42 Ridgeway Ave: The Curious Case of Mary Hodgkins

[Liessel]

The home of the Hodgkinses was large and made in the Georgian style. Like the Knightbridge House, it was stately and imposing, but it was also surrounded by other stately and imposing buildings that made its largeness mundane.



Ridgeway Avenue was a clean neighborhood with fenced in front facades with recessed servants entrances down on the lowest level of the houses that could be accessed by steps that cut up from the level below the street. Trees lined the wide street, and automobiles were far more common here with the rare horse drawn carriage and trap pulling around and coming and going as they would have anywhere else.



The front steps to forty-two Ridgeway Avenue were wide, and without the cover of a porch roof overhead. They led up to a heavy looking set of doors made of a dark wood with ornate panels, and side windows that had been made of paned glass.



Within, in the sitting room, Liessel sat with her hands folded against her lap and her hat sitting forward and low over her forehead. She'd put her hair up in tight curls, pinning them into place against the back of her head as was much the fashion of the younger women of London. She'd chosen a dress for this that was made of a crisp cotton in blue. The bodice was split, the lapels made of a contrasting and deeper blue than the rest of the bodice beneath which was split down the middle by a panel of white with tiny decorative buttons that stopped just at her waist where the rest of the dress took over in the form of a well-made skirt the same color as the bodice.



It was a room that looked as if it were as big as the foyer of the Knightsbridge house with wide windows that overlooked the street adjacent to the avenue they'd come in from. The butler, a Mister Jenkins, had told them that Mr and Mrs Hodgkins would be with them presently before excusing himself and disappearing out of the room with a sharp turn on his heels.


Liessel Erphale looked like she belonged in this sitting room, in this house, on this street, in Kensington. She was a match for this scale, and it made sense that Mister Jenkins should be looking slightly more toward her than toward Adam Larrow.



Adam's best suit had been mended at cuffs and elbows by him the night before, small attempts with small skill to try to shore up the more threadbare parts of the coat. He'd gotten himself together, but this was the suit he wore to work on Saturdays. Liessel had seen him in the same brown and striped trousers when they'd gone through the spring to the Tor. Eyepatch in place, even with an artifact of enigmatic power currently lodged in his skull, Adam was what he was.



As soon as Jenkins was gone, he popped up from his chair, unable to sit still.


Elijah had escorted Liessel to 42 Ridgeway Avenue in the same proper fashion that he'd previously shown up on her doorstep in. A deep blue suit, outlined in white at the proper places. He'd worn his nice shoes, his hair pulled back into a low braid. He'd worn the full suit and jacket, complete with his cane and a hat. Both of which now rested where they had been taken by Mister Jenkins.



He sat close by to Liessel, watching Adam calmly through those ice blue eyes. They still hadn't been properly introduced, but Eli had been studying the older man since he'd first come into view.


Adam wasn't much older, of course. In terms of the pack that howled around Flynn & Flynn and the Knightsbridge House, he fit right in with the youthful leaning. His brown curls and brown eyes set off a pale, slightly ruddy-cheeked face. Even missing an eye, he offered the world a friendly sort of handsomeness, an attractiveness that came from being somewhat frank, and somewhat humble and pleasant, rather than from any particular perfection of feature.



He said lowly, "I don't want to try another reading. Not today. Save me if they push for it."



"Of course, Adam," Liessel said, her eyes drawing away from the door that Jenkins had disappeared through until she found Adam and found herself rising so she could cross the room to where he was, "We won't let them make you do anything you are not ready for."



A glance was cast Eli's way, even as she was reaching to place her hand against Adam's arm, looking for Eli's agreement to her statement.



With the floor thick with carpets over wood that had been well kept, and well seen to, there was not a squeak or any scuff of sound to come from her modestly heeled shoes as she approached the young man with the pearl-eye.


Eli's eyes broke away from Adam to glance at Liessel, then he looked back to him and nodded. "That's fair. If you are uncomfortable with doing readings right now, we will certainly intervene on your behalf."


Adam stopped pacing as Liessel approached, and nodded to her--and then to Eli. He knew Eli's name. He didn't know much else but what the pearl was and was not deciding to pass along to him. It had done that before. It was different from a reading. Adam would characterize it as incidental leakage. "I appreciate it. This hasn't been the best day."


"Something's happened?" Her concern had been there like a current beneath everything she'd done since word had come that they had their meeting with the grandparents of Mary Hodgkins. Now, it had a slightly different focus to it, the shift coming to include the idea that Adam found himself in distress over something unknown.



A quick look was sent toward the doorway, a moment spent watching for shadows of approach before she was looking back toward Adam.


Eli stood to approach the two of them, closing the circle as it were. To talk in hushed voices, but still standing a few feet apart. His eyes lingered on the doorway to the parlor, but his attention was on Adam.


"Personal," Adam told her. "Nothing to do with this." When he pushed a hand back through his hair, his curls caught in his fingers, pulled out taut, and sprang back messy and hopeless.



He looked Eli over--not for the first time--and felt his own shabbiness. That never happened on the hill. That hadn't even happened at the Knightsbridge House. This level of nervousness was new. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly.



Liessel's hand was there and steady against his arm. She spared a moment to study his true eye before giving Adam a small nod, "If this becomes too much, on top of that other matter, please do not feel obligated to stay. Alright? If you find that you need to leave, we will catch you up on --"



From beyond the doorway two voices could be heard. A man and a woman --



"Mind yourself with them, Cora, that is all that I am asking --"



"Winston, you think me mad?"



"We invited them here --" the man was reminding the woman as their steps got closer.



"You can stop pestering me about this, Winston. I've promised to give them room enough to breathe --"


Eli had been starting to lean in to Adam as if to whisper something to him, then they heard the voices. He leaned back out to stand up straight, hands tucking themselves into his pockets. Then he leaned into Liessel and whispered, "I'll follow your lead."


The voices cut off any reply that Adam might have made. He turned, too, at the sound of them. He knew who was coming, and stepped forward in anticipation. Whatever his stresses, he was the only one of the three of them who had met Cora and Winston before.


"--Cora." Winston's admonishment missed its mark as he failed to catch Cora's arm before she stepped into the sitting room. In her wake, he followed behind trying to shake his stiff frown enough to be able to smile at the guests that were waiting for him.



Ahead of him, just by steps, came an old woman wearing a mourning dress of modest, but wealthy, design. Behind her, Winston in his fine suit of black, wore a two inch wide band of black fabric around his left bicep.



In the moment that it took for Cora to cross the threshold from the foyer beyond to the sitting room, she seemed to have forgotten those promises she'd made to Winston. She found herself looking at Adam, and then toward the young woman in a blue and white dress, and then the other young man that had come with them.



Before she could speak again, though, Winston was rushing in and cutting in front of her to offer his hand toward Adam, "Mister Larrow, thank you for coming," He was saying quickly to hedge out the porcupine that wanted to crawl itself out of Cora's throat, "These are the friends you told us about?"


Adam felt that shiver in the air, carried on Winston's tone, and so when given the choice between them, he was there for the outstretched hand, shaking it firmly, doing what he could to shed the ticklish feeling in his muscles. "Mister Hodgkins. Dame Murphy. --Yes." Pulling back, he turned to indicate each of them. "This is Miss Liessel Erphale, and with her is her associate, Elijah Whitmoor. They're--specialists."



He frowned a little over his own lack of a perfect word for them, but let them have their moment.


Eli's hand came out of his pocket to offer itself to Winston, but there was nothing in his body language that indicated demand or urgency. It was an offer. A friendly gesture. And one given with genuine emotion to befriend. "I am sorry we're meeting under such dire circumstances, sir," Eli offered. Trying to contain that southern drawl but failing somewhat miserably.


Adam's hand was given a firm shake, and that was followed by Winston turning to Eli to take the younger man's hand against his own, "As am I, Mister Whitmoor," Winston assured Eli grimly before turning toward Liessel who presented her hand with her fingers and palm downward. He took just the tips of her glove covered fingers and bent over them slightly.



