Satis House

[Okimiyage]

Rynn raised an eyebrow at 'Atticus's pagan gods', but otherwise seemed largely unfazed. Crossing his arms, he leaned back against the edge of the book-case. "Well, I don't know about the goddamn cat, but I can tell you pretty much any embarrassing story about my brother that you would care to hear. I'm sure he'd love to tell you all about himself, but he's taken a vow of silence. Probably planning to turn cloistered monk." Cian, where he had taken up a seat at the desk across the room, flicked his eyes sourly in Rynn's direction. One of the books Singe had recently replaced toppled off the shelf and struck his brother sharply on the skull. "Ow!"
Cian turned back around. Even if he'd been capable of telling Singe that the cat was backed up into a corner of the ceiling on top of the book case, he wasn't sure he would have. Amadeo looked like Singe was a repeat visitor that he hoped would go away if he just hid for long enough.

Rubbing the point of impact, Rynn grinned at Singe. "He's still sore about breaking his vows of celibacy, I suppose."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"You can't blame him for it," Singe said in all seriousness, pulling up the cushions of chairs looking for the cat, "It's Antha Mayfair. There's no escaping that siren call. Poor David tried, and she took him as a challenge. Funniest month of my life." At length he gave up looking for the cat, going instead to the desk and shuffling stacks of papers out of order as he browsed through them. "Anyways, whatever your stories are I'm sure David will find them on his own. You just became an official person of interest." He paused briefly, grinning, and patted Cian twice on the head before moving on, babbling again, "You'd be surprised how much people really know when you put enough money in front of them. Old nannies, maids, lawyers, whoever...they see more than you'd think. David's convinced that if Jacob Gripling would ever crack, we'd have loads on the Mayfairs. Unfortunately, Antha and Julien pay him too well for his services, and everyone else---the doctors and lawyers and babysitters---are all Mayfairs themselves, and Mayfairs have this nasty habit of killing us poor, nosy Talamascans when we show up."  

[Okimiyage]

"You know, I'm not sure what you do to that family is...well." Rynn trailed off, taking up residence on the arm of the plushly lined loveseat across from the window. "Certainly they have the grounds to file a restraining order on the lot of you, if they wanted one." The curious thing being that they didn't; that apparently, no matter how nosy the Talamasca were, they either were not nearly enough of a concern to merit taking action, or the Mayfairs were getting something out of the arrangement. Information, no doubt--that was what the Talamasca was known to specialize in, after all. "Jacob Gripling?"

Cian gave the boy A Resentful Look at being patted on the head. It deserved the capitalization. He didn't know who Singe was, or why anyone would send a youth of his tender years to look over two witches, neither of whose motives--or sanity, for that matter--was without question.
This 'Talamasca'--whatever that was--sounded just as interesting as the Mayfairs. He'd have to make time for a visit, Cian decided. It was funny to realize that he had now, that after weeks of being confined to Llyr's Court on account of Liesse's 'illness', regained the privilege of setting out on an excursion on his own. Thoughtfully, Cian picked out a fountain pen from the desk and began to tap out an idle rhythm against his palm.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"I think some of the family members did, a long time ago, but it's a lengthy and irritating process and there are hundreds of Talamascans. In the end, they just started killing us when we got too close to them. Funny, considering the great majority of them are descended from one of the greatest Talamascans who ever lived, the legendary Petyr Van Abel. Though, they killed him in the end too. I think his bones are stashed in this house, somewhere..." He stood straight, looking around as if Antha might keep them laying around on a bookshelf, and then returned to setting things out of order. "Jacob Gripling is their housekeeper, he works at Mayfair Manor. God knows what kind of stuff he's seen in his days, living right at the heart of the family."
Briefly the boy vampire laughed, running his hands through the scarlet spikes of his hair. "We did research on you as soon as you left the motherhouse, did you know that? Apparently your ancestors weren't worth note, so we had nothing on the Calais family in all our vaults. Conspiracy theories are flying all over the place right now. For instance, did you know that your parents died in the same year that Antha's father was 'mysteriously' murdered and she got set free? David and I don't think much of it, but Aaron's always ready to jump at some evil doing of Antha Mayfair's and he's got everyone all worked up. I mean, that is one of the great mysteries left about her, how exactly she escaped this attic, and everyone wants to be the one to find some correlation."  

