Girl's car is small. Sporty. Even three makes for a tight fit. Julie gets put in the back, because of course she does. Wolf doesn't want her thinking he's some sort of nice-guy pushover, after all.
They do stop at a Walgreens though. There, wolf leaves kid and fox in the car together. Goes in (grumpily) and buys a tube of hydrocortisone cream (grumpily). Pays with his card (grumpily) and comes back out (grumpily). Hands the tube to fox-girl.
"I'm going to be mad as hell if that Conrad prick magically finds out where Devon's staying tomorrow, you understand?" he warns as Kenneth punches the address into his phone. "Mad as hell."
Takes about fifteen, twenty minutes to get back. Usually takes fifteen, twenty minutes to get anywhere in the city. Car gets parked and wolf gets out, letting fox out after him before shutting the door. They go in. Wolf sends the other two up first. Asks Kenneth if he's staying here tonight or going home. Stops by the front desk.
Hotel door whirs five minutes later as wolf lets himself in. "Booked the room next door," he says. "Two queen beds. There's a rollaway coming up too. Don't care how we split up but I'm staying in the same room as Devon."
DevonWhen he comes back to the car, Kenneth is talking to Julie. Looks wryly at Rafael when he warns Julie -- perhaps Kenneth, as well -- that he'll be mad as hell if Conrad comes after Devon tomorrow.
Julie just says: "He won't hear about it from me, but he also won't not hear it from someone else, but he also might be dying to fight a couple of werewolves." She makes a face when she sniffs the cream, but puts it on her hands, on that ugly red rash that goes up her forearm.
--
At the hotel, Rafael gets the a second room. When he gets upstairs, Kenneth and Julie are waiting for him in the hall. They haven't gone in. Kenneth blinks; he guessed from the car, but the way Rafael easily gets the room next door, gets a whole other hotel room without even having to pause to think: trailer park kid is reminded how different Rafael is from himself.
"Sounds good," he says, looking at Julie. "Do you think Ursula... is going to have a problem with you?"
Julie nods emphatically. "Ursula has never seen me when she isn't enchanted. She might recognize me, but she won't remember me. So yes, I predict bloodshed! Mayhem!" She makes some mrow, hiss noises.
Kenneth looks at Rafael. "I think we're good."
Rafael"Good."
Reaches past them and slides keycard into slot. Green light blinks on. Lock whirs. He pushes the door open.
"Back," he calls.
DevonThe t.v. is on, and Mean Girls is playing. There's a room service cart inside against one wall, and it looks like some comfort foods have been had. Devon and Ursula are sitting on the bed in robes, both wet-haired, sharing a pint of Ben & Jerry's. They look up when the door opens and two wolves and an unknown redhead come in.
Devon looks at Rafael.
Rafael"This is Kenneth," he says, in case the two of them were too out of it earlier to remember. "He's like me."
Leaves it at that, unsure of how much or how little Ursula knows.
"And this is Julie. She's ... more like Conrad."
DevonUrsula waves at Kenneth. She remembers him. Kenneth gives a small wave back.
Now both witches look at Julie. Julie's arm is still red, but she edges forward, still carrying her shopping bags. She looks at the girls, who are both a little pale, who both have dark circles under their eyes, who very likely could not bring to life a flicker of their own magic right now without hurting themselves, and her face looks tight.
"Someone who looks very much like but is definitely not me may or may not owe one or both of you something resembling an apology, and I'm very sorry she isn't here right now to deliver it."
The witches blink, almost in unison. One of them looks at Rafael for an explanation. The other one is looking at Julie, trying to place her.
Kenneth is picking over the remains of the room service, despite the three burritos earlier.
Rafael"She's the fox," wolf says bluntly.
And then winces.
"I mean she's the ... the fox." He makes pointy-ear gestures with his fingers. "She was at Conrad's. But she's helping us out right now."
Should probably rake her over the coals some more, ask her just how she felt associating with and benefiting from a monster like that, but somehow it's not in him right now. He sighs, kicks off his shoes, locks the door and comes in. Picks up the room service menu and holds it out to Kenneth.
"Get yourself something to eat. Her too. Probably you and her will go next door later tonight. Ursula and Devon can take the big bed. I'll take the rollaway."
DevonRafael is blunt, but that doesn't mean he's clear. He tells the witches that Julie is the fox twice, even mimes actual ears, but neither of them have any idea what he's talking about even then. Neither of them, either, have the same rage and hatred for Conrad that Rafael has developed. Their feelings are more broken, a mosaic produced by flickering memories and, in Ursula's case, several months of genuine feeling.
They share a look, a few moments later. Devon gives her a shrug. Ursula speaks up: "I can go next door, too."
Kenneth takes the menu.
--
So there's some shuffling. Kenneth and Ursula and Julie and Julie's shopping bags and Ursula's dirty clothes from earlier go next door, where a rollaway bed is being delivered and where a laundry bag can be handed over. But in the main room, the first room where there's just the one bed, Devon puts aside her ice cream and sits on the bed, wrapped in a too-large bathroom and looking at Rafael.
