Who: Amelia, Ruby, Aidan, Max & Aya Where: The O'Reilly home When: Sunday night 7/8 Status Complete, part 1/2
It was never fun to find out that people had kept her out of the loop and Amelia had been grumpy when she first found out about the fact her dad and her aunt Kat were also dealing with the Dark Man nightmares. It was hard to stay mad about it when they were literally in peril but there was that familiar helpless feeling like her family didn't trust her or thought she was weak. At least there seemed to be a solution in sight and Ruby had asked her to come with her to this random house in the middle of the woods, not wanting to go there by herself. Amelia couldn't blame her, Gavin and Kat had gone through it already, but the witch couldn't perform the spell until the next day so Ruby had been invited to stay the night for her safety.
Amelia wasn't sure she could be surprised by anything anymore, but she also wasn't sure what to think about all of this. The people in this house were offering help and they seemed really nice, but they were witches, so that was just one more weird thing to accept and deal with.
"Are you nervous about tomorrow?" she asked Ruby when they were alone in one of what seemed to be a lot of guest rooms. She was getting her toiletries out of her backpack, trying to ignore how weirded out she felt by all of this, but hell, hadn't they all been through so much worse by now?
Ruby had been eager to go out to the O’Reilly house once she knew they could help her with the Dark Man problem. She just wished they could have helped her with it immediately. If they hadn’t offered to let them stay the night, Ruby wouldn’t have asked, but knowing she’d be safe there, it was impossible to pass up. As uncomfortable as it was staying in an unfamiliar house for the night, with witches no less, it would be much worse to be visited by the Dark Man again.
“Kinda,” Ruby said, taking a tentative seat on the bed. “I was hoping it would be something quick and easy, but if it’s difficult enough that they can’t do it more than once a day… Yeah, I guess I am.” She had to believe that this was going to work, that she’d be able to walk away from the house without fear of going to sleep in her own bed. She didn’t know if there would be any proof of it, but it sounded like Amelia’s dad and aunt believed it had. She couldn’t imagine them sending her over if not. “How’d your dad find out about these people? He’s sure they’re the real thing?”
Amelia had a late shift the next day which made it even easier to be there for a friend and now she was even more relieved she'd come along. It would have sucked to sleep here alone in this old house with a bunch of strangers, four of which were older men - out of the ones they knew about anyway. She could feel herself slip into hyper vigilant mode now, exploring their room, checking the locks and the windows, curiously peeking into drawers and behind mirrors and frames. Whoever had cleaned this room had done a good job but she still got a feeling it wasn't used often. "If dad trusts them then I'm sure they're legit," she murmured with more confidence than she really felt. Ruby looked so small and tired, she just wanted to hug the crap out of her and reassure her she was going to be okay. They had to believe this was working because there really wasn't anything else. At least believing in witches was easy, if people could go missing in other dimensions and Jules could open up portals and Jasper was a human compass, then why wouldn't magic be real also?
If she’d been there by herself, Ruby would have been checking the doors and windows as well. She might have even moved furniture in front of the door, just to be sure no one tried to enter while she was sleeping. She was glad Amelia was there with her, because her friend made her feel safer than almost anyone else. Amelia had survived growing up in another dimension, one filled with monsters. Spending the night at a witch’s house had to feel like nothing by comparison. “They seemed legit,” Ruby agreed. “This house is legit. Can you imagine living out here? I didn’t even realize they ran electricity this far out into the woods.” Maybe the witches didn’t need it. Maybe the house was fueled by magic. At least everything seemed modern enough that there was indoor plumbing. Ruby would have faced the woods if the alternative was an outhouse. “I’ve always heard there were witches in town, but… I dunno, this is both what I expected and not.”
"I knew, but I didn't, if that makes sense," Amelia sighed, peering into one of the vents before finally joining Ruby on the bed, plopping down next to her. "I have a magic tattoo, or so dad says. I always figured it was more like astrology or tarot cards or religion, just a thing people do to make themselves feel better. Real, but not real." She trailed off, then gave Ruby a concerned look. "Are you tired?" she asked, giving Ruby a concerned look. Ruby had been under a lot of pressure and the stress of the upcoming ritual like that might give her hope but it was also stressful. Amelia wasn't tired, but she figured she could read something on her phone or something if Ruby wanted to rest.
Ruby nodded in understanding, finding the definition of “not-real” much more finicky these days. The more she saw, the more she was willing to believe, to the point that anything seemed possible. Amelia’s existence alone had proved that much, yet Point Pleasant continued to surprise her, often in the worst possible ways. “Only tired ‘cause, like, I haven’t slept well in days,” Ruby said with a little smile. “Kind of wired just being here though. It makes me want to explore.” She knew it was a bad idea—besides the fact that it was rude to wander around someone else’s house, there was a chance they could stumble upon something that might curse them or worse.
Amelia didn't always have the best boundaries and being in a strange house she didn't know inside out was making her feel uneasy. She'd already investigated their room thoroughly, making sure the nearby rooms were safe too didn't seem like a bad idea. "Nobody said we couldn't roam around," she pointed out and for that matter, nobody had told them any rules about the house at all. They'd been shown to this room seemingly at random and she didn't think anyone would care if they ended up picking some other room to sleep. She set her hair free from the tight ponytail she'd worn to give herself a little break, haphazardly braiding it instead. "Wanna go now?"
It didn’t have to be explicitly said for Ruby to know they shouldn’t roam the house, yet that wasn’t enough to stop her. These were the first real witches that she’d ever come in contact with and she wanted to know more about them—who they were, how they lived in the middle of a forest that was said to be dangerous, seemingly safe within these walls. If the house had been small, she’d probably have kept to their room, but it was big enough for them to get lost in. Were there more O’Reillys than she’d seen, hiding away in their rooms, waiting for her to leave? She doubted it. No one could be that quiet for so long. “Yeah,” Ruby said after a moment of thought. “We’ll just be real quiet. Try not to enter any rooms with people in them. And if we get caught, we can say we were looking for the bathroom. Or the kitchen.”
"Or we can just tell them we were exploring," Amelia said with a shrug. She didn't feel like anyone could blame them for being curious, especially when nobody had told them to stay put. "Do you think there's a lot of people living here?" she asked, thinking along the same lines as Ruby. "Like... a cult." She arched her brows and gave Ruby a bemused smile. Her dad wouldn't let her stay there if he didn't think it was safe and he would burn this place down if she went missing again so she wasn't actually too worried that there was a coven of witches living here who'd try to indoctrinate them into some weird beliefs. And still... It was a strange, gigantic house in the middle of the woods.
