A smooth corner of phone in rumbled jeans - a sense of poison and corruption - something slimy and scratchy and foul filling her up, the feeling concentrated in her throat - and a threat, a threat
a threat
a threat
- the candlelight on the surface of the cran-grape turning to pale eyes pale eyes pale eyes staring back at her -
Hecate threw herself backward, smacking her head on the dishwater as she threw her leg out, kicking the bowl of juice to upend it over the floor. One hand violently shot up into the air and every candle flared with a light it couldn't possibly sustain on wick and wax alone, but it felt imperative that Hecate banish all shadows from the kitchen, at least until she had time to stand, and step over the cran-grape puddle, and turn on the electric lights.
"Alright then," she said, to hear her own voice in the shaken silence. "We start with the obvious place after all." She wasn't going to risk scrying again, not now. The energy in this room... No.
She sealed it up, tight, as she left. Both with magic, to stop anything leaking out, and with her key. These rooms, these protected rooms, couldn't be unlocked by just anybody.
Hecate only paused at reception to ask Luisa to continued watching the puppy until she returned, and then, Hecuba on her heels, she ran. (And drove, since it was a far way up toward the Bronx and while Hecate could move swiftly on her own two feet, she couldn't move that fast, and time was of the essence.)
Qebhet's door did not slow her down. Hecate wasn't sure if it had been locked or not, when she curled her fingers around the handle, but it swung open without Hecate thinking twice. "Qebhet?" she called, but there was no reply.
Hecuba pushed forward into the house, her mistress now on her heels as she led Hecate toward the bedroom, where Qebhet was curled in a dark and devastating ball. There Hecuba stopped - Hecate couldn't blame her. The energy here was worse than the energy at the Enodia, even after the cran-grape nightmare. The slimy, featherly mess on the floor was unexpected, unnatural, unnerving.
Hecate stepped across the threshold and knelt down beside the unconscious goddess. She grounded herself as best she could without ritual, and reached out to touch her damp skin.
It was much, much worse that the nasty moment in her hotel, but Hecate had been ready for worse. "Qebhet," she called, and in her mind Qebhet! as she tried to pull her back from the evil twisting around her. She'd found Persephone in the underworld, she could find this girl too, wherever she'd gone.