The maker.

Hawksley Rothschild

- Hawksley found 10 instances of the drug, which he just calls a Charm, throughout the Denver metro area: 2 in Kelsey, fading and 4 hits used in the DU area but not together.
- 2 more hits were in Sera's possession and them disseminated to other magi, so he knows what those were doing.
- That leaves two out there, somewhere, beneath the pale moonlight.
- The maker of the Charms is at least a Disciple, and -- as the others have found -- Destructive/Liberating, but mooostly Liberating.
- The maker also currently has Time and Life effects going, somewhere in the alteration/maintenance/restoration vein.
- ...probably, Hawksley conjectures, to deal with the heavy backhand of Paradox the maker just got.
- He never refers to the maker as Byron, because he doesn't know for sure.
- The Charm can allow the user to adopt or expand their own ability, even if their own ability does not exist, with Disciple-level increase -- in this case, Time, Correspondence, and Mind. If you're already a Disciple, you could borrow spheres you don't know shit about, and if you're a Sleeper or an Apprentice, then hooboy, have fun.
- Downside is the complete and utter ass-kicking that comes after that appears to be anything from the worst hangover ever to coma. Kelsey, unAwakened (like the others who have taken it), has been mostly unconscious for close to a week, barely rousing unless Collins shakes her to make her drink some Gatorade or whatever.
- Hawksley thinks that a mage might be able to come off it in a day or so, a Cultist -- or someone used to drugs -- probably less.

Hawksley Rothschild

[line breaks, Jove! LINE BREAKS.]

blues

By the end of the week the young woman in the suite at the Four Seasons has come closer to rejoining the living but still will not sit up or speak. When she makes the attempt her words come out in a slurry and she closes her eyes again. Not a side effect but a reaction all the same. Until her appetite returns they can't be sure the filament in her head hasn't completely fried after what she took.

They haven't found Byron yet because Dick Fairchild can't tell them where he is. He wants to know but he doesn't as yet know. When Hawksley lifted his attention up over the city he saw the place where a reason for all of this lies. He called him the maker. If they can't find the distributor they decide to go to the source.

Out of the city in a rental car and the buildings fall away from them after a while. Even as they fly through the valley down I-25 they can look out the windows at the foothills and the trees rising up to meet the mountains in the distance and if they choose to brave the rain they can roll down their windows for the air. Even if they don't the sight of green untouched by progress does plenty.

Their route takes them down to Castle Rock and forty minutes outside the city. Rock croppings and steep hillsides greet them into the suburb. Their quarry has found an excellent place to buy and sell drugs, if that is the aim. Lots of open space and lots of bored teenagers and young adults. They pass some of the little angels released from their academic doldrums into the borderlands between unsupervised youth and juvenile delinquency.

Should they follow the coordinates Hawksley brought back from his scrying with him it will take them into a cabin on the outskirts of town. Not completely isolated but the sort of place a hermit or a mad scientist could escape humanity long enough to forget it's there. A long driveway stretches through thick trees. If they sit still long enough they'll see a deer.

Hawksley Rothschild

For his part, Hawksley does as he told Sera: he stays away from Kelsey. For most of the week following bringing her back, he doesn't know what set her off, he doesn't know if being around him might trigger something magical and awful. Collins is the one who takes care of her, and Hawksley -- not surprisingly -- does not even question the privilege of having someone who just takes care of things for you, including stray burnouts you bring home from the street. Must be nice to be him.

He does ask about her. He complains about Collins's notes but he does want to know. He pays attention. Only mid-study, though. He researches circles and summits and he reads texts that are sent to him that don't tell him much of what others are planning, what others have done, but some of that is his own damn fault because he forgets to text them back and just goes back to reading. He knows that this is something he does, and often, and he knows the consequences. Still. It is what he does.

Sid and Sera are the two people he calls. Sera because he knows Sera, he has a weird and instantaneous trust in Sera, at least for some things, and Sid because Science. Sid because of the way she and Sera seemed tethered to each other even when they weren't looking at each other. Sid because something about her fucking face has him borderline obsessed and the only reason he isn't scouring his own mind to find her in his past is because:

books. He has to study.

After two full nights of sleep and some change, Hawksley at least feels competent in the world again. Not as strong as he could be, but he's not going in guns blazing. He is not going to the south suburbs with two magi, neither of whom are of greater power than he is, and he is not getting them a black van and he is not asking who they know with weapons. Certainly there is a knife somewhere on his person but he doesn't make an issue out of that, even though it isn't an athame. That thing, like the wand, is just for show. This knife could be a box-cutter, and in this part of the city, it's really not uncommon to see the metal clip on someone's pocket.

Hawksley drives the rental, some basic 5-seater with A/C and a decent stereo in simple white. He likes driving, especially on long stretches of road. He doesn't care what Sera or Sid want to listen to or talk about; he drives rather quick but he's not reckless. Right now.

