|
Post by Teja on Sept 8, 2015 18:27:19 GMT -5
Teja had the lowest expectations for what would happen, but she left by the back of the building as Adrian suggested and scurried to the subway from there. She was recognized a few times, and a couple of people did seem to stare, but she ignored everyone insistently. By the time she was nearing work, she thought the worst was over. Then she turned the corner and began slowing down in fear.
There was a crowd of people, and she immediately linked it to her situation. Forcing herself to quicken her pace to a normal stride, she whispered again and again in her mind that it couldn't be. It was some coincidence. It was a tour group or something of the kind.
And then she was noticed, and she saw the preponderance of cameras... as they all came rushing towards her.
"Tell us, is your fiance some kind of a god?"
"Did you summon him?"
"What are his plans for New York City?"
Appalled, she tried to scurry through them, but there were such an awful lot of people, and she was so struck by anxiety and dizziness she couldn't focus on where she was going.
"How long have you known the truth about Lukas Ashton?"
"Lukas..." she said, and then they seemed to be circling her, trying to get in her way. She covered the back of her neck with a sudden mortification, ripping out her scrunchie to let her hair cover it. Oh god, there had to be a picture of that somewhere, people would find it, someone astute would know- "I just... Leave me alone. Leave me alone!"
She took off at a run the short way back to the shop, bursting through the doors and straight into the backroom, past the confused customers and one of her coworkers, who followed her into the back room.
"I can't do it. I can't go back out there," she was saying in tears.
Her coworker hovered beside her, then leaned in to whisper harshly, "You have to clock in, there's no one to cover you and my shift is almost over! I'm not staying here another five hours just because now the whole world knows you're married to a monster!" Then she stomped out of the room, leaving Teja curled up with her face pressed into her knees.
|
|
|
Post by Teja on Sept 8, 2015 18:55:46 GMT -5
Five hours later, she was dead on her feet.
Her desire to go home to Loki and his insipid desire to take care of her was below nonexistent. The way he reacted to her every displeasure as though she was hurting him, killing her ability to voice it in her throat, was too much to handle right now. But she didn't want to stay out; she wanted to sit, to sleep, to take tea, something. She had nowhere else to go. Even if he had been in New York, she wouldn't have been able to go to Adrian, and Adrian was one of the only people she knew. And her only friend was with him in Greece. She didn't even mean Megan.
There was someone else she knew, she remembered as she checked into a small non-chain coffee shop to get something to take with her. The last time she'd shown up to his door unannounced to complain of Loki had not started out as a great success, but his company afterward had been all right - enjoyable, even. But of course she didn't want to go to Johannes; he was precisely the reason all this fame bullshit had happened, the reason Loki's masquerade had ended. (Not that he wasn't visibly loving every moment of it!) Thinking again of Loki and Adrian ignoring her when she proposed Johannes had some reason for that made her even angrier; she had to compose herself to place her order.
Someone had to confront him. Someone had to find out what he was up to. Nobody else wanted to do it except for her. Oh, she could see Loki being persuaded to do so, and then making a terrible mess of it because he was so completely incompetent with other people. She pictured it in her mind's eye. All ego he leaned on the wall and threatened to use magic to harm Krolock or his son more likely if he made any odd decisions that led to something bad later, while Johannes lifted his severe-looking eyebrows and mildly shrugged his shoulders and spread his strangely-formed hands in a gesture of innocence. (This image in her mind made her angry all over again.) No, it was going to have to be her. She wasn't good at reading people all of the time, and not as good as Adrian, but she was far better at it than Loki was, especially when Loki was convinced he was superior to others, smarter than they were, and already knew what was going on.
She drank her tea on the way to the subway, threw out the empty cup before boarding, and then took a bus separately over to Johannes' apartment. It was already growing dark, and she was regretting not merely going straight home by the time she got off in front of the Krolock mansion. But she had come too far to turn back now. She knocked demandingly on the door.
|
|
|
Post by Graf von Krolock on Sept 8, 2015 19:10:15 GMT -5
Krolock looked back and forth straight over her head before glancing down to look at her and smiling broadly.
"Oh, there you are. Come in, child..."
He held the door open solicitously with one hand and a candelabrum- an honest-to-god, three-tapered candelabrum, fully lit- in the other. Outside it was still gold with sunset, but the house was shadowy and dark.
|
|
|
Post by Teja on Sept 8, 2015 19:14:17 GMT -5
She was taken aback by this, and no longer heated by the white-hot fury she'd felt earlier, she didn't know how to approach the topic. He was very tall, and his house very strange, foreboding - and he was a vampire. She seemed to have forgotten that. If he did have some sinister plot, he could kill her now.
|
|
|
Post by Graf von Krolock on Sept 8, 2015 19:19:29 GMT -5
"These summer hours you keep in this country are such a chore," he said pleasantly. "It must be nearly as dreadful for the warm as it is for us."
|
|
|
Post by Teja on Sept 8, 2015 19:21:38 GMT -5
"I don't like the heat very much," she confessed vaguely. But she could feel her resolve slipping, and she ceased following him into the other room, holding her ground. She pitched her voice slightly lower, trying to sound authoritative.
"Johannes, I came here to ask what the hell you were doing last night at the Gala."
|
|
|
Post by Graf von Krolock on Sept 8, 2015 19:23:04 GMT -5
He looked back over his shoulder.
"You too?"
|
|
|
Post by Teja on Sept 8, 2015 19:42:59 GMT -5
"Don't think I'm going to be fooled by you acting as though you've done absolutely nothing. You've had a few hundred years to learn that trick, and I only a couple decades to learn to piece it together when it's happening, but I'm not stupid."
|
|
|
Post by Graf von Krolock on Sept 8, 2015 19:45:11 GMT -5
"This entire situation is very new to me as well, my dear," Johannes retorted gently. "You saw what shape he was in before that crowd-"
|
|
|
Post by Teja on Sept 8, 2015 19:46:18 GMT -5
"Johannes, you knelt."
|
|
|
Post by Graf von Krolock on Sept 8, 2015 19:48:01 GMT -5
"What else does one do before a greater power?"
|
|
|
Post by Teja on Sept 8, 2015 19:48:35 GMT -5
"You have never considered Loki a greater power! I can't believe you have the audacity to lie to my face like this!"
|
|
|
Post by Graf von Krolock on Sept 8, 2015 19:52:15 GMT -5
"But he does, does he not? He has built his entire idea of himself upon that," Johannes said, shrugging. "It was the only thing I could think of to perhaps coax him out of the spell he was having up there. Something to... how would you say... lift his spirits, perhaps?"
|
|
|
Post by Teja on Sept 8, 2015 20:02:13 GMT -5
"You, a man so unseduced by the thought of performing sociability that he stayed in a castle for something like 400 years, you, a complete misanthrope both from birth and by diet, made a big show of performing allegiance to my skinny, self-congratulatory fiancé... to cheer him up? You think I believe that? What do you take me for?"
|
|
|
Post by Graf von Krolock on Sept 8, 2015 20:19:03 GMT -5
Johannes spread his hands in good-natured surrender.
"Well... his influence will not be so bad, either."
|
|