"We are sorry that it has taken us so long to come at all," Liessel was saying as Winston righted himself, "Please, accept our apology, and know that there are already people searching for your granddaughter. Mister Larrow has told us some of what transpired, but -- if you would -- we would like to hear the tale from you, as well as anything more you can tell us about Miss Hodgkins."



Liessel had spoken to Winston but had also looked toward where Cora stood in silent assessment of these youngsters that the card reader had brought into her house.



"Of course --" Winston started to say while motioning toward the seats that had been arranged near the center of the room.



While behind him, Cora stood in assessment of the young trio, "Unless your friends can travel into Faerie they won't be finding her, but I am sure that Mister Larrow has made you well aware of that."


Eli focused on Cora. His demeanor was neutral, carefully composed, professional. Despite what liessel had seen in her Harroway with a flower crown and leftovers in the brim of his hat. He gave the older lady a slight nod. "Ma'am, the group we represent is more than capable," he said softly. "We wouldn't be here if they weren't." His tone was reassuring, but to the already bristled woman, doubtful it would be taken that way.



"They're fae." Adam stood there, regarding Cora out of one eye, and through a dreamy haze from another that he might wrestle with for some time yet to cme. He'd been trying with all his might to yank some of the self-confidence of his fortune-teller self into this room when the words had come right out. "My friends who search. Getting to Faerie is no difficulty to them."



And he stood there. The words were, in other settings, enough to have one eyed askance, and the beginning of a case for one's commitment, but Cora had broached it first, so he left the statement there like a tossed-down gauntlet between them. It was not a surprise attack, he was sure, but maybe it would break through any remaining inclination to talk around certain truths.


Cora went from eyeing Elijiah Whitmoor to watching Adam. Some little bit of fight slipped away from her. She felt it when it left, like one would notice a songbird that no longer sang. The old woman's shoulders dropped, and with it went the mask of strength that had blown into the room with her.



Winston seemed to feel it, too, the moment it happened and turned toward Cora with his hand held out for her, which she took after making those few steps forward to take it. "They are already looking for her, you said?" Her words felt just as weighted as her shoulders and for a moment she looked toward her husband before looking back to meet the gazes of Adam, Eli, and Liessel.


Eli took a step back after shaking Winston's hand and saying his small piece. He glanced between Adam and Liessel and simply waited. He'd promised to follow their lead-- he'd make good on that promise now. Maybe. Hopefully.


"Based on what information you gave me previously," Adam told her, gauging that downturn of her ire. He worked in a shop; he knew perfectly well that sometimes that kind of softening was more like the tide drawing out before a huge surge. "As Miss Erphale said, now is the time for you to share the whole of the story with us."


"Come and sit, my dear," Winston kept a tight hold on Cora's hand as he turned and led her toward one of the chairs that seemed just as grand as the house. It was upholstered with red velvet, the frame made of a dark oak that had been polished well.



"I had taken her to Bristol with me for the summer," Cora was saying, her steps falling in line with Winston's as he guided her toward the chair, "Which is not unusual. She enjoyed -- enjoys -- the country air, and I have a cottage out there, just past the village. We were there during all the -- strangeness," Her face reflected the oddity of that word. What better way was there to describe it, though? A day lost, and the days after filled with finding forest debris in a small house that was surrounded by no forest, "Escaping the heavy air of London."


Adam took a seat near her. He'd learned not to underestimate the simple annoyance of being on the wrong side of a person without both of his eyes and put himself on her left.


With their hosts gravitating toward the seating arrangement, Liessel drifted in close behind Adam and took up her own position to the right of the woman.



"It had been going so well. Nothing at all was different than any time before, but then that strange day -- and the community meeting afterward. I shouldn't have taken her with me."



Winston let go of her hand, but only to draw his handkerchief free from his pocket in order to offer it to his wife.



"Mistress Littleman, and Mister Hutchins had planned it and so many had shown. It was to discuss the odd occurrence of that strange day. I took Mary with me. She met a young man -- Peter -- Peter Ewing. I could see she was smitten. I told her after the meeting that she would be returning to London, and that was the end of it. She refused, and we argued." The old woman held onto the handkerchief that Winston had given her, wrapping it tightly around her fingers until there was no more slack within the fabric. Her eyes were downcast, her voice trembling, "I pushed her -- she wouldn't have left if I had just let her see the lad." Her eyes shut, and she shook her head before looking up toward Winston. She'd said the words hundreds of times since then, whispered, shouted -- unsaid. He knew them when he saw them in her eyes and shook his own head gently.



I'm sorry. Wasn't needed.


"Do you think she tried to reach him?" Adam knew what had ultimately happened, without a doubt in his mind, but not the course of how it had come to be. He didn't know if any other detail she'd given thusfar even mattered. A lone person out at night... He'd never considered that to be magically dangerous, whatever the stories said, but all sorts of choices felt riskier to him after the Lost Day, and he found himself unwilling to push back too much against that newfound wariness.


"If she had," Cora said at length, having given herself a moment to steady her voice, "she had gotten lost in the dark. The old farm where they found her shoes was in the opposite direction of town. The Richardsons had left the place years ago. It was empty and ramshackle, but it was where they found the last trace of her, and the fire she must have lit. By daylight, her footprints could be seen going into the place, but there were none leading out."



What had he been expecting? Adam recognized the name Bristol, and that was all. Maybe that would be enough. "I can share that location with those I know," he said, "that they might search from the point of her disappearance. But any protections of the land must be removed." Frowning, he hastily added: "I know how that sounds. I only mean that most folk charms keep all at bay. Even those who mean well."


"If there are any charms left in the place, they are weak and easily broken," Cora hefted a heavy sigh and brought Winston's handkerchief up to dab at her eyes, "The Richardsons left very little behind when they left, and they did not have a care at all for the land they were leaving. They got out and away as fast as they could. Strange things tended to happen on their land. I think they just got tired of dealing with it."



For a time, Adam said nothing, and it was quiet in Cora's wake. Then, shifting slightly on his chair, he asked, "What was it that made you first think that a mundane explanation would not satisfy?"


"I am no stranger to the 'odd', Mister Larrow," Cora let the handkerchief fall away from her eyes so she could lift them and find where Adam was sitting, "And I know my Mary, and I know that land. I know she would have come back if she were able. That farm -- it is not a place to tread heavily. There were many times when I went to visit the Richardsons that we spent hours digging up fairy rings and pulling seeds that had grown skewed. The land, itself, wasn't right. I've read more than enough to know the touch of Fae kind when I see it. That land, it was touched a long time ago and it's never recovered."


Liessel sat quietly, watching and listening. She was poised just at the edge of her seat, her eyes on the faces of Cora Murphy and Winston Hodgkins as Cora answered Adam's questions.



Eli's hand went up just a little. "Excuse me. But… Just on the Richardsons land? Since it had last been parceled out? Or did those strange effects echo over property lines?"



The lift of Eli's hand caught just at the edge of Liessel's vision, causing her to turn her head and look his way.



Cora and Winston both looked, too.



"My land out there ran up against theirs, and on occassion I'd find something out of the ordinary," Cora said, "but I had learned quick how to protect myself once I realized that something wasn't right. The Richardsons struggled with it, even with me trying to help them along the way. I saw odd things elsewhere too, even here in London on occassion. But who is to say what is connected and what isn't? If I saw it, and it wasn't right I knew I had to fix it."


"Do you think that urge to fix things may have brought you undue attention?" he asked gently.



Cora eyed Eli hard before looking up toward Winston and then toward Eli again, "You are implying, young man, that a Fae laid in wait in that old farm house just counting the days until my granddaughter just happened to stumble in there one night to light a fire when there were countless opportunities over the years, especially at the beginning, for them to get me instead! And before you tell me that time passes differently in Faerie, know that I am well aware of that fact."


"I am not implying anything, ma'am," he said. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't seem upset. "I am asking if you think you may have made enemies and brought undo attention to you and your household. I don't necessarily mean Fae. Protections can ward off God only knows how many things. We know she's in Faerie. But how she came to be there is still to be determined."