He lets his senses guide him, and not his eyes or ears or even the taste of the wind. He draws himself towards the magic he sensed, the magic that will chew you up and spit you out but oh:

it will make you free.

He drives out to the cabin, but he doesn't drive straight to it. He parks a ways down the road, out of line of sight to the front door, which isn't hard or that far thanks to the trees. And kills the engine. "Everyone wearing sunblock?" he asks cheerfully, like a fucking asshole.

Sid Rhodes

Sid takes a window seat. Front, back, whichever, so long as she can sit with her knees pointed toward the door and her temple pressed to the glass. For the first mile or so she's not thinking about the odd familiarity of Hawksley's face or why she can't seem to place him. She's busy acclimating to the strange and foreign vehicle that wraps around a little too close. She's busy keeping her eyes on the road that blurs past her vision, the rain that streaks the windows, the outside that's out of her reach. It only takes a few miles for her muscles to start to relax and for her to start sitting back a little. Cars aren't so hard, particularly when they're not full to bursting, and particularly when she has a special liking for one and a reluctant sort of care for the other.

Then, once she's relaxed, she's not thinking about Hawksley's face because if she can't place his face within the last few years she's not going to search for him anymore.

After a while she even talks a little, which could be seen as some kind of motherfucking breakthrough given the way she was when Sera first met her. Afraid of touch, not wanting to talk, not able to talk, now sometimes she takes the Ecstatic's hand as a comfort to them both.

Hawksley asks about sunblock. Sid looks at him with a faint, confused frown. Of all of them, she's the one who would need protection from UV rays the most, but it's raining, so, "No."

Serafíne

Serafíne is seated in the backseat, curled up, her legs tucked under her body. Peaked and sharp and sharply aware of their surroundings. Her skinny ass looks thinner and she is so fucking hungry that she has gone beyond hunger to something else, entirely. So: a fucking smoothie from a rawbar made out of green things. It tastes like shredded leaves mixed with pear and beets and she would prefer a mudslide or a straight fifth of tequila with maaaybe a baggie of limes and she would prefer a cigarette and she would prefer fifteen cigarettes and the world's larger order of fried cheese and she would prefer not to feel so started and stretched and tenterhooked and hungry.

All this fasting, all this fucking abstinence and her resonance is darker and more presence for it, because that hunger, that want gnaws at her gut and pulls her back around and back around to the spare and heightened presence. To her reflection in the passenger's window, the damp fog of her breath on the cool glass.

She rolls down the window and braves the rain when it comes.

("How'd you find him?" is a thing she might've asked Hawksley with a faint frown twining its way between her dark, arched brows, soon as they met at his hotel, or as soon as he picked them up. It is probably not a question he answered in full because a fucking rant from a fucking Cultist with a fucking headache and a week of fucking sobriety and abstinence (five days, whatever) would have ensued. Invoking Pan and John Brogan and the blood on his shirt and the blood she cleaned up from his truck. There may have been kidney-punching, but that is harder to manage when you are all sitting in a rental car.

So maybe she'll ask later.)

Soon as they're in the car, all three of them, soon as Hawksley's briefed them on where they're going and what to expect she swallows and flashes Sid a quick smile, made spare by her fasting and abstension and tells the both of them that she's going to Work. She starts humming soon as the car is in motion, all under her breath, eyes losing focus as the rhythm matches the rhythm of her heart and the turning of the wheels and the breathing of the other fucking human beings in close to her and the drum of the raindrops on the metal roof and the wooshing roar of traffic in the rain and -

- opens everything up. Just so she can start weaving it closed again.

--

Hawksley's cheerful question earns him an eyeroll and a spare little smirk from the Cultist as she slides out of the backseat, and onto the pine-needle strewn drive. She rocks back on her heels, turning in a thoughtful arc as she takes in their surroundings, the breathing wind and driving rain.

Dressed, as she usually is, in virtually nothing, though today her nothing is more practical - her cutoffs, yes, her fucking fishnets? yes. Flat-soled Doc Marten's, though, and a Bauhaus t-shirt. Hair pulled back into a wound-under ponytail that is heavy at the nape of her neck.

"Alright. Let's go say hi."

Serafíne

[Mind shield: mind 1. Difficulty 4. -1 taking time (on the drive out)]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (4, 4) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

[Extending: +1

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (6, 7) ( success x 2 )

blues

The impending threat of a storm rustles the trees around the cabin but with all that Hawksley and Sid have experienced being around those who have taken the drug and with as much as Sera has heard no one would blame any of them if they thought the wind to come from the person inside the cabin and not from a difference in atmospheric pressure.

A short but crowded walk. Grooves worn into the dirt from frequent and past vehicle trips in and out of the place, filled in by the remnants of prior fallen pine needles. Fronds of foliage reach out as the three Awakened make the walk. Glimpses to either side reveal abandoned tires with saplings grown through them and posts protruding like broken bones from the earth and birdhouses that may or may not serve tenants.

