Who: Zania and Vex When: Wednesday, November 8th Where: Castell Spice Shop Status: Complete
Vex had been out and about all day. It was a bit easier to drive now, his leg was healing fast and he didn't really mind the pain. There was still work to be done on the house that had nothing to do with dead bodies or cages and he took his time buying the things he needed and grabbing a bite to eat. He'd spotted some old water damage in the basement and with how they were using it now he didn't want to take any chances of it getting flooded this winter. That meant sealing up any cracks and getting some waterproof paint coat on the walls. He had a busy few days ahead of him for sure.
There was a funeral at St. Dismas and he couldn't help but feel a little guilty about it. If they'd killed the creature sooner, somehow managed to lure it in more quickly, Miss Sadie Gaines might be alive. Here was to hoping nobody else was going to die, that the wolf they'd killed was the last one - aside from possibly Vex himself. He had no idea how the curse worked, there was so much lore. Some said that if the wolf who bit you died, your curse was broken. Others said a scratch was enough to turn you. There was really nothing Vex could do but wait and see if he'd turn on the full moon.
It was late afternoon when he stopped by the Castell's tea shop and limped inside. It wasn't raining at the moment but his hair and jeans were still damp from an earlier shower and it was all a little itchy and annoying. Zania was working and that was good, he wasn't sure why but he always felt like she was the more knowledgeable of the twins. Maybe he was just used to bossy ladies though. "Hey neighbor," he muttered, glad there was nobody else in there at the moment. "You gotta a chair for me to plop down on?"
All this rain was really starting to put a damper on Zania’s mood. She knew her brother loved it, that he’d stand in it until she worried he was going to make himself sick, but all it did was chill her down to the bone. If she’d been home, she would have had a fire blazing in the fireplace, but at the shop the best she could do was turn on the heat and try to keep it at what other people considered a normal setting. The goal was to be warm without sweating her customers out of the store.
Her eyes ticked up when the little bell over the door rang and she immediately sat up when she realized it was Vex. She hadn’t seen or heard from her neighbors since the full moon, something that was starting to drive her a little bit crazy. If it hadn’t been for the rain, she would’ve marched over there already, but that never seemed like quite as good idea when it would have gotten her wet in the process. But Vex was here now, saving her the trip, for which she was thankful. “Of course!” she said at his request for a chair. She swung her hand around and one of the stools against the wall moved swiftly to his side of the counter. As he moved towards it, she noticed he was limping. “What happened?” she asked, getting straight into things. “You’ve been hiding over there. You both have. Don’t tell Lem, but Nic’s about to climb the walls. Are you okay? Is she?”
"Not so much hiding as recuperating," Vex said as he took a seat, sprawling out a bit and stretching his legs. "We loaded the fucker up on tranquilizers and he still slipped away from us," he muttered. "But not before giving me a little gift goodbye." He gestured at his leg. "I guess we find out a few weeks from now if I am become the wolf. At least I gotta a good cage in the basement. It'll hold if I go bad but if it gets too bad I need you and Nic to take care of my conduit. I don't wanna leave her all alone."
“Shit,” Zania said, cringing in sympathy. She held her place for barely a second, then came around the counter, and looked towards his hurt leg. “Is it healing properly? I can give you something for it, you know. And for the pain. Was it an actual bite?” Because if he’d been bitten, then the odds were not in his favor. As exciting as it might be to know a werewolf and drill him with questions, she didn’t actually wish that on Vex. He seemed cool. “That’s not gonna happen,” she said sternly. “But if something does, of course. We wouldn’t let anything happen to her.” She almost said that Lem was one of them. She wasn’t a witch, she wasn’t a local, she wasn’t blood— but she was still theirs. It went unsaid that both of the Castell twins claimed her.
"Nah, it's a scratch," Vex said though it had been deep and it did hurt. He had a way of blocking out pain if it wasn't the sort of pain he could enjoy. This was the kind of pain that was more annoying than any sort of crippling. Mostly because he couldn't really wear his favorite tight jeans because of the bandages. "Not planning on going anywhere but this meat space is fickle, you know it." He rolled up the leg of his cargo pants and peeled the bandage back to show her the stitches. "You got some magic for this shit?" he asked, giving her a crooked grin. "Hell I'd take a painkiller at this point."