“It feels like there could be,” Ruby said as she opened the door to their room and peered out into the hallway. “I was going to say no to a cult, but is a coven much different?” She thought they could be one and the same, but if Shayna Mae was the leader of this one, then it seemed distinctly un-cult-like. Ruby had always imagined witches to be threatening in nature, but she didn’t get that vibe from the O’Reilly matriarch. Then again, with magic involved appearances could easily be deceiving. “I wonder if there used to be more of them,” she said softly, moving down the hall towards the next room. She tried the handle and, when she found it unlocked, quietly opened the door.
A coven felt like it might be more equal than a cult but Amelia didn't have the expertise to even try to examine it. She did know that it was possible that the O'Reillys could have been a big family living together though, she'd read a lot of historical fiction in her life and big households had been a lot more common. It was kind of sad in a way, how families all broke up now. Amelia wanted to keep everyone she loved close now that she'd gotten them back. She followed Ruby quietly, looking around this new room curiously. It was clean and well taken care of as well, but she still got the feeling it hadn't been lived in for a very long time. "So many old things," Amelia whispered absent mindedly as she looked over the picture frames on the walls, paintings and photographs alike and all of them at least a few decades old by the looks of them.
“There’s so much history here,” Ruby said, her voice soft and reverent as she made her way around the room. Her eyes tracked the people across the pictures, wondering if they were all O’Reillys and how far back they went. She could tell the house was old, but when it was featured in one of the photographs she began to wonder when it was built and how many secrets it held. It had seen so much, at least compared to the house she lived in. “Do you think they’re all witches?” she asked, glancing over at Amelia. “They look so… normal.” Yes, they lived out in the middle of the woods, but none of them looked like someone she should fear or avoid. Again, she wondered about the other witches in town. Who were they? Did she know one and just not realize it?
Amelia couldn't help but wonder if witches were just some variation of whatever it was Jasper and Jules were. They had strange things going on that could easily be classified as magic, was that something they could learn to use just like these witches? Harness into protective spells or even harmful ones? "I don't really know what's normal anymore," she admitted, peering at a family picture that looked like it had been taken in the sixties. "You don't look like you're being hunted by a real life monster. Jasper doesn't look like a human locator and I don't look... ten." She moved to the small dresser and opened up a pretty little jewelry case there, surprised to find a necklace within. It was like something out of a story and she had to wonder if there was an actual story there, one they'd never know.
“True,” Ruby said and she was glad that those things weren’t obvious on the outside. If people could tell that she was being haunted, could they also tell that she’d killed a man? It was self defense, or friend defense, she kept telling herself, even if she wasn’t entirely sure Jules was her friend. But even if they weren’t friends, she knew she would have swung that bat. It shouldn’t have made her any different, and yet it did. It had changed something in her brain, altered her way of thinking, just like seeing the Dark Man had. “You’re not really ten though, are you?” she asked as she opened a book that was sitting on the dresser and began to flip through the pages. “You just grew up… somewhere else. Where time was different.”
"Yeah, and I have a fake birth certificate now," Amelia sighed and like so often before, she wished she could have her own identity back. There were people who knew who she was, people she loved and who loved her, but her own mother didn't believe her and despite trying to swear off the woman, she still felt the pressure to prove her identity to her somehow, to be the little girl she'd loved. "It's so clean here," she murmured, running her finger along the window sill. "Do you think they use magic? Or do you think someone actually cleans all those rooms every week or two?"
Ruby imagined that Amelia’s situation had to be hard; she couldn’t even go by her birth name, at least not publicly. The child that went missing would never be declared found, even though she was right where she should be, back with her family. It would be easier if they could move away, start somewhere fresh where no one knew their bizarre history, but she knew that would never happen. The Lucas family had too many ties with Point Pleasant to leave even if they wanted to. “It has to be magic,” Ruby said with a small smile as she picked up a small hand mirror. “I can’t imagine any one of those people wandering around this house with a feather duster.” She glanced in the mirror, then dropped it with a startled gasp, spinning to check that there was no one there behind her. The mirror fell to the floor with a dull thud, cushioned by the rug. “I swear there was someone else in that mirror,” she said, glaring down at it.
Amelia had been grinning at the mental image Ruby gave her but she was startled out of that amusement by Ruby's gasp. Thank god she wasn't a screamer but it still gave Amelia a fright. "What did you see?" she asked worriedly, eyeing the mirror with some suspicion before crouching down to pick it up. She refused to give in to fear and if this damn thing was showing Ruby something, she was going to see it too but if Ruby just thought she was seeing things, she wanted to show her it was safe. She couldn't see anything in the mirror when she looked into it so she put it back down where it belonged. "Place like this is bound to be haunted, right?" she said. "Ghosts can't hurt you."
“It was just—just a girl,” Ruby said, her eyes darting around the room just to be absolutely sure they were alone. “Our age, maybe a bit older. Dark hair. I didn’t get a good look. She didn’t look dead, or threatening. She just spooked me.” She had no idea if the girl had been there or not, in the mirror or in the room, but she would rather not look again to find out the details. In her experience, ghosts couldn’t hurt her, but she didn’t know if that was always the case. She hadn’t thought dreams could hurt her either. “Could be an ancestor,” she said, her eyes flicking back to the pictures. Goosebumps rose on her arms. “Maybe these rooms aren’t as empty as they look.”
"Maybe," Amelia said and closed the distance between them to put her hand on Ruby's shoulder. "Or maybe you just really need sleep," she added gently, not wanting to sound like she was dismissing Ruby's worries but it was more than likely that she was seeing things due to sleep deprivation. "It's safe here, they said it's like a fortress, right? So you can actually sleep tonight and I'll be right there to keep you safe too." She didn't know how exactly but she did know that it was safer to be with someone than to be alone so just being there was a good thing.
Ruby frowned, sure of what she saw, but also forced to accept Amelia’s words. The O’Reillys promised they’d be safe there, even from the Dark Man. If there was something in the mirror, then she had to believe it couldn’t hurt them either. It was easier to go down that path than to believe her eyes were playing tricks on her. The second she stopped trusting her own mind, she knew her world would start to fall apart. “Yeah,” Ruby said softly, giving a little nod of agreement. “We’re safe here.” But she was still glad Amelia was with her. Safe or not, she didn’t want to be there alone. “Keep moving?” she asked, starting towards the door. She’d had enough of this particular room.