[Okimiyage]

XCandy and LunacyX

"I think some of the family members did, a long time ago, but it's a lengthy and irritating process and there are hundreds of Talamascans. In the end, they just started killing us when we got too close to them. Funny, considering the great majority of them are descended from one of the greatest Talamascans who ever lived, the legendary Petyr Van Abel. Though, they killed him in the end too. I think his bones are stashed in this house, somewhere..." He stood straight, looking around as if Antha might keep them laying around on a bookshelf, and then returned to setting things out of order. "Jacob Gripling is their housekeeper, he works at Mayfair Manor. God knows what kind of stuff he's seen in his days, living right at the heart of the family."
Briefly the boy vampire laughed, running his hands through the scarlet spikes of his hair. "We did research on you as soon as you left the motherhouse, did you know that? Apparently your ancestors weren't worth note, so we had nothing on the Calais family in all our vaults. Conspiracy theories are flying all over the place right now. For instance, did you know that your parents died in the same year that Antha's father was 'mysteriously' murdered and she got set free? David and I don't think much of it, but Aaron's always ready to jump at some evil doing of Antha Mayfair's and he's got everyone all worked up. I mean, that is one of the great mysteries left about her, how exactly she escaped this attic, and everyone wants to be the one to find some correlation."

"I'm sure God has nothing to do with it, Singe."
No doubt the Gripling fellow was a force of his own to reckon with. Certainly, he'd have to be in order to run the Mayfair household. They'd never get him to talk, though; Rynn knew that much without even setting eyes on the man. Family retainers, the servants who saw the members of the family they served as they were born and matured and died--you could not hire loyalty like that for any sum. Rynn respected that.
"I wouldn't say they were not worth note. Although I am somewhat biased on the issue, of course." he murmured, running his hand along the velvet upholstery at his side. "They kept to themselves. Aleric knows more about them than I do." Although of course, he was dead now. But Rynn recalled how excited Aleric became when he first started sifting through the remains of their library; he could remember meeting his brother at the breakfast table in the mornings, Aleric spilling porridge on himself because he didn't want to look up from his page, dark circles under his eyes from reading all night, with the biggest, stupidest grin on his face that Rynn had ever seen his brother wear.
The news that he'd set the Talamascans aflurry with their doings--or rather, Cian's doings--made Rynn laugh. "At least you sound like you're deriving some entertainment from it. I very much doubt that Antha's escape from the attic has anything to do with the fires that were set at Llyr's Court, but I'll keep the possibility in mind. What was she doing up in the attic, anyways?" No, wait, don't tell him--Antha wasn't a real girl at all, but a cursed antique doll locked away by the Mayfairs who had finally escaped her metaphysical shackles and burst upon the world to wreak havoc and revenge. Rynn hoped the answer was something like that, anyways.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Like I said, conspiracy theories. Aaron wants to believe it of her, or that you lot had something to do with her escape." At this last question, Singe went very, very still, looking at the boy with a rather intense sense of incredulity. It was so common knowledge around the city, Antha's sad little past, that he had trouble believing someone wouldn't know. But clearly Rynn didn't---he knew from something in his voice---and it made sense, given how withdrawn their family had been. "Antha's mother, Mary Beth, she fell in love with a very, very normal man, Leon. She tricked him into marrying her by telling him Antha was his, but then Antha was born and Mary Beth died in the process, in the room right down the hall, and Leon realized the little girl wasn't his at all. She was Julien's, just like her brothers. So he told the Mayfairs Antha had died too, and locked her up in the attic. He never let her out either, not until nine years later when she's suddenly walking around the house free and he's been stabbed to death in his bed. Nobody knows how it happened, how she got past the chains and locks and wards, she won't breathe a word of it." He shook his head for a moment, tromping out of the room and staring down the hall towards the stairs, towards the attic door. "You can't blame her for being a psychopath, knowing about her early years. Most people would have died under that kind of torture."  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn let himself fall onto his back, kicking his heels idly over the arm of the sofa. He whispered, "Oh, tragedy!" beneath his breath, and then rolled off.