Adam perked up. "It's a reasonable thing to ask if there's a chance this might be personal," he said. "Not as a casting of blame, Dame Murphy, but as a matter of the nature of faekind. They can be given to whim, to be sure, but even those I know and love often act primarily...." A few phrasings occurred to him that he discarded at once as unfair. "... in response to the actions of our kind."



Cora's gaze shifted from Eli to Adam. "I've done much in my time, Mister Larrow, that would draw the focus of Fae kind. I've destroyed many a fairy ring, filled many fairy holes, upset and torn up plants that didn't grow right -- flowers blooming in the middle of London sidewalks, mushrooms sprouting from cement -- flowers blooming the wrong color. It isn't impossible to think that I caught someone's attention."



Liessel had tensed where she sat, ready to breathe out words that might calm the tension she could see rising in Cora while she had spoken with Eli. She didn't have to, though. Adam was there, and what he said -- Liessel could see -- unwound the older woman a little bit.



Eli was wishing in that moment that Tom was with them. They could use his bridges to speak to each other. They likely would've been more at ease with an older person... What he wanted to do right then in that moment was walk the lands of the Richardsons to see if there were any spirits lingering there. Protections went a long way, but sometimes spirits found loopholes to stay put. Maybe there was one who was a witness. Give perspective. But... "Do you have something of hers I can hold?" he asked, looking to Winston.


Adam looked at Eli, puzzled. He'd been about to ask a different question, but Eli asked his with such purpose that Adam held off.


Winston, who had stood as a silent spectator and pillar of support for Cora while she told her story, blinked and roused himself. Eli had asked him a question, and he found himself studying the young man before giving a slow nod, "Of course -- Why, though?"



"What good will holding something that belonged to her do?" Cora picked up the question. It was a quick change of subject, just a swift slide away from the talk they'd been having over attention drawn, and the whys of it happening, that she found herself stumbling over the idea just as much as her husband was.


Eli found himself debating whether to be candid or not... To beat around the bush or not. To whack them in the face with what he was? He made a thoughtful noise. And finally he said, "Mister Larrow does readings, yes? I do... spirits... I might be able to sense something of her." He very pointedly did not mention the fact that he could only sense dead things. For the most part. But it would give them a place to start, maybe?


Adam hadn't known that, not in any sense, and watched Cora keenly.


Cora's face grew grim, her mouth drawing down into a tight lined frown as she considered Eli anew, "Are you a charlatan, Mister Whitmoor, tell me now and tell me true. I've heard many stories of people who claim to be able to do what you have just claimed to do. I've seen friends swindled, and I will not have it. Do you hear me, young man?"



Why, then, had she trusted Adam? Those stories she'd heard also included the dangers of paying fortune tellers to tell fortunes. Desperation, grief -- but the truth was that Adam had told her what she had already known. He had given up the secret fear she had felt sink into her heart the moment she knew that Mary was missing. It was no foul play. Mary did not succumb to highway bandits. Or thievery of the human sort. No, Adam had confirmed that it was Fae kind to blame.


Eli smiled, letting out a small 'heh'. It was not a pleasant smile, but it was more sad than not. "You want me to manifest one of my ghosts that follows me everywhere for you to see? Because I can," he said bluntly.


"I wouldn't bring charlatans to you," Adam said seriously, glancing at Eli with a frown in intended counter to that smile and that little laugh. "... though I may have brought a horse's arse. Tell us to leave your house, and we'll still do what we can to find your Mary. We're not here for coin, and we're not here to waste anyone's time."


"No, we are not," Eli said, sobering considerably. He agreed. They weren't here for coin or to waste anyone's time. Resuming the professionalism.



Liessel's eyes closed and she felt her shoulders drop with what would have been a groan had she given it sound. It would have been a thing of displeasure, disappointment, and dismay.



"I apologize for Mister Whitmoor's lack of decorum," she said, opening her eyes to look toward Cora and Winston at the tail end of what Adam said with Eli sliding in just before she started talking, "We take this matter seriously, and as Mister Larrow said we will do what we can to find Miss Hodgkins."



She made a mental note in that moment to see about taking Eli with her the next time she went to serve at the charity house. Working with the public might do some good with his manners.



Cora had settled back against her seat, and drew in a breath to speak but it was Winston who filled the silence for her,



"You came all this way to meet with us in our home," his tone got a stiff glance from his wife, but she bit her tongue and let him speak. It was for Mary, all of it, and what other options did they have? "Let me go get you something you can hold," he said to Eli with a small nod, "I'll be right back."


"Thank you," Adam said to Winston, though he thought at Eli for making this even more difficult.

Eli gave both Liessel and Adam apologetic looks.


Silence settled as Winston left the room. Liessel could feel it come down around them like a sheet that had been tossed up and let to fall. She let it sit for a moment before clearing her throat and looking Cora's way, "While we wait," she ventured gently, drawing Cora's tight lipped attention, "You said before about a 'beginning'. Would you tell us about that? How long have you been disturbing things that you feel aren't correct?"



That Cora had to think about the answer drew away from the tight, thin frown she wore. After a few moment she told them, "1854, I think -- maybe it was '55? It could have been 1856. It was so long ago."


Adam's relief was immense when Liessel asked that question. That had been his question, too. "Was it a family duty?" he asked, trying to make 1854 or '55 or 1856 line up somehow with Cora's apparent age, and realizing only too late that it didn't, quite. At least it helped him to smother the odd errant jealousy that Eli could be dressed so fine and be so ready to smash their welcome here at the same time.


"No," The grimness in Cora didn't budge but for the easing of her tight frown, "It was the oddest thing. Up until then, I can't remember ever having the compulssion to do it. Then one day, I wake up on the front grass of the Richardson farm surrounded by sheets that had been strung up around me and naked as the day I was born. From that day forward the need to do it has been with me. I've no idea why."



Naked and surrounded by sheets, out in an open area where the sun could hit her.



We need to get into the sunlight before the first rays hit. It's a must to reconnect us to this world and scrub away the traces of Faerie.



We have to be naked when we do it.



Liessel stopped herself from gasping just in time. Still she sent a quick look toward Adam and Eli before asking, "Have you ever been to Faerie before," while turning her gaze to Cora.


Adam blinked at the mention of her waking up nude. It was the first time it occurred to him that he'd only read for Mary, not Mary's grandmother. But reading for a past was a far different venture than reading for a hidden present, or a future. Liessel's question, this time, was even more pointed than the one he would have asked. As before, he kept quiet.



At Liessel's question, Eli's attention focused back on Cora and how she reacted to that question.



You, Apr 11, 6:44 PM

"No," The old woman shook her head, "Not that I know of, but that means very little doesn't it? If I had been there is a good chance that I wouldn't remember it?"



Liessel gave Cora a tiny nod, "I've heard of it before -- needing to be in the sunlight, as you described. The belief is that it helps to wash Faerie away and create a connection back to this world."


"More than just Faerie," Adam put in, the eyebrow over his eyepatch arched at that. "When we revel, or observe night magics, we, too, wait for the sun in our skin and nothing else. It's not that it washes Faerie away, but that it invites this world to be what clothes us for the coming day." For a young man surprised by a self-consciousness regarding his clothes that he'd never felt before, he spoke of not wearing any at all perfectly bluntly.



He did look a little curious about Liessel's having heard of it, though, and shot her a questioning look before the question itself popped right out: "Is that a tradition of your home?"


Liessel and Cora both looked Adam's way as he spoke up, but only one set of eyes remained on him as Cora turned her attention back to Liessel.



A tradition of your home?



Where was this young woman's home? Now that Cora was thinking about it, the girl's accent was most decidedly not British.



"No," Liessel was telling Adam just then, "I heard of it just recently from a mutual friend of ours. It was said after a most difficult day, a very long, very tiring, and very trying day." She could have named names. She could have come right out and said that Adeline had told her right after they broke away from Cyrus in The Fens to return to London, but that would have opened up a whole can of worms and questions that they didn't need Cora asking.


"Oh," Adam breathed, blinking. "It's not every tradition has it," he mused. Looking to Cora again, eyeing her shrewdly for the first time today, he asked, "Did you have hurts, when you woke?" Because there were other ways that waking naked could be interpreted, and he wanted to rule them out. It was the fact that sheets had been hung that made him think they could be.