Walls of green close in to block out the road they've left behind and the smell of soil comes up the deeper they walk. Rain-wet and fecund. Through the rustling comes the sound of a wind-chime.

Something scuttles through the underbrush. A rodent or a lizard. Birds call out to each other across the property.

At the end of the drive lurks the front porch, so draped in shade that they can just make out the shapes of wicker chairs, squat citronella pots parked in intervals along the railing. The frame and the screen of the storm door are both intact. Something else skitters beneath the porch, pebbles displaced beneath tiny feet. A single story, windows for the basement, thick dark drapes tied over the windows. A garage around to the right of the house. They must have passed the mailbox when they got out of the car for none waits here.

No lights in the place but the cabin feels as if it's holding its breath.

Hawksley Rothschild

So it's Hawksley driving and Sid either sitting back with Sera or sitting up front with him and either way it's a little awkward, or would be if Hawksley ever seemed to notice awkwardness when it happens. He rather happily ignores it, or just calls it out. But no matter: she sits where she sits.

Hawksley can't remember if either of them asked him how he found 'him'. Hawksley, then again, isn't using pronouns. If she did ask him maybe he just asked her what the hell is in that cup, it smells so weird, can he try it?

She can ask him later.

--

In the car, Hawksley feels her weaving. Her resonance is distracting, and it makes him drive slower, but he can taste her magic in the air and he doesn't ask her what she's doing. At least not until he feels the weaving of it completing, feels something settling in like a blanket snapped over a freshly made bed. But by then, he's getting out of the car. They all are. Into the rain and under the dark blue sky and the thick wet trees and near the lonesome deer.

Sid tells him, like he has no idea what is going on, that it's raining. And Hawksley pauses when he gets out of the car, looking at her, because maybe she didn't get the joke or the reference or maybe it was badly delivered or maybe she thinks he's stupid but he just looks at her, cocking his head to the side, a bemused look on his face. "Huh," is all he says, and closes the car door behind him.

Sera's out now, too. "What was that you were doing?" he asks her, as he's starting to walk towards the cabin. The wind tightens, and the house gives off a feeling they can all sense, and Hawksley can't be unaware. He isn't. He hangs back a bit to ask that question and hear its answer, but when he has the information, he just walks on ahead.

Surely whoever is inside has to know they're here. The sound of the car, the resonance of Sera's magic, the doors shutting, their voices down the path. Surely whoever is in there is not going to think any better of it if they're skulking about. Hawksley pauses a moment, and says as he looks straight at the door:

"God, I feel so rude. I didn't even call first."

And knocks.

Hawksley Rothschild

[EDIT:

Sid tells him no, giving him an odd look. And Hawksley pauses when he gets out of the car, looking at her, just looking at her oddly right back, cocking his head to the side, a bemused look on his face. "Huh," is all he says, and closes the car door behind him.]

Sid Rhodes

[Life scan! Life 1, coincidental +3]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 9) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

If Hawksley wanted a taste of that awful thing Sera's drinking, she gave him one. The strangest thing, all green, barely sweet, like liquified kale and the memory of a pear. Maybe there's nutritional yeast or something she has no idea what it is supposed to do for her in there. It's the grossest thing.

--

So, they are out of the car and approaching the darkened house. Sera tucks her hands into the pockets of her cutoffs, which would normally drag them a dangerous inch or two lower on her hips (and to be fair does so again tonight), but tonight her t-shirt actually covers most of her torso so. There's no danger, really. Long strings of shredded denim dance down her fishnet-clad thighs as she moves.

Hawksley asks her what she was doing. She gives him a sidelong glance, this quick inhale and a wry look that still has that starched quality to it. "Something that will hopefully keep him out of my head. Or at least make it harder to fuck with me."

So focused on the working was she for much of the drive that she never finished her green smoothie. So she's carrying it now, like they're just friends coming by to visit.

"You could've sent your man out," murmured, and listen, she avoids names, now, " - like a fucking herald," as they get to the porch. Glances back at Sid, then tips her smoothie up to frown at the remaining green sludge. "Maybe I should've brought an extra, just in case. I'm feeling pretty rude right now too."

Sid Rhodes

It's quiet when they get out of the car, quiet but for the gentle sound of chimes, the wind blustering through the trees, animals or some other creatures skittering around in hidden places. The atmosphere sets a chill to climbing up her spine and suddenly, when she sees that house up the drive, all she wants to do is get back in that car and curl up and hide. It's not that place, though, the one she told Jim about. And she's not alone. Swallowing hard, fighting the urge to at least wrap her arms around her upper body and curl in on herself, Sid puts on her big girl underoos, and she takes a moment to dig around in her bag for the marker that's of course gotten itself lost all the way at the bottom. When she finds it, she bites down on the cap and pulls the marker free, and then she starts drawing on the inside of her left arm. Just below the words inked into her flesh, she makes quick, black marks. A little diagram starts to take form, and as it does her resonance charges in the air around her, ecstatic, euphoric.

