1/12/2011
Harper spoke to Bernard. Bernard spoke to their father. Their father considered, talked to Eva, then to his wife. Then he spoke to Simon, and it was decided that if Simon could keep his hair trigger in check, he'd be the best one to go. Bernard was too easily swayed, and he and Eva were not privy to the family secret. A full moon was set to rise on Manhattan that week, and Bernardino would not be able to go. So. "She was his noster nostri," Bernardino told his second son, and was rewarded with a minute widening of Simon's eyes. "If he really did repudiate her, he'd better have a damned good reason why. And it'll be good for you and Hilary to have the break, with her knowing exactly where you are. Keep in touch."
Simon packed a couple of bags: one with work he couldn't leave behind, and the weapons that best suited him; and one with clothing, a book he'd found that he thought John would like, extra gear, his favorite straight razor. John had left the family with the transport spheres necessary for them to be able to travel to Rhydin, if needed. Being a Hound of God, Simon had no need of it. Take me to John, Simon asked of God. Take me to my brother, and cast himself into infinity.
John had been sweet to Morana that night, gentle and teasing by turns, exquisitely careful not to touch on anything even remotely resembling a taboo subject. He'd also been stubbornly uncommunicative about the accident, about the reason why he came home sweating and shivering with a long scrape on his cheekbone and wildness in his eyes. He'd talk to her about it tomorrow, he said. When he could handle it. And he did not relent. He took a good-sized dose of some medication that made him sleepy, and went to bed far earlier than normal.
As soon as John was in bed, she'd placed a call to Chief Malloy, another to one of her operatives. Black and red flashed and glowed through her eyes as she stalked through the living room, talking on the phone in a low and very, very cold voice. The Chief passed on that the accident didn?t appear to be an accident at all, but they couldn?t identify the culprits. When she finished the calls she snapped closed the phone and tossed it onto the sofa. She pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers, sucked in a breath, and exhaled fury. Then she went to her briefcase, pulled free the folders of work she still had to do, and spread out at the kitchen table as calmly as if there'd been nothing unusual about the evening at all.
There was a polite little cough of a knock at the front door.
She looked up, and both eyebrows lifted. John was out cold, and her mouth twisted thoughtfully, eyes narrowing. Who would be coming to John?s door at this time of the evening, without warning? After a moment she tucked her pen behind her ear, slid from the chair and started down the hall toward the door. As she reached a distance just over fifteen feet away, she paused. There, on the edge of her nerves, was a stinging burn that belonged to the man passed out in the bedroom.
Void surged in a raging clamor to fill her bones. The presence beyond the door was not John, but it felt like him. Therefore it was probably his father or his brother, and they didn?t have John?s motives not to kill her. She continued toward the door and her expression turned warmer, more welcoming, with every step as she put on the face of a lie. By the time she opened the door, her smile, her body language, were sin and homecoming.
Simon had made extreme concessions for this trip, and had packed not a single suit. He brought no ties with him. He was, in fact, wearing jeans. Levis, a glove-soft pair that he'd owned since college and that had survived the journey by virtue of being hardly worn in the ten years since. The gray sweater over the top of it was zip-up wool, with the gold of a crucifix just barely visible at the neck. He had one bag slung over his right shoulder, the other in his left hand to leave his gun hand free--it had become habit over the last two years, one that had served him well.
The door opened. His head came up, the shadow on his cheeks stark against a skin pale with cold, brown eyes clear and topaz-brilliant behind the frames of his glasses. He was tall, six feet or more, and not as bulky through the shoulders as his brother; rather, the line of his shoulders to his hips was a longer, more graceful vee. Nearly black hair allowed to run a little long was falling over his forehead. He and Eva shared their father's nose. He was a remarkably beautiful man, with a face sculpted for the sort of sin she was projecting.
The killer that filled up his eyes at the sight of her? He definitely shared that with John. The killer's eyes turned up Morana?s smile a little further, and she filled her expression with very deliberate appreciation as she skimmed him from top to toe. She had a rich voice, rich and smooth as honey, when she cared to wield it like a weapon - as she did just then. "Well, hello darling. You must be Simon. John was right - you are better-looking."
