Chapter 106
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 105
Hissing for a moment at the dissipating glitter, Quincy lets himself fall from the table directly onto the sofa. “So, what are we going to come up with?”
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“…If we already knew that, we’d be done, wouldn’t we?” Arthur can’t help point out, but with a smile, he doesn’t want Quincy to think he’s being snide. (Also… ‘poison moth’? What’s that supposed to mean?)
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Shaking himself free of seeing a spark of the woman he lost four centuries ago, Vlad steps forward. “I shall return to the court and try to find more books on the topic. If we take more languages into account, maybe we can find another option we have overlooked so far.”
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“We better. All of those suck and not the…” Quincy swallows the rest of that sentence, he promised not to be mean to Arthur after all.
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Arthur didn’t even notice that Quincy’s tone and words made him tense until Quincy cuts himself off, when he finds his shoulders and middle relaxing minutely, and he can’t help but give him a quick, grateful smile.
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“I promised, and clearly, some fey are more bound by their word than others.” Quincy huffs and adds a derisive ‘poison moths’ to it, not that he has a clue what that’s supposed to mean, but if his mother uses it as an insult then it’s probably fitting. Much as he’d like to focus on just huffing at that creep and learn more about why he can’t stand him, if his… if Basarab is going back to get them more info, then that means no fast relief for John, so he better get back on that.
Getting up to walk back upstairs, he quickly finds himself with a shadow, at least not a cat-shaped one this time, but ugh, fine, he supposes he can be on patron duty first. Not as if he doesn’t know how to get a man to need a nap. He wishes he could get John a nap, too, and shush brain, yes yes, he’s an attractive brute, shut up on wondering how those strong arms feel and if his chest hair is that same or a different shade of blond. Any way you would get him to nap is more likely than the one you just used on Cobb.
No, John is Cycy’s and a homophobe only slowly learning better. In any case, he can only give him a quick break, but that’s better than none and he’s starting to learn to hold it a little bit longer, too. Still, Blondie is looking like shit and he means that caringly.
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Arthur very much wishes they’d had more success with their meeting, but takes a deep breath when Quincy and Gregory have left the room, feels some determination returning- maybe he can’t help with Darcy, can’t do anything about the strain on John. But he was working on something else, maybe he can help in that way. So he returns to his lab, is joined by Katharina, (the castle must’ve opened a window for her to come back inside, her fur is still cool and damp,) and settles back in to figure this scrying business out.
So. He needs some kind of object, ideally reflective in some way, which has some personal significance and of which the parents also carry an equivalent with them.
That’s… at first he thinks there can’t be any such thing. It’s not like he’s had anything much to do with them. But after a fruitless few hours searching for another method of scrying, he’s still back to this possibility.
Yes, some people can scry with random surfaces like water or mirrors, but it takes a talent for it and years of training, from what he reads. It’s not something he can just learn in a day. It’s a skill related to astral projection and dream walking and that sort of thing- separating your consciousness from your physical body to travel and explore the world in a different way.
Obviously, it’s not the sort of thing he wants to mess up, because he’d rather not fall into a coma or die if he can’t find his way back, thank you very much.
So, objects of significance. And really, the only ones he has are his birthday gifts. The books from Dr Seward are out- there’s hardly something less reflective than books. And horse grooming supplies aren’t much help, either. Arthur can’t help a (slightly hysterical, it’s getting late) snicker at the idea of scrying through a hoof pick. But Lucy gave him that writing set… The nib of the pen is too small, but there’s the inks. One of them is black, and he lifts the little pot out, studies it.
It’s worth a try, isn’t it?
He asks the house for a flat-bottomed bowl, pours the ink in, and it does form a shallow but reasonable pool in it. And he can vaguely see his own reflection in it when he leans over it.
Of course, it doesn’t work right away. In fact, it takes him hours and hours, until after four in the morning, before something happens.
There’s a ripple across the ink- except there isn’t, the ink is still in the bowl, but it still looks like someone just dipped a pen into it. And if he unfocuses his eyes just right, while holding the scrying spell firm in his concentration, Arthur can see a small, brighter circle in the middle. And a shadow beyond, the side of a face outlined in low, red light, an impression of a weird shape next to it… A lock of hair, he realizes. Seen from below. Like if he’s looking up and out from the inside of an inkwell, maybe.
“Lucy?” he tries, hears his voice echo in an odd, flat way.