“A scratch has better odds than a bite,” Zania told him, crouching to look at his wound like she was some kind of nurse. She’d given herself, and Nic, stitches in the past, but these looked professionally done, better than even her own handiwork. And while the wound looked painful, it didn’t appear to be magical. No weird ooze or coloring, at least so far. And it seemed to be healing, which was a good sign. “Hell yeah, I’ve got magic for this shit. What kind of a witch do you think I am?” she asked with a little laugh. “It won’t heal it instantly, but it’ll speed it up, like, twenty times as fast,” she said, walking over to a cabinet and unlocking it with a little key. Zania stood on her toes and grabbed a glass jar, then returned to Vex. “The pain will go down as it heals, but I’ve also got some ibuprofen if you’d like it.”
"Fire witch," Vex murmured to her rhetorical question and then perked up at what she said next. "Both of these sound really good," he said and it felt like there might be a balance, a cure from the meat space and a cure from the... wherever the hell magic came from. He studied the glass jar curiously, then cocked a brow at Zania. "Why has your brother been climbing the walls?" he asked, his voice void of inflection. He suspected it was because of Lem, he wasn't blind to the effect she had on him and they had been busy taking care of the corpse in their basement.
“Well, yes, but I can do more than make fire,” Zania told him with a warm smile and opened the jar, spooning a bit of the stuff inside into a small bowl. It looked a bit like dark green pudding, and had about the same consistency. Once in the bowl, she began to measure out a few more ingredients, adding a pinch here and a spoonful there, then mixing it all together. “He’s worried about Lem,” she said after a minute. “He doesn’t say much, but… I know he likes her. And not knowing what happened is sometimes worse. You make up things in your head, you know?” When Zania was worried or upset, she was loud. Nic was the opposite. He was epically good at quiet brooding. Zania would have preferred he yell it out.
Vex didn't often have hopeful thoughts for other people but he happened to like his neighbors a lot so he hoped Lem wouldn't eat Nic alive. She was feisty and difficult in ways Vex could handle - just like he was weird and annoying in ways she could handle - but that didn't mean other people would do as well in dealing with them. Historically speaking, they hadn't. He hummed softly as he watched her mix her ingredients together, curious about how it worked. It was one of those things that was bigger than he was, bigger than he could really wrap his head around; the way things worked on their own and then together. It went from the tiniest atoms to the largest planets, things moving lightning fast or slower than the eye could spot, jumbled together in chaotic harmony. He and Lem were the same, like supernovas burning up and shooting in the same direction. Or maybe they were just bacteria. In the grand scheme of things there wasn't really that much of a difference. It was all systems within systems within systems. He snapped out of his thoughts when Zania came close again and he sniffed at the pudding-like thing in her jar. "What makes this magic then?" he asked because from what little he'd observed she'd just mixed things together. Maybe they were all magic in some way.
With the way Vex went quiet, Zania wondered if she’d said too much. She wasn’t always good at thinking before speaking and she knew there were a couple complicated relationships going on there. But then, if Vex had a problem with Lem and Nic, he needed to take that up with Lem. They certainly weren’t keeping it a secret. “Once it’s all mixed, I’ll activate it. Anyone can mix these things together, but they won’t do anything without a witch’s involvement,” she explained. Once she was done, she placed the bowl in her palm, then metal suddenly heating up till the mixture bubbled and steamed. Her eyes shut briefly as she called upon the elements, asked for their blessing, and felt the little pulse of magic rush through her and into the mixture. She smiled, satisfied. “We’ll put it on your leg as soon as it cools a bit. Let me get you something for the pain in the meantime.”
"Well, that was just cool as shit," Vex said after watching her and he had to admit, watching magic at work was getting to be a little addicting. It was like peering behind the curtains of the universe and catching a glimpse of what went on behind the scenes - but only a glimpse, no explanations. Vex wasn't sure the universe could be explained so that wasn't unfair. At least he got to peek. "Lem likes him too, you know," he murmured as he waited for her to get him some pills. "She gets that shine in her eyes around him. It's cute."
