Silas Ellery, The Forger (biggerdreams) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-10-02 13:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | boo radley, eames |
Who: Brea and Silas
What: A rescue and tea
Where: Aubade
When: For the sake of timelines, let's say the evening before the Bank robbery
Warnings: None
Brea had left the apartment for the first time in her life at 1:34 AM on a Friday evening. She had another brief argument with her brother on the phone, who had called to say he was not going to come home again, even though it had been three weeks since she’d seen him. She tried to tell him about all the awful things going on in the city, because she read about them on the Creation forums, but Stephen didn’t want to hear about Creations or about forums, and he hung up without waiting for her to say goodbye. Even the radio’s usual program of non-stop music didn’t cheer her up after that, and she couldn’t read any of her books over or browse on the internet--all that was there was awfulness and venom, really. She wondered if some Creations had friends they sent nice messages to, and the public ones were the only awful ones left. She hoped so.
At 1:15 AM, she remembered something she’d read about it being the darkest time of night in the morning, and she decided to venture out. She had a good time digging up some old sunglasses of her father’s, pilot’s glasses that made him look like Tom Cruise in Top Gun (she had photos). She combed her hair back and put on a soft plush sweater in a soothing color that to her looked pastel but was actually a rather hideous pumpkin color. The jeans were corduroy, and black to her but, of course, a soft velveteen brown to different eyes. It took her a little while more, but she dug out one of her mother’s old purses that had a Chanel clasp and smelled like No. 5. She put some things in there she thought she might need, like a scarf, a little tube of chapstick, a map of the city, and some cash money that Stephen left in one of the desk drawers. She took one of the credit cards she used to buy things online with and put that in there too.
The only thing she didn’t have were sturdy walking shoes, but she thought that outside couldn’t be that rough, and so she put on some canvas sneakers that were worn without being dirty at all. Tramping on carpet didn’t do much to the treads, and she had running shoes for the treadmill that she decided were too athletic and she wouldn’t blend in properly. Brea didn’t actually expect anyone would be out or awake, and she didn’t know how far she would get before her eyes hurt too much, but she thought she might see some new things before she had to come home, and she’d have several days, at least, before Stephen came home, if she needed time to recover.
Unfortunately, the grand plan didn’t work out the way she wanted. After she got out in the hallway she discovered it was still too bright, even with the glasses, so she put her hair up in the scarf and pulled it a little closer around the glasses to block out the light from the sides, leaving her face free. After she worked this out she was pleased, thinking of Audrey Hepburn, but everything was still painted in white fire and she had some difficulty focusing, especially if she passed a lamp. She wandered down several hallways and dark stairs, but she went up and down different times, trying to backtrack, and she ended up hopelessly lost at the top of a back stair to the garage. Her map didn’t do her much good here, and there weren’t posted floor signs anywhere that weren’t lit by tiny spotlights that made them perfectly readable for everyone but her. She took advantage of the shadow of the stair and sat down to try to think and keep from crying about something so silly as being lost in a building.
Silas was in Aubade for only the second time in his long life of almost 40 years. He didn’t work in buildings, as a rule. The territory belonged to someone else and that always put the away team at a disadvantage, and he did enough of that in his dream work. However, dropping in on Rocco was worth making the exception.
He’d not seen the man in over ten long years, at which time he’d conned Rocco out of enough money to keep quite comfortable after crossing the portal. Maud had been gone for two years at the time, and Silas had made the decision to leave Musings behind him. He’d needed capital, and he’d remembered Rocco from a poker game. Marked cards and forged bills did the rest, and Silas had almost forgotten Rocco in the ensuing years. But the man had recently popped up on the radar, as it was, and Silas associated him with a past he could barely remember clearly most days.
The first deck of cards he’d left Rocco had been a whim. Tonight was much more deliberate. He wasn’t concerned with being caught, and so he’d dressed like a visitor rather than a man intent on thievery - gray slacks and a black sweater. The garage was warm, even though the air outside had a strong chill, and Silas pulled open the stairway door with a brr for the cold and a gust of wind at his back.
He didn’t immediately notice the girl huddled beneath all her warmth, too busy warming his hands against the legs of his slacks. “Bloody cold,” he muttered to himself, even as he checked that the poker chip in his pocket hadn’t been lost on the way.
She hadn’t been fully aware that there had been another door there, just a few steps and a curve away, and when a man appeared, Brea started upright from her position on the topmost stair and made an initial sound of surprise that was between a squeak and an “oh.” There was a brief picture of her painted there on the step, scarf and mirror pilot glasses and parted unpainted lips--and then it went dark.
Not just dark, but complete, absolute blackness. For Brea it was like someone had switched off a spotlight that had been pointed in her face for hours, and she felt the muscles behind her eyes relax. She still saw the man clearly, but she perceived a difference in the light when she had not before. For him, of course, the cloud of blackness seemed to extend in all directions.
“I’m lost,” she said, in a venturing tone that made her naturally hushed voice even softer.
Her movement and the surprised squeak made Silas straighten instantly, another curse on his lips at the shock of companionship when he thought himself alone. He got one good moment’s look at her before the lights failed. No, not failed, that wasn’t the right word for the permeating darkness that currently enveloped him. Now, had he seen anything other than what he did see in that flash, he would have reacted very differently. But what he’d seen was a surprised young girl in mismatched clothing and aviator glasses - entirely harmless in Silas’ opinion.
When she said she was lost it only cemented Silas’ certainty that this was not a situation warranting fleeing in a panic, and he slowly edged toward the stairs in the tomb-like darkness, a hand outstretched toward where he assumed the railing was. “Did you shut off the lights, poppet?” he asked, sounding as if this sort of thing happened every day, as if it was the most natural occurrence that could possibly take place in a garage stairway.
A pause followed this question. Brea had never been called anything but her name before, and she reveled in the sound of it for three seconds before she figured out that he was talking to her. None of this cautious delight was evident in the dark, obviously, and there were faint quiet hissing sounds of her smooth treads on the stair as she descended a little way, watching him grope for the railing. She didn’t find this strange; not even Stephen looked directly at her and he was always groping around for things in her dark little abode. “I don’t... did I?” As soon as she thought that maybe she had, all the light came back at once.
One never realized just how much light there is, even in a dark shadowed stairwell like this, until it’s been gone for long counting seconds. The return made in her flinch and squint from beneath her large bug-eye glasses. “They’re back,” she said, uselessly, shielding her face from the outline of the garage door, where there was one bare bulb twenty feet away from any crack in the wall.
