Gideon Ayers (shallmovehell) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-03-03 12:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | acheron hades, violet harmon |
Who: Hannah and Gideon
What: A second meeting, and some revelations.
Where: The temporary Cassilda office
When: The morning of the 25th
Warnings/Rating: None
With the advent of the hotel behind him but not entirely comfortable regardless, Gideon was staring blankly at a file open on his computer as the clock ticked toward ten that morning. Visiting the hotel in broad daylight had rankled something in him, but there had been nothing strange waiting for him there … if by strange he meant dangerous. It had been empty. But, then again, there’d been food in the kitchen when he looked, and alcohol stacked neatly behind the bar. What dust there was didn’t look very much disturbed. He doubted that the various other people who’d been there the night prior were the ones to supply the place, given how many seemed incredulous and not nearly wealthy enough. So who and how, he wondered?
But the strangest thing had been the door. He hadn’t gone very far and wasn’t intending any full exploration before he’d been brought to a halt in front of a simple door, made of wood and painted blue. It wasn’t familiar, per se, but when he tried his key in the lock, it fit. On the other side … the other side was strikingly normal, leading through a small hallway to a sunlit place beyond. It looked for all the world like a perfectly normal small town.
Most of him was unimpressed; the rest had been derisive and even angry. He couldn’t explain the anger. Given the way people had spoken about voices and personalities in their heads both before and after, Gideon started to wonder if he was either insane … or if there was someone else in him, waiting to be addressed, ready to strike out the moment he let down his guard. Luckily, he very rarely did.
The sudden reminder that Hannah was coming did catch him very slightly off-guard, and he almost sighed, shutting his laptop with a snap. It would likely be easier for her to fill out the proper hiring forms by hand, and in any case that would resonate better with the people he wanted her to work for. They liked quiet, studious, hardworking people, and no doubt they wouldn’t guess that such a quiet, withdrawn girl was sent at his personal request. She didn’t know his ulterior motives at hand, either, and he intended to keep it that way, but Gideon was, as ever, prepared to lie the moment he had to.
He took a moment to straighten his tie before she arrived. Regardless of how he felt, he had to maintain a high level of professionalism.
It was every bit Hannah that showed up at Cassilda for her appointment, and Violet was nowhere to be seen. She’d had plenty of trouble getting out of the apartment, seeing as she’d been caught sneaking in the window after visiting the hotel just days before. She was doing hard penance, which involved a whole lot of flogging and wearing an itchy shift near her skin, beneath her clothes. Her knees were red from kneeling all day long, and she’d been near fasting since she’d gotten caught. It was the devil made her do it, the priest had said, and they’d written it all down as further proof of her possession.
She’d been quiet as a clam since then, not wanting to draw any attention that kept her from going on this job interview. She was starting to see the job as salvation, even if she was planning on lying to everyone about what it was. She was hoping, maybe, that Mr. Ayers would help her with that. He seemed plenty nice, and she was counting on that holding out. Her stepmomma had always said men weren’t worth trusting if they weren’t of their faith, but Hannah was having trouble keeping with all the teachings now that she was away from home.
She waited while the secretary went to announce her, and she smoothed her braid and made sure it was real neat and tidy. She was dressed in a skirt to her ankles, gray, with a prim collar to her throat that was edged in white scallops. She thought she looked like a maid from some old time movie, and she was young enough to think there might be some kind of romance in that image. It didn’t come with scrubbing floors and being poor as dirt, the image. It came with the rich owner of the house falling so hard in love with her that he couldn’t see right. She liked that image.
She wandered around the waiting area for Cassilda, her black Mary Janes shined and polished, and she tugged on the cross that hung around her neck, working real hard not to itch where the scratchy shift rested against her collarbone.
Though the office was technically temporary, it certainly didn’t look it (unless you had a very careful eye). It lacked any touches of personalization, it looked highly professional, and any wear and tear had been there before the company’s arrival, though most of it had been neatly covered up by desks or other furniture. Gideon’s secretary, who had flown in from the L.A. branch at his request, had her doubts about the location, but rarely voiced them. She also had her doubts about the dully-dressed girl sitting in one of the office chairs, but that she never said. Gideon could tell, though.
