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xp_logsBack in May, Marie-Ange and Amanda made a decision that would change the outcome of Topaz' next meeting with Adam Destine.
It was becoming routine to pop frozen waffles in the toaster, or put on an extra pot of tea in the morning. Marie-Ange had added "check the couch for a visitor under the knit blanket" to her morning routine, just after "find an eyepatch that went well with her clothes" and before her own breakfast and morning habit of the day's tarot reading.
The toaster had just made a off-key clack as Marie-Ange chewed on her own buttered bagel, but this morning she ignored it - it would turn itself off and she was focused on re-shuffling the cards she had just placed back into the deck and placing down another triad, and then shuffling that and laying out the more complex patterns that she rarely used. Cards upon cards, taking up half the table, and the frown on Marie-Ange's face grew deeper, and she finally stood to start another kettle, and get down a few canisters of tea, and then knock on her suitemate's door. "Amanda? Are you awake and not naked? The future is dropping garbage on our morning commute." A pause. "Not literally. I think."
The joke about Marie-Ange expecting a lot if she wanted non-naked died on Amanda's lips as she heard the rest of the comment. "In a sec!" she called, hunting for a pair of pants from the pile on the floor. She hurriedly knotted her hair into a loose braid and pulled the pants on, still buttoning them as she opened her door. "What are we looking at?" she asked.
"I am not entirely certain." Normally this was where she would have made a run for the headache pills and a mug of hot cocoa. "Last night I could have sworn I heard Topaz, but I have no signs she was here, and now all my cards are coming up Topaz, but... " She waved a hand at the table, where half the cards were reversed, and there were four cards from four decks that had all come up The Devil. "I already checked, Topaz is in her room, she is safe this morning..."
"Huh. That'd be a first for this week. She's been here almost every night." Amanda rubbed the sleep out of her eyes as she thought. "Normally I'd say the twitchiness was a coincidence, but you know how I feel about those. No such thing in magic."
"And no coincidence that the first night she is not here, I come up with a reading for her." Marie-Ange added. "Sometimes The Devil is misfortune but usually it is temptation? But in this case... " She pulled the cards out of the arrangement, and set one that had been hand-drawn. It showed a demon that Amanda would be chillingly familiar with, and a bastardization of its name, in Cypher's precise and measured handwriting. "I made one for that demon, the one Rack tried to deal with. It has never, ever come up before."
Amanda's face clouded as she took in the image, then pushed it away. "NOT something I ever wanted to have come up again," she replied. "So, Topaz, my own personal demon... I think we know where this is headed, but just to be sure, can you do a spread for me?"
Marie-Ange frowned at her cards. "I can try, but everything has come up Topaz this morning." She said, as she sorted cards into piles. "I did a reading for myself and it came up Topaz." She gestured with the cards in her hand, waving them in Amanda's direction. "Here, I have a whole Thoth-Crowley deck, perhaps you talk to them and tell them to behave."
Amanda snorted a little and shuffled the cards with brisk movements, her adolescent history with card sharking tourists on the streets evident. "All right, let's have it." She held the pack out to Marie-Ange.
She took the cards, and then Marie-Ange reached out with one hand to Amanda, pulling her friend's hand back towards the deck. "Better chance if you stay in contact, I think yes?" She said, voice firm but good eye already distracted by the intricate interlocking pattern of the cardbacks. "People get lost to us so easily, if we stay together we find them the way back."
She flicked a card off the deck with her thumb, then another and another, until there were seven in a perfectly even arc across the table, face down, mismatched cardbacks clashing against each other.
Marie-Ange turned the first card, and her hand tightened against Amanda's. "Discord, strife, and fire, from your past, or my past, or Topaz's part, or all three of ours, which only has one option, and I hate it."
"It was going to happen, sooner or later," Amanda replied, but the slight knot of fear - not for herself, but for anyone around her - belied the philosophical tone. She watched as Marie-Ange turned over the second card, present concerns. "One of... pentacles? They look more like discs on this set. That's an earth sign, isn't it?"
"Yes, this one is all the four elements, so I think this is earth. It would make sense, gems come from the earth, and Topaz is a gemstone, and all these readings, as I said. They keep coming up Topaz, and you are certainly concerned about her." Marie-Ange blew a piece of hair off her face in frustration. "I just hate where I think this is going."