He’d listened to her approach with the sort of curious patience that came from living long enough to accept that sometimes waiting was a requirement, and it wasn’t like she was quiet in her approach. The fact that he couldn’t see her didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of her location throughout the entire shuffle-step-closer. And then she was speaking and the lights were back.
“Ah, there we have it,” he said, glancing back at the unimpressive, bare bulb and the limited light it offered. “You’d think the lightbulbs here would be crafted from gold,” he said as he turned back to her, but any additional joking was cut short by his realization that she felt the need to shield herself from the barely-there light. Perhaps the glasses were less fashion accessory and more necessity? “Does it bother you, poppet?” he asked, but he was already moving toward the lightbulb and unscrewing it.
Now the only light was from the hallway door that was ajar three stories up, and she dropped her hand from her face. The mirror glasses glowed with gratitude. “Thank you. I didn’t know it would turn on again so fast.” She had a genuine approach to her, and without thinking to fear she moved awkwardly down the stairs (not having encountered many uneven surfaces in her time) and nearer to him so she could get a better look at his face. To Brea, who was unassuming in height and used to looking up to her brother, he quite towered, though at least he was not a hulking giant. “Where did you come from?” she asked, seriously, so obviously aglow with curiosity that she looked past his face at the door and then back again. She didn’t understand the joke about the gold, but she filed it away for later reference. The stairs here were very nice, she surmised. Or maybe the lights were? Something was very nice in comparison to something else. Noted.
He was surprised to find her so close, but he didn’t back away from her curiosity. Her interest was evident, even with the glasses covering a better part of her face, and stood still and gave her a moment to see. The dark was obviously a place she was comfortable, much more comfortable than he was. It reminded him of sleep and dreams, and those were things he didn’t very much care for. He wondered why no one watched these girls that wandered around Seattle buildings just asking to be snatched up by one horror or another, and then he reminded himself that he didn’t care about such things. “From outside,” he said easily, nodding toward the top of the stairs. “You came from up there?” he asked. “Shall I walk you back?” She was, after all, lost. It would get him into the building, he reminded himself, making the offer entirely selfish.
“I don’t know how to get back,” she said, with absolute frankness. “What’s outside?” She looked where he nodded, but she didn’t see anything but the stairs. “Is it very bright? It looks bright.” She gave the door a distrustful look that was somehow visible through the overlarge glasses. Having no particular concept of how much space people did or did not like to have, she was standing about four inches away and the gentle aroma of strawberry perfume was permeating the air around her. The pumpkin orange cable knit sweater made her look both young and rather absurd thanks to the scarf, and her illusion of Audrey was entirely her own. She didn’t have her swan-like grace, not bundled up as she was.
“It’s rather dark at this time of night,” he said, and he ducked his head to get a better look at her face, to look for all the markers of age, the ones that sat beneath a woman’s skin and gave her character. There were no lines around her mouth from laughing too long and too hard, no worry lines marred her brow above the ridiculous glasses, and her neck was smooth and with nary a wrinkle. His final glance, this one to her hands, confirmed what his prior inspection had suggested - youth, bundled in the security of bright knits and thick layers. “Would you like to step outside?” he asked. “I can escort you to the door and back again.” He smiled as he made the offer, because it was such a simple and harmless thing - a nice change.
She didn’t think it was odd that he was staring at her, because she was staring back. He was quite literally the oldest person she had ever seen, but she thought he was handsome in a very clever sort of way, in a way that made her think of foxes. Not that she had ever seen a fox.
She looked from him to the door again, chewing on her lower lip and clearly considering testing some invisible boundary. “No,” she said, finally, in her little rasp of a voice. “I think I should stay in. If it’s too bright, then I might not be able to see for a long time, and I’m not sure how to get back.” With this extraordinary decision she turned her attention back to him. “Is someone going to be very upset that there isn’t a lightbulb?” She looked down at it in his hand thoughtfully, as she’d never had anything stolen or go missing from her world before, and it was something of an abstract concept. She leaned forward a little closer when he moved his mouth, trying to identify the expression, which was not at all like anything Stephen had ever worn. People in the movies she watched sometimes did that, though, and it was a general indicator of humor. Smiles were generally positives, but the shades between tended to blend unless they were just like Stephen’s. The ballpark guess made her pull back a little with uncertainty.
“I’ll replace it on my way out,” he said, as if it was conspiratorial admission. And he would, too. He’d steal one of Rocco’s lightbulbs and replace it when he left. “The sun isn’t up, poppet. If you wait a moment, I can loosen the light just outside the door,” he offered. “Are you photosensitive? Or is it just your vision?” he asked, as if it was a common thing, not being able to go into a bright place. When she leaned closer and watched his mouth, his lips twitched in an almost laugh. She reminded him of someone very young, someone seeing some mythical creature out of stories, and he enjoyed the thought. She was perfectly safe with him, even if his extensive police record would indicate otherwise, and he was entirely relaxed, letting her take time with her perusal and not pressing forward when she pulled back. “Did I frighten?”
“No,” she said, honestly. “It’s complicated, Stephen says. Besides, even if that light went out there might be others, and I can’t risk it.” She came back again, bee to honey, close, and watched him carefully to see if he smiled that way again, her face oddly blank as she did not have excessive expression when she wasn’t concentrating on it. “I’m not supposed to be out,” she admitted, softly. “Do you live here?” There was no segue from topic to topic, she just assumed he moved at whatever speed, in whatever direction, that she did. She identified the accent as something different from Stephen’s and searched for where she had heard it before, out of the mouth of one of the movies she liked, probably. She looked for clues in his dress, like Sherlock Holmes, but she wasn’t as good at it, she found.
“Stephen says, does he?” Silas asked, watching her come close again, nearing him with entirely no concern for her own well being. “If you’re not meant to be out, I think we should return you from your grand adventure,” he said, his voice lazy, as if there was nowhere he needed to be, no place he’d rather be that where he was, and no worry over her being out here alone. “I’m visiting, poppet,” he added, and he held his arm out to her, wondering if she’d see it (and if she’d know to take it). He couldn’t tell precisely how much this girl could see, but the fact that she’d become lost three stairs away from an open hallway door made him suppose that she was quite blind, even with the relative darkness; admittedly, he couldn’t be sure as long as she wore those glasses. “Who is Stephen, hmmm?”