The secretary ushered Hannah into Gideon’s office politely, closing the door behind her when she left. Gideon gave Hannah a brief smile and gestured to the chair across from his desk.
“Ms. Montgomery. Please, have a seat.” He pulled up the paperwork and shuffled it into a neat pile. “How have you been?” As far as his appearance was concerned, there had never been a hotel, or a strange train of thought in his head. Everything was businesslike. Every single thing.
Mostly.
The south was back in her voice, like it had been when she’d first spoken to him, as was the demure homegrown girl with too much trust in her eyes. There was no sitting on the arm of the chair, no spreading of her thighs, and nothing like knowledge in her demeanor. She took a seat across from his desk, settling her skirts around her with nervous over-care, and then she looked at him with all that impossible faith staring back at him. “I’ve been good,” she lied, and she was terrible at lying. It wasn’t even the hotel weighing on her; it was the apartment, and the scratchy shift, and the marks on her back. And that exorcism was looming. This was an escape plan, and there wasn’t any way around it. Maybe it was the demon causing it, but it was what it was, and she was determined to get this job and keep it.
She scooted a little further forward in the chair, until she was almost on the edge, her hands clasped demurely in her lap. “I’ll do anything you need, Mr. Ayers, if I can have this job,” she said, and it came out like begging.
Externally, Gideon was as casual and likable as ever; internally, he was thinking this is a change yet again. Last time they’d met, she’d been all confidence and sharpness; now she was the same girl he’d spoken to on the phone twice before, soft and withdrawn but altogether earnest. A fleeting thought in his mind suggested that maybe she had been so-called-blessed by the hotel, as well, living with someone whispering in her mind … or stronger than whispering. He brushed off the thought, but it lingered.
“I appreciate your enthusiasm. Don’t worry, what I need isn’t much. These companies are just ones I have an interest in, and to be able to have a better connection to them via hiring procedures is always an advantage for me.” Gideon checked to make sure all the papers were there before turning them around and setting them on Hannah’s side of the desk. “And I hope that it’ll be to your advantage, too. If any problems arise, just call me, and I’ll see to it that they’re worked out.” He passed her a pen. “These are the applications you’ll have to fill out. Since you haven’t done much solid work before, just leave the previous employment sections blank. Once you’re done, we can get the questionnaires out of the way … would you like something to drink?”
She didn’t remember her last meeting with him, but it wasn’t the first time she couldn’t remember things real clear. Her stepmomma had said it was the devil riding her, and Hannah hadn’t ever mentioned it again. It sounded real scary when her stepmomma said it that way. She wasn’t sure what she would have done if he said what he needed her to do something that was bad, but he didn’t, and she smiled one of those pure, trusting smiles at him. “Anything that pays real money will be to my advantage,” she told him honestly, taking the pen when he handed it over and tipping the back legs of the chair off the floor as she leaned forward to begin filling out the applications. She looked up when he offered her a drink, and she nodded. “It’s warm out. It wasn’t like this back home, where there was a breeze off the water all the time,” she told him. She itched at her collarbone, where the itchy shift was pressing too hard against her skin, and she reminded herself it was meant to be uncomfortable; penance always was.
Gideon stood up and made his way to the office door, opening it briefly to ask the secretary to bring in water and coffee (the former for her, the latter for him). He went back to his seat and pulled out the questionnaires that she would have to finish up, after she’d gotten through the application; ideally, it wouldn’t take long, and he was intending to help her out with it, which was unusual for him. But …
She seemed trusting. Even in their previous meeting, where she had been angry and edgy, she hadn’t seemed suspicious of him, or at least not overtly so. Now she had given him a look that was absolute trust, and when they’d spoken before, she’d told him he was the only person she’d come to trust in the city. If her life has been as sheltered as he imagined it had been, then it wasn’t really surprising that she trusted someone who offered her a helping hand. Above all the possible church figures, who probably saw her as … well, he didn’t know, a faithful young woman, he supposed, he had taken an interest in her. If she continued to trust him, and he continued to give her no reason to distrust him, then it was entirely possible that she could be an incredible asset … whether she knew it or not.
He blinked, clearing his thoughts, but before he could try and figure everything out again his secretary stepped politely into the room and put down the drinks in front of them.
