WHO: Holland Vosijk and Charlotte Wells WHAT: Holland takes a room in Mrs. Quigley's house in exchange for agreeing to protect it. WHEN: Saturday, after Charlotte's intro on the network WHERE: Mrs. Quigley's home WARNINGS: it's pretty tame tbh.
The luxury of sleeping outside was starting to wear off. Some of Holland’s friends among the homeless had taken him to the homeless shelters, and he had slept there more comfortably, but it was less appealing to have so many people around him. He could have arranged housing through the military, but was not particularly keen on letting them know where he was. Not that he had any real reason to hide from them, but he suspected someone was keeping tabs.
So, when the woman had arrived from a time not unlike his, with multiple rooms to offer and an interest in exchanging them for protection rather than money, Holland thought it at least worth investigating. He put the address into the map in his phone, and walked there.
The house was a large brick one, quite solid, and looked much like something that he might have found in the non-magical London that had been in a country called England, in the world that Kell had called Grey London.
Holland approached the door. He was already a tall and slightly imposing figure, with his one all-black eye, albeit dressed in plain grey clothes. He considered allowing his magic to be sensed, in case Miss Wells was the type to sense it, but it was likely that she wasn’t, given the type of world she seemed to have come from. Therefore it would only send up a beacon for someone like Kell, who might panic, so he didn’t. Instead, he pulled some air to swirl around him in a gentle wind, making his clothes billow gently, cooling the temperature around him in comparison to the Texas heat. That would surely be something she could notice, even if she had no sensitivity to magic whatsoever.
Then he lifted his hand, and knocked.
--
Mr. Holland was a strange relief indeed. It was a wonder that the combination of heat and tightly drawn layers of clothing had not caused Miss Wells to pass out. The dress she wore was more French than British, in a pleasing teal color with elegant ruffles down the front. Her hair was not done up, but pinned into a sort of bob that made it easier to deal with when it needed to be washed, styled or kept carefully under an extravagant wig.
“Mr. Holland, please come in.” Her voice was pleasing but unrefined, like whiskey poured over gravel. She could be polite, as she had been to attract as many interested friends as she knew how to over the network, but she was by no means born into upper society. It was part of her charm, she played it up.
“I trust you found the place easily enough.”
--
Holland accepted the invitation, and took a step inside. He brought the air in with him, but let it settle somewhat so as to avoid causing any damage to the nice things in the house, moving just enough to keep them both cool.
“I did,” he said. “And you may just call me Holland.”
He, too, was not at all noble, but he was used to moving between the palaces of kings and queens, and could perform the niceties if required. She had already said she was not a lady, so he did not use that term again. He was, frankly, a little relieved that she was not actually nobility; he did not have a good history with royals. He decided to skip to the point, or rather, to pick up their conversation where they had left off.
“I am an Antari, which is a word from my own world, not this one. It refers to a blood magician -- magic that runs in my blood, not that of others. I have a command over the elements --” he made a small gesture with his hand, carefully making the air billow around them again -- “Including air, water, earth, fire, and bone. And then there are the blood spells, which I do not use unless they are necessary.”
--
“Some of that might as well have been in Greek,” Charlotte admitted. Her expression was pleasant and she stayed close in his space. Not just because it was cooler with the breeze being near, but because she knew how to keep men on edge, and she wanted a measure of him. If he was noble or lecherous or something else entirely. She watched for his eyes, to see where they went and what interested him most.
“I believe you promised me a demonstration. How am I to know if this magic of yours is truly capable of protecting this house and those who come to call or conduct business in it?”
Charlotte did not bother asking about her own safety. She didn’t know enough to know if there was any way to tell, if there would be anything she could do to defend herself against his spells. She had only her polite hospitality to offer him.
--
Her closeness neither bothered Holland nor tempted him. He had learned to be incredibly quick, and it would only take the blink of an eye to freeze her in place if she attempted to hurt him. He watched her with the same impassively calm expression that was always his default, his gaze direct and unfaltering. He wasn’t purposefully trying to make her uncomfortable, but neither was he going to back away, and if she insisted on being in his personal space, he was going to keep both of his eyes on her.