"When aren't I concerned about her?" Amanda quipped dryly. The next card was the Tower. "Destruction, right? But not random - someone's planning something." Her eyebrows rose as the next card was turned over, signifying the querant. "Er, did one of your cards get mixed up in here? That looks like me."
"Destruction, chaos, all of that yes. It used to be my card for Cain Marko." Marie-Ange's eyes were on the mismatched card, and her fingernail was tapping it in annoyance, and yet, she kept on speaking about the third card. "That is supposed to be hidden influences, but the Tower is never subtle. It is the big messy disaster, it is a hurricane or a car accident. It is not hidden." She finally settled her tapping finger, and picked up the middle card. She turned it over carefully, examining it almost as though she was looking for flaws, and even slid a fingernail along the edge. "Nothing tricky about this one. I was.. I do not know, hoping it had brought something else along. It is just you, all you. You, and magic, and I had thought once to do a deck of magical people I know, but this is the only one I finished." The art was delicate watercolours, showing Amanda, feet dangling over a metal fire escape, face and hands brilliant with the light from a city that was all at once the East Village, Whitechapel and the French Quarter. "Whatever the future is telling us, you are at the centre of it."
"I like the card. And better me than Topaz." Amanda frowned, considering what Marie-Ange had said. "So whatever's coming, it's not going to be subtle. Good - at least it won't be able to sneak up on us so much." Despite everything, she snorted as she flipped the next one. "Two of swords - and another resemblance."
The entire reading went that way - Amanda, Topaz, chaos, Amanda, Topaz, the past coming to bite them in the arse, Amanda, Topaz, dark forces and hidden knowledge. Marie-Ange covered an entire piece of paper with scribbled notes, finally jabbing her pencil into the paper as she circled a cluster of notes. "Well, if this is all the past and the future mixed up and coming together to drop on our heads, I suppose it is poetic that my injury is what will let us prevent things from being truly horrific."
"There had to be a silver lining to that somewhere. Apart from you being able to sleep at night and being able to lay off the painkillers." Amanda scrunched up her nose. "Topaz... it'll happen to her first."
"And then the rest of us." Marie-Ange huffed out. She flipped her pencil in her hand, tapping on her paper of notes absently. "Most of these are earth, and the rest are fire." She pulled one of the cards over, next to the carefully painted card representing Amanda. "I hate how much this one is me, when I did not actually draw it myself." The woman holding both swords had a red braid, and unlike most versions of the Two of Swords, only one of the woman's eyes was covered with the blindfold. "It is supposed to be protection and peace and I do neither of those."
"That is more my thing, yeah. At least the protection..." Amanda pondered the cards, biting a thumbnail as she still did when worried or stressed. "I don't see how we can protect anyone from Adam if we don't know when and where he'll show. And my contacts are pants at finding him - he's got people mostly too scared to cross him, and the Dark Path is fine with him running about causing trouble."
"He wants Topaz first...." Marie-Ange said, not entirely aware she had said it out loud. "He wants Topaz first, and now we know what he is capable of, and how far he will go." She rolled the pencil over her knuckles, flipped it over her thumb and then, aware of her own nervous habits, set it down on the table. "When he and I were fighting, I asked him what he had bargained, and he said ... bugger, I do not remember the exact words, but I know. I am certain. He is making deals, selling off everything that is his and not his that he thinks he can bargain, what if we lay a trap. We lay a trap, we wrap the cheese up in layers and layers of protection and it comes down on his neck instead of ours."
"Use Topaz as bait?" It was a reflection of their friendship that Amanda tended to bluntly state what Marie-Ange used imagery to describe. Her immediate reaction was to protest - Topaz had barely escaped the last time - but she paused. Personal isn't the same as important. "It would have to be one hell of a protection spell, and putting some kind of tracking element might be an idea..." she began, thinking it out. "I think I can do it, but what do we tell Topaz? Kid's already freaking the fuck out about Adam, telling her we're using her to draw him out might just break her entirely."
"Bait that knows they are bait is terrible bait." Marie-Ange said quietly - and picked up her deck of cards. "Adam Destine has taken too much of ours, Topaz' safety, your own past, my eye... " She shuffled, one-handed. "And I am very tired of waiting around for him to come out of the shadows. I get to see what our best path forward is, and it is long overdue for me to seek those answers out instead of waiting for them to knock me about the head."
Amanda was quiet for a very long time, looking at the cards as Marie-Ange shuffled them. Then she sighed; what they were discussing went against all her instincts of keeping her students, past and present, safe. But Marie-Ange was brutally right. "I'll get to work on the spells we'll need," she said at last.
