lady, now, is it?" She rounded the corner, ringed hand trailing idly along the front counter's surface. Its twin held a violin case at her hip, and three other Shepherd University students carrying strings cases passed her by with waves and see-you-tomorrows. All had been using Joe's acoustic stage to rehearse Vivaldi's Autumn for an upcoming recital. The coffeehouse had been filled with cheerful allegros that mimicked the dance of falling leaves and quiet, almost haunting adagio motos meant to put the Mother to sleep for the winter for nigh on two hours before they finally packed it in. Her fingertips were red with abuse, which explained their trailing. The counter was a cool relief. "Andy, you aren't letting him fill your head with nonsense about me, are you?" Tsk tsk. Oh, she knew that Tucker had been talking about the kitten. Warm, brown eyes shone with mischief, even if they were tired, again. "I've come to break up the stud party," she informed them both. "I have business with Mr. North, if you don't mind." Because Andy was sooo prone to gossip; all that talking he does(n't do). Then she was reaching over the counter to cup a hand against Tucker's cheek in greeting. "Shall we?"

[Tucker] The violin music had proven a very nice distraction, and Tucker had found himself humming the familiar melody lines while he was doing his damn job and making sure that everyone was suitably caffeinated. When he hadn't been doing that, he had been watching Beth out of the corner of his eye, admiring the way she moved, the way she played. It would always bring him back to Litha. Once she finished up her performance and started trailing her fingers along the counter, he put something there to for her hand to intercept, a hot mug of tea. A bright green mug with painted yellow flowers on it, no less. "Very nice performance up there, Bethy. I still don't know what the hell I'm gonna play for that recital." Better come up with something soon, North, because Miss Griswold was going to get in your face if you didn't make a selection within the next week or so. With his girlfriend pulling him away from his conversation with Andy and his cat photo sharing, he offered the other barista a salute. "'Scuse me. Duty calls, y'know." Rather than leaning over the counter to respond to the attention, he stepped out from behind it, slid an arm about the lithe little witch's waist, and kissed the top of her head. "We shall. Pick us a spot, yeah?" Andy nudged Tucker's coffee his way, and he caught the brick-colored mug with his right hand, his left still positioned on Beth's opposing hip.

[Beth] She didn't snag that cup of tea until after the face she'd reached out for had retreated to remove its owner from behind the counter, but by the time there was an arm around her and a mouth in her hair, she had. "Mm," Beth breathed it in. "Thanks. You're terribly thoughtful, sometimes, you know." Just in case he didn't. A leather sofa, the color of coffee and amaretto that hadn't yet been stirred, called to her from its place in the street-lamp lit front window. It was a large, boxy pane; different from the tall, narrow ones that lined the rest of the walls at regular intervals. Her free hand rose to tuck spun gold behind an ear that sparkled with black tourmaline and silver wire. "Why don't you play that piano piece you were working on in the recital hall the night you failed brilliantly at seducing me? It was lovely." Barb and a compliment, compliment and a barb; nothing was ever just straight sweetness, with her, was it? Her descent onto the loveseat was careful, tea considered. She punctuated it with the jut of one knee into the opposite leg's calf, all denim and riding boot. A cautious glance crawled back Andy's way before she decided to bypass smalltalk and get right to the heart -- head, rather -- of the matter. "Bad, your message said," she coaxed, muffled by sips at her cup. "Let me guess; there are things under Lily Hall that ought not be?" That old game, Telephone -- it was probably invented by the Lyons family. From Sybilla's mouth to Uncle Thomas's ear, and from his pen to her eyes. She already had half the story.