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“Hm?” That sounded oddly muffled but then, her men are snuggled deep into their sleeping bag and it’s only been a short while since Art joined Jack for some hours of sleep after she returned from her larger circle over the treetops, so she smiles over and whispers: “Sweet-Art, can’t sleep? Or are you worried about waking up Jackie?”
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Arthur can just about make out the turn of Lucy’s face- like she heard something, but away from his vantage point. It worked!
Calm, calm, concentration- he pushes the excitement away.
“Lucy,” he tries again. “Down here! It’s Arthur! In the, uh, in the ink…”
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Is the snow making her hear things? The forests here are full of noise, but, no, she is pretty sure those were words, but upon closer inspection, she can ascertain both her men are asleep right now. Looking around, she is about to stopper her ink well when she startles. So she did hear that voice right, even though she couldn’t make out the words!
Maybe if she focuses? Lucy leans down close to, and that makes her giggle, her ink. “Arthur? I can’t really understand you.”
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Yes! Lucy is leaning towards him! But… he can’t really hear what she’s saying, her voice is also oddly flat, and sounds like it’s really far away…
He takes a deep breath, tries to force more power into the spell. It feels fragile in his mind, like ice, like he has to tread carefully. And it’s exhausting.
So he has to make this quick. “Please come back.” He says the words carefully, enunciating clearly, tries to project them. “The vampire is here. It’s not Mr Basarab-” Wait, do they know that name? It’s not really his name, is it? Just his stage name. “It’s not Vlad the Impaler,” he adds.
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Narrowing her eyes, Lucy turns to try to hear better, it’s all distorted, but she’s pretty sure she heard ‘come back’… and then… Oh fuck! ‘Vampire!’
The kids are in trouble, the damn sneak must have heard of something going on at her old castle after all! Ugh, she had tried to avoid that. Oh no, if he’s in England then he might go for Mina, too! “We’re coming back fast as we can!” she yells at the ink bottle and feels silly for it, but the sound already made Jack sit up, yes, knife in hand, he’s dreamy like that. But they need to get Art up, too!
“On our way!” she repeats at the ink before stoppering it and breaking camp as fast as she can, there’s only so much night left and it’s a very long flight back.
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Arthur’s pretty sure Lucy said “come back fast as we can”, and feels relief even as the spell frays- it doesn’t like her moving the ink bottle on the other side, and his own power and concentration is running out.
He moves the bowl with the ink aside so he can rest his head against the table with a groan. A vicious headache springs into being, feels like ice picks driving into his brain and eyes, which makes him feel nauseous. And dizzy, too. He’s just going to sit here for a bit, just breathing.
Katharina mrows at him from her place in his lap, and sticks her head up to rub it against his chin. Her fur is soft, and it feels very comforting, and he reaches down to pet her while he waits for the strain to settle. Once he thinks he can stand without throwing up or falling over, he lifts her into his arms, asks the house for a cover for the ink bowl because he doesn’t trust himself to pour it back into the bottle without a mess right now, and staggers for his bed.
He needs sleep, really badly, but through the pounding in his head, he also feels triumphant- he did it! He reached them!
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Waking up in somebody else’s bed feels familiar to Quincy but not like this. Not with a guy who looks like absolute shit… and making him want to take care of him for it, but not being allowed to touch him. Idiot homophobe, why does he have to be so sexy with that basically invisible blond stubble and expression of dedication to the bone to his girl ?
Part of Quincy knows he’s being huffy to distract himself from his own worry. Darcy might look peaceful where she’s sleeping next to him, but she’s been kept like that for two days soon and well, let’s not talk about the not so savoury side of that. Good that Quincy never was squeamish and spare him any ‘if you play in the mud you get dirty’-comments, ugh.
Yes, yes, he’s playing essentially nurse for two people here. He’s stuck to soup and blood on the feeding Darcy front at least but still, he can’t keep this up much longer. Well, he probably could, but John needs rest.
Or at the very least quiet! For bloody crying out loud! Is Cobb bloody serious? Sitting in front of the door and cat yowling? Alley cat in deed. “Ugh, Cycy, once you are awake we need to have a serious talk about bad marriage choices.”
That very nearly was a snort from John there, and Quincy better get out of the room and stop the cat yammering rather than contributing to poor John’s misery.
“For the absolute very last time, I’m not talking to you like this.” Still tying his morning robe closed, Quincy hisses it at Cobb as he marches down the corridor. Having his shadow from last night right next to him in an instant, Quincy tries the reward approach, maybe that’ll get him somewhere. So he takes Cobb’s hand and calls him ‘kitten’ (let the idiot think it’s a nice pet name and not an expression of how needy and immature he is).