"Babe... what's going on?" she asks him, her brow wrinkled.
RafaelJust the two of them now. Some muffled sounds from next door as their ... friends? Were they all friends now? set up camp for the night. Wolf takes his socks off, and his shirt. Is digging his toothbrush out when girl speaks.
Pauses. Puts his bag down, his toiletries bag. Comes over to sit on the bed beside her, folding one knee atop the bed to face her.
"How much do you remember?"
DevonDevon's brow stays wrinkled. She shakes her head. "Not much. Ursula and I hung out. We got brunch. We went out to this metaphysical shop she knows and met the owner. He's a witch, too. We... did magic, together. It was nice." She sounds wistful. "A while later, Conrad showed up, and... that's where it starts to break up. I remember that I kept thinking I needed to call you, and I couldn't remember why. But then I'd think you were going to be mad at me, but I didn't know why. I remember flowers growing around Ursula's feet. Conrad... looking like an elf, or something. Like from Lord of the Rings."
She winces. "Then we were in a room somewhere, with music? There was incense, or maybe pot. Someone made us brownies and we played outside. Ursual kept making things grow. I kept... floating. Like I'd run and take a little jump and just... hover there, for a second, or feel myself lifting, before I hit the ground again."
Devon leans, then, curling against his side. Feels like forever since she's been close to him, and alone.
"I don't know if this is before or after, but I remember being back in that room and doing more magic. Conrad was, too. His was... unreal. I feel like I saw some weird shit. Like furniture moving and this insane giant white bird. I think I was tripping balls, but... I don't remember feeling paranoid or freaked out or anything. It felt like... "
She exhales. "It was almost like being with the girls, in Newbury. All of us together. All that power in the air. I felt like I could do anything. So I kept trying. I saw... I could see future and past. My feet wouldn't touch the floor. And after a while I think I just... stopped fighting any of it. Stopped questioning it. I just let it flow through me.
"It was amazing," Devon sighs, tucking herself into a ball against his rib, under his arm. She moves her hand towards his, finds his, wraps hers around it.
"Remember seeing you. Not sure if you were really in that other form or not, but that's what I think I saw. But then I think I was unconscious. I sort of remember being in the car, and getting here. Things start coming back after we got to the hotel."
RafaelAlmost of their own accord, their hands lace together. Their bodies press together. He tucks her head under his chin, the way he might if he were in another form altogether, long-muzzled, thick-furred.
She gives him a few fractured pieces of the puzzle. He has a few more in hand; what Kenneth said, what Conrad himself said. It's far from being a complete picture, but the outlines are there. The scaffolding, the frame.
"Don't have all the answers yet," he says quietly. "Here's what I know. Conrad's a faerie. Not like Tinkerbell, Peter Pan, fairies. A real faerie. Kenneth's Fianna too, and apparently Fianna and faeries go back a long ways. So Kenneth knows a bit about them. Says they're ... like creatures of pure magic and fantasy. Dream creatures. Not really tied down to good or evil, and not really mortal either. Don't really understand that bit, but sounds different from how wolves and kin are born again and again but don't remember much of the previous lives. Sounds like maybe they do remember. Anyway, Conrad kept calling us 'mortals'."
He's losing the thread. Rambling. He tries to put it back together: "Don't know how he found Ursula in the first place. Or how he found you earlier today. But sounds like he can ... inspire magic in others. But also feeds off of it. Needs it, somehow, to be what he is. He called the magic Dreams, and he called Ursula a Dreamer. I don't know if it started out innocent, a symbiosis between the two of them, or if it was always like this. But now I think he -- I don't know. Somehow taps into the latent magic in witches, and then feeds off of it. He didn't really go into details. Kinda sounded like...
"Well. You ever go to Home Depot, see those fruit trees they sell in spring? And you'll have this three foot tall orange tree with like twenty little oranges on it. But then if you buy it all the oranges fall off like a week later and nothing else grows for years. And it's because before they sold it to you, they blasted that plant with chemicals that made it flower too much, too quickly, and then afterwards it's exhausted. Know what I mean?
"I think it's like that. What he did to you and Ursula. Made your magic come out too much, too fast, and now you've got nothing left for a while. I don't think they're supposed to do that. Or at least I think it's frowned upon. But then he alluded to something else -- some way of harvesting magic that would completely drain the Dreamer. Forever. And he said he'd never do that -- but when I pushed, he admitted he didn't know if he'd already done that. He wasn't sure. Can't control himself anymore.
"Talked about a Queen of Thistles too. Said he was her knight, but that she'd banished him. Maybe because of what he's doing to Ursula, and you. Or maybe because he did that other thing and completely drained someone else. I don't know. I want to find out, and I want to talk to this Queen of Thistles. Ask her to ... do something. Punish him, or control him, or help him, whatever it takes to keep him from doing this again. Or worse."
Wolf exhales. Long story, told in disjointed pieces. He thinks a moment.