It was becoming routine to pop frozen waffles in the toaster, or put on an extra pot of tea in the morning. Marie-Ange had added "check the couch for a visitor under the knit blanket" to her morning routine, just after "find an eyepatch that went well with her clothes" and before her own breakfast and morning habit of the day's tarot reading.
The toaster had just made a off-key clack as Marie-Ange chewed on her own buttered bagel, but this morning she ignored it - it would turn itself off and she was focused on re-shuffling the cards she had just placed back into the deck and placing down another triad, and then shuffling that and laying out the more complex patterns that she rarely used. Cards upon cards, taking up half the table, and the frown on Marie-Ange's face grew deeper, and she finally stood to start another kettle, and get down a few canisters of tea, and then knock on her suitemate's door. "Amanda? Are you awake and not naked? The future is dropping garbage on our morning commute." A pause. "Not literally. I think."
The joke about Marie-Ange expecting a lot if she wanted non-naked died on Amanda's lips as she heard the rest of the comment. "In a sec!" she called, hunting for a pair of pants from the pile on the floor. She hurriedly knotted her hair into a loose braid and pulled the pants on, still buttoning them as she opened her door. "What are we looking at?" she asked.
"I am not entirely certain." Normally this was where she would have made a run for the headache pills and a mug of hot cocoa. "Last night I could have sworn I heard Topaz, but I have no signs she was here, and now all my cards are coming up Topaz, but... " She waved a hand at the table, where half the cards were reversed, and there were four cards from four decks that had all come up The Devil. "I already checked, Topaz is in her room, she is safe this morning..."
"Huh. That'd be a first for this week. She's been here almost every night." Amanda rubbed the sleep out of her eyes as she thought. "Normally I'd say the twitchiness was a coincidence, but you know how I feel about those. No such thing in magic."
"And no coincidence that the first night she is not here, I come up with a reading for her." Marie-Ange added. "Sometimes The Devil is misfortune but usually it is temptation? But in this case... " She pulled the cards out of the arrangement, and set one that had been hand-drawn. It showed a demon that Amanda would be chillingly familiar with, and a bastardization of its name, in Cypher's precise and measured handwriting. "I made one for that demon, the one Rack tried to deal with. It has never, ever come up before."
Amanda's face clouded as she took in the image, then pushed it away. "NOT something I ever wanted to have come up again," she replied. "So, Topaz, my own personal demon... I think we know where this is headed, but just to be sure, can you do a spread for me?"
Marie-Ange frowned at her cards. "I can try, but everything has come up Topaz this morning." She said, as she sorted cards into piles. "I did a reading for myself and it came up Topaz." She gestured with the cards in her hand, waving them in Amanda's direction. "Here, I have a whole Thoth-Crowley deck, perhaps you talk to them and tell them to behave."
Amanda snorted a little and shuffled the cards with brisk movements, her adolescent history with card sharking tourists on the streets evident. "All right, let's have it." She held the pack out to Marie-Ange.
She took the cards, and then Marie-Ange reached out with one hand to Amanda, pulling her friend's hand back towards the deck. "Better chance if you stay in contact, I think yes?" She said, voice firm but good eye already distracted by the intricate interlocking pattern of the cardbacks. "People get lost to us so easily, if we stay together we find them the way back."
She flicked a card off the deck with her thumb, then another and another, until there were seven in a perfectly even arc across the table, face down, mismatched cardbacks clashing against each other.
Marie-Ange turned the first card, and her hand tightened against Amanda's. "Discord, strife, and fire, from your past, or my past, or Topaz's part, or all three of ours, which only has one option, and I hate it."
"It was going to happen, sooner or later," Amanda replied, but the slight knot of fear - not for herself, but for anyone around her - belied the philosophical tone. She watched as Marie-Ange turned over the second card, present concerns. "One of... pentacles? They look more like discs on this set. That's an earth sign, isn't it?"
"Yes, this one is all the four elements, so I think this is earth. It would make sense, gems come from the earth, and Topaz is a gemstone, and all these readings, as I said. They keep coming up Topaz, and you are certainly concerned about her." Marie-Ange blew a piece of hair off her face in frustration. "I just hate where I think this is going."
"When aren't I concerned about her?" Amanda quipped dryly. The next card was the Tower. "Destruction, right? But not random - someone's planning something." Her eyebrows rose as the next card was turned over, signifying the querant. "Er, did one of your cards get mixed up in here? That looks like me."