That does get at least a grin from Cobb. A grin that doesn’t leave when Quincy sinks into his chair at breakfast and rubs his face, because he might have slept but he doesn’t really feel rested. They have a problem he can’t really fix and he hates feeling so powerless, really, really hates it. Which great, now he feels angry and powerless, very helpful.
He supposes Cobb is trying to cheer him up… or tease attention out of him (more likely) with keeping on him. It’s not really helping but maybe… okay, fine, screw it! After he’s done with nurse duty upstairs, he finds Cobb again and drags him off. If they can’t do something to help for Darcy right now, they can at least do something for when she’s back on her feet.
She’s a terrible story addict and it’s nearly Christmas, they can make her wake up to a fairy tale- (okay, that hits differently now that he’s met a bloody annoying fairy-) in any case, a story-book Christmas castle.
There are plenty of options to spruce the place up and even a solarium to get a massive tree in. He’s not quite sure what he thinks of Cobb using that weird demon tiger shape to reach to the top of the tree, but he supposes it’s better than not reaching it at all? That form makes him shiver. And he’s not sure if that’s because part of him has a case of the ‘allure of the dangerous’, or if he wants to be as far away from it as possible.
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Arthur wakes up far later than usual, which is no wonder, given that he went to sleep only a couple of hours before he usually would get up. And he still didn’t get enough sleep, so he’s trudging through breakfast and looking after his animals, and only three-quarters awake by the time he goes look for the others.
Still, he keeps thinking about whether he should tell anyone that he reached Darcy’s parents and they’re on their way back. Mrs Harker likes Lucy, but not Art, apparently. Quincy doesn’t even know them. Gregory… doesn’t precisely get along with them. The ones he wants to tell are Darcy and John, but of course, that’s the two that are tied up the most in this mess.
How John is even still going, Arthur doesn’t know. Sheer stubbornness, probably?
He hasn’t reached any conclusions when he follows the sounds to the solarium where they first received Mr and Mrs Harker and finds it filled with a huge evergreen tree, covered in decorations, and Gregory in his demon form just putting a star on the top of it. “Uh…” he says, blinks. “Good morning? What are you doing?”
Stepping out from the side of the tree, Quincy waves at him, hands full of garland. “I can’t help with the actual problem, but I can give Cycy a nice space to wake up to, so I pulled Kitten in to help with decorating the place top to bottom.”
“Oh, right. Christmas,” Arthur says, because he’d kind of forgotten. “…Damn, I have no presents. But, um, it’s a big place so… can I help?”
After putting the garland up on a branch, Quincy walks over to Arthur and puts a soft hand on his arm. “Honey, I know you’re worried about Cycy, too. She’s your friend. Of course you can help.”
“Why don’t we go gift shopping?” Gregory asks as he shrinks down to his human form with a grin.
Quincy’s nice and understanding words make Arthur give him a smile, but then Gregory’s question interrupts his small moment of feeling cheered up, because: “Go shopping? What, like… outside? Outside the wards? Where the vampire with the mind powers and the scheming is?” Maybe his voice slides a bit far into sarcasm there, but… “How about let’s not.”
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“Mother was rather outspoken on not wanting us outside the wards if we can help it,” Quincy adds and lifts an eyebrow. “I’m not covering for you if you want to explain to her why you got yourself mind-controlled. I’m staying right here with at least one line of defense.”
Quincy can see the oncoming new yammering fit and is really not in the mood for that level of patron management, not with his own emotions being frayed from all the things he has no control over, he needs some easy wins! Oh, actually, that just might work. “But if you keep helping with the decoration where it’s safe, we could take a look at a catalogue later. How about that?”
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“A catalogue?” Arthur asks. He remembers seeing adverts for them in the newspaper sometimes. “That sounds fun!”
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Perfect, now he got both of them! Quincy feels much better for it, orchestrating the emotions around him helps him keep his own off the worry for Cycy… fine, and Blondie. So he asks for more decorations from the house (he loves this magic castle!) and puts a full box of garlands into Arthur’s hand with instructions to decorate the stairs, he’ll be right after with the wooden stars for the top points of the garlands.
Cobb gets tasked with putting themed doilies on all the side tables. No, not over everything! Lift things up and put the doilies under, seriously.
With everybody helping, including his mother and little sister, the place quickly transforms into something he thinks Cycy will want to wake up to. Yes, little honey, go calculate the perfect distance between decorations (his sister might have interesting ideas about what is the best help, but he’ll take it, he’s at the end of his rope of child entertainment.)