[Tucker] "Only sometimes? I'm gonna have to up my game." Probably the only reason that wasn't followed up with a gentle swat to her denim-clad arse was because they were both holding hot beverages. Once they were settled side by side on the love seat, with the cambion's own denim-covered hip nestling against her own, he took a sip of that coffee and watched her. Always getting to the meat of the subject quickly, his Bethy was, and his smile was somehow both adoring and wry. "Well first of all, if I'd really been tryin' to seduce you that night, I would've turned on the cambion thing and you would've woken up in my bed and probably slapped me. But a girl like you deserves more than a demon's false promises, yeah?" One blue closed in a wink, and then his expression went somber. "Oh yeah. Lots of things under Lily Hall that ought not to be. Where do you want me to start? I've got a clue to the Lucas family's involvement, I've got the mirror from hell, and I've got a bleedin' severed head that stared me in the face. I mean, not...not actually bleedin'. It had stopped bleedin' a while ago." Shudder. "Oh, and there's my speculatin' as to why the restricted section of the library is, in fact, restricted. Pick a place, and I'll go from there, unless you want chronological order."

[Beth] "Apparently." It was said with amusement, so she probably didn't mean it. Beth watched Tucker watch her and lifted an eyebrow at him for it. Why not dive in? The petite witch's to-do list did not match her. She had neither the time nor the patience to beat around bushes that she could just take a machete to before moving on to the next. "If I recall correctly, you did turn on the cambion thing a time or two, and yet unsullied by your sin remained a good while." And that was said with outright laughter. Cozy and quiet, though, not her usual cascade of rich and bright. Oh, what he said was true. She'd had to scold him and storm off a time or two, too, in order to stay out of his bed that good while. "Half," she corrected him, inadvertently (or maybe not so) reminding him that half of him was what he was and the other half was who he was. There were ways to stumble over things like that with poise and poetry. She just went Captain Obvious on it. "Half-demon's false promises." Her eyes widened as Tucker ran down the list of laundry that needed addressing. Either Sybilla hadn't thought the name Lucas worth mentioning or Uncle Thomas hadn't, because this was the first she'd heard that it was attached to the underground burial chamber's collapse. There was a third possibility, of course: That Uncle Thomas hadn't mentioned it on purpose. That one skipped by her with flowers in its hair. "Mirrors from Hell, severed heads," she waved her hand. Been there, done that? It seemed so. "Let's hear about the Lucases, first."

[Tucker] Unsullied by his sin. That earned a soft laugh from Tucker, something that matched the timbre of her own, and a harmless press of teeth against her clothed shoulder, playful. "Oi, you watch it, Bethy, or I'll make sure you're sinnin' beyond all repentance by midnight." So...just another night for these two, then. "I may be a half-demon, but I'm still, y'know, lust personified. Or somethin'. And also very, very human." It seemed like Sybilla had mentioned some of these things to Beth already from the way that she dismissed them, which was something that he had outright expected. She was a nice girl. Tucker liked her. The Lyons clan seemed to be, in general, very smart and very welcoming, from what he had observed thus far. "Here. Look at this, then. Crap picture, I know, but lightin' conditions weren't exactly ideal..." He showed Beth the picture on his phone, the one of the tombstone of L. Lucas, died 1620. "Whoever this Lucas is, he or she is buried next to Marie Edlington, who I'm gonna assume is your Marie. So seems the Lucases have some sort of a tie to the Edlingtons, which have a tie to this school." Boom, boom, boom. It was the kind of logical idea stepping stones that he thought Beth would be proud of. Of course, there was a pretty obvious one that he was not yet connecting.

[Beth] Lust personified. Beth rolled her eyes. "Only when you're not talking, Cockney," she spit back at him, muffling more laughter in her tea cup and shying away from harmless teeth. Beth went silent for just over a moment -- what is that, a moment and a tick? -- while a photo-finish-flash preserved the memory of what she saw on Tucker's cell phone somewhere in ye olde hippocampus. "Marie?" No reaction, as yet, to the fact that there was a Lucas buried under Lily Hall. "My Marie? Interred here? That's..." Disbelief clouded normally high definition eyes. "That's impossible. Or... or at the very least, it's improper. It's sacrelige. Marie told me that she died at the stake, Tucker. Witches weren't allowed proper mournings, then. What was left of their bones was tossed to the wolves." 2+2 was not equaling 4, for her... and it sure as Hell wasn't equaling an answer as to how the Lucases had anything to do with her.