“Thank you,” he said to her, and then, turning back to Hannah, “The ocean is a very pleasant place to live, I’ve found. Unfortunately the weather will only get worse around here as summer approaches.” Gideon picked up the coffee and took a sip, carefully rearranging his expression to be perfectly casual.
She took a sip of the water, and she nodded. “That’s why I want to make sure I have an inside job before then. Right now, I’m standing out on the street corners handing out fliers for the church, and it’s hot, and the people are real frightening, and I don’t get paid.” Some of it was repetition, but she didn’t know that, since she didn’t remember. “Have you lived here long?” she asked, breaking rules about not being personal on interviews, but not aware of the social niceties that came along with job hunting.
She pushed the application across the desk once she was done and, as expected, it was blank in all kinds of places. Her high school was filled in, but there were no jobs, no references, no contact numbers for anyone at all, no skills, no driver’s licence and no car information. She’d lied and checked the graduated box, but she didn’t even have a real high school diploma. There was a certificate of completion with her name on it back in North Carolina, but there wasn’t anything more than that.
She ran her fingers over the white paper of the application, her fingertips pressing against the pen indents. “I know I don’t have much experience in anything, but I can pick things up real quick,” she assured him, in case he was having second thoughts after seeing how inexperienced at life she looked on paper. It didn’t occur to her that some folks might take advantage of her desperation or her trustworthiness, and she sure didn’t think he would.
Her application was as empty as expected, but that didn’t deter Gideon - he’d dealt with worse, and since Hannah did seem by all rights to be willing to learn, there wasn’t a problem. He’d put in the appropriate ‘not applicable’s later. For now, he arranged the quick interview sheets - personality tests that so many places seemed to require these days - in front of him and picked up a pen of his own.
“That’s always good to hear,” he said in response to her willingness to learn new skills. “This is a recent move for me. A change of pace, mostly.” As if he would ever mention the advent of the notebook, the key, and the hotel. “You’re here mostly to do work for the church, I take it.” Whatever other reason she would have moved from her home to Vegas, of all places, he couldn’t really imagine. More likely than not this was some sort of test by the church for her. Or she needed to do … rather more stringent penance? Gideon wasn’t religious and never had been. What little he knew about the inner workings of any particular church had come from what he could glean from other people and a quick scan or two online.
She was real terrible at hiding things going on in her head, and she shifted her gaze down guiltily and scratched at her collarbone. “I’m not sure I should tell you why I’m here,” she confided. “You might not want to help me if I say, even if it won’t affect none of the work I do. I swear. You have my word, and I don’t lie.” Or, rather, she didn’t lie well. She’d been doing a fair share of lying lately, especially when she called her stepmomma and daddy back home. She looked back at him, but she was even worse at lying to someone’s face than she was at lying in general, and it showed all over her features. She wanted to trust him, to tell him everything, and her face said as much. She needed him to promise not to take this opportunity away, though, she knew, or the demon in her mind would have a fit.
Gideon watched Hannah closely when her response was so hesitant. So, she was here for some other reason than simply church affairs, and it probably wasn’t good if she was this concerned about it. But what kind of trouble could she be in? He’d found jobs for ex-cons, sex offenders, people with frequent explosive rages, and the terminally stupid. There was almost nothing she could say to him to make him rescind his offers, unless she admitted to trying to be undercover to infiltrate him, which didn’t seem likely.
She wanted to say something, that much he could tell from the pain and wariness in her face. And so he leaned forward, hands folded on the desk, and looked Hannah in the eyes, his expression one of concern.
“Ms. Montgomery,” he said, and his voice was as calm and accepting as it could be, “whatever reason you’re here, no matter how bad you might think it is, isn’t going to stop me from helping you. I know for a fact that you haven’t committed any crimes or done anything that would keep you from finding a career. Why you’re here isn’t something an employer has to know.” Technically, he didn’t have to know it either, but he didn’t mention that. To some extent he did want to know why she had moved from such a calm town to Las Vegas, which clearly didn’t suit her. Now he started to wonder if it had been her choice at all.
She’d only talked to John about her demon, and she’d only just mentioned the exorcism to him, but she was pretty sure he didn’t know a whole lot about what any of it meant. He was smarter, Mr. Ayers, and maybe he could give her some good advice. She didn’t have to tell him about the hotel, not exactly. She could hint around it, maybe, and do just as well.