Well. That answered his first question.
She opened the door a little wider, stepped back - and turned to walk down the hall away from him, her back clearly exposed with an implied invitation. If he wanted to stab her in it, this was his chance. Not that he would be able to accomplish that through her wards, but he couldn?t know that. "John's asleep at the moment. The drugs should keep him under, but I'd rather not chance that with too much noise, if you don't mind, darling."
He gave her a politely lifted eyebrow, stifled the urge to pull the Sig Sauer that was lying right on top of the bag in his left hand and empty the clip between her eyes. The ferocity of the urge surprised him. He examined it, considered how much of it might have been the way she felt - it was impressive, he'd never been in the vicinity of a person who felt evil, before - and how much of it was the implications she'd dumped into her very first words to him.
"You guessed correctly," he said. His words only contained a trace of the accent more prominent in John's, and his voice was a quiet, precise tenor. She should have had to strain to hear him, but the air sat still for it. "Why is he drugged?"
He did not immediately follow her.
Halfway down the hall she turned, the richness of her voice turning cool. Fury still raged beneath her surface calm for that attempt on her Hound?s life. "He was in a car accident this morning; his cab was hit rather hard. Do decide whether you're coming in or out, darling, you're letting out all the heat." Sable hair caught up into a French twist, one or two strands were just starting to escape down the back of her neck. They tickled faintly against her skin.
The Hypokeimenon had brought him here, to this house. Therefore John was inside, unless this was some trap of which he had never before heard. He paused for a moment longer, wary as a wild animal. Then he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
He looked at everything around him as he followed along after her, absorbing the details of doorways and windows, skylights and floor surfaces. Despite the sneakers he wore and the wet concrete he'd walked down to the front door, he placed his feet so carefully that he made hardly a sound behind her.
As soon as he closed the door, she turned and continued on toward the kitchen. He felt like John, the stinging burn over every square inch of her skin, and completely different. More threatening. He was nearly silent, walking, but she could close her eyes and point him out from half a house away. In the kitchen she pulled down coffee, set it up and started the pot brewing. "I didn't realize you were coming to visit, darling. There's not much to eat in the house, I'm afraid."
"I'm not hungry," he assured her, and asked, "Who are you?" The bag with his clothing dropped to the floor. The one with the weapons in it was eased onto a chair. His fingers closed over the back of that chair, and showed no urge to stray. He either did not realize or did not care about the rudeness in his slow-motion interrogation.
"You can call me Morana, darling." Calmly, with a hint of a smile back up on the turn of her mouth as she glanced over her shoulder at him. He stood motionless, a statue of a man, a more refined version of his brother. She had the feeling he was standing so still to conserve his energy, in case he decided to attack her after all. "Do feel free to take a seat, make yourself at home. If you'll wait for the coffee, I'll even promise to answer your questions."
"I had a very long day at work and don't mind standing up. Thank you." He watched her eyes change, showing firefly flecks of red and a teasing glimmer of blue over the brown. The alarm he'd felt upon first seeing her deepened, became more concrete with every second. His expression did not change - he projected politeness, weariness. He'd planned, originally, on staying with John. This was now plainly an impossibility.
"If you're sure, Simon. Tell me, how is the rest of your family?" As if she had every right to ask the question, as if John shared that information with her regularly. She was trying to unsettle him, to cast him off-balance. While the coffee dripped high-speed into the pot, she pulled out a clean mug. "I thought you'd be spending more time at home, all things considered." Flash of white teeth against glossed lips and dusky skin in a quick smile. It was deliberate, the humor and the appearance of ease, as her flirting had been.
She had expressed surprise at his appearance. Therefore she hadn't seen a picture of him. Either John had done a remarkably good job of describing him, or this - woman - could somehow sense him the way he was sensing her, like sandpaper over sunburned skin, like a cup of too-hot coffee after a handful of habaneros. At her comment she finally pulled a reaction out of him: an equally quick showing of his teeth that was not a smile. "I am going," he decided, "to look in on him. Where is he?"