[Tucker] Tucker slung his arm about Beth again, tugged her closer until she was nearly in his lap and provided her with the option to get there if she so desired. His head leaned against hers. "Well, I mean, I ain't about to go diggin for bones underneath Lily Hall, but if she ain't buried there, she's definitely got some kind of marker there. Right next to a Lucas. Which is funny, 'cause now that I think about it, when I asked my grandmum about our family, she refused to go back any further than the 1700s. Just flat-out said no. Said she didn't wanna bring it up. And this was a while ago, couple years." Tucker had just asked out of curiosity, then. An idea flitted through his head. "What if we asked Marie?" he suggested. "Not just about why she's got a memorial way underneath Lily Hall, but if she knew a Lucas. Or is that...I dunno, is there some sort of etiquette you gotta follow with ghosts where you can't ask 'em certain stuff?" So Marie Edlington was a witch. Or at least a suspected one, but then again, pretty much any woman was a suspected witch in 1620, right? Tucker wasn't sure what to make of that. He tugged Beth to him a little tighter, and there was maybe a tiny little growl when he thought of witches being burned at the stake.

[Beth] Two of the ever-running cogs in Beth's head caught, then clicked, then jammed together. "I don't suppose you happened to notice any other familiar surnames while you were down there," she feigned musing, lightness and crazy random happenstance so as to avoid triggering Tucker's 'what the fuck, Bethy' lever. The thing had a hair trigger, lately. "Say... Turner? Or Veitch? Oh, and what's this about the restricted area at the library, while we're on Veitch?" Her questions faded out like a song that DJs hate and can't wait to get off the air. Radio silence didn't last long, however, and as she was being pulled into what amounted to the extent of Tucker's possessiveness, her thought process faded back in. She didn't think a think of turning his lap into her personal booster seat for the time being. "It's all so bloody circumstantial," she fussed, brows knit. "There could be millions of Lucases in the world." If she really believed her self-sanity-talk, she wouldn't be squaring her jaw or narrowing a determined gaze at the window. "What if we asked Marie? That's a very good question. She can be elusive, at times. Secrets; Marie deals in secrets. We'll have to take her a secret to trade, but..." Ettiquette. Psssh. (Yes, there is.)

[Tucker] Oh, it did have a hair-trigger, his Beth Knows A Thing sense. Tonight, it was not going off, though. She was doing a good job. It made sense to him, though, that if he saw the woman who presumably lent her name to the Edlington organ, there might be a Turner or a Veitch down there, too. A perfectly logical leap from his perfectly logical woman. She parked herself in his lap, and he looped one arm around her loosely, leaving the other hand free to sip his coffee. "Well, I would've loved to have done a little more lookin', but the whole infrastructure started to give out after that. Bricks started crumblin' and ricochetin' all over the place. One of 'em got me in the ribs, one of 'em got little Jaycee Cooper right on the head, poor thing. I think she was more scared than hurt. So no, I didn't get to see any of the others. But there were several. Startin' at 1620 and then goin' even further back the further down we went. Which ain't surprisin'. Follows the general stratigraphy pattern usually seen in ruins. Oldest on the bottom." He had thought that there would be newer remains on the top, but a two-second glance at a year as they went further down had proven him otherwise. "Now, about the library. That door? The one in the way back of the restricted section? It leads right into this underground chamber. I tried to go back down there durin' the week, but the security director caught me and gave me the most fatherly lecture I have ever heard in my life." While Beth looked out the window, he leaned his head against hers. "What kind of secrets would Marie want outta us? We don't exactly have a lot of our own personal intrigue."