Liessel gave Adam a small nod, and looked back toward Cora who was pulling herself away from studying Liessel. "I know what you are asking, Mister Larrow," Cora answered as Adam found himself in her sights again, "And the answer is no. There had been none of that. There had been nothing at all, as a matter of fact. No muscle soreness, no bruises, no aches or pains of any kind. But on occasion, not too long afterward, I had started to feel as if my legs were not --steady."


Adam's cheeks colored a little at the incisive look on Cora's face. It was late, this tickle of the topic. It was something he understood in a vague way, something that came up in his life nearly only on the hill, or in the worst the newspapers had to report about the world, and here the only reason he flushed at all was because Cora had gotten to the sharpened razor of it without needing to be wheeled in a pram toward it. That look was more like one the Dame would have given him for such a presumption. He felt his lack of years in it.



Clearing his throat, he tried to think without the wisps of the pearl's version of the world getting in his way. "Do you have any ideas about what caused that? Any ideas about what happened to you at all? You said you know about faeries, about the rings and the hollows, and it's all tied up with that land your neighbors owned, you said. Speak freely. Magic's all stories, in the end."


Just then there came a rapid knock at the front door of 42 Ridgeway Avenue, Kensington London.


"Nothing specific," Cora told Adam, "Just dreams, and half remembered sensations. I could be standing in my kitchen doing things that I'd done a thousand times before that day -- making tea or fixing myself some dinner -- and suddenly I'd lose feeling in my legs. Not like they'd gone numb. Sensation was just gone. I had no strength to them, there was no control over standing. More than once I found myself clinging to the counters or reaching for a chair just to stop myself from falling. In my dreams, something was always there waiting."



The knock at the front door would be met by a straight-faced butler, well pressed and buttoned up tight, "May I help you?" Jenkins asked, sounding as if he might be trying to stifle a yawn.


Eli had been paying keen attention to the conversation... Truth be told, he knew very little of the Fae. And he'd been far away from the epicenter of the events that took place on the night of the pink lightning. So, he turned over what Cora said. What Liessel said. What Adam said. In his wee little brain. He'd stuck his foot in his mouth not even minutes before and he was determined to be quiet now.


Adam glanced at the others, and then quietly asked, "This lack of feeling... you simply return to normal after?" He could feel it inching closer, the urge to offer her a reading. Dread made a wall between him and that course of action, but not an unbreachable one. Perhaps to pack the cracks he perceived in it, he shoved in another question: "And is there any other element you recall from your dreams?"


Standing at the medium height of 5'5, long brown hair pulled into a plait braid and dressed in a light feather blue walking dress with lace trim was Adeline Webber.



"My apologies if I'm late." She said hastily to the butler trying his best to stifle a yawn. "I have an appointment with Mister Larrow and his party to see Miss Murphy? I believe some of my colleagues may already inside?"


"Yes," Cora answered Adam, "The feeling would come on suddenly, and then be gone just as suddenly. I would be fine, then lose use of my legs, and then they would be mine again like nothing had happened. From my dreams, there were times when I'd wake up having crawled my way out of my bedroom in my sleep. Sometimes I'd wake in the living room of my cottage, sometimes I'd not make it that far. Once or twice I woke up outside, having dragged myself through the grass. I dreamt of being turned into a fish, and flopping around in shallow water quite frequently. And there were dreams of some spindly thing reaching for me. I had always thought it was a spider of some sort, but larger -- more the size of you or Mister Whitmoor, there."



Giving Adeline a once over, Jenkins opened the door wider and stepped back, "They're already in the parlor," She was told, the old man sounding as if that yawn he was stifling was perpetual, "I will show you in."


"Thank you." The young woman breathed out a sigh of relief as she stepped in. "The parlor is just back this way?" She pointed a finger towards the sound of conversation, already starting to move in that direction.



Eli's eyes went to the door to the parlor, having distantly been aware of that rapid knocking. He was still listening to Cora speak, to explain how things had happened, but he wawa trying to figure out who was coming in, too.


Just as Eli was reacting, so too was Adam--to the new voice. He looked instantly to Liessel in question as he slowly rose to his feet. "Is that--?"


Liessel gave Adam a nod, "I wasn't sure she'd be able to make it."



Jenkins was nodding to Adeline while from behind them came Winston carrying a pair of ladies shoes, "I'll take her in, Jenkins. Tell Mrs Keller that we'd like some tea, please."



Jenkins would depart, leaving Adeline following the sounds of conversation with Mr Hodgkins by her side.


Moving into the parlor room, Adeline grinned at her dear friend Adam Larrow.



She was a young woman, younger than Liessel but perhaps older than Eli, with a lovely heart shaped face and dark brown hair that was pulled into a plait braid that morning. The dress she wore was simple for today's age but gave way to some shape of her body. Crossed over her body was a brown leather bag.



"My apologies for being late." She repeated while moving deeper into the room. "Miss Murphy?" Her blue eyes landed on Cora. "My name is Adeline Webber. I am an associate of Mister Larrow and Miss Eprhale."


Adam's surprise came with a smile. He crossed to her with both hands out for her in greeting--but before he could say anything, she was introducing herself, and he was clearing his throat and meeting her eyes to say, "It's Dame Murphy." But he had no intention of letting that catch them up, and was turning to add to Adeline's own words: "I didn't realize she was in town," he lied--though, technically, it was the truth. He hadn't known if she was in London or out of it.



Eli arched a brow at Liessel, but stayed silent. He stood from his seat to walk towards the group and offer Adeline a hand to shake. "Good to see you again, Miss Webber"


Seeing his intention, Adeline reached for his hand to give a brief but warm welcoming squeeze. It was good to see him. Surprisingly so. How long had it been since the two of them saw one another? She knew her last trip at the Bells left her visiting with Temmis.



But where had Adam been all this time?



"My apologies again, Dame Murphy." She breathed quickly.



Her blue eyes flickered to Whitmoor. "Yes. It is good to see you as well, Mister Whitmoor. It has been a minute, yes?"



"You two know each other?" Adam asked before he realized how the reflexive surprise might knock them off-course here in this house. Reaching up to scratch briefly under the tie of his eyepatch, he tried to fix the path. "I feel a little better about our odds, with these kinds of numbers. How much was Miss Erphale able to tell you...?"



He assumed--hoped--that Adeline knew what Liessel knew.


Liessel had risen from where she sat, but had not moved closer not wanting to crowd Adeline in. Over Adam's question, she was saying "Thank you for coming, Miss Webber, I know it was short notice when I asked you to meet us here. And my apologies to our hosts," She looked toward Winston, and then Cora who was eyeing Adeline from where she sat, "I was not entirely sure Miss Webber would be making it. I've told her what's happened. She knows everything that you've shared with me, Mister Larrow."


"Since we came to Miss Erphale's aid," he told her. That was the tlast time they'd spoken, technically, but not their most recent interaction. They'd been in the same room with Father McKellan. He stepped away and towards Winston, gesturing that Winston follow him to a quiet corner to do the task he'd asked Winston to fetch the item for.


That gave Adam some context, and he turned finally, realizing that of course Winston had not returned empty-handed. Looking up to the man, and then over to Eli as Eli separated from them, Adam was left wondering just what might be learned from a pair of shoes.


"I'm up to speed." She nodded to Adam with a small smile. He knew her better than others and yet less than some. He knew her well enough to know that there was an edge of nerves to that smile as she redirected her attention to Dame Murphy.



"Please. I did not mean to interrupt the conversation. I heard a touch of it on my way here. Something about dreams?" As she spoke, Adeline found herself a space to sit and retrieved her pencil and notepad from the brown leather bag.


With Winston and Eli occupied, Adam, too, was willing to retake his seat and listen if Cora could dredge up any more information for them. Information, or even impressions. Anything that was not handed to them all by the pearl. He waited for the ladies to sit before he'd do the same, but that seemed to be the way the moment was moving.



Winston gave Eli a quiet nod and led the way out of the parlor.



As Adeline found a seat, Liessel lowered herself back down, "Dame Murphy was just telling us about her dreams," she gave Adeline a small nod and then looked toward the Dame who was still watching Adeline keenly.