She took a real deep breath, and she tugged her chair closer to the front of his desk, where she could whisper and still have him hear her across the flat surface. “I’m here for an exorcism,” she told him. “My parents think I’m possessed of a demon,” she said, all earnest seriousness. “I don’t think I am, but that’s why I’m staying where I’m staying. See, I was studying to be a nun before it all happened, the demon business. They got a boy locked up in a basement waiting on one, and I just want to have some money set aside in case they think I got to be all locked away too.”
She waited for his reaction, fingers clutched so tightly in her lap that they went white-pale from lack of circulation.
It took a lot of concentration not to snort with laughter when Hannah said she was in Vegas for an exorcism, of all things, but Gideon had a lot of experience in keeping himself perfectly under control. He didn’t so much as twitch when she spoke, though something else in the back of his mind - something with less control than him - practically howled with laughter at the mention. An exorcism!, it seemed to say, how pointlessly quaint!
But she was smart enough to know that it wasn’t something to just go along with, if she was setting aside an emergency fund if she needed to bolt. It was clear enough that she honestly wanted and needed help, and if he could provide it, he’d have the full trust of a young woman who didn’t know him, or his methods, or anything else except that he helped keep her from a fate that wasn’t at all pleasant.
Now … how to respond without offending her sense of religion?
“That’s a very sensible action,” Gideon said, “and considering the seriousness of the circumstances, I believe you should start building that fund as soon as possible. I can’t say I’m very religious, but even to me, an exorcism seems … excessive. You seem like a perfectly normal, intelligent young woman to me.”
Possessed, was she? The memory of their last meeting flickered in his mind. That Hannah had been rough, angry, and straightforward, but certainly nothing like a demon. A fleeting, uncomfortable thought nudged at his consciousness, but right now he had other things to focus on.
She didn’t even know she was holding her breath until she was done doing it. When he didn’t laugh or call the police on her, she relaxed some, and by the time he said it was a “sensible course of action” she was full-on smiling at him, hero-worship all over her features. “I think so too,” she said about it being excessive. “They tried to do one when I was home, but it was real small, and nothing sanctioned by the church, but I thought I was going to die on account of not getting to eat or drink for spells at a time.” She was scared of that, of whatever was stronger than what her parents had already done, and that boy all locked up hadn’t made her feel any better.
“I hear this girl in my head,” she admitted, because now she trusted this man with near all her biggest secrets. “My stepmomma said she was a demon, but she doesn’t seem like she wants to do demonic things. My stepmomma says that’s how demons work, they make you like and trust them, and then they do bad things.” She didn’t add that she hadn’t done many bad things in her life, because she had a feeling that was real, real obvious.
I hear this girl in my head …
Internally, Gideon thought: and sometimes I hear a voice nudging me toward pointless crimes, flashy ones, for no good reason other than because I can, and right now that voice is laughing at you, at your naivety and your trusting nature, and some part of me that’s still me agrees with it. Now the nudging thought became something to consider, and he watched Hannah for a few moments too long before setting down his pen and glancing, just once, toward the window.
“Ms. Montgomery, I apologize if this is out of line, or if it doesn’t make any sense,” he said, very carefully in case he was completely off the mark, “but have you ever been to a hotel called the Passages?”
It wasn’t a very good shot, but he knew he wasn’t the only one to have gotten pulled to Vegas for this reason. Hearing a voice in her head could mean that she was just as unlucky as he was.
She wasn’t expecting that question, and it showed on her face. She nodded quickly, repeatedly, before even managing to find her voice. This was just like running into John. Finding other folks who knew about the hotel, it made her more certain in her conviction that she didn’t have the devil riding around inside her. “You know about it too?” she asked of the hotel, almost tipping the seat forward with her eager scoot closer to the edge of his desk. “I went there the other night, and I opened a door, but I couldn’t go inside,” she said, eyes wide and interest piqued.
In her mind, Violet was sure this man wasn’t as nice as Hannah thought he was, but she kept that to herself. Much like her infatuation with Tate, Violet liked darkness in people; she liked it a little too much.