[Alice Clare] Oh ho ho ho. Lookit dat. Beth Lyons, sitting over there like she hadn't been keeping the biggest effing secret to ever hit Shepherd University in a million billion years. Alice had slipped into Joe's only a few moments ago, parked herself at the counter and was trying to decide just how many shots of espresso were too many to add to a cup of coffee before her brain exploded, when she'd caught sight of the couple. Lashes immediately narrowed. This wench had so not been calling her, like she'd told Tucker to tell her what had to have been like fourteen times ( okay, 2, but still! ). Alice flat out stared a moment, and when Andy stepped up to see what she wanted Alice shot up a hand to stop him mid-word, leaning over without tearing her sights off Beth, the traitor. "Shhh, I'm stalking," she side-talked to him. I think we all know Alice can't stay still very long, and so it was within moments she was prowling forward like the predator she'd become. She didn't look much like one though, not in the thin denim shirt dress she wore, belted at her waist with a thick braided tan belt that matched the riding boots on her feet -- heather gray tights tucked into them, and all that pretty blonde hair in a messy braid that lay over one shoulder. "You," the lion on her pointer lifted at the Lyons in Tucker's lap. "You are one sneaky sneaky sneaky witch. Six years! Six years we've been friends. I did that Lit paper for you when we were Freshers because you didn't want to do it! I let your brother feel me up! I've shared biscuits with you, Beth Lyons." That was obviously the most important one in that short list.

[Beth] "Hm," she exhaled. "Hm." Then she distracted herself with more sipping, or at least she tried to. 1620. 16... 20. 1620 1620 1620. It wouldn't leave her alone. That unobtrusive door labeled STAFF ONLY in the restricted area of Veitch Library that she visited so often, it went where? Before she could respond to that or to Tucker's assumption that neither of them had much personal intrigue -- she does, Tucker... oh, she does -- an accusing Alice Clare pounced upon her prey with pointy finger armed and at the ready. Andy stared at the back of her, bewildered, but Beth was too busy picking up the pace with that blinking to notice what Andy was doing. "Alice Clare, what are you on about?" She reached out to wave that pointy finger away so that she could narrow brown eyes right back at Alice Clare's narrow blue ones without the visual interruption. Then her nose wrinkled and the corners of her mouth turned down, way down, into a grimace. "I told you it wouldn't work, letting Doc feel them; there's no pair of tits in the universe that could have turned him straight, not even yours." Apparently Beth had seen them. Apparently they were very pretty. Biscuits. Biscuits and crisps, biscuits and crisps! The tune came back to her too easily. Biscuits and crisps, biscuits and crisps, touch Alice Clare's and she'll rip off your lips! Sing-song. Beth was fifteen, Alice Clare eighteen, and the former had punched a boy in the nose over it, you know. It's on her permanent record. "Please tell me you aren't still disappointed." What's all this about being sneaky?! Neverminding that she is sneaky.

[Tucker] Tucker had a lot to say, and he had a lot to think about, but suddenly there was Alice Clare, swanning on over like she owned the place and getting all...accuse-y. Tucker was just left blinking sand out of his eyes in the ensuing metaphorical dust storm, blues glancing between blonde and blonder. "Evenin' to you too, Alice," he murmured, amused. "Six years? I didn't realize you two had known one another that long..." Because the day he met Alice Clare, she had said something different. "Wait, what? You know what each other's tits look like?" Don't think about it, Tucker, don't think about it, Beth's in your lap and you're in public and that's just fucking uncouth. "You let Doc feel you up?" Snort. "No, yeah, from what little I've heard of the guy ain't nothin' was gonna change him." He glanced up towards the ceiling a moment, as though paying silent tribute to his love's late brother. And then his eyes came right back down to narrow and flitter between the pair of them. "You know, I'm startin' to think one or both of you is keepin' a few things from me. You can't just tell me the two of you barely know one another and then a couple months later drop the fact that you've apparently known each other long enough to try to turn Doc straight with Alice's tits. And for you to have seen 'em!" Oh, how Tucker wished he was a fly on the wall for that, as he grinned at Beth. "So, ladies. Are you two gonna tell me what's up? I'm waitin'." There was room on the loveseat for Alice Clare to settle beside them, since Tucker and Beth were taking up a lone cushion, the cambion looking relaxed and at ease and with one arm about the witch's middle. The other hand was bringing his mug to his lips to drain the remainder of his coffee.