"I was saying," Cora slid a glance Liessel's way, "That my dreams could be quite vivid. Life-like enough to send me crawling from my bed to wake on my living room floor, or in the hall, or out in the yard as whatever was behind me gave chase. As I mentioned, I thought it to be a spider as large as a man -- spindly, but reaching like it had fingers. Sometimes, just as it touched me, I'd turn into a fish and would suddenly be surrounded by shallow water. Enough to flop around in, but not enough to swim through. Other times, I'd lose control of my hands and feet -- my legs -- and could only just wait for it to rip into me with those sharp pointy fingers. In those dreams, though, the color of honey was always there to save me right at the last minute. I'd see it, and the spider would be gone. My legs would return to me, and I'd wake wherever I'd crawled myself to."


The color of honey



Adeline remember her own vivid dreams of such a color. Though hers were attached to much more than just a color.



"Do you believe your dreams are connected to Faerie?" She asked the Dame with interest. "In my personal studies and experiences, there are more than one way to be touched by the realm. There does not always have to be one path."


I met a man today whose eyes were the color of honey.



Liessel felt herself frown, looking from Cora to Adeline, and then to Adam. She didn't say anything just yet, giving Adeline the space to ask her question and get an answer. But she was looking for indications on the faces of her companions that they'd picked up on it, too.



Cora gave Adeline a small smile, "There are many, many ways that they can touch this world so it would not surprise me. But how would such a pathway have come to me through my humble cottage out in the countryside of Bristol so quickly? It would have happened overnight."


"Sometimes it can be an accident. Sometimes it can be through old pacts made long before when the world was wild. On this side of the border, its hard to know how it happens. All we know is that it does."



She took in a quick breath.



"Your daughter is in Faerie? How long has she been missing?"



The color of honey could mean anything, but Adam, too, thought of a particular set of eyes. In this particular company, that was what came to mind first, and not because of the Lost Day, but because of how he'd met Adeline in the first place. He didn't say anything, but met Liessel's eyes, and there was enough of a sense in that that it might come up later.


"Granddaughter," Cora corrected Adeline quickly enough, "Mary Hodgkins. It's been several weeks, now. She was last seen leaving my cottage just outside of Bristol, her shoes were found in an abandoned farm down the road from where we were staying. She disappeared after a community meeting in Bristol that was held to discuss the mysteries of the day that we all lost. In the farmhouse a fire was lit, and her shoes were found, but there was no other trace of her left behind."


"Granddaughter." Adeline corrected with an apologetic nod.



She looked quickly to Adam, "And you saw her in a... reading?" That was a guess that she hoped he could fill in for her.


Having since caught on that Adeline was not so up to speed, Adam sailed right in with, "As Liessel told you," and a slow nod, "they found me while I had my table set up. I did not...." His mouth quirked. "... complete the reading. I saw something else instead. The magpie in the bottle, but I felt an air, too. Their girl's in Faerie."


She threw a quick glance to Liessel and then to the Dame, waiting a beat to see if there was anything else for them to throw in. Liessel had told her a girl was lost in faerie but it seemed there was more to it than just stumbling into a fairy ring. Realizing there was much she didn't know, Adeline took in a quick breath.



That she was in Faerie for several weeks was worrisome.



She tried to think of how Avery would say something. How Aurelia might offer her own insight. "As you know," she said delicately. "Time moves differently on that side. Several weeks here could mean a multitude of situations - and none that we could properly predict in this moment." Was this what it felt like to be apart of the infamous Flynn & Flynn and Associates?



"Did your family have any ties to the fae beyond yourself?" She asked then. "Any old wives tales that your own grandmother passed down? Turns of phrases that were always spoken at specific moments that had no real root of reason?"


The frown that came to the Dame's face was telling. Of course, it said, I am aware of how time moves differently. What Cora said, though, was, "Like any family, I heard the stories growing up: don't go near the edges of rivers and lakes near dusk. Steer clear of fairy rings around sunrise, sunset, and at midday. Never be caught outside when the light is shifting -- but no. There was nothing more to it than that." She had settled back into her seat sometime before Adeline arrived, but now she was pushing herself forward in a slow curl that found Cora Murphy rising from her seat, "Allow me to show you something." She said to the trio of young people sitting in her parlor with her.



Adam perked up at that, for a second reading Cora's face to sift out whether she meant for them to wait while she fetched something, or for them to rise with her and follow. His assessment told him the latter, and, as he was already risen as good manners dictated, he asked, "Show us what?"


Never be caught outside when the light is shifting...



Something about that struck Adeline. It sounded like something that her own grandmother would say. But there was something more to it. A little voice that told her to be aware and to keep that thought in the back of her mind.



Her own excitement was palpable while good manners had her rising along the same time as Adam.


Adam took the Dame's attention as she moved forward, toward the door of the sitting room. She made a small little noise but said nothing more than that as she led the way.



Liessel had risen, too, and easily fell into step.



Cora was taking them out of the sitting room and to the grand stairway that Winston had come down earlier. Where he had gone with Mister Whitmoor was anyone's guess just then. They were not seen in the foyer as Cora led the way across it.





Where they wound up was a room on the second floor of the house. It had to be one of the biggest rooms within the manor-like home. From ceiling to floor, it was lined with bookshelves, and every shelf was full of books. Where shelves weren't present on the walls, there were portraits every one of which was almost the same. Orbs of amber -- almost honey in color -- all framed and of various sizes. They could be found everywhere through out the large room. "My library," Cora would finally say as she brought the young trio in, "Every book in here is dedicated to knowledge of Fae kind. So much knowledge, but not nearly enough to save my precious Mary."



Every window was heavily draped, natural light locked out to protect the priceless bindings that were housed within the bookshelves. The room was lit, instead, by deep energy bulbs that shown from sconces that lined the very tops of the tall bookshelves.


Adam, who brought up the rear, stepped into the room and was immediately dumbstruck by the scale. Tipping his head back, he half-heard what Cora told them about it, so that it took him a second to put together what she'd already put together for him. "I didn't know there was this much fae lore in the world," he said, starting to count shelves, missing the paintings for the moment--


This was a gold mine.



A treasure trove.



A true dragon's horde.



Adeline stood there, mouth slightly agape as she took in the rows and rows of books. Each one of them about the Fae. She had no words to give. All Adeline could do was stare in stunned appreciation at the piles of knowledge that was held in this very room.


Adam could not right then contemplate how much of this might be real traditional legend and lore, and how much more modern and fantastic publication for money. All he knew was that if he wanted to know anything, he'd have gone from fae to fae at the Bells, or done as Liessel had, and that success or failure then depended on which knowing being might be alive and in the world, and which might be dead. Even more than that, which might feel like sharing, and sharing with you in particular. Which might have moods. Which might have whims. Which might have tricks, or bargains. Yet here, whatever its worth in truth, was knowledge that did not care. It was simply there for the taking.


"It is everything I could find, in every language I could find it in. Some of them contain repeats: the same stories just told slightly differently, or with minor changes of small details," Cora, herself, stood there looking up and down, and all around at every shelf she could see while she spoke, "After that day when I woke up out on the Richardsons' lawn, I started collecting them. I thought I was preparing for a battle that I had no idea how to even begin fighting. I didn't know, then, what the battle would look like. I just had a feeling it was coming, and I was going to need everything I could get."



Cora broke away from her own studying of the bookshelves to look toward Adam, Adeline, and Liessel, "And here I am, too old to use any of it. If it will help bring her home, you are free to use it. Any and all of it. Just bring her back to me."


Snapping out of the dazed admiration of Cora's collection, Adeline asked "How are they categorized?"



Because surely a library of this magnitude did not survive with books being shoved in random places. There had to be a system in order.



Oh, if only Felix Flynn were here to see this. Adeline was almost giddy with the thought of telling him about such an exquisite collection. Cyrus as well! She wondered what he would have to say about the literature in this room compared against his real life experience on the other side of the border. How much of these tomes held the truth; how much of it were exaggerations?