He was very sure of himself, and since it never occurred to Brea that he would not seem sure of himself unless he was sure of himself, she relaxed slightly from the suspicion that he was laughing at her, no doubt the intent. Her chin dropped hastily down to catch the movement as he put his elbow in her direction, but she’d never seen the gesture from this angle before, and she didn’t understand what it meant. She contemplated it while he spoke, and there was a short silence as she uncertainly shifted on her feet to look at him from a few degrees’ difference, and then she caught it. Understanding settled into her spine and she immediately shifted forward and wrapped a trusting arm all the way around his elbow, absolutely without hesitation, and quite enjoying the idea of it, though he was very tall. She searched around a bit in her mind and came up with a very dapper Gregory Peck, who was quite tall, and she smiled with delight without warning. She tipped her face all the way up toward him. “Stephen is my brother. He takes care of me.”
Silas watched her try to figure out his arm, and he would have given quite a bit to be able to see her expression, the look in her eyes throughout the process. He’d been about to offer assistance when her face brightened with a sort of understanding, and then she was wrapping her arm in his in a way that made his chest ache. It was similar to the way he felt when Samantha had reacted with absolute trust to being trapped in an elevator with him, but it was sharper. Samantha had an impossibly brilliant force of childish character that made her come across as slightly more self reliant (if entirely lacking in judgement), and she had a vigilante as her caretaker. He’d not heard of Stephen before, and it worried him - but only for a moment. Not his concern, he reminded himself. He smiled down at her, and he led her toward the stairs. “Your brother? Is he at home, darling?”
Her smile disappeared, like snow in spring, and she concentrated on her feet because she’d never had to walk with someone before, and it as hard to do so and not trip on him. She got the rhythm of it though, and once she handled it--she was a cerebral little thing, to be sure--she spoke. “No. He... works, and he’s gone away, and he says he’ll have to stay away for a while.” She sounded absolutely forlorn, and it wasn’t sad tone, but rather an unfamiliar cadence that affected her vowels when she tried to assemble them into calm. “So... I went out. He’ll be angry.” She sighed.
However badly her vision was, she still saw the stair well enough, and lifted a white shoe without trouble.
He was silent during the process of figuring out white sneakers and men’s dress shoes. It didn’t make him impatient in the slightest; he watched it all with a small smile of interest and admiration. “Is that so?” he asked noncommittally, as if Stephen’s disappearance was hardly anything to be concerned over. “Do you stay with someone when he’s away?” he asked. The forlorn tone of her voice made him want to brush that silly scarf off her head and give it a good pat, but he refrained. “We shan’t tell him,” he said, though there was doubt in the statement, doubt in the decision. “What happens if you go into the light?”
This series of comments startled her quite a lot and she forgot to move. Since she was wound up very close to his arm, she might have pulled them back down the stairs without thinking if she hadn’t caught herself. Uninhibited, she pressed a little closer, curious about the odd way he was put together, very long from knee to hip. She remembered to reply. “No, no one comes. Stephen says the light will erode the insides of my eyes until I can’t see any more,” she said, with absolute scientific certainty. “I can’t keep it from him,” she said, truly troubled by the thought. There was nothing she kept from her brother. She didn’t think there was anything he kept from her. “We tell each other everything.”
Silas doubted that, though he didn’t say as much. He led her up the first set of steps and to the turn, where he stopped so she could get her bearings. It was darker here, between the light that had filtered under the door on the level below and the light from the hallway above. “Does it have a name, your situation?” he asked, not using the word ‘condition’ or ‘disability’ quite intentionally. “You can see in the dark?” he asked, looking down at her with a smile and misstepping on the first step upward slightly and using the railing to catch himself with the ease of a man who was used to being in places he wasn’t supposed to
“No, nobody has it but me. That’s why doctors can’t fix it so I have to stay in.” This all bore the air of long repetition, of childhood certainties, of reminders, all sealing into fact. She avoided looking directly at the doors, and she was caught up in doing so when he misstepped. She was not accustomed to accounting for someone else’s movements and she faltered back and had to be supported back on the step as he corrected the mistake. Her little ‘o’ of surprise as she recovered her balance was obvious enough. After a moment she said, “It’s not dark to me like it’s dark to you. This landing looks like all the other landings.” She didn’t like rising around the same stairs and the same landings over and over again, not one bit, and she unconsciously pressed closer.
The way she came so close to a complete stranger made that whisper of concern turn into a roar, and he held still a moment and did not continue on. “Darling, you’re entirely safe with me, but not everyone is as trustworthy as I am,” he cautioned. Stephen, wherever the bastard was, should have explained this to her. It was one thing to have a sister who was blind and quite another, Silas thought, to keep her unaware of life. She reminded him of a small and helpless creature in a pet store, and he didn’t like it one bloody bit. As for this ‘nobody had it but her’ nonsense, he wasn’t certain he bought it, not in the slightest.
It wasn’t a recoil. Her arm slowly loosened from his and her hand fell away as her body drew back as it had on the landing below, when he had smiled that odd smile. The little tips of her head were a sure sign that she was searching hard for an expression that she recognized, but she found none. The little line over his eyebrow meant nothing to her, and she didn’t know what it meant. She understood that she had done something wrong, however, and she didn’t want to repeat it, though she was hurt and newly cautious at what she perceived to be a scolding. “I’m sorry,” she said, still looking in vain for familiar signs. “I don’t know anyone else.”
Her expression fell, and he felt like a bloody ass. “Poppet,” he said, tipping her chin. “I’m not put out with you,” he explained. Silas had grown up in a busy place, surrounded by people, and he was very good at reading body language and expressions; it was the reason he was so good at what he did, because he could read cues and play to them. This wasn’t about a take, however, and it wasn’t about cues. It was about a young woman who was going to get herself killed. “Shall we make a deal, you and I?” he asked her, his voice as calm as it was before the realization that he felt responsible for this girl’s well-being had set in.
Again, she wondered what that word meant. ‘Darling’ she had heard before, but not that one. It was not threatening, however, and neither was the touch, but she shied away anyway. Nobody had ever touched her like that before, and regardless of what it was supposed to mean, she didn’t have a reaction or a reference. This time it was definitely a recoil, though it wasn’t one of disgust or fear, just uncertainty. She was pleased he wasn’t angry at her, though, and after a moment of study she decided that he was the same color as he had been before. Stephen always changed colors before he started shouting at her, and he always bribed her good will with things, things that he offered for what he wanted, which usually involved her staying quiet. “I don’t want anything,” she said, hoping to head this off before they got to the arguing.