Amelia nodded though she wasn't sure if Ruby wanted to look at more rooms or actually follow her advice and go back so she could sleep. She didn't ask, let Ruby lead the way instead, not terribly surprised when they entered a different room. "What if someone is actually staying in one of these rooms," she murmured as she looked around this new room. "And we walk in on them. Awkward..." There was an old sewing machine in the corner and stacks of fabrics and crafts supplies on the shelves and Amelia couldn't help but think it must be nice to live in a place with so much room for random interests. She'd love to get better at sewing or painting or any number of other hobbies, but there wasn't exactly a lot of room to spare at Charlie's house with all of them living there.
“I dunno. We apologize, and tell them we’re lost? Wrong room?” Ruby said with a little laugh. It wouldn’t be too far from the truth. All the doors looked the same when they were closed. Maybe they should head back and go to sleep, but she wanted to look just a bit more. The more she knew of the house, the safer she felt, familiarity turning into comfort. “Who here do you think sews?” she asked, running her fingers over the fabric. “And what do you think they make? Clothes? Quilts?” She could possibly see Shayna Mae in there, making herself a dress or a long, flowey skirt, but certainly none of the men. They didn’t seem the type. But if Shayna Mae was the one who did all the magic, how did she have the time?
"All of them, none of them," Amelia said and sat down on the bed in the corner, harder and creakier than the ones in the other rooms. "Maybe they just fix things." She tried to remember what everyone had been wearing when they arrived but it had all seemed fairly modern and nothing like some grand home-fashion statement. Then again, she didn't exactly pay attention to fashion nor did she have an easy time telling expensive labels from cheaper brands. She was probably the last person who'd notice if someone was wearing home-made clothes. "Maybe it was another ancestor."
Ruby hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to what anyone had been wearing earlier. She wasn’t a fashion expert herself. And if she had to sew something, she’d probably end up breaking the machine. It just amazed her that such a room existed. “Yeah, maybe…” she said, now thinking of the family in general. It had been just her and her dad for as long as she could remember. It would have been cool to have a bigger family, but after her mom disappeared so did that option. “I know it’s not the norm, but it’s kinda cool that they all live here. Like, I’m ready to move out, but also… I don’t really want to live alone.”
"There's no rush if you get along with your dad," Amelia said and she didn't love this topic because it seemed like everyone wanted to move somewhere. Everyone being Jasper, who still wanted to go live somewhere else even if he had a pretty sweet deal in the basement. Amelia definitely wanted everyone in the same house and she liked the way things were for the family right now. There was safety in numbers and they didn't need to schedule time to meet, they just ran into each other all the time. "Your dad is pretty nice, right?"
“Yeah, but he’s my dad,” Ruby said with a smile and a little shrug. “I like living with him for the most part, but… I think it’s hard for him to treat me like an adult. Some of it’s nice, like I know if I didn’t come home, he’d come looking for me. But sometimes I want to stay out and I don’t want to have to answer for it. Or maybe I want to have a guy over. Right now they’re not even allowed in my room. Not that that matters right now, but… I don’t know. There’s really no rush. I’d save more money staying at home, that’s for sure.” And right now, saving money mattered, especially if she still wanted to try for a law degree. She was looking at years of school, so she might as well save while she could.
Amelia had a moment's pause as she wondered what the policy in her home was about guys staying over. It hadn't been an issue so far and she had a feeling her family wouldn't really konw how to deal with that in general. It was a later time problem as she didn't have her eyes set on anyone or even the longing to get there. "Saving money is good," she said with a little smile that faded when she opened the door and found herself looking into the kitchen instead of the hallway. "Uhm," she murmured, slowly looking behind her even if she knew there was no other door in the room they could have possibly come through. "That doesn't... seem right."
“What doesn’t? Oh…” Ruby looked over Amelia’s shoulder, not sure what to make of what she was seeing. She knew they hadn’t entered through the kitchen. Was absolutely positive of it. And yet, that was the kitchen, on the other side of the door. She looked behind her, at the rest of the room, but there were no other doors to go through in this one. It was either exit into the kitchen, or stay in the sewing-craft room. “Um… It’s not right, but… I don’t know where else to go,” she frowned. “We could… we could close it, re-open it, and try again?” That sounded ridiculous, but it was the only idea she had. “You think the house is annoyed at us for snooping?”
Amelia could feel the all too familiar sensation of panic start creeping through her body, even as she stayed stoic and still. They were supposed to be safe in this house and her father seemed to trust these people but was their magic powerful enough to ward off those strange glitches in reality? It didn't seem very likely that they were in a different dimension, the room they'd entered was exactly the same and as far as she knew, only Jules could open literal doorways between worlds. What Ruby said actually helped because she much preferred the house gently chiding them than any other possible reason for this. "That might be a good idea," she said quietly as she did just that. "And if it's the house, it should just send us back to our room."
She opened the door again, somewhat hoping that the house had heard her - if that was even what was going on - but the doorway didn't lead to their room or the hallway, nor did it lead to the kitchen. It led to a room they hadn't seen before. "I don't know what to do," Amelia admitted, her voice flat and almost robotic as she tried to keep herself in check.
Though Ruby knew other dimensions existed, she’d never seen one first hand, and she assumed they would look different. Other-worldly. Frightening or completely alien. Maybe that was why her brain didn’t go there. She assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that this was a self-contained puzzle and that the door would keep them in the house, not take them somewhere else completely. It kept her from panicking outright, and what little trepidation she did have, she stamped down at the sound of Amelia’s voice. “We stay together,” she said, and reached for her hand, giving it a squeeze. Ruby peered into the other room, her feet still planted on the other side. “It still looks like the O’Reilly house, but I’m not completely sure.” Her eyes ticked to the windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of something familiar, but they were surrounded by woods. “We can always open and close it again. Hope for something we’ve seen before.”
Amelia nodded and there was no way she was going through without knowing what she was walking into so that was a good plan. She opened the door again and closed it immediately and quietly when she realized it was somebody's room and there was low music playing so they were probably in there. Maybe that should have freaked her out more but it made her laugh tentatively and quietly as she looked back at Ruby. Maybe it was the sign of life - of normalcy and the faint whiff of weed that was so familiar to her - but this somehow didn't seem so malicious anymore. "What the fuck?" she whispered, wide eyed and a little exasperated.