Paranoia, paranoia... She could have laughed, if it weren't for the echoing burn of two Hounds in the house and one of them hostile and within killing range. She poured the coffee, wrapped her fingers around the mug, and leaned against the counter while she answered, "Just a bit further down the hall, darling, second door on the left." She made no move to show him the way, nor push from her lean, just lifted the mug for a bitter black sip.
Paranoia indeed: both bags went with him. When he vanished from view, only the steady burn of his presence told her where he was...until the click of a door's latch sounded, and again a moment later.
This was her chance to do terrible things to the coffee.
Terrible things consisted of adding two large spoonfuls of sugar to her mug and setting out a second, clean and empty, by the pot. She slid back into her seat and pulled the pen from behind her ear, tossed it down on the stack of forensics reports. Two fingers pressed at one temple with the circular rub of an impending headache. First the incident with John yesterday, after that movie, then his accident today, and now his killer brother come to visit.
She looked up a moment or two before he actually entered the kitchen, several minutes later, alerted by the returning mobile furnace. His gaze was openly troubled before it found her. "Is he still sleeping?" One long leg lifted, crossed over the other while she took a sip of the brew. That was deliberate too. She knew she had distracting legs.
Simon had always believed in the Bible and the attendant corpus of knowledge of the Church as being symbolic rather than literal. When Thomas Aquinas spoke of succubi, for example, he had assumed that it could be interpreted in terms of man's baser desires and the phenomenon known as sleep paralysis. Watching Morana cross her legs, he found himself reconsidering his position.
"Yes," he said, and the disquiet in his expression - which made him younger, more human - faded back into that imperturbable mask. "I didn't attempt to wake him. You said that he was in an accident." He considered her and her coffee, and then went to the maker to pour himself a cup into the provided mug. "Thank you," he said, and added sugar and cream in outrageous amounts.
"You're welcome, darling." Oh, the mask she understood; the mask was her playground where the disquiet threw her off balance. When he slipped back into his lie, she smiled just a bit, gently. That was ever so much more comfortable. "Yes. He was on the way to work, and didn't make it in. I don't know much more; he didn't want to talk about it tonight." Another sip of coffee and a touch of her tongue to her lower lip to catch an errant drop. "He'll be sorry he wasn't awake when you got here."
He watched her eyes and not her mouth as he drank. They shifted while he watched; black eating away at chocolate brown and little pinpoint sparks of blue. Whatever she was, she made a decent cup of coffee by Benandanti standards. Which were admittedly high. "He wasn't expecting me. I'm sure it will be fine," he told her. "Do you know whether he intended to go to work in the morning?"
"Mmm. I'm not sure whether he intends to go to work in the morning or not, but he'll have the day off." She'd wondered, before, what it was that he loved more: his wife or the lie. Now that she had met the man, she knew. Unperturbed, she set down the mug, laced her fingers together around the point of her knee. Time to kick the flirting up a notch and see what he did. She gave him a tilt of her head to the side, assessing gaze and a slow, slow smile that was both lush and inviting. "You're welcome to stay if you like, darling. And I just know you have questions you want to ask."
Simon, knowing nothing of wards, believed that he could not be kept from John and so was perfectly comfortable in saying, "No, I won't intrude further on his hospitality without speaking to him first." That she had made the offer in John's stead was not lost on him. As she assessed him, so he considered her from his place at the counter, laden with bags and wearing them as if they weighed nothing, the mug of coffee perfectly steady in his hand. "John had the same job for almost a year," he said finally. "At Christmas my brother and his girlfriend seemed very happy with one another, our sister tells me. I decided to drop in unannounced, and I find that not only did he change jobs at the end of last year, but apparently houses and significant others as well in the space of three weeks." Another swallow of coffee. "Unless you have some job title of which I am unaware."
"Among other things, darling, I own Gira Pharmaceuticals, John's current place of work." The smile teased her mouth up further at his neat summary. "The employment came rather before the rest of it. Is there a question in that, Simon," his name was a caress on her lips, nearly physical, "or are you simply explaining the situation to me?"
That surprised him, and it showed in the flare of interest revealed by his widening pupils. "Yes. Why?"