"Destruction, chaos, all of that yes. It used to be my card for Cain Marko." Marie-Ange's eyes were on the mismatched card, and her fingernail was tapping it in annoyance, and yet, she kept on speaking about the third card. "That is supposed to be hidden influences, but the Tower is never subtle. It is the big messy disaster, it is a hurricane or a car accident. It is not hidden." She finally settled her tapping finger, and picked up the middle card. She turned it over carefully, examining it almost as though she was looking for flaws, and even slid a fingernail along the edge. "Nothing tricky about this one. I was.. I do not know, hoping it had brought something else along. It is just you, all you. You, and magic, and I had thought once to do a deck of magical people I know, but this is the only one I finished." The art was delicate watercolours, showing Amanda, feet dangling over a metal fire escape, face and hands brilliant with the light from a city that was all at once the East Village, Whitechapel and the French Quarter. "Whatever the future is telling us, you are at the centre of it."
"I like the card. And better me than Topaz." Amanda frowned, considering what Marie-Ange had said. "So whatever's coming, it's not going to be subtle. Good - at least it won't be able to sneak up on us so much." Despite everything, she snorted as she flipped the next one. "Two of swords - and another resemblance."
The entire reading went that way - Amanda, Topaz, chaos, Amanda, Topaz, the past coming to bite them in the arse, Amanda, Topaz, dark forces and hidden knowledge. Marie-Ange covered an entire piece of paper with scribbled notes, finally jabbing her pencil into the paper as she circled a cluster of notes. "Well, if this is all the past and the future mixed up and coming together to drop on our heads, I suppose it is poetic that my injury is what will let us prevent things from being truly horrific."
"There had to be a silver lining to that somewhere. Apart from you being able to sleep at night and being able to lay off the painkillers." Amanda scrunched up her nose. "Topaz... it'll happen to her first."
"And then the rest of us." Marie-Ange huffed out. She flipped her pencil in her hand, tapping on her paper of notes absently. "Most of these are earth, and the rest are fire." She pulled one of the cards over, next to the carefully painted card representing Amanda. "I hate how much this one is me, when I did not actually draw it myself." The woman holding both swords had a red braid, and unlike most versions of the Two of Swords, only one of the woman's eyes was covered with the blindfold. "It is supposed to be protection and peace and I do neither of those."
"That is more my thing, yeah. At least the protection..." Amanda pondered the cards, biting a thumbnail as she still did when worried or stressed. "I don't see how we can protect anyone from Adam if we don't know when and where he'll show. And my contacts are pants at finding him - he's got people mostly too scared to cross him, and the Dark Path is fine with him running about causing trouble."
"He wants Topaz first...." Marie-Ange said, not entirely aware she had said it out loud. "He wants Topaz first, and now we know what he is capable of, and how far he will go." She rolled the pencil over her knuckles, flipped it over her thumb and then, aware of her own nervous habits, set it down on the table. "When he and I were fighting, I asked him what he had bargained, and he said ... bugger, I do not remember the exact words, but I know. I am certain. He is making deals, selling off everything that is his and not his that he thinks he can bargain, what if we lay a trap. We lay a trap, we wrap the cheese up in layers and layers of protection and it comes down on his neck instead of ours."
"Use Topaz as bait?" It was a reflection of their friendship that Amanda tended to bluntly state what Marie-Ange used imagery to describe. Her immediate reaction was to protest - Topaz had barely escaped the last time - but she paused. Personal isn't the same as important. "It would have to be one hell of a protection spell, and putting some kind of tracking element might be an idea..." she began, thinking it out. "I think I can do it, but what do we tell Topaz? Kid's already freaking the fuck out about Adam, telling her we're using her to draw him out might just break her entirely."
"Bait that knows they are bait is terrible bait." Marie-Ange said quietly - and picked up her deck of cards. "Adam Destine has taken too much of ours, Topaz' safety, your own past, my eye... " She shuffled, one-handed. "And I am very tired of waiting around for him to come out of the shadows. I get to see what our best path forward is, and it is long overdue for me to seek those answers out instead of waiting for them to knock me about the head."
Amanda was quiet for a very long time, looking at the cards as Marie-Ange shuffled them. Then she sighed; what they were discussing went against all her instincts of keeping her students, past and present, safe. But Marie-Ange was brutally right. "I'll get to work on the spells we'll need," she said at last.