“Thanks,” Zania grinned, enjoying the praise, even though this was much more practical magic than showy. Healing spells were the kind she’d learned early, then refined over the years, never knowing when you might need them. A dirty bit of backlash could hit and it could save you from a trip to the ER, but only if she was already good at it. “I wasn’t super sure how you would feel about them, but… I think she’s good for him. She seems very open minded.” More than most of the girls Nic had dated. Though most knew what he’d done, few knew why and only a fraction of them knew what he was. It was hard to get close to someone when they barely knew you. Lem seemed like someone Nic could open up to if he wanted.
"You know we're both batshit crazy, right?" Vex murmured with a wry little smile. "Not as crazy as they say we are but still. Batshit." He had enough moments of clarity to recognize that in himself but to him it wasn't a bad thing. It just meant his eyes were open and you needed to be a little crazy if you wanted to see the Whole Truth. Lem could see it too because her eyes were open and, well, Vex didn't know which was the cause and which was the effect. Were they crazy because they could see? Or could they see because they were crazy? Nic and Zania struck him as at least a little crazy too though, so maybe that was why they got along so well.
“Yeah, I kinda figured that out,” Zania said with a grin, setting three pills and a glass of water down in front of him. “Most people would say we’re not all there either though, so I don’t think that’s a problem.” She thought Vex and Lem might be a little more off the rocker than she and Nic were, but it really depended on the day. They’d both done things that society frowned on, though Nic was the only one with a record for one of his indiscretions. And she knew the real issue was that they didn’t regret it. “Someone once told me I have a broken moral compass, but I’ve never see it that way. It’s just different than theirs. Skewed. I see right and wrong, but not always the same way they do, you know?”
Vex took the pills and swallowed them down dry before he thought to drink the water too. He nodded along to what Zania was saying, understanding it all better than she even knew. "They see it in black and white, people like us? We see the grays, the hues, the changing contrast. It ain't all one size fits all, a good act can bring about bad consequences and vice versa." He didn't realize how thirsty he really was until he started drinking and once he did he didn't stop until the glass was empty. It was refreshing and yet another reminder that he needed his anchors in this meat world, people who reminded him to take care of himself. "You know some people see more colors than others," he muttered as he put the glass back down. "I think you might be one of those people."
Zania liked that, the idea that she could see more colors than other people, even if he didn’t mean so literally. She knew she saw things differently because she was living in a different world than everyone else. There were more dangers than most people realized, but also more options, and if the law didn’t quite align with what she wanted or needed, there were ways to skirt around it. The basics were still the same, but the lines were occasionally different. “I see it as a good thing,” she said, flashing him a little smile before she crouched beside his wound. “The world might not understand us, but I think it needs us.” Scooping a bit of the goop onto her finger, she looked up at him. “This should tingle a little, but not hurt,” she said, then started to apply it, carefully, but in thick globs.
"I'm okay with most pain," Vex reassured her but she was right, he barely felt anything when she applied her magic goo and that was a relief. This wasn't his preferred sort of pain. "The world definitely needs us. It's like a child that doesn't understand its surroundings. It doesn't understand the stove is hot or that knives are sharp even if its instincts might tell it to steer clear of those things." In some ways he too was just a child but at least he had seen the edge, felt the heat of the fire, seen beyond the veil and even an adult who knew these things still got burned and cut on occasion.
“I’m only okay with pain when it’s on my terms,” Zania said with a twist of her lips. She didn’t mind a knife slicing her skin when it was her own hand doing it, for a specific purpose. But injuries annoyed her. And anyone else causing her pain was most likely to result in pain returned. Zania pulled the bandage back into place so that the magic goop wouldn’t get on his pants, then rose to her feet. “At least they have the instinct to stay away. Or most do. They might not understand the danger, but they sense it.” Even she knew when some things needed to be avoided. Like the black eyed children. They creeped her out and were a bad omen, even if she didn’t know what the fuck they were.
There were many kinds of pain if you asked Vex. Healing pain and sexy pain were good, unwanted pain and pain that left permanent damage were bad. It made perfect sense to him that she didn't mind some pain but not everyone thought that way. To some people pain was just pain and they always saw it as bad. "Instincts are severely underestimated," Vex said as he rolled the leg of his pants back down. "The primal brain often knows more than our thinky thoughts think they do."