Hannah tugged her braid over her shoulder, and she pulled on the end as she continued. “I met someone else there too, like me. I guess we could all have demons, and it might be the coming of the Antichrist or preparation for some takeover, on account of there being so many of us, but doesn’t that seem unlikely?” His word, her expression said, would be law.
“I don’t think we’re all possessed.” Given how many names he’d seen appear on the journal since it’s arrival, Gideon didn’t think that demons acted en masse - or gave their possessees a way to communicate with each other. “It wouldn’t … really work out, I think.” He kept himself from saying that it didn’t make sense. As far as she was concerned, it did make sense, didn’t it?
So, she was just as much a victim of fate as he was. That made matters a little more clear, but that still left plenty of questions. At least now they had a very strong connection that he could likely use. This way, he would be able to keep an eye on her and reach her at any time, especially given that she didn’t have a personal phone number. Above all, this was an interesting development. Who was she, and what door was hers? Would the whispering voice at the back of his mind wind up knowing her? There were only a few ways to find out, and all of them involved going through the damned door himself.
“I couldn’t go through the door I found, either.” Gideon looked down at the personality test without seeing it. “If nothing else, now we have an easy way to keep in contact. I assume you still have your journal, of course.” He looked back up at her, still accepting, still interested, but internally he was roiling. Complications on complications … how swiftly things could change.
She nodded. “I have it,” she said of the journal. She didn’t have it with her, but she did have it. It was tucked beneath the boring white panties in her one drawer in the apartment, and she only wrote in it in the middle of the night, when no one was likely to see, or while hiding in the bathroom with the water running loud as she could make it. “I don’t check it much, though. They’ll take it away if they see,” she said with certainty.
His assurance that they weren’t possessed made her feel so much less worried about everything, and she felt all sorts of better knowing she had two people in Las Vegas that were going through the same thing as her. She paused thoughtfully. “What’s he like, whoever’s in your head?” she asked, curiosity winning out over politeness yet again. “The only other person I’ve talked to that had someone in their head, he doesn’t say too much about the boy he’s got in his mind.”
His mention of the door made her look down at her hands, and when she looked up it was a new braveness. “I’m going once I get out of here, to see if I can walk through. I can let you know after. Or maybe have her contact you once I’m there, if I can. I seen other folks do that.”
That was a question Gideon wasn’t entirely keen on answering. What little he’d been able to glean over the past week or so hadn’t been pleasant, and the things he’d felt in the month or two prior hadn’t helped matters any. If he had been truthful, he would have said as far as I can tell, he’s a worse monster than I am, and believe me, in some aspects, that’s hard to top. But saying that to Hannah would turn her away from him, and at some speed. Lucky for him that he wasn’t much for truth when it didn’t suit him.
“I haven’t really heard much from him, unfortunately.” There was a moment of disdain in the back of his skull. “If he has an agenda, I haven’t heard anything of it. Sometimes there are influences, but nothing terribly strong.” He didn’t say what kind of influences. He didn’t need to. If she asked, he would lie, dreadful as ever. “Whichever method you choose, I’ll most likely be able to respond when you ask for me. I don’t intend to go through my door any time soon.” There was just too much to do, and despite the low grumble of irritation he felt, even that force could understand the importance of business.
She didn’t question his not knowing a whole lot, and she didn’t think (not for a minute) that he was being dishonest with her. “I’ll reach out,” she promised, meaning it to her core. This shared thing, it made her trust him even more than she had when she walked into his office. She smiled a bright smile at him, one that was all hope and bright things, and she nodded toward the papers he was still holding. “We better fill those out? I’m keeping you from more important things than me, and I want to try that hotel before they send out the choir hunting for me.” She was nervous, which was evident, but determined, especially now that she’d talked to him about it.
For a moment, Gideon was silent; then, at her mention, he glanced back down at the papers and everything clicked back into place, efficient and business-oriented as ever. He picked the pen back up and gave Hannah another fleeting smile that seemed out of place if it lingered too long, stopping by only to make sure the muscles hadn’t atrophied completely before departing.
“Every client is important to me,” he said. “But I don’t want to get you into any trouble. This is just a basic personality evaluation, one that many companies have their potential employees take these days to see if they’re suited to the field. Answer as best you can, and don’t worry about something sounding wrong. It’s just designed to get a general gist.” He resettled the papers, checked the first few questions, and began.