It should have freaked her out that the rooms kept changing, but none of them seemed especially threatening, and the last one was almost inviting. She would’ve told Amelia to head on in, except they couldn’t have even explained how they got there or where they came from. Was this normal for the O’Reillys? If so, how did they get anywhere? Or maybe they had control over it as witches? Ruby snickered, preferring to find the humor in it, even if she was beginning to be as exasperated as Amelia. “Maybe we should try asking nicely,” she laughed softly. “Can we please go back to our room? We promise to stay there.” It felt weird to appeal to the house, but she wasn’t sure what else to do at that point.
Amelia wasn't so sure that was going to work, but at this point they were just opening a door and closing it and nothing had been scary so far so she directed a faint skeptical but hopeful smile up at the ceiling before she opened the door again. It didn't lead to their room this time but to the kitchen where the first thing they saw was Aya, perched on a counter, eating some snacks.
"Oh, hi!" she chirped as if she was completely innocent of the shenanigans. "You weren't there a second ago..." The doorway that led into the kitchen didn't actually have a door save for the current one leading into the room Amelia and Ruby were in so as far as they knew, they'd just magically appeared in the doorway. "Is the house playing tricks on you?" she asked knowingly with a roll of her eyes and a little smile. "Call it initiation, I guess."
“Does it do that often?” Ruby asked, taking a few more steps into the kitchen. Looking back, she couldn’t even figure out how they got there. Behind her, the craft room was gone. She thought she should probably be spooked, but they’d seen this kitchen before and that made it feel safe. The girl, on the other hand, kept Ruby on her guard, having not been introduced to her earlier. “Why would we need an initiation? I think, between the two of us, we’ve had enough experience with... with the supernatural.”
"You're new to the house," Aya pointed out and offered out her bag of snacks. "What are you doing here anyway?" Neither of them was a witch though there was something off about one of them and both of them had definitely been in touch with the supernatural, she didn't need to be told. Then again, they were in Point Pleasant where most people had, even if they weren't aware of it.
"You don't know?" Amelia asked, cocking a brow. "Shayna Mae is helping us, she didn't tell you?" She didn't think this girl needed to know any of the details if she wasn't already in the loop but she did accept some snacks because they looked fucking tempting.
"Oh, customers," Aya said with an enthusiastic nod. She knew what was going on, it was hard not to know when she was a nosy little bitch with door magic at her disposal. "And nah, I'm Aidan's friend, did you meet Aidan?"
Ruby cautiously moved forward and took the other bag of snacks. Nothing looked suspicious about them, and they weren’t homemade, so they were probably safe. “Yeah, I think we met him,” Ruby said. “Kinda scruffy, really quiet?” She still wasn’t sure exactly how man O’Reillys lived in the house, so maybe she was wrong. Ruby looked around, expecting him to be somewhere near, but it looked like the three of them were alone. “Do you live here, too?” She’d said ‘friend’, but the girl looked rather at home on the kitchen counter.
"Scruffy, yes, quiet no," Aya said and tilted her head in thought. "Well, sometimes, I guess." It sounded about right that all the boys had been quiet since these girls were guests of Shayna Mae, behaving themselves for a change or just being uncharacteristically shy around newcomers. "I think all the men in this house are scruffy, actually, so maybe you didn't meet him. If he was a giant, then that was Knox. And nah, I just stay here sometimes. It's not so bad for a house full of witches."
"We didn't really meet him so much as see him," Amelia interjected. They'd been briefly introduced to four men in the house and yes, they'd all been somewhat scruffy. "Do you think the house will let us get back to our room?" she asked before plopping some snacks in her mouth. Maybe this girl could walk them back or get one of the witches to do it. It'd be weird though, if that was what it took.
"Let's find out," Aya replied and widened her eyes in excitement before hopping down from the counter. "This house is stupidly big, do you remember where your room is?"
Ruby smiled a little at Aya’s description of the men in the house. They were all a little scruffy, so it’d probably been a bad choice of words. “Not a giant. Longish hair,” she clarified, though it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that they were no longer stuck in the craft room and that they’d found someone who could help them get back to their room. It didn’t matter to Ruby that she hadn’t met her earlier. “I know it was upstairs,” she said, frowning a little as she realized they were back downstairs. “I think it was maybe the second or third door on the left, but we got all turned around somewhere. I’m Ruby, by the way.”
"And I'm Aya," Aya said cheerfully and smiled when Amelia mumbled her name in turn. "Let's try to get you where you belong." She had no real intention of taking them directly to the guest room but taking them out of the house was probably a bad idea since they were under the witches' protection, still, it was a big house with lots of weird places. She led them to the hallway and smiled back at them. "So far so good?"
Amelia wasn't worried anymore, they were supposed to be safe here and she had snacks so she just followed the black haired girl, sticking close to Ruby as she indulged in the salty treats, looking around a bit curiously. It felt different walking this hall for some reason, maybe because it was late or maybe because there weren't as many people around. She didn't feel quite as rushed and out of place at least now that they had a guide who didn't have any sense of urgency about her.
“Looks good so far,” Ruby said, following Aya’s lead. She hadn’t paid as much attention as she probably should have the first time around, especially if they were going to go exploring, so this time she made an effort at watching for specific markers. Windows, pictures, anything that would help her better navigate the house, though if the doors started misbehaving again, it really wouldn’t matter how well she mapped it out in her mind. Hopefully it would start to see her as a friend and let her go on her way. “So you’re not a witch?” she asked, hoping she was making the right guess there. Something Aya said made her think that wasn’t the case.
"Ew no," Aya replied instinctually, then tittered. "Respectfully. Witches are messy. You're not witches either, are you?" She already knew the answer to that but assuming they weren't because they were here for help wouldn't make much sense so she didn't try to fake that kind of guess work.
"We're not, no," Amelia replied and she didn't really know what Aya meant by that. Humans were messy, life was messy, she didn't think witches were any messier than anything else but maybe Aya meant something specific. "I sometimes wonder if it would be any better, having magic like that. But it probably comes with its own set of problems."
"Oh yeah, it does," Aya replied. "But hey, take advantage of their magic if you gotta," she added as she led the way upstairs. "I'm guessing you're not in the mood to talk about why you're here and that's fine with me. Do you like music?"
Ruby didn’t know enough about witches to fully comprehend what they were capable of, or what the potential drawbacks might be, but if they could ward away the Dark Man, then the skills they had were worth the problems that came with them. At least in her book. It made her wonder what else they could ward off. The woods had always seemed like a dangerous place, but their house might be the safest place for miles—so long as the house liked you. Preferring not to talk about the Dark Man and what he’d done to her, Ruby latched on to the later question. “I like music,” she said, shooting Amelia a little smile as they followed Aya. “Most kinds, anyways. Depends on the situation. Why do you ask?”