By the time she's done she's a little behind the others, so she hurries to catch them up at the door.

She doesn't mention the entire cast of Bambi (including all the forest creatures that didn't get speaking parts) is running around the cabin.

Hawksley and Sera are talking about calling ahead and sending heralds. Luckily (maybe?) they have a Sid to let them know what lies ahead.

"There's only one person inside. A woman." Which may be moot depending on how long it takes the woman to get to the door. If she even ever comes.

Serafíne

"Hah," is Sera's quiet exclamation when Sid clarifies that the only person inside is a woman. " - so, not Byron." Her breath streams out of her nostrils in a short huff and she clarifies and corrects her earlier statement, nearly sotto voce, to Hawksley as they wait.

"Hopefully I'll keep her out of my head."

blues

Before anyone comes to the door they can hear the dull sighing of interior floorboards beneath the weight of the approaching body within. A declaration from the shy scientist outside: the body is that of a woman. She's alone.

A drape covering one of the windows looking out onto the porch flickers but doesn't cast back to show a face or even a finger. And Sid doesn't have to open up her senses to feel when the woman performs Work of her own because she knows the flavor of it. Hawksley knows it. Sera has heard it described and she too can feel the freedom in it like the whipping of wind through one's hair on a too-fast drive down a road devoid of others. The exhilaration that comes before the crash.

Rolling silence claims the birdsong and then the furious flight of so many unseen little bodies quitting the place.

Hawksley Rothschild

The smoothie: Hawksley sips, and tastes, and then sticks out his tongue, but it's not the worst thing he's ever tasted. He hands it back to her, asks his question, she tells him its answer and he seems just delighted. What a neat thing to be able to do, he says, even though it's not the first time he's encountered such a thing. It's a practiced rote for most anyone above the basic levels in Mind. But still, it's just so neat-o.

Her idea, at the door, is that he could have sent Collins here. "He has other things to take care of," and he means Kelsey, poor Kelsey, who cannot move and cannot really speak.

--

Sid does her work, too, and Hawksley breathes in deep of the women's magic as it is gathered around him. He feels it like pillars to either side, and the way their resonances twine around each other move in his mind like vines up marble, only

it must be a flowering vine, he thinks, half-drowsily, but the thought does not last long.

Only one person, Sid says, and Hawksley looks over at her, down at her, smiling slow and lazy and true and earnest. "Thank you," he says, and not because she confirms that the maker isn't Byron because he really had no investment in that one way or the other, but because: she worked. She saw a necessity, an emptiness, saw no one else stepping forward to fill it, and then she just fucking did it. No waffling, no quailing, no requests for permission.

Hawksley is new. He's seen that she doesn't like being stared at like a mouse, but who does? He's seen that she wants to make sure she uses Pan's preferred name. And he's seen, now, that as soon as she can, she contributes. Hawksley has no idea that she's really shy, that talking to people is hard for her, any of it. All he sees are little things adding up, leading towards respect.

Then his head snaps up to attention, and he looks at the door, but his expression is calm. He hears the creaking of floorboards the way birds feel tremors in the earth through their talons when they land, telling them where the burrows of their prey are. The curtain moves but he keeps his eyes on it. And when he feels her magic he feels it keenly, deeply, in a way he didn't when he was merely looking down from on high.

Hawksley, who is always flying, soaring, as though -- Sera said it -- the earth is just a rumor he heard once, a dream. To have that. To fly.

And to crash.

He feels such a wave of sy-- no. This is empathy. This is understanding coursing through him, sorrowful as it may be, or maybe it's merely a reaction to the idea that comes into his mind, and it makes him ache for her.

Maybe that is why he speaks so clearly, but so calmly, when he answers her. "I'm sorry," he says, and this is not a lie or even a nicety, for he truly is and he could not lie to her if he wanted to. "I didn't see a sign or sense a ward. All I know is that you made something that I'm intensely curious about, and that you recently got dealt a harsh hand by the universe. I don't know if the two are related. I don't know if I can help you or if you are deserving of help, but I'd like very much to talk with you about both those things."

Then this, something so much not-a-lie, something so much a truth, that it sounds naturally like he is showing her his entire hand, and he may be:

"I just want to understand."

Sid Rhodes

Sid has her reasons for Working without thought. It's because she's scared. She's scared of strangers, and she's scared of dark small places. And she's scared of hands reaching for her, dragging her into small dark places. She Works because the last Working she felt was Sera's in the car, and that seemed to settle around the Ecstatic. So she Works because she wants to know. She wants to be prepared, if she can even hope to be prepared, for what might come out of that house.

Sid is absolutely unprepared. When that voice creeps inside her head she makes a starled sound and claps her hands over her ears, as if that might help in any way to keep that voice out. There has never been a voice inside her head that wasn't her own or the memory of someone that she once knew or met. She doesn't know this voice, she's never met this woman. Or has she?