[Alice Clare] "Hello, Tucker," Alice spoke to him without looking away from Beth, sneering down at her when she swatted away her hand. Fine! Fine! No pointing, jeez. The hand balled into a fist and rested against her hip. "I knew it wasn't going to work, Beth! He wanted to try it, and who was I to deny that beautiful boy?" Brilliant blues rolled skyward, as if Beth should have just known that. Like, duh. If she felt any sort of anything about blowing the top off the whole introduction thing they'd gone about doing the night that Alice had stolen Tucker's crisps and was wearing a tutu, it sure didn't show. Because it wasn't there. In fact, sorry, Tucker, you were kinda ignored for the most part. For now at least. Kinda. Sorta. Ignored -- but used! "So, did your boyfriend tell you that we had a sit down with Headmaster, Beth?" Quite the stress on that title. What was Alice going on about? There ya have it. One of those amazingly expressive brows rose up on her forehead, and the hand that had so recently settled at her hip lifted, to allow thin arms to cross beneath the shelf of the breasts that couldn't turn Doc Lyons straight. But that's okay. Tits weren't for everyone.

[Beth] Tucker was batting 1 for 2, that night, on calling secrets out where he saw them hiding. Or not so hiding, thanks to Alice Clare, who Beth straight out glared at while some invisible force thwapped Tucker upside the back of his noggin. Something... cold. Her glare segued into another eyeroll. What is that, two, in the last half hour? Of course Tucker was focused on the who, what, when, where, why and how of the very small part of history revealed that had to do with someone's tits. Of course he was! "Goddess," she muttered under her breath. He's such a boy, sometimes. And not the kind of boy Doc was, once, by which I mean g-a-yohomosexual. Well, if it wasn't that ages old experiment in sexuality that Alice Clare was on about, then what was it?! A sit down with Headmaster? Why on Earth would she give a rat's tail about...? Oh. Oh, fuck. Bollocks and fuck. It was that. Beth's posture went ramrod straight. Her shoulders fell back and her chin lifted with the kind of ice-cold poise you'd expect from Sharon Stone ala Basic Instinct. "He did not," was her overly formal response. It lifted in pitch toward the end, there. "That's a rare thing, isn't it? An appointment with Headmaster?" That's a rare thing. 'This is a rare thing, isn't it?' the old man had asked Tucker with that same Oxford proper; that too-smart gleam in dark eyes so familiar. "What did you think of him, Tucker?" Someone had not fully explained herself as to her relationship with Alice Clare, either.

[Tucker] "Well, I was gonna get to the part about the Headmaster once I got through the debriefin' on what happened under Lily Hall," Tucker remarked. "But I was a bit, uh, well..." He gestured hopelessly towards Alice Clare. He had been thown off by her, considerably, first by her stompy-tirade, then by the realization that things were not as they seemed between Beth and Alice. It would have been easy--too easy--to blow up here, to feed his growing rage about being lied to by loved ones. Or he could sit, and he could listen, and he could learn. "Oi! Which of you ladies did that?" His hand flew to the back of his head, digits rubbing. "No need to go smackin' me with magic, if you want me to leave you two to whatever it is you're up to, you can just ask..." The last scrap of playfulness slithered out of Tucker with the way that Beth sat and the way that she spoke. And his eyes narrowed, narrowed right into those dark eyes that he knew so well and had seen somewhere else before. Beth wasn't the only one who turned a little formal then, though his hold on the Lyons witch remained, loose and easy. "Well, he seems like a nice man, a bit of the absent-minded-professor type. But he looked at me in a way that I didn't understand, and he was drawin', in this book, and it reminded me of..." No. Tucker shut the fuck down and cleared his throat. "Alright, ladies. If either of you want my help on a bleedin' thing, whether it's shadowy doubles or family curses, I think you two ought to spill whatever it is you're both hidin'. There's enough pieces missin' in both of these puzzles without either of you snatchin' up handfuls and keepin' 'em to yourselves." Surprisingly, he found that the anger dissipated before it could come close to an explosion. It settled into a tingle. Anticipation. Oh, Bethy, you didn't love an idiot. Just a man who sometimes acted like one.