“How do you know so much?” Zania asked, coming back around to lean on the counter. “I mean, like, these are deep thoughts. Reminds me of a philosophy class I took in college.” She’d been horrible at it, but liked the way of thinking, the way they went deeper than all the surface thoughts. The cool thing about Vex was that he never sounded as snooty as those people. He said things like ‘thinky thoughts’ when he didn’t have the technical words and she was fine with that.
Vex didn't really think he knew much so her question put a little grin on his face. "I'm old as fuck and I've seen a lot of shit," he replied. "Philosophers are just people with a fuck ton of time to think. You think at all? You're a philosopher. Some of them just say things people like to hear - or write them down or whatever. I don't know half the stuff I want to know and some of the shit I know is wrong - or the wrong side of it, just a fragment of the truth. I just try not to jump to conclusions 'cause we're all just ants behind a glass and we can't see past it."
“You think outside the box though,” Zania said. “I want to know things, too. Mostly about the things people don’t know. About the werewolves and the other creatures that roam the night. About spells I’ve never even heard of. There’s so much out there we don’t know or understand and it’s not the kind of thing you can just look up on the internet.” Science could only take them so far, in her opinion. The unknown was getting smaller and smaller in that realm, yet the supernatural was vastly unexplored. “Have you always been a prophet?”
"I don't know," Vex replied honestly. "I've seen things for a long time but I took a lot of drugs to suppress it. Medication, not drugs, whatever the difference is really. I don't know how much of what I saw back then was truth. Lem helps me see more clearly now, meeting her changed my life. Sometimes there's a reason I see things, sometimes I think... the universe is just fucking with me. But it brought me here and that? Feels right." He narrowed his eyes as he thought about it. "I've seen some people around town that I've seen before - in my visions. I don't know what that means but it feels like another sign that I'm in the right place."
“I wasn’t sure. For witches, magic doesn’t usually kick in till around our thirteenth birthday. For some, even later. But I’d imagine seeing things as a kid would be difficult,” Zania said. It was more than that. It would make you feel crazy. Psychic abilities rarely ran in families, so she doubted his parents would have had a clue what he was going on about. And they wouldn’t have been able to help. She was guessing that the ‘medication’ suppressed more than his abilities. It always did. “Other than visiting your aunt, have you been here before? Or do you think you saw ‘em in the visions first?”
"I grew up here," Vex told her and it wasn't something he generally liked talking about but Zania wasn't just anyone. "I'm one of those people who went missing as kids and I don't remember shit about it but the things I've seen after I grew up - I think they might have messed with my head." He got a stick of gum from his pocket and unwrapped it slowly. What he really wanted was a cigarette of course but gum would do. "I don't know who they are but they experiment on kids and those kids... Some of them grow up weird, I think." It was hard to form an opinion on what was really going on when all he saw was glimpses.
“I’ve heard of that,” Zania said. “I don’t know the full history, but your story matches up with the others. Kids that went missing and then came back without their memories. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they were messing with people’s heads.” It made her wonder how many of those kids came back with abilities. If they didn’t remember they had them, would they know they were even there? “Makes me think of people that don’t know they’re witches. The magic can lay dormant, or it can blow up unexpectedly.” Like it had with Nic. A rush of extreme emotion and he’d given a man hypothermia in addition to beating him half to death.
"Blow up? That doesn't sound pleasant," Vex said with a little frown. It was one thing to see things, when that had manifested he'd just thought he was insane. Magic blowing up sounded far more like it had more far reaching consequences for other people or their properties. "I thought it ran in families, can't be common for you not to know, can it?" Maybe if kids were adopted, that made sense he supposed and couldn't help but mentally compare it to some of those mutants in the X-Men movies.
“It’s not. It doesn’t happen often though. ‘Cause, yeah, it runs in families and most people know what to expect and when to expect it,” Zania explained, leaning on the counter. “You see it most when you have a witch and a non-witch, their kids might not be witches, but they carry the gene. So if there’s a witch in the third generation, they might not know. People don’t usually try to perform magic if they don’t think it’s possible.” It always made her sad when a magical line seemed to die out. It seemed like such a waste.