After his mother saw to lunch, he grabs Cobb and Arthur and gets them all on a sofa in the solarium, the fireplace ablaze, the cocoa hot, and soft blankets all around. Now this is luxury… if he ignores that he had to run the next round of nurse duty upstairs and John is at the point of muscle spasms and so tired that he only grunted once before he submitted to Quincy massaging the cramp out of his leg.
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Arthur welcomes the distraction of the whole thing- yes, he wishes there was something more definite, more immediate he could do, but at least he’s not stuck looking through books for answers that aren’t there.
He just wishes Darcy were with them for this. He thinks she’d really like it, really have fun.
He… misses her, he thinks. Yes, she’s physically in the house, but she’s not laughing or giggling or stomping her foot or clattering up and down the stairs. He feels a very distinct smoulder of anger at Radu for taking that away from them and her.
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Now that expression Quincy can read easily, so he puts his hand on Arthur’s arm again, dares to tuck a side of the blanket tighter around him and smiles softly. “I miss her, too.” He doesn’t comment on the obvious anger, because if he’s completely honest, he’s scared of thinking about that vampire. He saw what he did to Harker… and what if he would react with nothing again if that Radu hurts another person?
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Arthur blushes at clearly having been very obvious with his thoughts, but sighs and nods. “This is nice, but it’d be even more fun with her here…”
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“Celebrations are about the people you share them with. All the decorations mean nothing if there aren’t people to share emotions about them with. How about you pick out something nice for her so that she can feel your care?” Letting his hand slide down from Arthur’s arms to his hand, Quincy takes it and puts the catalogue in it with another soft smile, then picks his cocoa mug up and leans over to check what Cobb is browsing, puts his best cooed ‘kitten’ expression on, too.
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“It’s weird to buy her a gift with her own money, though,” Arthur admits. It’s not like he actually has any money of his own.
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“Does she care about the money or about you making the effort of knowing her well enough to pick something for her that will make her happy?” Even while he says it, Quincy agrees internally. He already had to push back on Cobb wanting to throw him a large sum of money so he can buy whatever in the catalogue he might want. Not that it helped, he just ended up wrinkling his nose when Cobb instead circled every little thing Quincy so much as expressed appreciation of.
Now, don’t get him wrong. Not that Quincy doesn’t like being spoiled, but this feels like grooming, like a noble making him indebted, and he refuses. He is playing the boyfriend, he adopted the stray, he is not somebody to be bought!
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“I think,” Arthur says, since he can’t be entirely sure, but he really does think so, “she’d say that the money is important for providing for us, not for its own sake…” Which would mean, yes, she’d appreciate a gift he picked even if he paid for it with her money. He’ll just have to make sure to keep working hard to be worth his keep.
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“There, now that sounds like Cycy.” Leaning back over to Arthur with a smile that feels a little bit less put on than the one for Cobb, because ugh, taking care is easier and more fulfilling than managing, Quincy taps the catalogue. “Meaning, think about what she would enjoy. Even better, what you might enjoy together.”
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Something they could enjoy together? Arthur thinks about that as he flips through his copy of the catalogue- of course he’s thinking of maybe a book. Darcy likes books, right? But what kind of book could they enjoy together?
Well, he knows it when he sees it: There it is, a beautiful, illustrated book on the Yorkshire moors- flora and fauna and notable sites and history and all. With 24 plates of photographs, too, according to the advert. He remembers Darcy telling him about her book about the flora and fauna of the British Isles, and how she wanted to show it to him. She likes animals, and learning about things, and he thinks she’ll like this book.
And then they could go and find the places and animals and all in it together, maybe. That would be fun! He nods to himself, makes a decided note next to the book, and then considers who else he ought to give gifts to.
Which is a very strange thing to have reason to consider. There’s never been anyone except Gregory before…
Speaking of, as soon as Quincy excuses himself to go check on everyone else again, Gregory scoots over and shoves his own catalogue at Arthur, tells him to fill out the form with ‘all of these!’
‘All of these’ turns out to be a dozen or so things marked with Gregory’s pencil- things Arthur’s pretty sure are supposed to be for Quincy. And that after Quincy has already refused Gregory’s offer of giving him a heap of money. Which Arthur understands, and he tells Gregory ‘sure’ while he privately resolves to ask Quincy first- he kind of thinks a mountain of stuff isn’t any better than a mountain of money.