"Because, darling, your brother is a romantic at heart - as well as rather a masochist. He believes in redemption, in hope - and in love." She picked up her mug again, took a sip of the sweet dark coffee. "Unlike you, I might add." His hand was less square than John's as well, with longer, more delicate fingers. Still definitely, unequivocally male. But this was the more polished version of the genes, without a doubt.
"My personal beliefs are not at issue here. I am concerned for my brother." Perfectly calm tone. And if he truly believed in love, Simon did not say, he would have remained with his noster nostri. He did not say this. He only looked at Morana, and waited, watching her as black Void ate her eyes and a shimmer of blue in them kept struggling back to life.
"You're a perfectly beautiful liar, Simon. I think I rather adore you." The way a human might adore their new puppy, even if it did make messes on the carpet. Her smile was brilliant as she leaned forward a little, braced her elbow on one thigh just above the knee and her chin in her palm. The pose did sinful, terrible things to that cami top. Things she was, by all appearances, unaware of. That was just an appearance, of course. She was just as aware of the drape of her top as she had been of the crossing of her legs. "Darling, what do you want to know? I've no plans to kill or harm your brother - in point of fact, I rather want to keep him."
"That was exactly what I wanted to know." He emptied the mug. "Are you going to join us for lunch?"
"I've an appointment at eleven, I should be free by twelve-thirty. If you don't mind eating a little bit later, darling, I'd be delighted." She leaned back in her seat again, a lazy invitation to sin. "If you need a place to stay, the Red Dragon Inn generally has rooms - or I can call ahead and see that there's a room waiting for you at the Throne of Saturn."
Void slunk behind dark chocolate in her gaze while he watched. "I'll go to the inn, thank you." He laid the mug down on the counter, hefted his bags and started for the door.
"Do have a good night, Simon, and sweet dreams." She made the innocent phrase sound incredibly sensual. She watched him go, and didn't make a move to walk him out - not when every step away he took was a wash of soothing coolness to her nerves. Once he was gone, she stood, walked the same length of hallway to lock the door, and then turned back to find her personal bonfire.
Harper spoke to Bernard. Bernard spoke to their father. Their father considered, talked to Eva, then to his wife. Then he spoke to Simon, and it was decided that if Simon could keep his hair trigger in check, he'd be the best one to go. Bernard was too easily swayed, and he and Eva were not privy to the family secret. A full moon was set to rise on Manhattan that week, and Bernardino would not be able to go. So. "She was his noster nostri," Bernardino told his second son, and was rewarded with a minute widening of Simon's eyes. "If he really did repudiate her, he'd better have a damned good reason why. And it'll be good for you and Hilary to have the break, with her knowing exactly where you are. Keep in touch."
Simon packed a couple of bags: one with work he couldn't leave behind, and the weapons that best suited him; and one with clothing, a book he'd found that he thought John would like, extra gear, his favorite straight razor. John had left the family with the transport spheres necessary for them to be able to travel to Rhydin, if needed. Being a Hound of God, Simon had no need of it. Take me to John, Simon asked of God. Take me to my brother, and cast himself into infinity.
John had been sweet to Morana that night, gentle and teasing by turns, exquisitely careful not to touch on anything even remotely resembling a taboo subject. He'd also been stubbornly uncommunicative about the accident, about the reason why he came home sweating and shivering with a long scrape on his cheekbone and wildness in his eyes. He'd talk to her about it tomorrow, he said. When he could handle it. And he did not relent. He took a good-sized dose of some medication that made him sleepy, and went to bed far earlier than normal.
As soon as John was in bed, she'd placed a call to Chief Malloy, another to one of her operatives. Black and red flashed and glowed through her eyes as she stalked through the living room, talking on the phone in a low and very, very cold voice. The Chief passed on that the accident didn?t appear to be an accident at all, but they couldn?t identify the culprits. When she finished the calls she snapped closed the phone and tossed it onto the sofa. She pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers, sucked in a breath, and exhaled fury. Then she went to her briefcase, pulled free the folders of work she still had to do, and spread out at the kitchen table as calmly as if there'd been nothing unusual about the evening at all.