"Because I love music," Aya replied, audibly more excited now. "Can you sing?" she asked, eyes widening as she glanced back and grinned at Ruby. "I go to this karaoke bar all the time just to listen to people sing. Too bad so many of them suck." It was worth it for the nights someone with a good voice went on stage but that didn't happen nearly often enough.
"I can carry a tune," Amelia said. "But that's about it. Haven't exactly had any practice." She looked at Ruby with some curiosity, feeling like this was something she should know about her. They hadn't exactly spent a lot of relaxed time together with music involved though and right now that seemed like a pity.
“I mean, nobody’s going to give me a recording contract or anything like that, but I think I’m decent,” Ruby grinned. “I like to dance more than I like to sing. If there’s music on, I can’t keep still. Doesn’t even matter if I like the song or not.” There were many days that she found herself dancing through work at the diner and Ruby believed that was all that kept her sane sometimes. Things were crazy, especially in Point Pleasant. Music could be an escape, one she could turn on any time she wanted.
Aya spun around with a playful gleam in her eye and excitement that went beyond a normal love for music. "Anything. The house will like you better if you sing for it. Can you harmonize? I can harmonize."
Amelia let out a bewildered little laugh and gave Ruby a skeptical look. "I wouldn't even know what to sing," she admitted but she found she kind of wanted to and a song did come to mind, only because she and Ruby had been listening to it very recently. So she sang the first line quietly - experimentally, watching Ruby with a questioning smile. It kind of spurred her on how Aya's eyes widened happily and she'd been promised harmonizing from this new girl, whether Ruby sang along or not.
“The house will like us better if we sing?” Ruby raised a brow as she grinned. That sounded made up, like Aya just wanted to hear them, but Ruby was willing to play along. And if it was true, then the house might like her a bit better as well. She immediately knew what song Amelia was singing and, smiling back at her, she joined her on the melody, glad she knew most of the words. It was easier to sing along with someone else than on her own, and she looked towards Aya expectantly. Ruby didn’t know how to harmonize with random songs, but from the way Aya’s eyes had lit up, she had the feeling she did.
The chorus was easy and as it turned out, fun to play with and prolong so that was what they ended up doing and Aya was quick to catch on, adding her own voice to the mix and harmonizing. The three of them sounded good, amazing even, like a little acapella group. Aya wished they were somewhere with more echo. It was tempting to steal them away somewhere cavernous but they weren't allowed to leave the house until after Shayna Mae did her ritual. Aya wasn't in the habit of obeying orders, but the girls were singing and that earned them her favor. Singing always brought out the best in people, even people who were reluctant to start seemed to light up once they got into it.
It was a little surreal to sing in a stranger's hallway with a girl she'd only just met but Amelia had to admit she was enjoying herself. It was a beautiful song, melodious and despite being melancholic it filled her chest with some kind of hope to use her voice like this. She kind of wanted to keep going for the next hour, even if it was just the same song over and over but after just a few minutes they were interrupted by a door opening a few feet away. One of the O'Reilly boys - Max? - poked his head out, looking curious and a little bewildered.
"...I thought I heard singing," he said. "I didn't mean to... stop you?"
It was really pretty cool, the three of them singing together, and Ruby would have kept going if she’d known how to. Unfortunately, she eventually ran out of words and wasn’t sure if she should start up something new. She was attempting to think of what else they might be able to sing when one of the O’Reilly men came to investigate. “You didn’t stop us. We just finished the song,” Ruby smiled. “We could keep going, but we’d have to come up with something new. Any suggestions?” She had no idea why she was volunteering them to keep singing like they actually knew what they were doing, but this was more fun than she and Amelia sitting in their room, waiting for dawn and hoping the Dark Man couldn’t reach them there.
Aya was the only one of the three girls who shot Max a death glare when he peeked out because she hardly ever had someone singing with her - for her - these days and in her mind he was interrupting, but there was mellow music coming from his room and that... helped. Plus, he was used to her death glaring for no reason so he didn't really blink at that. "There's plenty of songs," she said as she turned back to Ruby and Amelia. "I could even teach you some, or..." She turned back to Max with a sly grin. "Max could share some of his pot with us," she said playfully, making Max smirk though she was pretty sure he wouldn't mind. Men were so easy. These girls might be off limits to the boys in the house, but just the presence of pretty girls always cheered boys up and Max could use some cheering up most of the time.
Ruby’s eyes lit up and she grinned, unable to control her reaction as she hoped Amelia was as down for that as she was. She’d been stressed for days, and the night has been weird, and she wanted to chill more than anything. It didn’t really matter at the moment that she was lost in a house full of witches, or that Max had a least ten years on her—he was hot, Aya was fun, and this was a much better alternative than attempting to sleep. “I’m down if you are,” she said, knocking her hip against Amelia’s. Ruby wouldn’t leave her friend, no matter how much she might enjoy getting high. Amelia wouldn’t even be there if it wasn’t for her, so she had the final say.
“Max, have you seen Aya?” Aidan called out as he came down the stairs, his voice fading as he laid eyes on the girls hovering outside his brother’s room. He looked from them, to Max, and then, lastly, to Aya. “Are we having a party?” he asked with a little smirk. He knew why Ruby and Amelia were there, and had expected them to stay locked away in their room for the night, but no one said that had to be the case. He’d spent the day trying to work around a water curse and mostly failing and could use a distraction.
Amelia got a brief flash of that all too familiar feeling that she didn't really know how to party or be around normal people, but it was easier to push it down now. These weren't very normal people, she didn't feel very weird around them and Ruby was there. "I guess we are," she said jovially, raising her chin playfully as she bumped Ruby's hip back.
"We're going to listen to music and sing," Aya told the boys, confirming Amelia's thoughts on her not being all that normal. "So if you're joining us, you're gonna have to sing too." She gave Aidan a mischievous grin before pushing past Max to head into his room in such a familiar way it made Amelia wonder if she was his girlfriend or something. She at least seemed very comfortable with both of the O'Reilly men.
Max shrugged softly and backed up to let Ruby and Amelia in too, glancing at Aidan. "They were out here singing," he said. "I thought we got a ghostly choir in the house or something." It wasn't really out of the ordinary for strange things to happen in the house but he'd still been surprised by them. "Lucky I have enough weed for everyone."