"I have them divided," Cora told Adeline while Liessel drifted closer to one of the sets of shelves, letting her fingers brush ever so lightly against the bindings, "Between fairy tale and Faerie history, magic and lore. Authors are in alphabetical order, and start with the oldest of them on this side of the room. The far side is mostly modern, and mostly fanciful as far as the most modern of my collection. But even in those stories there are threads of truth to follow as long as you keep in mind they were written more to entertain than to inform."


Finally Adam saw them. The color of honey. He counted them before he pointed across the way to them and asked, "That's what you see in your dreams? Or sense?"


Drawn that way, to follow Adam's pointing finger, Cora turned and gave a nod before moving toward one of the smaller paintings and lifting it from the wall to bring closer to where he stood with Adeline.



Liessel turned, leaving the shelves behind her alone for the moment, to see what Adam had been talking about.



Honey.



The painting Cora had brought with her was offered out so Adeline and Adam could see it better. "I started painting these after I realized it was what I had been seeing in my dreams. It was like the color was watching, trying to protect me. It was always with me when I needed it the most."


"And it comes to you every time in your dreams?" Adeline asked curiously as she peered at the painting with Adam.



"Does it ever come to you in a particular shape or is it only the color that you remember?


"It watches, she says," Adam said, turning, his brow pinched upward. He'd looked to Adeline, but now his gaze slid sidelong to Cora. What watches?



Eyes watch, that's what.



"Every time I find myself in trouble," Cora said, looking toward Adeline, and then Adam, and then Liessel as she came over to join them, "When I had first started painting them, I had tried to make them look like an eye, but the shape was never right. Something about it, no matter how I drew it before painting, it was all wrong. I eventually stopped trying to get it right, and just started painting like this. The shape didn't matter, I found. It was the color. That was what I needed to focus on. Once I started doing that, they all came out perfectly to me."


"Did it ever speak?" Adeline asked, feeling a little uneasy at how quickly she was thinking of Cyrus.



Was it a lover's obsession? Did she simply miss him so much that it easy for her to associate his own unique eye color to these pictures that were so similar to him. Or was there a connection here that Adeline perhaps wasn't ready to make; one that she would not force together like puzzle pieces that didn't quite fit and yet still produced the same picture.


Cora let herself draw in some air deeply and cast a look toward the door. It was not a fleeting look, the meaning that came into her expression just then, "The only time that I could ever recall hearing it speak was when it told me that the next rider to pass my way would drop their hat -- man or woman, they'd be a great friend to me. That was how I met Winston. I was working on a prototype for my leg braces, and we bumped into each other. He dropped his hat."


Adam's face scrunched a little. Adeline's question had proven without a shadow of doubt that she, too, had thought what he was sure both Liessel and he had also first conjured. That color of honey instantly drew up an image of Cyrus Singh's face. And Adam, who caught the flavor in the air, looked right at Adeline and asked, "Have you ever heard him prophesy?"


"He's not a fan of them." Adeline said with a frown. "But that doesn't mean he wouldn't flourish one in the shape of a story. And what he told Dame Murphy certainly sounds like something he would say."


"He?" Cora was looking between three young faces, finding herself frowning deeply, "He, who?"



"A friend of ours," Liessel said quietly, her eyes still on the painting, "Whose eyes very much match that which you have painted." She had been hoping to try and reach out to him. Adam knew it. Eli knew it, Adeline knew it. Now, it seemed that 'try' was turning into a 'need' to reach Cyrus Singh.


"Associated with Faerie," Adam added, hoping to close the circle of interconnected threads for Cora. "And England," he realized suddenly.



At first, Castilan had just been Castilan. A free-floating particle in the magical landscape of the world as Adam had understood it.



But that understanding had begun when Castilan had appeared one evening at the Bells with Adeline Webber, and after that Adam had come to hear that there was some history there with the Twin Bells--itself ancient--and before that the Tor itself, before it was even the Tor.



Add to that the sudden prominence in the matter of the Alfar, when a "free-floating particle" might just as well have popped up in China or Chile, and maybe it wasn't such a strange thing to think that randomness was not actually involved. Still, it was one hell of a coincidence, Cora winding up at Adam Larrow's table.


"A friend of ours."



"My lover." Adeline said at the same time as Liessel. She paused, looking at the former priestess before falling quiet to allow her room to speak.



"He knows much about Faerie. Far more than I do." She added on the heels of Adam's offed of information.


My lover.



The slide of Adeline's voice in just along side her own brought Liessel to look at the other young woman. A nod was given, in it was acceptance that Adeline was giving permission for that to be brought out into the open.



"So," Cora was giving each of them a renewed, stern, appraisal, "Your friend --" She said to Adam and Liessel, "Your lover," she said to Adeline, "Is Fae?"


Adeline knew what it was like on Cora Murphy's side of the table. Not long ago, she sat in a very similar situation as the Dame did; searching for a loved one and relying on strangers without understanding the dynamic between them.



There may not be a single person in that room who would appreciate Adeline's consideration and respect for transparency to Dame Murphy. But she rather didn't care. If they were going to find Cora Murphy's granddaughter then they would need her to have even just a smidgen of respect and trust to them.



"No." She answered with a little shake of her head. "He is not fae, but he knows the realm much better than we do. His experience and time with the world and it's inhabitants far outweigh our own." She took in a quick, little breath.



"As Miss Ephrale said, his eyes are a match to the color of your drawings. I am wondering if your dreams have crossed paths with him over the years. I know he has a knack for protecting and helping mortals that come across his way when they get entangled with the Fae."


Just a few moments of silence from Cora passed after that with her giving quick consideration before she said, "Why are we standing here talking then? If there is the possibility that this man has had something to do with me in the past, and if he can help now, let's go call him. We can use the phone in the study." Nevermind that she was getting the distinct feeling that they didn't mean that the man was of London. It was a reach of her heart, a grasping at a straw that had seemed so far beyond reach. It was Mary.


Adam Larrow remembered The Lovers card, and Adeline's reaction to seeing it, and he remembered small things from the Lost Day that had not seemed all that memorable at the time, but which now stood out. My lover was an ownership of a collection of trinket moments he had, then. A lasso that pulled them all together into one single meaning. He blinked and looked to Cora Murphy. That kind of ownership was, after all, very different here than, say, My husband, but Cora's hard look was the same hard look she'd already been wearing, unchanged. She wasn't phased by this possible connection any more than she'd been phased by Adam's questioning as to her hurts in 1854, 1855, or 1856.



So he kept quiet, having nothing useful here to add, until the idea of the telephone came up, which roused him back. "If you were to compose a letter," he said, checking with Adeline, and then Liessel, with a look each, "that might work better for this. I don't believe he has access to a telephone service...."


"Letters are the best way of reaching him." Adeline gave a nod of confirmation.



The youngest Webber was taking along the same line as Adam, it seemed. There was very little that effected the hard stern stare that adorned Cora Murphy's face. Sometimes she saw looks of consideration but for the most part, her expression was unchanging.


Liessel gave a silent nod of agreement when Adam looked her way, and once again Cora was looking between Adeline, Adam and Liessel. She had made a quick assumption with the telephone call, but it was one that had come from a place where too much time had already been wasted. It had already been eaten up too quickly, and who in the heavens above could have said what had become of their granddaughter in the meantime? Here, time was not money. Here, time was life.



"Yes, of course," She didn't waste time on apologizes, instead she offered the painting to Adam as she said, "Be a dear, Mister Larrow, and hang this back on the wall. To whom will I be addressing the letter?"


Adam took the painting--didn't really have a choice other than to play numb hands and drop it--and turned to return it to its place. He left the matter of names to Adeline and Liessel, and by the sound of it predominantly the former. He was past the hyper-awareness of worn coat cuffs, and past the fear that Cora Murphy would call for help or have them thrown out. At last, with the revelation of the old woman's own experiences, and this library, and these paintings, he had clawed his way back to stable land and felt more like the Adam Larrow who had sat opposite her at the table, dealing cards he'd drawn himself. So finally he could think again.


"Sears." Adeline answered.


"Sears it is, then," Cora said giving Adeline a little nod. She started for the door, stepping to move past Adeline and Liessel before pausing and looking back over her shoulder at them, and then toward Adam, "Back down we go." And then she was heading for the doorway that would lead them out the same way they had come in.