“Are you most interested in the warding, or in my own skills in… ridding the house of threats?” he asked. “And is there any particular danger that you are most concerned about?”
--
He didn’t strike her as a lord, just as he said, he was no sir. Nor did he leer at her. If anything he seemed overly serious and sullen. A servant at some great house, perhaps. It didn’t make him more trustworthy, if anything it made his motivations more difficult to discern. She would have to be careful with this one.
“I’ve only just got here. What should I be most concerned about, Holland? You’ve been here longer than I have. Are these not all great feats a magician such as yourself is capable of?”
She hadn’t meant to smile, but couldn’t help it. Charlotte adjusted to Tumbleweed because she had no choice. She had to adapt or wither away under the electric lights, and Charlotte never withered. Still, the idea of magic sounded mad and she wasn’t entirely convinced of his worth just yet.
--
“Well,” Holland said, “I have not been here quite long enough to know what sort of supernatural events to expect, though I am told they are likely to come. However…” He shrugged. “In the event of an intruder, magical or supernatural or otherwise, I can turn anything in this house into a potential weapon against it. Everything around us is made of air or earth.”
He considered his options for demonstrating this for a moment, and then continued, “Imagine, for example, that I am an unwelcome visitor.”
He lifted one hand in front of him, palm up, and curled his fingers in towards himself, as if beckoning her closer, but the gesture instead called the air into a much more forceful gale, pressing his own body back against the door that he’d just walked through. In the next breath, he used just his willpower -- more than he should have needed, but Holland had grown accustomed to that by now -- to call on the metal of the candleholders and the ceramic of the vases, and pulled them towards him in the air. His will focused on the candleholders, twisting and sharpening the ends of the metal into sharp points. They arrayed themselves in front of him, pointing at his chest and throat in a way that suggested doing quite a bit of painful, if not fatal, damage.
He held it all in place just for a few beats for dramatic effect, and then he relaxed against the wall, and with a dismissive gesture, sent the candleholders and vases back to their places. He bent the metal of the candleholders back into their original shapes.
“That is one way I might deal with them,” he said. “Alternatively, I could use the walls and floor themselves as restraints…” He pressed his fingertips to the wall, felt the wood beneath it, and pulled on it gently, enough to make a visible bump without cracking the paint, and then pressed it back into place. “Or I could simply hold their bones in place with my will, but I would have to demonstrate that on you, for lack of any other options at the moment.”
--
Charlotte did not think, after seeing the way the metal of the candle holders bent, that she wanted him to demonstrate his bone magic on her. She did clap and smile with a small curtsy, as though he’d just revealed an excellent hand at cards or made a good shot on a hunting trip.
“Well done, Holland. Well done. Let me give you a tour of your new home.”
Charlotte sidled up to Holland’s side, slipping her arm into his, making it look as though he were the gentleman that had offered his arm all along, gently guiding him through the house. She wanted to know what kind of man she was employing. If he loathed women or simply lacked an interest. If he was angry or easily made uncomfortable. They were important qualities to note.
“The kitchen,” she announced. Each time she took him to a new part of the house, she would announce it like that as though she were announcing an old friend.
--
Being touched was a surprise, but Holland’s mask of impassive calm was too well-trained to hold up under pressure for him to show it. He was not precisely comfortable with it, but neither did it truly bother him, and it seemed impolite to pull away. So he allowed her to pull him through the house, keeping his senses well-attuned to her movements. He did not sense any blades on her person, and he had not revealed his own, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t pick one up and try to use it on him.
That was the thing about demonstrating his power. He had hardly showed off even half of it -- only used two elements, earth and air, which many elemental mages worth their salt could manage -- but he was accustomed to people wanting power as soon as they saw it. Not that Antari power could be easily taken, but multiple people had tried over the years. He expected it from everyone, at this point, because it was better to expect it than to be caught off guard.
“Very nice,” he said simply, observing the house carefully as they went along. It was not so nice as the palaces he’d been in, but certainly high quality, suggesting that this Mrs. Quigley, whoever she was, had a rather comfortable amount of money. It was more luxury than Holland particularly needed, but at the same time it was a more familiar house than any he’d been in so far in Tumbleweed (which was, admittedly, a very small number). And it was not the sort of place anyone was likely to expect him to reside. He had already seen the Mareshes and Alucard expressing interest in her party, so his presence was likely to be noticed by them, but he was less concerned about them than anyone else.