There was a polite little cough of a knock at the front door.
She looked up, and both eyebrows lifted. John was out cold, and her mouth twisted thoughtfully, eyes narrowing. Who would be coming to John?s door at this time of the evening, without warning? After a moment she tucked her pen behind her ear, slid from the chair and started down the hall toward the door. As she reached a distance just over fifteen feet away, she paused. There, on the edge of her nerves, was a stinging burn that belonged to the man passed out in the bedroom.
Void surged in a raging clamor to fill her bones. The presence beyond the door was not John, but it felt like him. Therefore it was probably his father or his brother, and they didn?t have John?s motives not to kill her. She continued toward the door and her expression turned warmer, more welcoming, with every step as she put on the face of a lie. By the time she opened the door, her smile, her body language, were sin and homecoming.
Simon had made extreme concessions for this trip, and had packed not a single suit. He brought no ties with him. He was, in fact, wearing jeans. Levis, a glove-soft pair that he'd owned since college and that had survived the journey by virtue of being hardly worn in the ten years since. The gray sweater over the top of it was zip-up wool, with the gold of a crucifix just barely visible at the neck. He had one bag slung over his right shoulder, the other in his left hand to leave his gun hand free--it had become habit over the last two years, one that had served him well.
The door opened. His head came up, the shadow on his cheeks stark against a skin pale with cold, brown eyes clear and topaz-brilliant behind the frames of his glasses. He was tall, six feet or more, and not as bulky through the shoulders as his brother; rather, the line of his shoulders to his hips was a longer, more graceful vee. Nearly black hair allowed to run a little long was falling over his forehead. He and Eva shared their father's nose. He was a remarkably beautiful man, with a face sculpted for the sort of sin she was projecting.
The killer that filled up his eyes at the sight of her? He definitely shared that with John. The killer's eyes turned up Morana?s smile a little further, and she filled her expression with very deliberate appreciation as she skimmed him from top to toe. She had a rich voice, rich and smooth as honey, when she cared to wield it like a weapon - as she did just then. "Well, hello darling. You must be Simon. John was right - you are better-looking."
Well. That answered his first question.
She opened the door a little wider, stepped back - and turned to walk down the hall away from him, her back clearly exposed with an implied invitation. If he wanted to stab her in it, this was his chance. Not that he would be able to accomplish that through her wards, but he couldn?t know that. "John's asleep at the moment. The drugs should keep him under, but I'd rather not chance that with too much noise, if you don't mind, darling."
He gave her a politely lifted eyebrow, stifled the urge to pull the Sig Sauer that was lying right on top of the bag in his left hand and empty the clip between her eyes. The ferocity of the urge surprised him. He examined it, considered how much of it might have been the way she felt - it was impressive, he'd never been in the vicinity of a person who felt evil, before - and how much of it was the implications she'd dumped into her very first words to him.
"You guessed correctly," he said. His words only contained a trace of the accent more prominent in John's, and his voice was a quiet, precise tenor. She should have had to strain to hear him, but the air sat still for it. "Why is he drugged?"
He did not immediately follow her.
Halfway down the hall she turned, the richness of her voice turning cool. Fury still raged beneath her surface calm for that attempt on her Hound?s life. "He was in a car accident this morning; his cab was hit rather hard. Do decide whether you're coming in or out, darling, you're letting out all the heat." Sable hair caught up into a French twist, one or two strands were just starting to escape down the back of her neck. They tickled faintly against her skin.
The Hypokeimenon had brought him here, to this house. Therefore John was inside, unless this was some trap of which he had never before heard. He paused for a moment longer, wary as a wild animal. Then he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
He looked at everything around him as he followed along after her, absorbing the details of doorways and windows, skylights and floor surfaces. Despite the sneakers he wore and the wet concrete he'd walked down to the front door, he placed his feet so carefully that he made hardly a sound behind her.
As soon as he closed the door, she turned and continued on toward the kitchen. He felt like John, the stinging burn over every square inch of her skin, and completely different. More threatening. He was nearly silent, walking, but she could close her eyes and point him out from half a house away. In the kitchen she pulled down coffee, set it up and started the pot brewing. "I didn't realize you were coming to visit, darling. There's not much to eat in the house, I'm afraid."