Hawksley speaks gently to the voice. Sid relaxes little by little. Removing her hands from her ears she looks at the door, frowning. Turning her head a little so that she can watch the door, the house, Hawksley and Sera, as much as she can with directly and with her peripheral, she waits to see if there's a reply.

Serafíne

Hawksley assured her that Collins had other things to tend to, like the girl still drifting in and out of her magical, drug-induced coma in one of the rooms at the Four Seasons, barely waking and then only as directed for sustenance. A girl that Sera knew,

in some past, half-remembered life. Which sobers Sera, who is already sober, steady as a church mouse. Sobers her enough that she doesn't manage to tell him that she was joking.

--

Then, movement behind the door, the flicker of the curtain. The wind and rain beyond the porch, all in a rush. Serafíne shoots a winging glance up at Hawksley as he begins to speak, replying to something that she cannot hear, sense or feel. Her eyes are quick on his profile, not soft but aware and they cut with a sweeping movement from him to the unopened door.

"I can't hear what she's saying."

She inclines her head toward the door, canted, like an dog listening to some sort only audible to its own ears.

"Please open the door," a moment later, her plea twinning his. "I'm not armed. It's just that the Charms you made are hurting people. Trapping them in a sort of half-life, a sort of half-space - is that really what you intended?"

blues

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (2, 7, 9) ( success x 1 )

blues

Beyond the screen door stands a proper door and that proper door is new and solid. Its character and color blends in with the woods and the darkness inside of the woods. The drape flickers again if only so the woman inside the cabin can better hear them. They see her shadow now if they aim their eyes just right. No light reaches through the trees or through the shingles of the eave hung over the porch.

Neither does her voice push through Sera's shield. But for the fact that she sees the drapes move too Hawksley and Sid could be the victims of a folie à deux.

The door does not open.

Hawksley Rothschild

"She said we were trespassing," Hawksley says quietly, aside to Sera, as she leans forward to talk to the woman through the door. "And asked who we were."

He takes a deep breath, then exhales, then flicks a look at Sid as the voice renews in their minds. His gaze is imploring. "Sid --" and nods his head at Sera. Could she tell her what's being said. Could she pass it along. He isn't going to ask Sera to drop her shield.

His eyes go back to the door. "Some asshole got a hold of it and was moving it," Hawksley tells her, whoever she is. "I don't know if he knows what it really is, maybe he does, I don't know much about him. But he gave it to someone else and that someone else started moving it and selling it and now there's at least a few people in the city who've taken it who really should not have."

Hawksley pauses there, then adds: "There are a few hits out there that haven't been dropped yet. I think I found all the ones in the area. But there's no guarantee any of us can get to those people before they take it, so I want to know what we can do, if anything, if that happens."

His hand goes to the door, flattens against it. Hawksley isn't working, but even in the darkness and the rain he looks and feels like he should be flying. He looks and feels like he comes from, lives, above the clouds, where there is only endless light. "Tell me your name," he says, softer but no less clear. "And let me in. I've got a knife but I'll toss it. I'm not harmless without it. But I daresay you could stop me if you needed to."

Hawksley leans forward, bowing his head to the wood. "Let me in," he repeats.

Sid Rhodes

Hawksley looks at her, says her name and looks at her imploringly. Sid looks at Sera, then back at Hawksley, and she nods her head. Sera can't hear, then Sid will help her to hear.

"She knows," she says quietly to Sera, her hands lowering down to her sides. "She knows and she was trying to fix it." Her eyes are on the door, and her frown is sympathetic.

"I know what it's like," she says when Hawksley bows his head to the door. "Not this, but. To do something and, and fix it alone." Her gaze flicks briefly to Sera, then back to the door. "Maybe we can help you. Make it right, I mean."

Serafíne

"If it wasn't your Will that these charms tear people apart, then someone has taken your Work and perverted it," Sera cannot hear the woman and will not drop her shield. Not now, not at this moment. This resonance does not feel wrong the way Brogan's resonance felt wrong, but she remembers the slither of his mind across their mindlink with Leah, that night at the hospital so many weeks ago. Even considering the idea makes her shiver.

Makes her visibly shiver.

And yet,

A slanting glance at Hawksley as he responds to the voice in their heads, and then another to Sid, steady and considering, nodding as Sid explains what they are hearing from the woman on the other side of the door.

"Kelsey. That's the girl's name. She's in a hotel room right now, and she doesn't wake up, and she's been trapped in the echochamber of the effect for weeks, looking for someone to help her.

"And there are others, and we can find them, and we can help you fix it, but you need to let us in and tell us how. We're fucking useless otherwise.

"My name's Sera. It's Serafíne, and if you open the door and talk to us, and tell us what we can do, I'll drop my Work. I'll fucking take off all my clothes to show you I have no weapons. I'll give you this shitty green smoothie if you like shitty green smoothies or I'll dump it out if they terrify you.