[Alice Clare] Oh, glare all you want, sweetcheeks. Alice was glaring right back. Walking into that office and coming face to face with the unexpected appearance of Thomas Lyons had been far too much for Alice Clare's mostly broken mind. It would account for the way she'd mostly sat quietly on the floor, staring at the man while the other two had been left to take over the conversation about the Dopplegangers. How could she not have known it was him? It wasn't her ego taking over there, but the intricate web of what she'd been chosen for. And did her grandfather know? Was she going to have to go glaring off to that man now? So much glaring. Her brow rose a little higher when Beth aimed the inquiry to Tucker, and he'd find another pair of witchy eyes focused on him; listening to his recount of how he'd found Headmaster -- and when he wanted missing puzzle pieces? Alice just shrugged one shoulder, a little insolently. "Well, he's not my uncle." HA SO THERE. IN YOUR FACE, LYONS. Alice sat then, occupying the cushion in the opposite counter; dropping her elbows to her knees and leaning over them a little with her hands raised closer to her chin; wringing them together some. "Why did they close the tour down beneath Lily Hall?" Alice hadn't a clue Tucker had been part of the party that had gone down, so the question was aimed towards Beth. Who for now on until either one of them died, AC was going to just assume knew EVERY damn thing that went on in the entire world.

[Beth] Tucker's accusation of Beth and Alice Clare hitting him with magic got him a very strange look from the former. She hadn't hit him. If she were going to hit him, she'd use her damn hands, just like she always did. Hey, Tucker, why do you put up with her, again...? Certain words seared themselves into her like a hot brand on innocent flesh. Drawing. Book. Family curses. Puzzle... pieces... oh, for fuck's sake, Tucker, she knows you're not an idiot. What she didn't know was that Alice Clare was SUCH A BIG MOUTHED BISCUIT AND CRISP HOARDER. The change in her personal booster seat's demeanor prompted her up onto her feet with the fingers of one hand still wrapped around the handle of her tea cup and the fingers of the other tugging down on the hem of a white cable knit sweater that wanted to head north in all her moving around. Neither her posture nor her formal tone had eased. "If you must know," she began coolly. "The business I've been in London on so often in the last few months is Shepherd University business." Sort of. Not really. "... and my Uncle Thomas is Headmaster. He and Alice Clare's grandfather, Charles, are... old friends. We've gone to school together since I was lower sixth form. Uncle and Grandfather don't like us to talk about it at school. It breeds the expectation of nepotism and ill will." That chin, oh; look how high, how stubborn, how still it held! Don't hate me, lover. Don't hate me, the rest of her begged.