Silas didn’t immediately address her statement. He held his arm back out, and he waited to see if she took it. It took longer than he’d expected, but he was starting to understand that she did things at a different pace. He didn’t rush her, and he didn’t make any sounds of impatience, because he wasn’t impatient. Silas had spent enough time in prison (at least half his life, he figured) to know how to wait. He’d learned early that impatience would drive a person mad inside, and he’d forced himself to slow, to calm, to think. He didn’t hurry her, and once her arm was wound with his again, he started on the next set of stairs. “You don’t want anything, but I do,” he said, watching her white sneakers in the darkness. “What’s your name?”
She gave a startled little laugh. “You don’t know,” she said, shaking her head a little at the idea of it. “I’m Brea,” she said, smiling. Bree, she said it, with a certain light-heartedness that came with an affection for the self that was entirely natural in healthy humans. Conmen and customer service specialists always tried to get you to say your name; it was the most positive word in the lexicon. She was happy to give it to him. “What’s yours? What do you want?” She wasn’t troubled by the suggestion he wanted something from her, and there was no thought it might not be something she wanted to give.
He considered telling her that she shouldn’t give her name out to strangers, but he suspected it would just confuse her (since he’d asked her for it). “I’m called Silas,” he told her, and he didn’t say it with the affection she did, though there was confidence in the saying. “I’d like,” he told her, “for you to not go wandering on your own, and I’ll make you a deal. If you’ve the wish to go for a walkabout, you let me know, and I’ll pop by.” He realized, even as he made the offer, that he was doing an absolutely atrocious job of not caring. Maud would have laughed at him, and she would have told him he wasn’t the sort of man who could ignore a damsel in distress; he smiled at the thought, and he gave all his attention back to the girl on his arm. “That way, I can have your company.”
Brea was new and naive, but she was not stupid. His concern charmed her to her core, and as they topped the next (oh so bright, to her) landing, she turned the mirror glasses to look up at him with another of those sweet smiles that she turned on and off. “You don’t have to be worried,” she said. “Once I find my way out of the building, I have a map. I want to get one of those phones where you are an arrow on a map and you’ll never get lost that way.” She was proud of this plan. “I’m sure I can get one online.”
He couldn’t keep the worry off his face then, not after what she’d just said. “Yes, love,” he said, forcing himself to keep his tone light and unconcerned. “But we should have a chat about being safe first, and you shouldn’t go on your own immediately. It’s like driving, you see, where you should have a companion to begin.” His mind was screaming run, but his feet just kept calmly climbing the steps with her at his side. He suspected this was what parenting was like, a constant state of panic that you had to swallow down for the sake of the child. He and Maud had discussed children, after 10 years together it was hardly a surprise, but they’d decided to wait until they’d made enough money to get out of the business; they’d never made it that far.
“I’m not going anywhere dangerous,” she said, excited at the prospect of going anywhere at all. “I thought I would go around the building first, there are sidewalks, right?” They stopped as the outline of the door was right in front of her, but she didn’t know what level it was and she couldn’t look at the sign over it because there was a white spotlight positioned to illuminate it. She pointed at it. “What does it say? I can’t see.” Belatedly she realized this would not strengthen her case for solo exploration.
“It says we’re on the third floor,” he told her. “What floor are we going to, Brea?” he asked, using her name instead of a term of endearment quite intentionally. “Once we’ve reached your apartment, will you invite me in for a chat about the sidewalks? I think we’ve different notions about what dangerous is.” He kept his tone light, made sure there was no chastisement in it, but he was worried enough that concern slipped through. He wondered if Rorschach wanted to adopt another young girl bound for disaster, and he wondered why the universe kept attempting to make him care about things.
“Oh,” she said, pleased as punch and pulling a little on his arm to climb the stairs more. “I’m in four-oh-three. That’s got to be one up, right? They always match the first numbers in apartment buildings like detectives live in.” Detectives, Brea thought, always knew everything, and they were very good at reading people and knowing when they were lying. That idea combined with Silas’ accent made her like him even more. He was sweet to be worried about her, and she was, secretly, pleased he liked her enough to ask himself in, so she told him where they were going without thought. “Yes!” Even her exclamations were soft, and as their steps echoed, it was hard to hear her long follow-up trail of words. “I can make tea, and last week I ordered these madeleines from France, the ones that taste like vanilla and sponge cake but look like sea shells. Do you think the sidewalk is that dangerous? I was going to go at night, like now, when there wasn’t anyone there.”
“Poppet, you have to promise you won’t tell anyone else your apartment number, and that you won’t let them in,” he cautioned as he walked with her. “Not until you’ve met with them at least twice beforehand. It’s the way it’s done, you see,” he told her, because he was counting on her not having the slightest idea how it was done, counting on her believing him without question. “It’s best to meet in public places, once you’ve braved the sidewalks.” He stopped at the next landing, the one with the open hallway door, and he looked over at her. “Well, we’ve bested the steps. Shall we attempt the hall?”
A frown of concern shadowed Brea’s features. “Oh...” she said, with the air of someone who had misplaced something important. “I’m not supposed to tell people where I live. I forgot. My friends on the computer always want to know where I am, and I’m only allowed to say ‘the west coast.’” She mimicked Stephen’s stern tone very well, not with intent, but with a gesture toward accuracy. “But I’m not allowed to meet people.” She settled closer on his arm, though never so close as she had before he had cautioned her the first time. She tugged the scarf over her eyebrows and around her temples, steeling herself, and then pushed forward through the door with her palm open against the wall sconce immediately to their right. “There are numbers on the doors,” she said to herself. “Just have to find the right one, is all.”
He reached for the sconce, his hand dipping inside the open top easily, and he loosened the bulb for her, the action unthinking and instinctive. “Meeting people is fine, poppet, just not alone at first,” he told her, and he wondered what sort of man left a girl this innocent alone in a sick city like Seattle. He didn’t move toward 403, though he knew the layout of the halls already from his prior ‘visit’ to Rocco’s apartment. He let her take the lead, let her have the pride of getting them there, even if it took all evening.