As a cop, Vex had often thought of people around him as potential ticking timebombs but this was a whole different sort of bomb ready to go off and he had to wonder how many people walked around with an unknown force inside of them. "I remember trying to do magic as a kid," he muttered. "Saw some movie with someone who could move things with their mind, probably Star Wars or some shit. Spent a while staring at a pencil, willing it to move." He grinned. "From what I gather that's a really common thing with kids, trying to figure out if they're special."
“Witches can do that,” she said with a little smirk, glancing at a pen on the counter and making it hover in the air. After a second, it dropped back to the counter. “But it’s not how we start. Most of us have to figure out our element first and go from there. I could’ve stared at that pencil all day long as a kid and gotten nowhere.” But once she was of age, put her in front of a candle and she could make it dance. “Everyone wants to be special. And I actually believe that everyone is. Even those without supernatural abilities have skills that I could never manage. The human mind is capable of so many things. You don’t need magic to be great.”
Vex laughed a little when the pen lifted off the counter. That would have annoyed him to no end as a kid but he had his own abilities today and while he didn't agree that everyone had a gift, he could see where she was coming from. It was sweet, really, and forgiving of the countless pieces of trash that thrived in the world. Maybe she was right though, maybe even the cockroach-people of the world were hiding some amazing abilities underneath their shit attitude, or they simply hadn't tapped into them. "Sure doesn't hurt though," he replied. "Having magic. That must be pretty sweet."
“I don’t know what I’d do without it,” Zania smiled. “I know most people get on just fine, but it’s always been a big part of my life. Of who I am. It’s my job and my passion, you know?” It was hard for her to imagine what her life might be life without magic. Drastically different, for sure. Maybe she wouldn’t know what she was missing out on, but knowing changed everything. “So how’s your leg feeling?” she asked, thinking that he should be feeling a difference by now.
"I couldn't go back now either," Vex replied. He understood. Losing his visions might have been a blessing a long time ago but by now they were such an integral part of his life. Losing them would be like losing himself. He glanced down at leg and patted the pants over the bandage. "It feels better," he said, furrowing his brows before quirking one at Zania. "That's some good shit you got there." Could be the pills were helping too but he didn't think that was it. His leg felt different.
“Thanks,” Zania smiled back at Vex. “Usually works pretty well, provided the wound isn’t too bad. It helps that you already had stitches.” She could work with deeper wounds, but it took more prep and something a little stronger than what she’d given Vex. Serious internal damage though, she’d always prefer someone went to the hospital. While she might be able to do something, she’d rather not experiment on people if she didn’t have to. She’d hate to fail and be responsible for someone bleeding out. “You’ll let me know if you guys need anything, right?”
Vex nodded. He wouldn't ask her to help them cover up what the police would see as a crime but he might get her to bless the basement before the next full moon. "You too," he said and it was strange to him that his refusal to tell Nic and Zania about the decaying body in his house had more to do with protective instincts than lack of trust. They hadn't known each other for long, but they were special and Lem had taken a shine to them too. Vex would do anything it took to keep them safe.
“‘Course,” Zania said with a little nod, finding that she meant it. Vex and Lem weren’t witches, but they were friends. And if she needed them, she would be comfortable reaching out to them. She didn’t think they could do anything about the issues they were facing now— or really, what Nic was facing, as the nightmares were all she could think of— but it was nice to know she could count on them. Just then, the bell above the door rang and a woman hurried into the shop, out of the rain. Zania gave her a little wave, recognizing her as a frequent customer, then turned her attention back to Vex. “Say hi to Lem for me, will you?”
"Will do," Vex replied and stood up, testing his leg a little. It wasn't healed, obviously, but it did feel easier to put a little weight on it. "Thanks, Zania," he said then, earnestly. She and Nic really were a boon in their lives and he wished he didn't have to keep them in the dark. It was for their own good, he reminded himself. The less they knew the better, just in case things went sour. "Say hi to your brother from me," he added and pulled a stick of gum from his pocket as he headed out.