Cian--who would never resist stories, devoured them in one sitting, and roared for more--had wandered out in to the hallway with Singe, and was looking at the attic door like he half-expected it to jump forward and bite him when Rynn came around behind the two of them. Draping a possessive arm about his older brothers collar, Rynn caught Singe's eye and flicked his own in the direction of the door. "Ever been up there?"
Rynn had to admit, it was a good tale. Would have to be--he was pickier than Cian. But he was also curious, and now--well, he would have been poking about in Antha's house regardless, but now it was like having a tour guide.
Ecstasy.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Twice," he admitted, his eyes flashing darkly, "Antha was trying to scare me the first time, and it worked. At the time, something...lived there." He shook his head, looking back towards the door. "You've met it. 'The thing' they call it, like they can't even come up with a name. They used to play their games up there, Antha and Nicolae and their cult of Mayfair children." He went---cautiously, like something might pop out of the door and gobble him up---to the foot of the stairs, tracing his fingers along the banister where someone had tried to grip it, tried to save theirself, their nails clawing into the wood. "There's nothing up there now, they closed off the connection when everything spiraled out of control and confined 'the thing' to Mayfair Manor's attic. But you can still feel that old miasma of madness and murder, still smell the blood. The chains are there too, the ones Leon locked Antha up with. She can't bear to look at them, much less touch them, do away with them." He shook his head, and his hand along with it when he withdrew it from the banister, and hopped his way gracefully up to the door.
It wasn't locked, Antha always said if people were going to invade her sanctuaries she might as well make it easy for them, they would regret it later. "Do you dare?" he challenged them, walking into the room and letting his eyes graze across the crude red drawings, the rabid dogs and headless fish and the giant red rose they all revolved around. The window to his right was still broken, the stain of Sleet and Vikteren's blood dried upon it, and he could feel that old madness of which he had spoken on the wind like something tangible, stronger than the scent of the rain that still fell outside. It made him shiver, which being a vampire he couldn't blame on the cold, and step back. He knew the door across the room led to complete emptiness, that there was no alter there anymore, but he couldn't bring himself to go near it.
The chains were, as he said, still in the corner, wound around an antique radiator that probably hadn't worked in decades, and the rust didn't hide the small traces of blood or the strands of scarlet hair caught between them, not from vampire eyes at least. He hated to imagine the room as she had seen it then, cluttered with boxes that had since been mostly done away with, or otherwise pushed off to the side, the roof leaking and windows boarded up, painted with things to keep her from using her power, the walls spotted with mold and ceiling a dense city of spiderwebs. It was easy enough to see, if one closed their eyes. Bad memories always left an imprint on their settings, David told him, and the attic was swarming with those bad memories. It had seen the little girl's pain and starvation, her loneliness, the panic of hearing the key scrape in the lock, witnessed blood shed at the hands of the possessed Mayfair children, their hunger to inflict pain on someone, anyone.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn said, "Oh," when he stepped into the attic.
Then, a few moments later, "I see what you mean." The atmosphere of the place was--tainted. It was like a scent that would not fade, a stain that refused to be scrubbed away. But Rynn should have been used to that by now, shouldn't he? This was practically homey.
Cian had followed Singe and his younger brother automatically, half because--even if Singe was far older than he--Cian still looked the oldest, and somehow he had the suspicion that older brothers were not supposed to allow their younger siblings to go running about in haunted attics with a person of indeterminate origin, motive, and sanity.
But once he got up there--ahh. Things. As an empath, Cian was constantly picking up information from whatever he touched--even if the information was nothing more than the last time that someone had picked that same object up. Which made going through attics, basements, and other places where people tended to store their important but out-of-place clutter really interesting.
Idly, Cian wandered across the room to try the only door that was in there--probably locked, but who knew?