She got them there--and it didn’t take as long as it should have. She squinted hard at the first door, leaning in, and while she stood there trying to make out the number, every bit of light, down to the atom, blinked out, and then back on again. It was so fast that it was impossible to be sure it actually happened, but Brea leaned back with satisfaction. “Four-oh-eight.” She went down a ways, and squinted at the next door, hand up against the light from the wall sconce. It was lit as the other one had not been after he interfered, so when all the light abruptly vanished, there was no mistaking it. It happened again upon her last inspection, and there they stood in front of 403. Brea smiled with pride and reached out to open the door, but the knob didn’t turn.
“It’s locked,” she said, with surprise.
The lights blinking out removed all doubt in Silas’ mind about what had happened in the stairway, and it made him feel just a smidgen better. “Can you control that? What you do with the lights?” he asked her, because at least that was something defensive she could do if she insisted on not listening to his cautionary advice. He was waiting for the answer when she turned the knob. Or, rather, when she didn’t turn the knob. “Forgot the key, poppet?” he asked, no ire in the question.
“What thing with the lights...?” Her head sort of ached behind her eyes and she sounded a little bewildered. “I don’t have a key. I didn’t know it locked behind you like that.”
“The lights turning off, like they did in the stairs,” he told her. “Can you tell, love, when it goes dark?” he asked, already testing the door with his hands. He’d climbed into Rocco’s apartment via the escape, and he suspected he could do as much here if necessary. Her response, however, left him cold. Did the man keep her locked in? He put all thought of breaking into the apartment out of his mind. “We should go to my apartment, Brea, where it’s safe, until we have a locksmith come.” Which translated into something along the lines of your brother is insane, and you’re not staying here a moment longer.
Brea was already shaking her head. “No, I’m not supposed to be anywhere else. I was going to come back home when my eyes started to hurt so I wouldn’t stop seeing for very long.” She was trying not to panic, really, but the idea of going blind was a very real thing for Brea and it frightened her more than the sidewalk or meeting people on it. She tried the doorknob again a little desperately. “It must be the little lock on the knob. I thought if it was open you could turn it from this side too.” She tried to think, detaching her arm from his and pulling a little on the door experimentally. It didn’t budge. “I suppose... that Stephen always has a key when he comes in. Yes. Oh no.”
“Brea,” Silas said, interrupting her growing (and very obvious) panic, “do you not want to come with me?”
The lights flickered, and she was, by the sound of her voice, trying not to cry. “I’m supposed to be at home,” she said, very softly. She took her hands off the door hopelessly.
Not crying. Silas did very badly with crying. He took her hands in his, and he held them as he spoke. “I can get you back inside, Brea. There’s no need for tears, hmmm? But you’ve to stay here for me, while I do it. Do you promise you’ll stay where you are and not wander? I’ll need you here once I open the door from the inside.”
Brea was obviously making a great effort not to cry any tears that would make it past the glasses. “But you can’t get in,” she said, thickly. “The windows are sealed and there’s not another door.” She caught her lip in her teeth as it trembled. It was very difficult to see him now, and her eyes stung from the tears and she couldn’t make out his expression, even this close.
“I can get in,” he assured her. The balcony couldn’t be so very different from Rocco’s, though he would need her to disable any alarms that might be in place once he was inside. He’d break the glass if he had to, just to make her lip stop trembling the way it was. “Do you trust me?” he asked her, forcing himself to sound teasing and lighthearted.
The line was from one of the Disney movies that she liked very much, since she hadn’t seen it until she was in her twenties and it matched all the pictures on some of her childhood toys. It conjured up a smile, at least. “Okay. They really are sealed, though,” she said, worried through the halos around her vision and the blurring of his features.
The way she made the statement about the windows being sealed made him pause. “Do you mean locked?” he asked, hopeful that he was just misinterpreting her level of concern.
She shook her head and the scarf loosened from the auburn hair. “No, they don’t open so the light can’t come in.”
“Are they blocked on the outside or inside?” he asked, because now things had just become even more complicated. He wished he had one of those easy abilities for a moment, the kind that could open doors or warp metal. He reached out, unthinking, and smoothed the scarf down as he looked at her, concern visible in his eyes.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “They just don’t open and they’re black on the inside.” She’d never seen them from the outside, of course, and wasn’t aware of the opulence of the building nor how the shutters had been made to blend in with the facade. She wasn’t so panicked now; the questions were making her think.
“It’s our best option, poppet,” he told her, hoping he’d find easily removable shutters once he made it onto the balcony. He was, in plain fact, more concerned about leaving her alone outside the door than he was of not being able to get her back inside. “You’ll wait here for me?” he asked, tipping her chin again.
She liked being touched, finding it a novel experience, and leaned comfortably into it. She nodded. “I’ll sit here,” she said, turning her head slightly away from the nearest light and tilting her chin down in a gesture associated with closing one’s eyes.
He slipped his hand away from her chin, and he gave her a reluctant look before leaving her there. Rocco was in the apartment directly above hers, which was something, at least. It meant he didn’t have to search for the right escape or route up in the middle of the night, and it meant he’d already been within reach of her balcony before. Granted, he hadn’t noticed the shutters then, because 403 wasn’t his target. As he climbed, he cursed Rocco, blamed all of this one him, and by the time he was making the unprotected leap from escape to metal balcony railing, he was cursing himself. If he’d only stuck to the plan, this would not be happening. But there would also be a very scared girl sitting in a stairway, he reminded himself.
She was right, of course, the windows were shuttered tight and sealed to boot. He almost gave up, almost climbed back down and went the way he came, but he couldn’t leave her in the hallway. He was, he was certain, the worst criminal ever born into existence.
He started work on the shutters, and it was no quiet affair. His foot held one end of the lower-most shutters, while he pulled with his hands on the opposite end. Gloves, he reminded himself, would be part of his next attempt at breaking-and-entering. It took him fifteen minutes to get three slats off, and the sky was beginning to lighten behind him. With every minute that passed, he grew more worried that he would be arrested or that she would wander away from the door in panic. He worked faster, the metal cutting into his palms, and when he had five slats off, he crouched in front of the window and peered inside. The glass was thick, but he didn’t think it was impact-proof.
He stepped back, and he kicked as hard as he could, the glass shattering inward, the sound loud and telltale in the early morning silence. He wondered if there was anything inside to steal, even though he knew he wouldn’t do it, and he began the very slow, very painstaking process of getting through the space cleared by the slats without impaling himself on the glass shards that jaggedly lined the bottom of the window.