"I'm not hungry," he assured her, and asked, "Who are you?" The bag with his clothing dropped to the floor. The one with the weapons in it was eased onto a chair. His fingers closed over the back of that chair, and showed no urge to stray. He either did not realize or did not care about the rudeness in his slow-motion interrogation.
"You can call me Morana, darling." Calmly, with a hint of a smile back up on the turn of her mouth as she glanced over her shoulder at him. He stood motionless, a statue of a man, a more refined version of his brother. She had the feeling he was standing so still to conserve his energy, in case he decided to attack her after all. "Do feel free to take a seat, make yourself at home. If you'll wait for the coffee, I'll even promise to answer your questions."
"I had a very long day at work and don't mind standing up. Thank you." He watched her eyes change, showing firefly flecks of red and a teasing glimmer of blue over the brown. The alarm he'd felt upon first seeing her deepened, became more concrete with every second. His expression did not change - he projected politeness, weariness. He'd planned, originally, on staying with John. This was now plainly an impossibility.
"If you're sure, Simon. Tell me, how is the rest of your family?" As if she had every right to ask the question, as if John shared that information with her regularly. She was trying to unsettle him, to cast him off-balance. While the coffee dripped high-speed into the pot, she pulled out a clean mug. "I thought you'd be spending more time at home, all things considered." Flash of white teeth against glossed lips and dusky skin in a quick smile. It was deliberate, the humor and the appearance of ease, as her flirting had been.
She had expressed surprise at his appearance. Therefore she hadn't seen a picture of him. Either John had done a remarkably good job of describing him, or this - woman - could somehow sense him the way he was sensing her, like sandpaper over sunburned skin, like a cup of too-hot coffee after a handful of habaneros. At her comment she finally pulled a reaction out of him: an equally quick showing of his teeth that was not a smile. "I am going," he decided, "to look in on him. Where is he?"
Paranoia, paranoia... She could have laughed, if it weren't for the echoing burn of two Hounds in the house and one of them hostile and within killing range. She poured the coffee, wrapped her fingers around the mug, and leaned against the counter while she answered, "Just a bit further down the hall, darling, second door on the left." She made no move to show him the way, nor push from her lean, just lifted the mug for a bitter black sip.
Paranoia indeed: both bags went with him. When he vanished from view, only the steady burn of his presence told her where he was...until the click of a door's latch sounded, and again a moment later.
This was her chance to do terrible things to the coffee.
Terrible things consisted of adding two large spoonfuls of sugar to her mug and setting out a second, clean and empty, by the pot. She slid back into her seat and pulled the pen from behind her ear, tossed it down on the stack of forensics reports. Two fingers pressed at one temple with the circular rub of an impending headache. First the incident with John yesterday, after that movie, then his accident today, and now his killer brother come to visit.
She looked up a moment or two before he actually entered the kitchen, several minutes later, alerted by the returning mobile furnace. His gaze was openly troubled before it found her. "Is he still sleeping?" One long leg lifted, crossed over the other while she took a sip of the brew. That was deliberate too. She knew she had distracting legs.
Simon had always believed in the Bible and the attendant corpus of knowledge of the Church as being symbolic rather than literal. When Thomas Aquinas spoke of succubi, for example, he had assumed that it could be interpreted in terms of man's baser desires and the phenomenon known as sleep paralysis. Watching Morana cross her legs, he found himself reconsidering his position.
"Yes," he said, and the disquiet in his expression - which made him younger, more human - faded back into that imperturbable mask. "I didn't attempt to wake him. You said that he was in an accident." He considered her and her coffee, and then went to the maker to pour himself a cup into the provided mug. "Thank you," he said, and added sugar and cream in outrageous amounts.
"You're welcome, darling." Oh, the mask she understood; the mask was her playground where the disquiet threw her off balance. When he slipped back into his lie, she smiled just a bit, gently. That was ever so much more comfortable. "Yes. He was on the way to work, and didn't make it in. I don't know much more; he didn't want to talk about it tonight." Another sip of coffee and a touch of her tongue to her lower lip to catch an errant drop. "He'll be sorry he wasn't awake when you got here."