"You have no idea how frightened she was. How alone, before he took her in. Let us help you help them."

blues

No rustling of the drapes this time. No thoughtful half-a-tick of movement like she might actually consider moving towards the door. The house holds its breath and the woman inside the house holds to her silence for a time. If she took a step they would hear. Seconds of stillness crawl past as they listen for it.

The wind kicks up cooler for the rain due to blow through. The wind chimes pick up their song again.

Sera is the only one who can hear as the woman moves not towards the door leading to the porch but to the door leading to the garage.

Hawksley Rothschild

In a glance, Sid understands him. See, Hawksley would argue: you're not shy at all. Hawksley would be wrong, but it wouldn't be the first time, and it wouldn't bother him any more than most of those other times. But he'd argue it with her. On occasion, the boarding schooled, Oxford-educated Hermetic likes to debate. Fucking fancy that.

--

There are three magi outside this woman's door, each one imploring her, pleading with her. We aren't going to hurt you. One of them shivers, and if Hawksley saw that he would likely glomp her up and convince her that 'cold' is a thing she dreamt up once, just a silly nightmare, shh, but he doesn't see that and so he can't misunderstand what it is.

He does glance up when Sera gives the girl's name -- then her own -- to the woman. It's a short glance, and it isn't chastising. He just notices it, the way he notices things, which is to say they grab his attention and pull him in a hungry direction. He also notices that she doesn't give the woman Sid's. Or his.

Sera starts moving, which he also notices, blinking and following her with his eyes. He hesitates, a moment only, then follows her off the porch. His voices raises to carry, wherever the woman is. "You keep trying to rewind time like that, you're going to kill yourself. And frankly, that's a rather selfish way of convincing yourself you're helping people." He's not being solicitous any longer. Maybe he's reacting to the seething he hears. Maybe he's wary now that Sera's reacting to something he can't hear or see or sense. Maybe he just really doesn't like the idea of this woman taking more Paradox onto herself trying to do the impossible.

"And frankly, madam, I'm not giving you any more information until you share some in return. Cryptic self-pity isn't cutting it."

Serafíne

[Mind 2: aura scan. Fast casting +1 -1 specialty focus. Dif: 5]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

blues

She's weary, remorseful, and angry. Seething, more like it, like the lava after it's spewed and started to cool. And powerless.

Serafíne

So: Sera hears the woman moving in the house, reacts to it without thinking. She does not know that she is the only one who understands which way the willworker on the other side of the wall is moving, or why that might be, and does not think to tell the others that she's moving.

But, Sera's attention drops from the doorway and a quiet frown courses across her features as she follows the sound of movement in the house. In the next moments she turns around and flies down the steps leading from the porch to the drive and then stops, darkling eyes flickering toward the garage door. Breath mostly withheld but she's humming once again, this is an old rhythm, but a young song, and though she is not singing aloud, with half-remembered lyrics. Even the chords - this rising progression of them - play out in the twitching of her fingertips, and just a little - more than a little - entranced as her gaze fixes forward.

"I don't think she's lying to you," when Hawksley follows her down the steps, low-voiced, a half-minute or so later. "I can't look deeply but she's tired, she's sorry. She's fucking pissed off, and thinks that there's nothing she can really do.

"I'll take a look back and see if history helps, if she doesn't come out. "But I'll need you to watch my ass, okay? I'm fucking sober. This is not going to be easy." A brief glance to Sid encompasses her, too, in this request. Then back to Hawksley. "You said you had a knife? I need it."

Sid Rhodes

Sid notices the shiver, because Sid's incredibly alert. Her body is a mass of tense, taut muscle, ready to react in an instant - not that it's easy to read beneath the baggy, oversized and faded clothes that she wears. They can see her arms, though, if they look at her at all. They can see the way her neck muscles are tightened, her mouth pursed into a straight line. She notices the shiver but she doesn't reach out to her friend, not yet. But she looks at Sera when she notices, angles her head a little toward her and tries to give her a meaningful look, but it's Sid. Who knows if it translates into what she wants it to say.

When she speaks, it's after she's recoiled from the words in her head, head craning back as her chin tucks a little. She paraphrases.

"She says there's no making it right. She tried to go back and stop it happening, but she couldn't," her eyes narrow, then relax, "couldn't rewind back enough to stop 'him.'"

Sera starts moving, then after a moment Hawksley. And after a moment more, Sid swallows. She feels the prickle of her fear, the way it tightens all of her muscles, the way it sharpens her senses.

And she turns that gaze onto the structure, seeking out - just in case - a means of quick entry to the woman on the other side.

[Locate Disorder and Weakness: Entropy 1, coincidental +3, +1 fast cast]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (3, 6) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

A sharp breath out as Sid translates, and Sera nods to the Orphan, her profile sharp and aware. "Okay, then I'll see what I can see of him in her past. At least that gives us some idea of what's going fucking on here."

blues

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 4) ( fail )

Hawksley Rothschild

Hawksley gives an acute nod to Sera at the information she's relaying. He looks more like a falcon, more like his name, when he is so damn serious like this, so intent. It comes out of him in these moments, when the shape and face of his avatar is so close to the surface he almost embodies it. them. him. whatever.