When his shoes landed on the plush carpet on the other side, it was with a sickening crunch of glass underfoot, and there was blood at his shoulder and thigh, the glass having cut through fabric. It was, he thought, a very good job.
He began walking toward the door, to let her in, when he heard the sirens in the distance. He quickened his pace, and by the time he unlocked the door for her, he had a sinking feeling his arrest record was about to get longer. “Come inside, poppet,” he urged; he suspected she wouldn’t do well with the police.
She’d been sitting, as promised, in the frame of the door, scarf over the glasses over her eyes, and as the minutes had ticked by she’d been increasingly worried that when she opened her eyes she wouldn’t see anything. She started upright when he let her in and fled inside, the door swinging shut behind her. She stopped short, startled by the slash of light through one of the far windows at the edge of the living room. “You broke the window,” she said, astonished instead of dismayed. The scarf had come loose, and Brea had a great deal of soft brown hair that never got shorter unless she cut it herself.
Crunching over the glass she tucked a heavy blanket from the back of the sofa over the higher slats, blocking out the day as it rose, and the opulence and books--the two major first impressions of the apartment--were dimmed into shadow again. She took off the glasses and hugged him around the waist without warning, just like she hugged Stephen when he came to see her. “Are you okay?”
She was older than he’d originally thought, he realized, as his hands rubbed at her upper arms. Silas knew women, and he knew the nuances of age, since it was an important thing when impersonating someone. Twenties, but a careless sort of twenty, he decided. Twenties without life. “I’m perfectly well,” he told her, even as the sirens neared. He took a step back, and he kept his hands on her upper arms as he looked at her. “There will be men at the door soon, Brea, and we’ve to tell them the truth. You were locked out of your apartment, and I helped you get in,” he told her. He gave her a smile then, one that was all easy charm. “Quite an adventure, is it not?” he asked, very intentionally.
Guileless, she smiled back. She would probably give the impression of youth for another twenty years, face cherubic, lips wide, and hair whispy. The eyes, though, were not young, but strange and alien. They flashed at him, gasoline in water. “I’ll tell them.” And she did.
Yes, she lived here, but her brother wasn’t home. She got locked out and her friend Silas went through the window to let her in. No, she hadn’t thought of a locksmith. No, she hadn’t known there was a security man on duty. Was he nice? Did the policemen want tea? Oh, well. They could come back if they wanted some tea. She was very sorry about the loud noise. Yes, she was sure she was fine.
She was shy and kept retiring from the doorway, but to a man she unnerved them with her squinting iridescent gaze, especially since she kept staring at their badges and their guns.
He listened without saying a word, letting her charm the police officers with her guileless manner. He was fairly certain they did not trust him, would never trust him; he would not trust himself around this girl either, were he entrusted with her care. She practically glowed with a sense of innocence Silas knew he had never in the entirety of his life possessed. "Yes, well, if we're quite done here," he told the officers who were not, in fact, done anywhere. They asked for her brother's contact information, and Silas made an impatient noise, a huff of sound for their benefit alone. "If I leave, will you let the poor girl alone?" he asked with an intentionally bored air.
"You said you would stay for tea," she told Silas, disapproving at the idea he would go back on his word, and not accustomed to people thwarting her plans, since... well, there wasn't anyone to do any thwarting, and usually no plans to thwart. When they asked for the contact information, she obediently went and fetched a business card. She offered it to them, and to Silas it was clearly readable over her shoulder: "Stephen Madison. Chief Executive Officer. Madison & Sons Software." The appropriate contact numbers were below, though the email was clearly a company address. She didn't like handing it over because she knew Stephen would be angry and she glanced at Silas in both apology and apprehension.
Silas realized she didn't understand the tactic for what it was: something to lull them into leaving, and which point he'd return. He would have tried to explain the fact to her with word or gesture, but then he caught the worry in her eyes when she handed over the card, and he smoothly extricated it from the police officer's hand. "Officer, Brea is quite old enough to have whoever she'd like on her premises, even if it's someone such as myself." He said it with full knowledge of how he appeared, here, in this wealthy young girl's home, and he was blatant about it, rather that apologetic. "Now, I do recommend you leave, before we're forced to file a complaint. Your prompt attention was, of course, greatly appreciated. He finished it off with a smirk and a wink. "Poppet," he said, handing Brea back the card. "Bid the fine officers farewell."
She watched the white card dance in front of her face and then vanish again in Silas' hand. The morning was getting bright and the hallway was turning into a series of large white and dark shapes, and though her lashes were low her gaze was getting rather fixed. "Goodbye," she said, softly, looking again back at Silas but now entirely unsure of whether or not he wore an expression at all, since he was a vague shape without definition. The cat's eyes flashed at the police officers, even the one who had been denied the business card, and the girl was not in distress so they decided to go back to the building security and report all well. Brea shut the door. "Why didn't they like you?" she asked the shape of Silas, blinking several times as she tried to focus.
He watched her blink, though he had trouble making out the flicker of lashes in the dark. Closing the door had plunged the apartment in the sort of dark he assumed she felt comfortable in, however, and he didn’t mention it. He took the card, which was still whitely visible in the gloaming, and he put it on the counter as he considered her question. “Because, darling,” he finally said, opting for honesty. “They’re worried that I’m here to rob you,” a pause, “or worse.” He crossed his arm, and he leaned against the wall at his back. “Neither of which are true, of course, but they’re right to worry. You’re alone here, and this city isn’t terribly safe these days.” He didn’t want to scare her, just as he hadn’t wanted to scare Samantha; but keeping the truth from her wasn’t an answer either.
She pondered this. “You could rob me,” she said, finally, not liking it. “But you got through the window. So you could rob me any time you wanted, if you wanted to do it.” She sounded impressed, because she was. She didn’t say anything about the ‘or worse,’ but that was because it was evident to her as it was evident to him: she didn’t leave, so if he wanted to get in for whatever reason, she would be here along with the rest of the clutter.
It was comfortably but not stiflingly warm in the apartment, and Brea wiggled out of the voluminous pumpkin sweater, drifting fingers up to find a coat-rack where it was secured to the wall and then hanging it up there. The darkness helped, but all the light had left a blurry film over everything. There was no pain, but she stood there a minute, staring at her vision, until she perceived some slight improvement that reassured her the blurriness would go away.