He watched her eyes and not her mouth as he drank. They shifted while he watched; black eating away at chocolate brown and little pinpoint sparks of blue. Whatever she was, she made a decent cup of coffee by Benandanti standards. Which were admittedly high. "He wasn't expecting me. I'm sure it will be fine," he told her. "Do you know whether he intended to go to work in the morning?"
"Mmm. I'm not sure whether he intends to go to work in the morning or not, but he'll have the day off." She'd wondered, before, what it was that he loved more: his wife or the lie. Now that she had met the man, she knew. Unperturbed, she set down the mug, laced her fingers together around the point of her knee. Time to kick the flirting up a notch and see what he did. She gave him a tilt of her head to the side, assessing gaze and a slow, slow smile that was both lush and inviting. "You're welcome to stay if you like, darling. And I just know you have questions you want to ask."
Simon, knowing nothing of wards, believed that he could not be kept from John and so was perfectly comfortable in saying, "No, I won't intrude further on his hospitality without speaking to him first." That she had made the offer in John's stead was not lost on him. As she assessed him, so he considered her from his place at the counter, laden with bags and wearing them as if they weighed nothing, the mug of coffee perfectly steady in his hand. "John had the same job for almost a year," he said finally. "At Christmas my brother and his girlfriend seemed very happy with one another, our sister tells me. I decided to drop in unannounced, and I find that not only did he change jobs at the end of last year, but apparently houses and significant others as well in the space of three weeks." Another swallow of coffee. "Unless you have some job title of which I am unaware."
"Among other things, darling, I own Gira Pharmaceuticals, John's current place of work." The smile teased her mouth up further at his neat summary. "The employment came rather before the rest of it. Is there a question in that, Simon," his name was a caress on her lips, nearly physical, "or are you simply explaining the situation to me?"
That surprised him, and it showed in the flare of interest revealed by his widening pupils. "Yes. Why?"
"Because, darling, your brother is a romantic at heart - as well as rather a masochist. He believes in redemption, in hope - and in love." She picked up her mug again, took a sip of the sweet dark coffee. "Unlike you, I might add." His hand was less square than John's as well, with longer, more delicate fingers. Still definitely, unequivocally male. But this was the more polished version of the genes, without a doubt.
"My personal beliefs are not at issue here. I am concerned for my brother." Perfectly calm tone. And if he truly believed in love, Simon did not say, he would have remained with his noster nostri. He did not say this. He only looked at Morana, and waited, watching her as black Void ate her eyes and a shimmer of blue in them kept struggling back to life.
"You're a perfectly beautiful liar, Simon. I think I rather adore you." The way a human might adore their new puppy, even if it did make messes on the carpet. Her smile was brilliant as she leaned forward a little, braced her elbow on one thigh just above the knee and her chin in her palm. The pose did sinful, terrible things to that cami top. Things she was, by all appearances, unaware of. That was just an appearance, of course. She was just as aware of the drape of her top as she had been of the crossing of her legs. "Darling, what do you want to know? I've no plans to kill or harm your brother - in point of fact, I rather want to keep him."
"That was exactly what I wanted to know." He emptied the mug. "Are you going to join us for lunch?"
"I've an appointment at eleven, I should be free by twelve-thirty. If you don't mind eating a little bit later, darling, I'd be delighted." She leaned back in her seat again, a lazy invitation to sin. "If you need a place to stay, the Red Dragon Inn generally has rooms - or I can call ahead and see that there's a room waiting for you at the Throne of Saturn."
Void slunk behind dark chocolate in her gaze while he watched. "I'll go to the inn, thank you." He laid the mug down on the counter, hefted his bags and started for the door.
"Do have a good night, Simon, and sweet dreams." She made the innocent phrase sound incredibly sensual. She watched him go, and didn't make a move to walk him out - not when every step away he took was a wash of soothing coolness to her nerves. Once he was gone, she stood, walked the same length of hallway to lock the door, and then turned back to find her personal bonfire.