The space beyond the library was unchanged except for the fact that it might have seemed brighter by comparison. There was so much open space to the rest of the house compared to the room that had been lined with shelves, books, and paintings. Everything beyond the library was white, or marbled, or polished wood that gleamed in the light brought in by large picture windows. The library could have been a cave for what the rest of the house was like.


"Dame Murphy." Adeline asked quickly.



"With your permission, might we return here both before and after we have rescued your granddaughter?"



She looked back among the rows and rows of books longingly. So much knowledge. So many things to discover. Could there be a key to find somewhere hidden within them?


Adam trailed last, and would close the door as they'd found it--only Adeline was lingering just ahead of him. He slowed to a halt at her back and threw a look back across the books. He wondered what the Dame--his Dame--would make of this room, and what it meant. He wondered what Missus White would make of it, or Veleith, or any of a dozen guildmembers who were not human. That eclipsed his minor curiosity about the name Sears, but not the thought that he'd returned from hanging the painting with. That one would keep.


Dame Murphy paused at that question, turning to look Adeline over once before saying, "Find my granddaughter, and you can use them whenever you wish, both now and afterwards. I gathered all of this with the hope that it would help whatever I was to be fighting. But I have grown too old for that. But you are not, so yes. As you like. I will see that Winston and Jenkins are made aware that you will be returning."


Politely she bowed her head with respect and gratitude to the current invitation and the hope for something beyond that. "Thank you."



Exhaling quickly, the brunette lingered back so that she trailed along with Adam. There were many things she wanted to say go her friend. Many things that would not find space even in Cora Murphy's large home. It would have to wait for not but not forever.


"Did you ever?" That was what came out of Adam's mouth as Adeline came back even with him, and it was aimed forward, toward Cora. "--Did you ever find the fight? In any form, before now?"


"For a while in my younger days," Cora's answer came to Adam as she was turning back around to continue them on their way back to the sitting room, "I had thought that the battle I had been fighting was simply the disruption of oddities present in this world of ours, as it seemed never ending. I'd kick up a ring, and another would grow two feet away by the next day. I'd fill a hole, and two weeks later it would be back again -- but after that strangeness in early August, I now don't wonder if what I had been fighting all these years were just small battles and not the war."


Silently listening as they walked back toward the sitting room, Adeline Webber thought of one person.



John Slake.



A government man who made it his business to know the oddities happening within the city and the people who inhabited that small circle. Was his viewpoint similar to Dame Murphy's? Had it changed since the Lost Day and the Alfars involvement? At what point would his work shift from careful watching to careful regulation?



Where was the line drawn for John Slake to decide it was time for war? Where had that line been drawn for Cora Murphy? Perhaps it was not etched in the ground by one catastrophic event but created by one little marking at a time until the boundary was formed.


Adam heard Cora's reply in his own way, and though it did occur to him that this was not the time, the grip he tried to take on his mouth slipped loose instantly. "They're not all wicked. Or if there's wickedness, it's not always mindless. Some of those rings could have been wrought by those who would have aided you."



Saying that here--a little like Eli had started to sound, to his ears--felt like having your shoes slide on gravel near the edge of a cliff. Adam persevered: "Mayhaps your instincts were good there, in that wood, on that land, and there was something seeping through that permeated the place. But it's not all--It would be like saying that because there is violence in London, every block should be razed."


"I know," A tiredness came to her voice just then, something that sat even with her age and how she moved one careful step after another as she took the grand staircase ahead of Adam and his friends, "They are not all wicked. I would not -- I do not wish any harm on those that aren't. I want them to exist as peacefully with us as I want us to exist peacefully with them. A co-existence, as it were. But whatever my feelings toward them are, if I see something that is wrong and out of place, if I catch wind that something is there that shouldn't be, I cannot stop the compulsion to destroy it."


"Were you harmed beyond the dreams? Adeline inquired.



She had not been here for the first part of the conversation where questions like this might have occurred.



"And in all your research, have you ever come across other tales of strangeness on the Richardson land, or nearby?" Adam didn't want to bury Cora under questions, but Adeline's had made him realize no one had yet asked about the history of the epicenter of these strange things.


"Beyond the sudden loss of sensation in my legs at times," Cora glanced back but was quick to return her forward focus again as she answered Adeline. Liessel was there, close at hand, just incase. "No. Not that I can tell you. I was telling your friends, Miss Webber, before you came in that there would be times when I'd lose all sense of my legs. It wasn't numbness. It was a complete lack of sensation. I'd be fine one moment, and then the next my legs would not be beneath me. It was a sensation that carried over from my dreams where I could not stand at all. And no, Mister Larrow, not until the oddness of early August. Talking to my neighbors out there near Bristol to see if anyone was experiencing similar netted me quite the reputation of being half crazed in my younger years. Since August, though, it seems that the town has caught on to my sanity. The Richardson farm, though, that family was not the same after we all woke up outside of their farmhouse with the sun kissing our skin. Their wee ones had nightmares up until the day they moved out. Jack, the oldest son, felt compelled to sleep with is father's gun in one hand and the poking iron from their fireplace in the other. And I swear that Gretta -- Mrs Richardson -- never slept a wink again."


Elijah was walking into the library, closely to Winston, when Cora was explaining the lack of sensation in her legs to Adeline. He wasn't holding the shoes-- he'd given them back to Winston... But the moment he laid eyes on the plethora of books, his eyes went wide. It was a look of tightly contained enthusiasm at the sight. Eli had read so so so many of the Flynns' books. He still hadn't read everything in their library, but he'd read an impressive chunk of it. He gestured to the shelves of books, pointing, and wordlessly asking-- what is...?


"Dame Murphy collects folklore," Adam quietly told Eli, looking back at the array, too. He actually said Folk-lore, fully meaning the capital F, but there was no way to have heard that. "She's been driven to it. What did you discover?"



Eli looked to Adam as he explained, his brows went up... Then he asked What did you discover? To that, he shook his head. He looked to Liessel, though. "I suggested maybe bringing Tom in to do a reading on the shoes. I didn't get anything."


Adam's eyes flicked to Cora, and back to Eli, and he stood there trying to keep a peculiar brand of alarm off his features. "Who's Tom?" He cast a quick look to the others, too, seeking surety.



"Mister Jefferson," Liessel spoke up from just behind Cora as she turned slightly on the stairs to see Adam, Adeline and Eli all at once. Cora had gently stopped to greet Winston as he came up the stairs to meet them with Eli, "Is a friend you haven't met yet, Mister Larrow. He, like Mister Whitmoor, has peculiar talents."



Winston spent those few moments speaking quietly with Cora, their voices unheard whispers between them while Liessel answered. It was Winston who pulled away first, and raised his voice for them all to hear, "Perhaps another time for that. I'm told that a letter needs to be written, and afterward we have an evening engagement we must prepare for."


Eli nodded to Winston. "He is an old associate of Mister Schoen as well," he said to Adam. "He's been under the weather for a long time, but thanks to Miss Erphale here, he's back in the game." He flashed her a smile.


A tuft of memory drifted past Adam. He did remember that name, it having sparked twice through the night of the Lost Day. Nervousness was starting to bubble in him, though, as he felt the threat that his would spin away from him. The fact that he hadn't really ever been in control of it in the first place was not enough to quell the tension. And networking was good, wasn't it?



It had been his first instinct, after all. But he'd known the players he'd hoped to involve.



He knew one thing anyway. Cora wouldn't care who Tom was, if he could help. She'd stop at nothing.



Liessel using the word "friend" amounted, he reckoned, to her vouching for the man, but Adam found himself looking to Adeline for some reaction, too.


Adeline wasn't sure if she knew of a Mister Jefferson. It could have been in passing at the Flynns but she wasn't sure. The name was unfamiliar to her as was... the priest?



Father - oh what was his name?



Adeline, feeling much like a fish out of water with these barely known acquaintances and strangers in general, going herself looking to Adam at the same time he looked to her. It seemed neither of them were alone in their confusion.


However, that lead to her now looking at Liessel to help provide some light on the entire situation.