The look on his face as she stood there was one of concern. She was such a strange little thing, and he didn’t know what she was waiting for in the dark silence. “I could have robbed you at any time,” he concerted, because he could have done. The wealth around them was evident, opulent in the shadows, and he could have easily made off with something valuable enough to live out the next few years in peace. He could have done precisely the same thing when he’d let himself into Rocco’s apartment, but he hadn’t. He was an honest thief, if such a thing existed, and she was safer with him than she’d be with most of the ‘good’ people the world over. “But I won’t,” he continued, after a long and thoughtful silence. “That doesn’t mean others won’t take advantage of you, Brea. You’re a lovely young woman, and you’ve a considerable amount of wealth at your disposal.”
“Just credit cards,” she said, without deception. “Do you need money, Silas?” Birdlike, she tipped her head with the inquiry, though she didn’t look right at his face because she couldn’t see it. Turning without waiting for the answer, she stepped confidently toward the kitchen, fingers drifting over the backs of chairs and low bookcases, guiding herself in a familiar space. She wore a thin bruise-blue shirt under the pumpkin, and that looked even stranger with the rich bark brown corduroy. Brea was built small naturally, proportionally, but though she was pale and without world experience, she was not unhealthy, and there was enough healthy muscle present that it was clear she got some form of exercise in her quiet little world. “The kitchen is this way.”
“I don’t need money,” he told her kindly, without any sort of offended pride at her question, and he meant it. Silas didn’t steal money for himself, and he wasn’t going to ask this young woman for anything financial. His life was comfortable, and he worked just enough to maintain his level of living. Other jobs, such as his dream work, involved repaying old debts and keeping jailhouse promises. And jobs like Rocco, well, those were about the thrill and had nothing to do with profit. The shirt revealed by the removal of the pumpkin outerwear made him chuckle to himself; she needed fashion advice, did Brea. “Have you any friends in the area?” he asked as he followed her, wondering how close she was with the computer acquaintances she’d mentioned.
“No,” she admitted. “Some people I talk to about books and things, but no one regular. Do you like black tea?” She fetched down one of her mother’s tea tins and opened it to sniff. No, that was jasmine. It was labeled as such, but she couldn’t make it out. She brushed her fingers into the cupboard for the next one. There was a pause as she searched, and the very, very faint sound of a radio playing in one of the other rooms trickled across the tile. It was a constant, almost background noise.
“I’ll take any tea you have to offer,” he said honestly, because despite his regular American turn of phrase, he was born British. He watched her, and he wondered why she hadn’t been sent to a school that would have taught her to get by out in the world. That led to wondering if there was nothing to be done about her light sensitivity, and he started going through the names of Creations medical personnel on the forums. That’s what he would do, he thought, once he left here. He’d find someone to come see her, someone trustworthy, and then he’d wipe his hands of this charming, otherworldly thing. He looked toward the music, trying to make out the tune, and then he looked back at her. “What are we listening to, poppet?”
She named a popular Seattle station that played alternate rock and spoke of ridiculous things like celebrity divorces, and she smiled when she told him, though not precisely in his direction. She hadn’t turned the stove light on since the eye-ache was pretty fierce, but she’d found the right tea tin and the rich scent of bergamot joined that of juicy strawberries. She picked up the kettle and brushed her fingers down the counter to find the faucet and fill it up. “I don’t turn it off. It makes the apartment seem fuller when Stephen isn’t here. Do you live with someone?”
He watched her version of ‘seeing,’ something comprised of touch and distance and memory, and he was mesmerized by it. It brought to mind the kind of learning that happened from doing instead of reading, instead of seeing, and he thought there was a rhythm to it, almost as if a melody accompanied to sweep of fingertips. “I live quite alone,” he told her, and then he smiled. “It means I’ve not had anyone make me a decent cup of tea in a very long while. I’m terrible at tea.” It reminded him that he needed to hunt up the ingredients for lasagna before the end of the following day, and he wondered what Alexis would think of this girl.
“It’s how hot the water is,” she said, softly. “We’re using black so, it’s okay if I let it boil a little. Or you can tell me if it’s boiling. There’s not a whistle.” She made sure the kettle was on right and turned the knob up. “Actually... maybe you better take the water off too, if I can’t see the kettle right.” She tipped her head down to regard it with some dismay before stepping back. “Why do you live by yourself?” He had asked her if she lived by herself, so she didn’t perceive any rudeness in the question.
He could see shapes and the movement of her hands on the kettle, and when she suggested he take the water off he moved toward her. “Have a seat,” he suggested, motioning to the shadowed shapes of chairs in the space. “Tell me how long to steep it, and I’m certain we can make a lovely cup between the two of us,” he said easily. He went to watch the kettle in the semi-darkness, and he considered an answer to her question. “I live by myself because I’ve no one I care to live with.” It was true enough; Silas was the sort to leave a lover before sun-up, no ties and no commitments, no dead bodies to be found in the living room ten years after the fact.
She moved off toward the table, caught her toe in the edge of the chair (not painfully) and sat with a little sigh. Stephen was going to be very angry. Rubbing her temple a little under her hair she sighed again, but not for herself this time. “That’s very sad.” She took out a tea cup that was sitting clean in the center of the table, paused for a moment, and then set it again on its saucer contemplatively. All of a sudden she looked up. “Oh, you’ll need a teacup.”
He chuckled, but he didn’t look up from the water, not wanting to miss the boiling point in the darkness. “Tell me where they are, love, and I’ll fetch one for myself,” he said, tugging the kettle off the heat a moment later. “I’m not sad, Brea. I quite like my life as it is at present.” He meant it; if it wasn’t for the insomnia and the dreams about Maud, he’d be exceptionally satisfied with the little life he led.
“I don’t like being alone all the time,” she said, with painful honesty as she slowly relaxed back in the chair with her teacup, old china with little lavenders painted on it. “There’s a dark cupboard over the right of the sink with the saucers and the teacups. The red ones.” The teacups weren’t red, and there was just enough light to see it.
They weren’t red, and he could tell that even in the darkness. He pulled one out, and he carried it with the kettle to the table, where he poured the water for both of them. “Darling, what makes you say the teacup is red?” he asked, tone curious because he was curious, not because he was intentionally keeping from hurting her feelings with the innocence of the question.
She’d poured bits of the loose leaf into tiny little bobble strainers in each cup, and now she took her saucer and pulled it closer, careful not to spill, bobbing it up and down in the water. “Not this one. That one is.” She peered at it. “Yes, I can see colors but not so much shapes. It’s coming back though. Maybe Stephen will be happy to hear it when I say it came back after just a little light,” she mused to herself, fretting over what Stephen would say over the surface of her tea.