--
There were a number of bedrooms, nearly all of them on the upper level. Charlotte showed all of them to him. There were more bedrooms than strictly needed. And the layout of the home was just slightly off. Drawing rooms, sitting rooms, but no library or other sorts of spaces that made it feel lived in by an upper class family.
It was a house of business.
“I’ve taken the master suite. You may have first pick of your bedroom beyond that. I welcome you and your talents into my home.”
—
The layout of the house was very interesting. Holland couldn’t quite figure out what it was that seemed different from usual. He followed her around until he had seen the whole place, even though he had decided on a bedroom some time before they reached the end of the tour.
“I have a strong preference,” he said, “For being on the ground floor. Even if that means… the room is less luxurious.” He had seen a smaller bedroom there, likely a servant’s quarters, which in some way, rankled at his pride. He was done serving anyone. But on the other hand, he had also slept in much worse places and had no real need for luxury. As long as she didn’t expect him to do all of her magical bidding, there was no real difference between that room and any other. “It would also be the most strategic location for protecting the house as a whole.”
--
“The servants quarters?” Charlotte looked surprised by his choice. Perhaps more than she should have. “More strategic than the room next to my own?”
The question was just as much a trap as it was genuine. But Holland struck her as a simple man. Not intellectually, but in his needs and desires. It was almost too good to be true.
“The room is yours,” she said, bowing her head to seal the arrangement before letting him go. “Try anything, and I reserve the right to toss you back wherever you came from.”
—
Holland raised his eyebrows. “The only thing I am here for is a room,” he said, simply. “I don’t trust anything that is given to me for free, so I did not want one from the military, nor any that the portal might have tried to provide, and I am saving my money for travel.”
Being able to exchange his skills had, from his perspective, also seemed too good to be true. Most people around here seemed to distrust him, or were at least too nosy for Holland’s tastes, or had houses filled with families and friends who would all have to adjust to Holland’s presence. Charlotte was new here, she was from a time and a world not unlike Holland’s, and she had offered him an exchange that seemed very acceptable to both of them.
“As for protecting you, there is no need for me to be so close by. I assure you, you and the house will be protected.” He leveled his black- and green-eyed gaze at her. “As long as we are understood that I am not your servant, regardless of my choice in rooms.”
--
“I will not ask to do the work of a maid or butler. Your service is to the safety of this house only. You want to quibble over your title that is your right. Call it whatever you like.”
There was no venom in her voice. She only stated facts plainly. He was her employee in this matter, in this arrangement under her roof. It stunned Charlotte, how quickly she assumed the role of an entrepreneur. Quietly she vowed to herself she would not become a bawd. It would be different here, even if she herself was incapable of change.
She let go of his arm. “If we have an agreement, you may collect your things and bring them into your room.”
—
“Tenant will suit me,” Holland said. He kept his gaze on her for a moment longer, but he was not concerned with her response. Then he looked away, back at the upper bedroom they were standing in, satisfied with his decision not to choose it. “And yes, I also accept your terms. If you wish me to leave, I will go.”
He was not overly concerned about that part. If she asked around about him, Kell would likely warn her, but then, she was counting on him to be dangerous to anyone who might threaten her here, so perhaps that would not dissuade her. Still… he remembered that she had already invited others over to a party, and both Rhy and Alucard had expressed interest. “You should probably know that there are three others from my world here, at least two of whom may be at your… housewarming party, and it is a complex situation, but suffice to say that they are not overly fond of me.” He paused. “At least one of them is likely to notice my magic here, even if they do not actually see me in the house. But we have established a… truce, of sorts, and they will not cause you any problems.”
He shrugged. “At worst, they might attempt to warn you about me, for your safety. But I am only a danger here to anyone who threatens me or… those I’ve agreed to protect.”
--
“Oh, Mr. Holland,” she smiled. Charlotte’s expression looked smug, “A harlot is no stranger to having a wicked reputation.”