Aidan narrowed his eyes in Aya’s direction as she and the girls filed into the room, but didn’t outright argue with her. While he could carry a tune, he wasn’t much of a singer and she knew this. Early on he’d caved her demands, despite his discomfort, but he was long past attempting to be someone he wasn’t to please her. They had their common ground, but singing was never going to be part of it. “A ghostly choir wouldn’t be the weirdest thing in the house,” he told his brother as he followed them all in.
This was one of the most eclectic groups of people Ruby had been with in a long while, but for some reason they made her feel at ease. Maybe it was having Amelia with her, or the singing, or the offer to share their weed. Or maybe it was the weird house as a whole. It would keep her safe tonight, whether she slept or not, and even if she never saw the O’Reillys again, she had the feeling she would never forget a minute of this—the house, the people, or what they’d done for her.
Amelia always felt like a weird outsider when she was in a group of people, but there was something about this place and about these people that made it not as bad tonight. It could have been the weirdness with the doors, but how could she feel like an anomaly in a house that did that? She probably fit right in. The two brothers had a very chill vibe to them too and neither of them were giving her or Ruby that dirty look that made her want to claw their eyes out. Sure, they looked - it was hard to miss that - but it didn't feel like they were undressing them with their eyes or planning something bad.
Max flopped down on a beanbag in the corner, leaving the couch in the corner for the girls and the bed for Aidan and Aya. It wasn't a big room, but it was cozy and he'd had his share of girls over throughout the years so his room was lady-friendly so to speak. He grinned at Aidan's comment and nodded knowingly, wondering idly if the girls even realized how much magic took place in this house - how many layers of it had stacked up over centuries of the O'Reillys living there. "It'd be new," he said as he started prepping a pipe for them to share. "Pretty sure I haven't heard ghostly singing before."
“At least the ghostly singing’s explainable,” Ruby said, making herself comfortable on the couch. “I’ve never seen anything like the moving doors, and I feel like I’ve seen a lot.” It hadn’t led them somewhere dangerous, though, so Ruby didn’t let it bother her. Now that they’d found Aya and the O’Reillys she was confident that they could get back to their room when they wanted to. She wasn’t in a hurry though. They had a whole night to kill and it was still relatively early. It would be fun to hang out with a different group of people, even if they were all older than her. She didn’t mind if Amelia didn’t.
Aidan raised a brow and glanced towards Aya, positive that ‘moving doors’ had to be her doing, and from the way she was glaring at him, he knew better than to give her away. So long as she didn’t send their guests out of the house, he’d keep his mouth shut. “The house has held witches since it was built,” he said, plopping down on the bed. “That much magic, for that long—doesn’t surprise me if the walls are so saturated that they do what they want.” It wasn’t an outright lie. The walls were saturated in magic. But they’d never rebel against their owner’s wishes or attempt to expel someone who wasn’t a threat.
Max caught on quick but he saw no reason to correct Ruby, not when it could piss Aya off and potentially cause some hassle between the three girls. He just shook his head and focused on his pipe. "I don't know why singing ghosts would be any more reasonable than moving doors," he murmured, shooting Aya a look. "Nothing in this town makes much sense though, ghosts, doors, psychics, witches..."
"It all makes perfect sense," Aya told him in a tone that made it unclear if she was serious or not. "You're just narrow minded." She sprawled comfortably, ending up with her feet on Aidan's lap. "I don't see how it makes any less sense than starling murmurations or mushroom communications," she added with a shrug.
"Mushroom communications," Max echoed with a little snort. He'd already smoked a little and he was feeling mellow and for some reason those words combined were hilarious to him.
“Mushroom communications?” Ruby asked, raising a brow in amusement. “Is that communication with mushrooms or communication while on mushrooms?” In this house either sounded possible, though talking to fungi felt like a new level of weird. Not bad weird, just extremely odd. She couldn’t imagine what mushrooms might have to say. “I wasn’t sure witches were even real until today, and now you’re telling me there are psychics too?” she smiled, shaking her head, though that smile faded a bit. “I might’ve seen a ghost before. Can they hurt you?”
“Depends,” Aidan said, his hands falling to Aya’s feet, rubbing the idly. “Most can’t. Most don’t have enough energy to be seen, let alone interact with our world. But ghosts born from extreme feeling tend to be stronger. If they find a good power source, they can be a problem.” He wasn’t trying to scare them, but the girls had come there asking for help. It didn’t make any sense to lie, even if it might make them feel safer.
"Ghosts can hurt you, but most of them don't care enough to try," Aya said and wiggled her toes happily. "And some of them are just echoes so they're not even sentient. If they hurt you it just means you go in their way. Oh! And mushrooms and trees communicate with each other through massive underground networks. All trees are connected - if not through roots then through spirit. The world is weird and wonderful."
Amelia could agree with the weird part though she wasn't always so sure about the wonder of it all. There was so much badness and she never felt completely at ease or safe. To be fair, she almost did now. Aya was rambling about mushrooms like some hippie child and Max was lighting up the pipe which just stirred up more of that familiar scent.
Ruby couldn’t help but grin at the conversation, weird before they’d even had a chance to take a hit. She could only imagine where it would go from here. “Can you communicate with trees?” Ruby asked Aya, since that seemed like it might be possible. She’d said she wasn’t a witch, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t something else. Ruby was tempted to ask outright, but that seemed rude.
Aya looked at her with half lidded eyes, a smile slowly spreading over her face, almost devilish in nature. That was all of her reply and it made Max laugh. "I mean we can all talk to trees all we want," he said. "If they start talking back you might be in trouble though." He passed the pipe to Aidan after taking a deep inhale. "Or high," he added with minimal breathing, holding the smoke in as best he could.
"Speak for yourself, human," Aya said teasingly and made little grabby motions at Aidan to get him to hurry with the pipe so the girls could have some too.
The more impatient Aya acted, the slower Aidan seemed to move, taking a long drag off the pipe and then holding it in longer than was humanly possible before slowly exhaling. The smoke swirled in the air, wrapping around Aidan’s finger before suddenly dissipating into nothing. He finally handed over the pipe just before he thought Aya might turn to violence. As amusing as that might be, they had guests.
Ruby watched the way the smoke behaved with wide eyes. She’d never seen such a visual display of magic, even if it was nothing more than a party trick. “So does that mean you’re not?” she asked Aya, instantly forgetting her attempt at being polite. The opening was there, so she was going to take it. If they weren’t going to pretend to be normal, then she wasn’t going to pretend not to be curious.