And then she says he should watch her ass and he wants to laugh, but he doesn't. The knife is coming out of his pocket, handed over to her. It's basic. She can fold it out with a flick, lock it. And Hawksley gives it to her without a question. He turns to look over at Sid, feeling desperation and euphoria in the air at once, and he breathes in. They're both Working.

Truth be told, he may very well be more of a threat to that woman than either of them, and he still knows that she could swat him about like a kitten with a ball of yarn, more than likely. He does not delve into his own magic. Not right now. Not when both Sid and Sera are reaching out with their senses, swimming in the ecstasy of their will.

blues

When she throws back the dead bolt and passes through the door leading from the house to the garage she is cloaked in shadow and the first thing they can see are her empty hands. She does not hold them palm out to show that she is unarmed. She is a Disciple of Time and Correspondence and Mind magic. She is never truly unarmed and she does not wish to assure them of that. They can read that in the straightness of her shoulders and the bold but slow steps she takes.

The garage houses no vehicle, not even a bicycle, so her approach is unblocked. Miscellaneous objects that go to make up the contents of a person's legacy after their passing clutter the corners and the shelves though the floor is clean. It could fit no more than one small vehicle.

Persistent if gray light show her bare feet first and then her bare shins and knees, the hem of her hot pink pleated tank dress truncating more than four inches above her knees. Bracelets hang about her wrists. She is in her thirties somewhere, perhaps even her late twenties. Her hair is a pale yellow and her eyes flash fierce the closer she gets. Her skin is the sort of pale that leads to jokes about sunshine allergies.

The thick red-purple mark across her throat so fresh as to be called a healing wound and not yet a scar would have stood out even were her skin dark but lightly complected as she is it all but screams at them.

She takes in the interlopers with her eyebrows lifted. Blows out a breath. Narrows her eyes.

Hawksley Rothschild

Sera sees Hawksley just roll his eyes at one point. Sid, privy to the woman's communications, knows it comes right after her insistence that they have nothing she wants, even information. Nevermind that she was asking him about information not thirty seconds ago. He huffs an annoyed breath out, another outward sign that Sera can see without knowing its source or motive.

The door opens, and he takes a step forward, and stops. It puts him only a few inches more between the woman and the other two will-workers, but he doesn't advance on her. That would be pretty dumb, he thinks. He exhales.

"You told us we were trespassing," he says levelly. "You never told us to leave."

His eyes flick to her hands, and he shakes his head once. "We came to learn, and we offered to help. I don't speak for those with me, but I know I can't force you to give me the former, and I'm under no obligation to try and force you to accept the latter."

With an incline of his shoulders and his head. "I will remain until my friends here are ready to go, since... I'm their ride," and at that he loses a touch of his formality, which fits him like a white glove despite everything else about him, "but as for me, I've no wish to continue wasting your time."

Serafíne

The door opens; Sera's standing back now, with the knife in her hand. She flicks it open with a certain degree of care, her eyes flashing up to the door as it begins to open. Releasing the first effect with an exhaled breath, glances at Hawksley briefly enough to catch the roll of his eyes, and starts to work.

Carving her own skin with the knife. First drawing the blade across her palm, enough that she begins to bleed, enough that the pain jolts her awareness bright, and brighter, pushing her all-too-sober consciousness outward and upward. She usually needs to be stoned. She usually needs to be tripping, that's how time works for her, they pull her back into the eternal flow but now, see: from bleeding palm to forearm, gritting her teeth to keep carving, to let the pain open her mind not like a whisper, but like a seeking fucking sunburst. Like a nuclear bomb.

Serafíne

WP roll for: the pain focus since ugh.

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

[Time 2 / Prime 1 - Divining / Watching the Weaving. Dif: 5 + 1 (fast casting) -2 (merit)]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (1, 5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Sid Rhodes

Sid's cast to seek out weaknesses in the structure falls away as soon as the woman steps out into the garage. She frowns when the woman describes a future where everyone's Awakened, but she does her best to relay the information to Sera.

"We don't have anything she wants," she sounds confused. She'd heard the woman asking for information not a few seconds earlier. A glance at Hawksley catches that eyeroll and the corners of her mouth, well they don't exactly lift up in a radiant smile, but the firm lines softens, like maybe she wants to smile but stress and fear keep her lips from making that expression.

"If we want to know more we have to find someone named Stav. Do you," this to the woman, "have anything that can help us find him?

"He got hooked on the stuff," she continues to Sera. And she lets her know the rest, about how the man wants to make everyone Awakened with the PCP, the doses missing from other batches."