He sat down, after putting the kettle back, and he watched the strainers bob. They reminded him of home and youth, where afternoon tea came in chipped tin cups and alongside the soft smell of flowers and musks. His expression went far away for an instant, lost in the memory, and he was only drawn back when she spoke to him. He didn’t question her understanding of the color, because he wasn’t the sort of man to jump into things he didn’t understand blindly. “Would you like me to speak to Stephen for you?”
She looked up in time to see his expression change, but she didn’t even begin to guess about what that look meant. She hesitated to ask, and by then he had a question of his own. She shook her head vehemently. “No, that would be a very bad idea.” Very, very bad. In fact, she looked worried at what might be said in a conversation like that.
“Would you allow me to bring someone else with me to see you, poppet?” he asked, not pushing the topic of Stephen, not yet. He needed more information- No. No. He didn’t need anything of the sort. He needed to find someone to come and work with her, and he needed to get back to his own crime riddled life. He took a sip of the tea, which was rich and robust, and he scowled into the liquid, thinking his life felt amazingly grayscale at the moment.
“Who?” The prospect of seeing more people interested Brea a great deal. “Everything was grayscale to Brea. Well. Greenscale. Same thing. She knew the scowl was bad. “Does the tea taste bad?” She sipped her own experimentally, and looked at him again, pleased that she could now make his features out clearly. The headache was dissipating too.
He tried to remember the names of the medical professionals he’d seen mentioned on the forums, but he couldn’t recall anyone by name. He didn’t even consider lying to her, even with all her otherworldly inexperience, because she wasn’t a child. He could see that now, sitting across from her as he was. “I don’t know yet, Brea, but I’ll bring someone. Your surname, love, it’s the same as Stephen’s?”
“Madison, yes. Why are you going to bring someone you don’t know?” She was starting to be wary of this plan, partially because she could see his face clearly now and she couldn’t read it.
He considered his options, considered why he was even doing this, and he finished his tea and pushed the not-red cup away. “Poppet, I want to know about your vision.”
Warier still. “What about it?”
He knew wariness when he heard it, but he wasn’t going to lie to her to counter it. “I’m worried about you, Brea. I’m a bit of a worrier. Do you see a physician?”
She stared at him. The cat’s eyes glowed. “I can’t because we’re Creations and they didn’t get that the first time.”
He nodded, understanding that. “We’ve Creations physicians on the network. They’re more aware of our individual situations.” He pushed away from the table, intentionally wanting to put distance between before she could tell him that he was not to bring anyone; he wouldn’t go against her express wishes. “I’ll bring items to fix the window as well, if you’ll allow?”
“Stephen says they’ll shine light at me to try to see what’s wrong and then I won’t be able to see,” she said, fearfully. “I can’t go to a doctor.” She fiddled a little bit with her cup but stopped the moment he moved, watching where he went not with wariness, but nevertheless with her full attention. He moved different than Stephen did, and she studied the differences with rapt concentration. “You better not, until I know when he’s coming,” she replied, after a moment’s thought. “He--”
The phone rang, interrupting her.
She started up from her seat, bumping the table with her hip and spilling the tea out into the saucer. The phone rang again and she looked around frantically. “Where did I leave it?” Ring. She dashed out into the living room, colliding with another side table and wincing. Ring.
He had opened his mouth to interrupt her when the phone rang, wanting to tell her they’d be certain to explain about the lights before anyone shined any lights. But then she was up, moving around in a whirlwind, and he hated Stephen even more than he had five minutes ago - an impressive feat. “Darling,” he said, standing and following her at a distance, listening for the phone and taking it in his hand. “You’re looking for this?”
She turned all the way around again and caught it up urgently. She answered it mid-ring before the caller hung up, rather breathless. The one-sided conversation was not pleasant to hear, and less to participate in. She sat down on the couch to have it. “I lost the phone, sorry.” She talked in the same tone as she did with Silas, neither lower nor higher. “Oh, they did? I didn’t know they did that. No. It was a window.” Stung. “He’s not a prowler, he let me in. ...In ...in the apartment.” There was an ominous audible pause in the tinny voice at her ear. She winced at the roar following, and caught her breath to give an angry retort.
Silas would have let her continue the conversation if she hadn’t winced. He’d fully intended to remain quietly observant, cataloging more of Stephen’s faults as he listened. But then she winced, and Silas was done. He took the phone from her with steady fingers, and he put it to his ear. “Stephen, darling?” he asked, voice calm, nonplussed and undoubtedly belonging to a very adult male.
Stephen was an adult male too. A very angry one. “Who the fuck are you?” This was even audible to Brea, who stood a good three feet away from the phone, and she pressed her hand to her mouth.
“Now, there’s no cause for that. I’m called Silas, and I’m helping your sister. You do understand the concept, do you not?” Silas asked, his tone remaining neutral, but the expression on his face cold and angry.
His expression wasn’t moving and Brea was completely at a loss. Stephen was not. “Helping her do what? Stay the hell away from her! What did you do, break in?!” Stephen was definitely the type to get worked up, and he was yelling good and full into the phone.
Silas was unimpressed with the yelling, and he waited until it stopped to speak, as if he was waiting out the tantrum of a very small, very loud child. “If you’re quite finished? Your sister was locked out of the apartment, and as I was on my way to visit a friend, I stopped to offer assistance. The police verified everything was as described, and she is perfectly safe and unharmed.” He looked at Brea, and he gave her a smile and wink. “She’s been very careful, not allowing me inside until she was certain I was trustworthy.”
“She doesn’t know what trustworthy is, and she knows better than to open the door. Get away from her.” Stephen was putting some effort into controlling his shouting, but there was absolutely no doubt he’d be trying to beat Silas into the ground if he was anywhere within a mile radius. Brea flittered up and tried to take back the phone.
When she neared, he smiled at her and put up a hand in a universal motion of wait. “I am leaving, but if I hear you’ve been giving her a hard time, darling, we’re going to have words, you and I. She did nothing amiss, and I’ll not have you taking your anger out on her. Do we understand one another?”
“Who are you, Mary fucking Poppins? Five minutes and you think you know what’s good for her? How long has she been outside? Why couldn’t she find the phone? Did she screw up her eyes?” He was working himself up into a rage again, as if it was difficult. Brea pulled on the phone. “YOU STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM HER.”
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