"That Julie girl's one of them too. A faerie. A different kind. Conrad's some sort of elf. She's a fox shapeshifter. But not like me. It's not something born of Gaia or Luna; it's something else, a weirder magic. And apparently that magic makes it so she physically can't tell the truth. So everything out of her mouth is either a lie, or two truths and a lie. She says she owes Conrad her life. But I think even she knows what he's doing is dangerous and wrong, and he's slipping closer to something even worse by the day. I think she wants to help.
"I'm trying to get her to take me to the Queen of Thistles, but she says the Queen of Thistles won't interfere with Conrad unless she unbanishes him. And she won't unbanish him out of pride. So Julie's trying to figure something out."
DevonAs it turns out, Devon has no idea what he's talking about regarding the little fruit trees at Home Depot. She does know that sapling trees shouldn't be bearing fruit to begin with, and as it turns out, the Wyrm is basically fucking up trees at Home Depot. That's her takeaway from that, but it's also a good analogy. She listens, and she holds his hand, and puts what he says together with what she's experienced... what she remembers of it, at least.
She perks slightly when he mentions the knight bit, though: she was right! Her reading. She thinks about what it was this reading suggested he wanted to steal: the Star. Dreams. Dreamers. She remembers the fox on the Seven of Swords, too. She glances at the wall between the two hotel rooms, wondering if it's safe to have Julie in there with Ursula. Well, Kenneth seems like a good guy, at least.
"They sound like faeries," she says, sighing as she re-settles against him. "Like in stories.
"What do you think you guys should do?"
Rafael"I don't know," he says quietly. "I want to talk to the Queen of Thistles first. Hear what she has to say. Maybe put a little more of the story together. Hear what she can or can't do in terms of reining Conrad in.
"And then we'll go from there. Know you don't want me to kill faeries, though. And I don't think Julie would be too happy either if I killed her friend. Or Ursula, if I killed her boyfriend.
"Ex-boyfriend. Hopefully."
Devon"Ex-boyfriend," Devon says quietly. "We talked about it. Other stuff she remembers. I don't know if he loved her for real or not, but she loved him, and she thought he loved her. But now... even if he did, or does, there's this... all this.
"She's heartbroken," whispers the witch tucked under his arm. "And that's what faeries are like in stories, too."
Rafael"Good." Wolf doesn't even hesitate. "Sucks. But good for her."
DevonDevon is quiet a moment. She knows what he means, but she doesn't say anything for a bit.
Then: "Yeah. But try to be nice to her, all right? Even about Conrad. She's my friend."
RafaelWolf's arms tighten around her a little. He closes his eyes, inhales of that indefinable not-scent.
"I know," he says. Which means he knows she's her friend. Which means he knows she has so few friends who are true, who are deep. Which means he knows she has no other friends at all who are like Ursula, magical, a witch, a sister in this wide and hostile world.
So he promises: "I'll try."
Devon"Good," says Devon.
A beat.
"Paying for a hotel room and room service and laundry so she can get herself together is a nice start," she tells him. Slides her arm over his middle. Hugs him.
She still feels weak. She still sounds tired. She still looks drained. Probably for the best if they wash up, get under the covers, get some sleep. But despite that, Devon doesn't move to get up and go brush her teeth with him. She strokes her fingers along his side, through his t-shirt. Breathes in the smell of him.
Her hand flattens. Covers his ribs, feeling him breathe. Her thumb strokes over his chest, slowly.
"You wanna?" she whispers.
Devon[delete references to his shirt HE IS TOPLESS :D]
RafaelLittle goosebumps on his skin in the wake of her touch. Answer is probably obvious. She asks anyway. He huffs a laugh.
Covers her hand with his, tenderly. "You're not too tired?"
DevonOf course she asks. Just because he's never said no doesn't mean he won't one day. Doesn't mean she doesn't want to hear him say yes, too. So she touches him, and thinks about it, and then she asks him if he wants to fuck. And he laughs.
Devon smiles. She nods. "Really tired. Not... physically." Hesitates a moment, before saying this: "Part of why I want to. I think it'll help."
She touches his hand. Wants to drag it to the knot on her robe's sash, make him undo it, open it, slide it off of her. But she doesn't, yet.
"And I miss you," she says softly. "Missed you, today."
Even that isn't all there is to it. She's sad about Ursula. She's sad that her friend is heartbroken. She's glad that she's not. She's glad she has him, and that their latest fight was about him wanting to keep her safe, not... draining her magic without her knowledge to get some sort of hit from it. She's glad they don't keep secrets, even if it's mainly because both of them are fairly poor liars.
She likes him. Loves him. And as she has said before:
"Want you," Devon reminds him. "I always want you."
RafaelI think it'll help.
Makes him think of Newbury, that. Makes him think of that strange and sleepless night, the hushed meeting in the woods. Their bodies, their faces, their minds and memories still somehow the same when all the world around them had changed. The way it felt in the woods, under the stars, in air unspoiled by industry.
He picks her up, pulls her onto his lap. There's a knot on her sash, and then it's not there anymore. He unfolds the robe like it's christmas and he's opening a gift; puts his hands on her waist, skin to skin.
"Too," he whispers, and closes his eyes into that kiss. "Always."
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