But Cian did not get the chance to test his luck. When his hand touched the knob, he snatched it back instantaneously, as quickly as though the metal had burned him, and he took a step back from the door, and looked it over again, with an unreadable expression on his face.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Almost as soon as Cian had touched the doorknob, voices sprang up around them, a whole crown of whispers and screams. Singe had known of course that it was a peculiar property of that room, manifesting memories like spirits, he had seen it before, and he saw it again once Cian had triggered it. Antha's shadow materialized like a ghost of the past, a very tiny, frail thing even for her nine years of age, her skin nearly white for the severe lack of sunlight, vaguely translucent like the skin of an onion. The shadow had pressed itself hard against the wall, the wide emerald eyes that had been even larger in childhood focused on something upon the floor that they could not see, and Singe knew instantly it had to have been after her father's death. Her curls were brushed, her little white lace dress clean, small luxuries she had never been afforded during her captivity, and her form was not quite as monstrously disturbing to look at as she had been directly after her release.
'Back to the airship,' another child's voice whispered, as the image of the living Nicolae and half a dozen of their cousins appeared, all as children, running through the door Cian had touched.
Nicolae remained, watching his sister as she peeked at the body crumpled on the floor, standing just on the edge of the puddle of blood seeping out of the figure's skull, and then she turned and took his hand, vanishing with him behind the door.
"I know this one!" Singe shouted when it was over, triumphantly pointing to where the body had been and the door the children had vanished behind, "It was the first time they ever killed anyone, the whole group of them." He sauntered over to the middle of the floor as he spoke, where the red rose had been drawn, "I've seen it before. Maybe it's a really powerful memory?" He paused, looking up at the brothers---they were the witches after all, not him, he thought they should know more about it---and then shrugged. "I hate this place. I'm going to go pick the lock on her mother's room."
If Rynn and Cian had known anything about the house, they might have been appropriately shocked by this statement. Antha had opened the door to her mother's room once, a decade ago, and then locked it up tight and never opened the door again. Singe reasoned that he would never have free reign over Satis House again, and so he was more than happy to return down the stairs, which was like stepping into cool water from the glare of the scorching sun after the madness of the attic, and went to the door across the hall from Cian and Rynn's rooms, going down to one knee and taking a bobby pin from his pocket to jam into the lock.  

[Okimiyage]

After a moment, Rynn transferred his attention from the rose scrawled upon the floor to his brother. "Cian?" he said. His voice was like nightshade in your tea, with too much sugar to cover up the taste of poison. "The next time you want to put your hands all over objects from one of the Mayfairs's little secret getaways, warn us first." The smile he showed his brother was a vicious, perfect sliver of teeth.
He waited for Cian to pass him on the way downstairs before he took up behind them, as though his brother was a puppy that wanted for scolding. He wondered how long that Cian would look at him like that, his eyes dark with unhappiness, his lips stitched in silence, before he realized that he didn't have to take Rynn's orders anymore. The Calais family was dead and gone, and Rynn was no longer the master of anything.

Some time yet, it would seem.

Cian followed Singe down the hallway, his footfall as muffled as a cat's. He was curious, despite what had happened in the room above, to see more of Antha's house. It was like looking through someone's wardrobe, all their measurements and tastes seemingly apparent in the fit of a hem, the drape of a sleeve. What people chose to surround themselves with--or in Antha's case, he suppose, chose to keep behind locked doors. And it was funny, wasn't it, that she should not lock the attic, where one imagined her darkest memories were kept, but should keep her mother's room safe as a mouse in a malt-heap...  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Generally, Singe liked to pretend that he was powerless, all brawn and no ability. But then at times, like now, he forgot to pretend he wasn't reading the minds that didn't bother to defend themselves from him. "This room is all that's left of Mary Beth Mayfair," Singe said, almost idly, as he worked on the tumblers, "Think about it, Leon wasn't really her father, Julien wouldn't take responsibility for her, and Mary Beth died giving birth to her. You know what it's like not having parents---she knows Mary Beth was a horrible person and blames her situation on her, and yet she wants to make a saint of her. It's all so emotional and psychological, I think I could throw up." That was when the lock clicked and the knob turned, and Singe held the breath he didn't need as he pushed the door open.
The room had been very drab to begin with by the looks of it, all grays and blues, but the solid decade of dust and cobwebs had made it eerie and haunting, and most of all hard to navigate as Singe stepped cautiously inside, dodging gleaming white threads spun between the walls. "Creepy," the vampire murmured, swatting the cottony crisscrossing webs away from his face as he went to the dresser against the wall picking up what appeared to be a frame and, when he had rubbed his sleeve against it, proved to be a photo. "Check it out, twenty-something-year-old Julien Mayfair." It was strange, seeing the boy in the photo that was the mirror image of Nicolae, though a great deal more dapper, without the constant crease between his brows that Julien now lived with. A direct effect of living with Antha, he thought. "I wonder why Antha didn't want any of this stuff?" he mused, running his fingers along the jewelry boxes filled with things that glittered even beneath all the dust, roaming over to the closet filled with Mary Beth's old designer clothes.
It was when he went to the bed that he caught the first flash of color, partially hidden beneath the clutter of pillows and the rumpled sheets. It was when he took the coverlet in hand and turned it back that the stains were revealed, large and dark with age, splattered across the middle of the bed. "And this would be where Antha was born," Singe murmured, covering his mouth and nose with his sleeve to guard against the smell that, after almost twenty years, had both weakened and yet grown fouler, "And Mary Beth subsequently died. Great. You guys see any more bloodstains older than Rynn is? Maybe a skeleton stashed in a drawer somewhere?"  