"That's for me to know and you to hope you never find out," Aya said playfully and it was probably a well timed question to distract her from hitting Aidan.
"Don't let her scare you," Max said. "You're off limits for her." He wasn't and he knew better than to tell them Aya was harmless. She might not be harmful but she could be a pest when provoked and he had no interest in walking into the kitchen twenty times in a row the next time he wanted to take a piss.
"Are you from somewhere else?" Amelia asked, studying Aya curiously. Max hadn't said she was harmful but off limits for what? She thought of shadow people and Jasper's infection and all the spooky shit that happened around town. Was Aya one of them? Or was she just the kind of girl who liked to challenge and tease people.
“Aya is special,” Aidan said, his eyes dancing with amusement as he leaned into Aya. Boundaries always began to blur when he was high and they’d never been stable to begin with when it came to her. Already he was itching to play with her hair, but he gripped the sheets instead, staying his hands as the drug made its way through his system. “We don’t know where she’s from, or when she’s from. I don’t even think she knows,” he grinned. “Or maybe she does and just wants to be mysterious.”
"I am mysterious, you dick," Aya said, smoke weaving from her lips as she laughed and poked Aidan in the face with her foot. "And yes, I like being mysterious." She handed Ruby the pipe and shot Amelia a smile that could almost be described as reassuring. "I'm from here," she said though she didn't address the matter of from 'when' she was.
"With all due respect," Max murmured. "Who in this town isn't special by now? Seems everyone's got some weird shit going on. You guys are here for a reason, right? That makes you special too." Different kinds of special for sure, he had no idea what their story was. Amelia might just be there for moral support but she obviously knew things if she was there to begin with.
“If that’s what makes me special, I could do without it,” Ruby said, pausing to take a drag off the pipe. Compared to the people surrounding her, she was probably the most normal of the lot, and she would happily give up dreams of the dark man to become boring if it meant she could sleep in peace. But she had experienced enough that she’d never be like the people outside Point Pleasant. She didn’t even know what that was like, but suspected that, to an outsider, she’d probably be just as weird as the rest of them. “I wish I could do what you guys do. It’d be nice to be able to defend myself against this town.”
"I don't think having shitty experiences really counts as being special," Amelia said with a little smirk. "Not like it gave us superpowers. It just gave us bad dreams and anxiety." That made Max laugh which was weirdly validating in a way. She didn't make people laugh often and it felt more like he was laughing in agreement than amusement.
"I got both," he told her. "Or all? I can tell where a limited group of people is located at any time, and I can see holes in reality." He gestured around the room, even if he currently didn't see any - thankfully. "None of those people are people I need to keep track of by the way, so it's the lousiest superpower ever."
Amelia listened thoughtfully and then her eyes widened and she sat up a little straighter. "You were with Jasper," she said, only half questioning, the pieces falling into place. "We should- you should start a club."
"Or a band," Aya chimed in with a little snort. "You're all so fucking traumatized, what the fuck." She tittered and maybe it should have made her feel bad for teasing the girls like she did, but they were no worse for wear and look where it got them!
“With our numbers, we’d be more like a choir,” Ruby snorted. It should be depressing, but she was somehow amused by all the overlap. Everyone she knew had some kind of traumatic experience they were dealing with, some bigger or smaller than others. They weren’t all on the level of Jasper and Amelia, but no one was completely untouched.
“That requires everyone to know how to sing,” Aidan pointed out. “You need, like, a dance. A rave. Something wild that matches how you feel. Get all the energy out.” He imagined the whole town in a trance, dancing to a pounding beat under the moonlight. It was the kind of energy that could fuel a major spell… not that he had any in mind. It was just interesting to think about. “Who’s Jasper?”
"My brother," Amelia replied and gestured vaguely at Max since he'd opened his mouth to speak at the exact same time.
"He was on the other side with me," Max replied. "He's got like super powers now, right?" he added with a smirk before glancing at Ruby with an 'oh shit' expression. "Am I blurting out top secrets here?" he asked and then started laughing because for some reason it was hilarious. The reason was probably the weed he'd been smoking, it tended to make him care less about everything which was exactly what he needed recently.
“Naw, I know,” Ruby snickered. “If I have to go to another world to get super powers, I’ll pass. Unless it’s a nice one. Are there nice other worlds?” From what she’d heard, the answer seemed like a resounding “no”. Everyone who’d been to one was lucky to have survived and she suspected they all came back with life-long trauma, no matter how well they hid it.
“There’s dangers in every world, even ours,” Aidan said. “If you could’ve picked your superpower, what would it have been?” Though his head was getting nice and fuzzy, he thought he should steer the conversation to something a touch lighter. Thinking too much about that other place, where his brother and the others had been stuck for months, wouldn’t be good for any of them.
Aidan was right and even if it would make for a good fantasy to think that all the evil in their world had come spilling in from another world and could be shut out like theirs had, it just wasn't true. Humans alone were vicious - unless of course that was all demonic influence. It was hard to tell these days. "Some are better than others," Max said with a shrug. "And I'm gonna guess... immunity to supernatural shit? At least bad supernatural shit. That'd be a good superpower. Being like a ghost to monsters, they just don't see you, glide on right by ya." It was a heavy topic but he was stoned and it was all a little cartoony in his head so thankfully it was more funny than sad.
"Finding anything or anyone anywhere is a good one," Amelia said quietly, thinking of Jasper and how he'd saved Rebecca's life. It had to make some of all the awful shit worth it, the ability to save a little girl from Amelia's fate or worse and she thought she should remind him of that more often. As much as she wished she could have that ability too, since he already had that, it'd probably be practical to have something else. Then again, it was probably best not to have anything at all, the little weirdness she'd experienced was already too much at times.
“Immunity to supernatural shit would be nice,” Ruby agreed. “If I could pick though, I think I’d go with the ability to teleport anywhere. Like the beach. Or some place else when things go fucking crazy around here. Like, oh, we have bad fog? I’m gonna pop over to Times Square for a bit, see a show while it passes.” Most things in life Ruby preferred to face head on, not run away, but she’d learned she wasn’t equipped to properly fight the kind of chaos that was sometimes inflicted on their town. Plus, it’d be awesome to go wherever she wanted for the day, then still come home and sleep in her bed at night.