Note to self: Make sure new friends know old friends before the next visit.



That thought ran through Liessel's mind as both Adeline and Adam looked her way and she sent a frown toward Elijah Whitmoor. The middle of a client's house was not the place to expand their visiting party, not on their first trip to meet in person. Another mental note was made to take him over what 'best practices' might look like in the future for them. It wasn't him and her, nor was it just him, her, Adam and Adeline. It was them, plus Avery, Felix, and Aurelia -- even if the latter three were there only in spirit at the moment. It was their reputation that he and Liessel were carrying. And now, by association, it was Adeline as well.



"We'll have him over before we come again," Liessel said to Adeline and Adam as Cora started down the stairs again with Winston at her arm, "that way you can meet him."


Adam, who was less sure of his place in this as more names were added, nodded anyway. It didn't matter, didn't matter, didn't matter. So long as Mary was found.



His eyesocket itched.



He balled a fist to keep from messing with it, and tried to slide back toward what Winston had said. The letter. "What else will be required?" he asked. "Dame Murphy's letter. What else? --From what I heard, he always just appeared on his own before. Never summoned."



And with time between appearances. Immense time.



Eli gave Liessel a nod to her suggestion. "I think I'll step out for a moment," he tolde them. He felt very out of place in that moment-- but he knew that Liessel could handle it. And she'd update him. He looked to Cora and Winston for permission of his dismissal of himself.


Adeline quirked a brow at Mister Whitmoor's sudden silence. Noting the way he moved, at how quickly he was to introduce himself into the conversation before exiting it out, leaving Liessel to clean up the pieces.



Not that it seemed Cora or Winston seemed to care. They simply wanted their granddaughter back.



But it was interesting and the exchange was filed away where Adeline kept all her assessments and observations.



"I might have a way to reach him." She said in reply to Adam. "If it is only Dame Murphy's letter that we need...?" She trailed off, waiting for someone to fill in any gaps she might have missed due to her late arrival.



Adam had no idea, but he was still less off-balance than he had been when he'd first arrived. It had been a bad day, earlier, but at least on one front he felt that he had something to offer. "I don't know how anything is found in Faerie," he said. "My friends I've asked didn't themselves ask me much. They asked for her name, which I made them promise to use with care, but not from where she was lost. They didn't seem to care about when, either. --I didn't expect them to. Would he care? Does he need any of that in the letter?"


Liessel hung back as they reached the bottom of the stairs, letting Winston and Cora gain some space from her until she was able to find herself with Adam and Adeline. Eli's coming and going brought an ache to her joints, and one to her temples that felt as sharp and throbbing as any bruise she'd gotten while using the fighting equipment in the basement of the Knightsbridge house when she'd first started training. That was to say, it was highly uncomfortable. "Leaving names laying around like that could be dangerous," She offered, forbidding herself from letting her eyes squint the way they wanted to, and folding her hands together to keep herself from rubbing at the sides of her head the way they itched to, "What if we ask her if we could write the letter for her? We could use my alias to sign it. It has no true connection, no true root. We can still get him the information he needs to know with little to trace back to the Dame and her husband."


"Then you will most certainly have to give thanks to Aurelia." Adeline replied to Liessel with a little pull of her lips in what could be considered a half smile. "She set measures in the Fens that allow notes to be left for his shipsprites to receive and deliver to him. There are measures that must be followed but I can confirm that it has worked well so far."


Adam looked between them, frowning a little, and tried again. "I mean, what would he need to locate someone that we could provide?"


Liessel wanted to close her eyes and breathe into the ache that had formed in her head, instead she gave into the urge to shake her head slightly and regretted it afterward as she said, "My original plan in trying to reach him was going to include Miss Hodgkins' last name only, her age and a description of her likeness. Since it is sounding as if he might have had contact with the grandmother at some point, I think we should also include Bristol, and perhaps the name of the farm -- the Richardsons' property -- since that is where she disappeared from."


"An item of hers would be useful. Something recently touched before she disappeared." Adeline offered.



Slowly nodding, Adam said, "And if it wasn't him--we need to cover that possibility, too. I thought the same thing I think you did, but I've seen fae with yellow eyes, too. They may not be common, but they're not unique, either." He looked to Adeline, nodding at the notion of sending along an item, as if what Eli (and maybe their friend Tom) could do was also more broadly practiced. Or maybe, magically speaking, it was like offering a glove to a bloodhound.


"If it wasn't him -- he will, at least, have the information we need to pass along on the chance that he can help us find her. Whoever else it might have been, we keep our eyes and ears open for any indication of who it might have been. I think following this up with C-- Sears -- is a good limb to go out on here regardless of whether it really was him or not." She felt the thoughtful frown when it came to her, "I'd like to take Mister Whitmoor out to the farm to see if he can pick anything up out there, as well."


A quick look towards where Cora and Winsten went had Adeline's next words spoken very softly.



"There's been an increase of people falling over into Faerie lately." She said to the few of them. "Something has shifted on that side and it's grabbing the attention of older Fae."


"Lately. What does 'lately' mean in this case?" That murmur from Adeline had snared his attention. If Singh might be relevant, if this was true it was undeniably so.


Liessel was caught in that 'lately', too. Adam's question of it had her looling quickly toward Adeline, and biting back on a wince that wanted to tip the corners of her lips sharply. The result was that her expression flatened for a moment before she could ask, "Since that day, or more recently than that?"


"Since that day, I would guess." Adeline said. "I don't know much about the workings of Faerie since before that day. Most of them are European. I was planning on looking into it when I came across you and learned of Mary." She gestured to Liessel while speaking.


"Are there any similarities between Mary's case and these others that you've heard about?" Liessel asked Adeline, while catching Adam in a small glance. He seemed just as surprised as she was to hear this news, "Adam, would there by any way for your friends to help with these others, as well, if we can get information on them?"



It was not the first time she'd had the thought, but it was the first time she spoke it outloud. Her next breath was a heavy sigh, and it came right before she quietly said, "I wish the Flynns were here to help with this."


Adam put in a quiet, "I can try. Without details, mostly I'll be asking them to keep an eye out." He winced a bland smile after he thought about the phrase. "Which they're doing already. I don't know the last time a human being was brought to the Dame after being found in Faerie. Certainly before my time. I don't know that they come across them--or, if they do, what might keep them from saying so or doing something about it."



Agreements, tricks, spells--


"That's all we can ask" Liessel said. In those words were her nod. She wasn't going to let her head bob, but the sentiment was still there. "If more information comes our way, it will be shared. Thank you, Adam."


Adeline heard the quiet words followed by that heavy sigh. It was a sting for sure and one she tried to muster through just as Adam put forth the winced smile.



"We have a place to start - that is worth something." She said helpfully. "We are not without our connections."


"Is the letter all we can offer, then, today, until--until your other friend might come?" Adam's tone was odd. He was catching it and making it go the way he wanted.


"I know of a spell," Adeline said quietly. "I do not know if it will work but it might... we might be able to reach him through that way instead of a letter. But there's no guarantee it will work." Her eyes jutted towards their case. "Which is why I didn't want to bring it up to Dame Murphy."


Liessel let herself nod this time, but it was a very small one, "We get the letter from her, and then try to reach him back at the house, or the office. I don't want to try something like that without some sort of protection around us that we can trust. If we reach him, we can just do this word of mouth. If we can't, then we take the letter, the item, and Miss Hodgkins' likeness to The Fens for his sprites to find."


Adam cast a blink Adeline's way, but nodded. He had a lot of questions, and he had some thoughts, but in the end the only one he had left in his mouth just now was: "Do you think she can be retrieved?"


"It's impossible to say." Her face was pulled into a frown. "There are too many factors that we don't know about. But... it can be done. It does happen. Let us hope that we can turn Cora Murphy's granddaughter's story into a happy ending."



"With faith, my friends," Liessel said quietly. In other surroundings she would have pressed her hand to her heart with those words. Here, she let them stand as they were while she shifted to the side to give Adeline and Adam the room needed to step into the sitting room ahead of her.

Adam would wait and go last. He did have something to offer, but no intention to offer it.