She stops then, takes a breath and sets her shoulders because it's about that time Sera starts carving up her skin and it's all Sid can do to keep from yanking the blade away. Sera said this would be hard for her, being sober and all. Sid agreed to watch her back.

blues

The woman looks between the three of them a last time and they know from the steeliness in it that it is the last time.

But Sid gets the most of her attention when she asks if she has anything that can help them find the person offloading the drugs. The woman crosses her arms over her midriff and cants her head. Considers. Then she reconsiders, huffs out a breath that could be a dozen things, more, but for the fact that Sera knows what color all of her surface emotions meld together to make.

The woman shakes her head at Sid, so slight as to almost escape notice, then turns around and walks back into the house. She shuts the door behind her, and locks it.

She doesn't come out again. They can feel her inside, and skim for her thoughts or her fate or her past, feel her heart keep beating if they'd like to, but they cannot convince her to speak to them again this afternoon.

In time the birds return. Their song is slow to follow them.

Serafíne

[Time 2 / Prime 1 Dif: 5 +1 fast cast +1 extending -2 merit -1 quint]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 4) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Serafíne

[Time 2/ Prime 1 blah blah blah Dif 5 Extending]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (3, 9) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

[ALL THAT STUFF AGAINS JUST BECAUSE EXTENDING. ]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (2, 5) ( success x 1 )

Sid Rhodes

Sid asks for more information, and she watches warily while the woman considers. Then, when she gives that almost imperceptible shake of her head, something changes in the shy Orphan. Tension of a different cast fizzles through her tallish frame. Her frown deepens, but it's not worry that darkens her eyes. It's not wariness. It's irritation. It's bordering on anger. These are the feelings that have been welling up inside her recently, usually on behalf of her friends. They're the reason she lashed out at the man who spat at her friend for no reason.

And she'd do it again, too, she's so suddenly done with this woman's contrarian nature. Sid would reach out, grab the little threads of fate that weave and wend around the woman and she'd twist them just so. She would ruin the rest of her goddamn day. Except...it looks like she's already had a pretty rough go of it, and after all, Sid is merely annoyed.

She lets out a short breath, a huff through her nose, and she turns abruptly to go back to the car, stopping only because Sera is still there and she's not leaving without Sera.

And Sera is bleeding. Just like that the annoyance is gone in a flash.

Sid's bottom lip disappears between her teeth, and she looks over at Hawksley.

"Is there a first aid kit in the car?"

Hawksley Rothschild

When Sera asked him for his knife, and told him that this would be difficult, and told him to watch her back, Hawksley handed it over with an immediacy that suggested he had no idea what she intended to do and a steadiness that suggested that maybe,

maybe he did.

Bloodletting is not unheard of in Hermetic circles, but it is not common and usually only seen amongst dwindling Crafts and half-gone, mostly-forgotten Houses that don't even have names anymore. Among the best and boldest and brightest, it's really seen as gauche and perhaps even a little too close to the infernal magics that get certain Houses wiped out for diabolism. Nasty business.

Sid and Sera might not know that, though. They came to his door and his hand was bandaged -- is, in fact, still healing, but it was a small nick on the meat of his hand to get the blood he needed for his study. Perhaps it should be no small wonder that he doesn't so much as blink when Sera takes the knife into her own skin. He doesn't know if it's the blood or the pain or the act of opening that which normally is closed except by injury -- in this case, her skin. He doesn't need to know, in order to believe it as she does her work. He remains where he is, between bottle-blonde and natural redhead and whoever this lady in pink is, watching her because if he needs to watch anyone's back, he has to watch this woman's face.

One more question from the scientist. One more denial from the maker.

Hawksley exhales audibly when the woman walks away, and he waits a few moments, then turns around. Sera is not on this plane of existence. Or at least: she's not with them right now. She is looking at, and seeing, other things that he has never learned to see except in books and hearing in other people's memories. She has not dropped the knife, but he takes it from her hand, wipes it on a handkerchief pulled from his pocket, folds it, and puts it away.

"We're going to take you back to the city," Hawksley says quietly, and does not use her name. Any of her names. That might stir her. But he looks at Sid, another request, only the latest of many he's laid upon her, and right now he doesn't doubt that she'll help him walk Sera back to the car, and get her in the back seat, and draw the strap of the seatbelt around her, clicking it closed. Sid has asked him if there's a first aid kit and he has said he doesn't know but they look and lo: there is a white box with a red cross on it in the trunk. It's basic, but it has gauze and alcohol in it, and Hawksley doesn't even try to help with this part.

"She'll be okay. It wasn't a deep cut," he does say to Sid, as they're settling Sera and as Sid is going through the contents of the kit. His voice is pitched low. His eyes are earnest, because they nearly always are. "She knew what she was doing and she willed it."

He doesn't say 'chose'. They are willworkers. Reality is what they will it to be. Sera willed this, and in a way so did Hawksley: the knife in his pocket, the knife in her hand, the knife on her palm, the blood on his handkerchief. He doesn't really know Sid, though. He gets in the front seat. This time he drives even more carefully.