Aidan was enjoying listening to everyone answer as he stole back the pipe and took another hit. Everything was starting to feel nice and fuzzy now, making it easier to tolerate Aya poking at him. Sometimes he wished he could read her mind, though most times it was probably a blessing he couldn’t. She probably wanted him to answer, but he still took his sweet ass time getting there. “Finding something could be cool, though I like the hunt, and I don’t usually know what I’m looking for ’til I find it.” It wasn’t really an answer for himself, but that was fine. He liked the powers he already had.
"You like the hunt?" Aya all but purred at him. "Maybe I'll drop you off somewhere mysterious and let you find your way home." She all but beamed at him at the idea but there was nothing malicious behind it - not tonight. She'd never done anything to endanger his life, nor did she feel like she could even if she had wanted to.
They both knew she meant a random door but it did just sound like a weird game to Amelia and Ruby, one that probably involved walking through the woods if Aya was 'dropping him off' somewhere so that just sounded dangerous and a little nonsensical - and probably just a joke. Amelia felt like she didn't know a whole lot of things she might otherwise know if she'd actually grown up here, but she did know nobody should be left alone anywhere near the woods.
"Leave it to you to leave him in fucking... Canada or something," Max tittered. "No passport, no phone, no cash. I don't think anyone would trust you in a game like that."
"I would never," Aya laughed but she knew she would, she absolutely would - just not with the family of witches she was so oddly and intricately bound to.
“You totally would,” Aidan laughed, just high enough now that it came to him freely. “So long as you don’t drop me in the middle of the fuckin’ woods, I’d be fine.” Cash was easy to score, as was a phone. A passport would be a pain in the ass, but he had the feeling Aya wouldn’t leave him for that long. She could be a bitch, but he didn’t think she had any desire to get him in serious trouble.
“Being a witch wouldn’t help you survive in the woods?” Ruby asked with a little laugh. “You can’t, like, grow your own food and make fire and shit?” It seemed a little off balance that they could rid her of demons, but not perform basic survival tasks, but what did she know?
"Aidan is all air," Max tittered. "Totally useless at survival. He can brew the best booze but growing food? That's more our sister's style. Ditch him in the woods and he'll just sulk until you come pick him up again."
"I would never dump him in the woods," Aya protested loudly. "Some small town in the south, maybe. That'd be hilarious." She grinned at Aidan as she pictured him trying to find directions and money for a bus at some shitty gas station, but honestly he'd probably just get himself shot and she didn't want that. "I'd keep an eye on you," she promised. "Poor helpless baby."
“Fuck you both,” Aidan laughed, flicking his fingers towards them so that sparks flew from the tips. It was a harmless little gesture, but a reminder that he wasn’t exactly helpless. Getting stuck in the woods would be a pain, in large part because of the food issue, but he’d fare just fine in a city. He’d been picking pockets since grade school. “Glad to know you won’t let me starve to death,” he said, nudging Aya.
Though it hadn’t been said, Ruby was beginning to sense that Aya had some kind of traveling ability. Either that, or she was strong enough to knock out Aidan and throw him in the trunk of her car. In a bizarre twist, magic seemed more probable. “You brew booze?” she asked. “That doesn’t sound very witchy. Cool, but not, like, magical.”
"If you had experienced the ability to get wasted and snap out of it if you gotta, then not have a hangover the next day? You'd think it was plenty magical," Max said with the pride of a big brother. The whole magic thing could be annoying as fuck for someone like him who possessed none of it, but he'd benefitted from it so much throughout his life, he had no place to complain. Healing ointments, safe drugs and happy-booze were just the tip of the iceberg.
Amelia stayed quiet, studying the three locals and the way they interacted, the bantering, the closeness like it was a science project. It was hard to tell what kind of relationship Aya and Aidan had with each other but it looked like they were far more than just friends. Friends usually didn't poke each other in the face with their feet, it was like a weird mix of girlfriend and bratty sibling behavior. She'd probably done that with Jasper when she was little, but Aya was at least twenty by the looks of it. People were weird, she wasn't going to pretend to understand much about them.
“Okay, that’s a cool power to have,” Ruby agreed. Despite her age, she’d suffered enough hangovers so far to see how she could benefit from magic like that. Every time she woke up from a wild night with her head pounding and her mouth feeling full of cotton, she swore she’d never do it again, but eventually she forgot how bad a hangover could be and the cycle repeated itself. “Do you sell this booze? Not that I’m technically old enough to buy it…”
“I brew it in the barn,” Aidan grinned. “Do you think I’m going to check your ID?” For some reason that tickled him, that he’d be strict about selling to minors when he’d been a minor when he made his first bottle. They were going to drink anyways; might as well give them something a little safer, something they couldn’t get alcohol poisoning from. “Grab me before you go in the morning and I’ll sell you each a bottle. Just don’t advertise where you got it.” They could come by whenever they wanted, but he didn’t need a load of high schoolers showing up to buy booze.
It was weird to listen to this conversation when she worked at the police station and Amelia was suddenly hit with a wave of understanding of why her dad had been so weirded out by her getting that job. She was no snitch, especially not with something so petty, but it did make her wonder where her loyalties lay and where the borders of acceptable were exactly. Family, of course, always family - but Grady had been good to her and lying to his face about something big? She really hoped it never had to come to that. "So what's the catch?" she asked jovially. "Does it taste bad? Is it actually worse for you in the long run?" She thought of her dad who had admittedly cut down on his drinking, but he still drank a lot if the bottles she threw out were any indication and he worked at a bar where he probably drank more unless something had drastically changed with Charlie in the picture. Maybe he could do with magic booze that wouldn't mess him up as bad as normal alcohol.
"Like rusted nails dipped in nail polish remover," Aya blurted out gleefully, then laughed and rolled her eyes. "No, it's actually good," she said as if admitting it kind of sucked. "Boy genius," she added affectionately. "Actually using his magic for good."
If Aidan had realized Amelia worked in the police station, he might’ve kept his mouth shut, but he was pleasantly high and assumed a Lucas that had turned to them for help would keep her mouth shut, especially if she could benefit from it. He shot a glare at Aya as she insulted him, but softened under the praise. He wasn’t usually one to brag about what he could do, and the complement meant a lot since Aya wasn’t one to flatter. “The catch was being hungover for a solid year while I worked on perfecting it,” Aidan said. “No catch now. Just work on my end. It’s like brewing anything else, but with an extra step at the end.” He’d taken the project on so that his father wouldn’t literally drink himself to death. That it had become a primary source of income for them was pure luck.