[Okimiyage]

Poking his head in the doorway after his brother wandered in, Rynn glanced about the room. His first impression was--pretty. Like what he imagined being inside a cocoon would be like, all dust and drop-cloths and spiderlace webbing over it all. "We didn't have--this, though. The West Wing was almost entirely destroyed in the fire. It's hard to pay your respects to someone when there's nothing of them left. This, though--" The air felt stale. Going to a window, Rynn pushed aside a lacy white curtain that was heavy with cobwebs, and forced the window half-up before it jammed. It was enough, though, to let some fresh air into the room. "--if she wanted to make a saint of her mother, why lock her up like this?"
Cian, covering his mouth with his sleeve at the odor that rose from the bed, even after nearly twenty years, unthinkingly went to the bedside, grabbing hold of the coverlet to flip back over the stains.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Because she wasn't a saint," Singe replied matter-of-factly, "She was selfish and thought the sun revolved around her golden head. She never gave her children any thought---abandoned little Nicolae and Malakai at Mayfair Manor, completely cut off all communications with them, probably would have done the same to Antha when she found some new love of her life if she'd lived. But you know how children are, they just can't ever seem to let go. Can't bear to clear her things out, but can't bear to ever see them again."
When Cian covered up the blood stains, he was left looking for new entertainment, searching under the bed and in drawers, dusting off the photos on the walls until finally a hand closed on the collar of his shirt, jerked him back and threw him---hard---through the door and into the wall. "Get out," Nicolae hissed to Cian and Rynn, pure ice and venom, his eyes promising murder, before it became a deafening roar, "Get the hell out!" He was aware, vaguely in the back of his head, that he made a much more menacing picture than usual at that moment, covered head to foot in splattered blood and guts, all kinds of horrifying gore, his mouth and chin layered red.
Singe paid very little attention to him, however. He went instead to Antha, laid across a couch in the library, half conscious and clutching the side of her neck that was black with bruises. "You look awful," he said simply, plucking little pieces of bloody meat off of her arms and face, to which she laughed softly and somewhat hysterically. His eyes fell then on her wrists, so bruised and raw, the cuts and scrapes all along her legs and arms, and finally he gave a faint laugh to echo her own, "Do I even want to know why you have pieces of guts in your hair?"  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn's immediate impulse was Shan't. Won't.
He took a second look at Nicolae, though, and decided not to argue. "Come on," he said, taking Cian's hands and following Singe meekly out of the room. Where Singe had crossed into the library, though, Rynn released his brother's hand and continued down the stairs. Cian stood for a moment, looking after him, puzzled, before dashing down the hall and into the library. The scent of sex had thankfully been overpowered by--well, Antha herself, and Nicolae. She was spattered with blood, the shirt she still wore soaked and stiff with it, and Cian suspected that rather a good deal of it was hers. He sank to his knees on the floor next to her, and leant his head against the leg of the sofa. My dearest, my doe, what have you been doing to yourself? He was half-afraid to touch her, but he reached out until his fingertips brushed hers--in the flickering glimpse into her mind, he saw a night suffused in horrors, her hours spent screaming--and gave her what it felt like to have her wrists un-reddened, her skin unscratched, her throat bare of bruises. A balm of the mind, even if it would not help her heal faster. Were those bite marks? What the hell had happened?

Rynn kept going.
He stopped by the room that Cian had chosen in order to tear a coat from its hanger, because it was ******** cold out and he might be stupider than a rabbit, but he wasn't completely without common sense.
Nicolae had said Get out, hadn't he? And like a child, Rynn was going to take it as literally as possible.
This wasn't his house, after all. This wasn't his home, and staying here would just turn him into another one of Antha's trophies, something to lock up in a room and wait for the decades to cover with dust and cobwebs so that occasionally he could be taken out and paraded about and spoken of in hushed tones. Look. This is the last of the Calais line, the stupid twit. Once they were grand. Killed off his whole family. Princess Mayfair burned down his house. How the mighty have ******** that.
He didn't know where Satis House was in relation to the rest of the city. It was surrounded by forest. But there was a road that presumably would take him somewhere.
Rynn kicked his shoes off, those uncomfortable mirror-polished Berluti masterpieces, and started walking.