[Tucker] "Uncle?" The word was spun out in a disbelieving tone and left to hang in the air until Beth explained herself. Sometimes she was Beth the haughty witch and sometimes she was his Bethy, and right now she was the former and not the latter. Which was...well, sometimes Tucker was the half-demon and sometimes Tucker was the barista at Joe's. They all had their differing roles to play. He looked to Alice Clare, then back to Beth, and there was a long pause. When he spoke again, it was soft and deliberate, which was good news for everyone involved. Tucker was not a soft-anger sort of person, it was brash and white-hot and unrestrained. This was, at worst, mild consternation, but mostly it was a whole lot of intrigue. "When we were in his office," he began, "he asked about you, Beth. When I said I'd been in that scrape with my double." Scrape? Tucker, you could have died, let's be real. "He knew I'd go to you. He asked. He asked 'cause you're his flesh and blood. Oh, bloody hell, that's why he looked at me like that, he knows!" Tucker dropped his head into his hands and let out a muted groan of dismay. "I've been fuckin' the Headmaster's niece." Then again, if the man was so concerned with impressions of nepotism, he doubted that he'd do anything untoward, like prevent the cambion from getting his degree in December unless he broke things off with Beth. Looking up, he motioned towards Beth. "Sit back down. You're gonna get cramps standin' so straight. And you." His eyes turned back towards the loudmouthed crisp thief. "Maybe in the future it ought to be Beth's choice on when and where and to whom she spills her secrets, yeah?" There was another pause. His own gears were turning. "His drawings. They were just like the ones in that book we looked at together when the Sphinx was causin' trouble, Bethy. Why?" What did Headmaster Thomas Lyons know?

[Alice Clare] Hey, we all have our faults. Be lucky you're not Ophelia Donovan, or Alice would be so many more things, that were so much worse than a big mouthed biscuits and crisps hoarder. Alice said nothing to combat with the explanation that was given as to their connection, but her brow did raise a little in how she'd started it. Business. Too many of them had been on business, it seemed. And alone. Tucker's dismay was rather pleasing to the water-witch, but rather than letting that show, she snickered softly. "Of course he knows. He knows practically everything that happens on his university." A thing that was long since rumored about the Headmaster, but now that Alice knew who he was? "One might suspect he was a Sterling with that, not a Lyonses," she muttered, comparing the earth wizard to one of those who held dominion over the shadows. Tucker scolded, Alice ignored. "Beth? The tour? Please don't make me go ask your cousin," was she whining? A little. "She's terrifying." And such a creepy goody goody.

[Tucker] "Beth wasn't on the tour," Tucker quickly pointed out. "But I was."

[Beth] "Sybilla is sweetness and light," Beth argued, which was neither here nor there as she gave Tucker just one piece of the puzzle. The rest remained clenched in her left fist and were beginning to feel an awful lot like lies of omission. "You don't like her because her Earth displaces all your Water." That could have been figurative or literal, really. It was probably both. Despite the re-invitation for her to sit, she bristled, opened that clenched fist only to close it again around the handle of the violin case that had been set on the floor nearby, and she'd already taken steps toward the front door. "Yes, you are." Fucking Headmaster's niece. Congratulations...? "I -- and I'm sure he -- would appreciate it if you wouldn't share that information with anyone else. Excuse me." Her chin dipped; forced cordiality for both Alice Clare and Tucker, and then she left both of them with unanswered questions that they'd have to resolve on their own. Alice Clare's answer was perhaps as easily found as asking Tucker for a play-by-play of the misadventure under Lily Hall. Tucker, however, was going to need to spend some time in the library looking up old volumes by author T. Lyons.

[Tucker] "What do the Sterlings have to do with literally anythi--" No, no. Tucker bit off his words, and when Beth began to leave, he did what he always did. She ran, and he followed, to the ends of this damn Earth if necessary. "C'mon, Bethy. I ain't gonna tell anyone, you know I keep your se--" He actually looked like he'd been slapped when she left them both behind. "Beth!" The cambion, looking hopeless, turned back to Alice. "You come find me tomorrow and I'll tell you all 'bout the tour, yeah? I dunno what you got against Sybilla, she seems perfectly nice, but I'll tell you what went down. But first, I gotta...you understand, right?" Even if she didn't understand, it didn't look like he was going to stick around to find out. He slid on his faux leather jacket, buttoned and zipped it against the cold, and saluted Alice in a manner that was infinitely jauntier than he had intended it to be. "Tellin' other people's secrets is no way to make friends," he admonished, though gently, as he turned for the door. It was thrown open, the witch's name called out again into the night. "Bethy?"

Last Edit: Oct 17, 2015 1:21:34 GMT -8 by Emily