LTSV - Harbingers of Change - 4 (Patreon)

They didn’t make it out of the apartment before Helena caught them.

“Samira, Mason, my darlings!” Helena called out, as they got near the door. “Where are you lovebirds going? I haven’t made the toast yet!”

It was news to Mira that this was the kind of event that involved toasts, but she’d kept her wineglass from Cece and had planned to ditch it just inside the front door, so she was already armed with a beverage and Helena couldn’t force anything on her.

“Everyone!” Helena called, clinking her glass. “Everyone, could I just steal a moment?”

The party quieted and the attendees cleared a little space around Helena, Mira, and Adra. Helena gave them a sparkling hostess smile as she addressed the assembled company.

“I just wanted to share this wonderful moment with you all. I’m so relieved to see my daughter back on her feet. We were all so terribly worried for a while there. Hospitals, late nights, all that stress—it really takes a toll, doesn’t it?” Helena turned to Mira and placed a maternal hand on her shoulder. “I’m so fortunate that she’s always been resilient. Still, we’re choosing to focus on the positive tonight. A fresh start, better choices, and hopefully no more incidents keeping us all on edge.”

Helena lifted her highball to prompt everyone to applause, and there was a slight smattering of applause. “Let’s raise a glass to her recovery. Cheers!”

A sense-memory assaulted Mira, a memory she felt in her body rather than recalled in her mind’s eye; Samira in a dozen other situations, just like this, where she was feeling woozy from too much to drink and not enough to eat, on top of already feeling bad, while staring up at what seemed like a whole forest of faces whose attention had been called down on her. Given the feeling as a point of reference, Mira could actually remember a little bit of why Samira had been feeling bad; she’d had the flu or that sports injury or had just lost a beloved friend—and every time, Helena would throw an impromptu little party like this one, to make sure everyone saw her daughter at rock bottom.

‘Oh, it’s on now, bitch,’ Mira thought and dug deep for her best, most dazzling smile. She leaned against Adra in a classic ingenue’s pose, patting his chest. He had on Mason Dietrich’s ‘normal’ bored expression, staring off into the middle distance.

“Mom, you’re too much!” she cooed. Samira might never have had a chance to learn to keep a harpy like this in her lane. Mira was a different story. Helena was about to find out which one of them was going to come out of this scene with egg on her face.

“You get too worried! They didn’t really need to admit me, but they got anxious about Daddy’s Donor Suite going empty. If there’s a next time, you should come visit me and you’ll see that the doctors overreact when one of us comes in for the littlest scrape. It was only a scratch!” She peered up at Adra. “Mason, you were there! Tell her?”

Adra made a good impression of his host, suddenly tuning back into the conversation. Mira was going to be interested to learn what happened in that back office if he’d come out of there having decided that he needed to be ugly and rude again.

“What?” he said. “Oh, yeah. I just wanted to make sure she got checked for a concussion. There was that commercial, or something, with the watermelons. We wanted to stay in the ER, but the intake nurse lost it when she saw Sammie’s last name. She could have gone home days ago.”

Sammie? Oh, hell no. They were not going to be using that nickname.

“Oh!” Helena awkwardly lowered her glass as the attention shifted onto her. “Well, I wish you’d said something beforehand.”

Mira batted her wide, guileless eyes. “But, Mom, this is the first time we talked since before they admitted me!” She flicked a lock of hair over her shoulder. “Anyway, thank you for a lovely party. I’m sorry we couldn’t stay longer. I have to take Mason to go pick up his car. He has an early morning. Okay, love you!” She added that last part as she waved bye-bye.

Adra took the wineglass from her, tossed it back and left it on a nearby table with no coaster or tray on it, before he led her out the door by the wrist. He switched his hand back to her waist as soon as the door shut behind them and Mira saw the change ripple over his face as he dialed back Mason Dietrich’s troll man appearance.

“Are you alright?” Mira asked, while he hustled her down the hall towards the elevator. “You’re tense. Did something happen while we were separated?”

He didn’t answer until the elevator doors had closed behind them and the carriage began its descent. Then he closed his eyes and leaned back against the rear wall of the elevator. “My love, I will need you to present me with a very compelling argument as to why I shouldn’t just summon an army of demons to take over this entire wretched country.”

Mira thought about it and started ticking reasons off on her fingers, “Firstly, this country has nuclear weapons that they would absolutely use against a demonic invasion. You might survive that, but most other people wouldn’t and one likes to live in a society. I am not post-apocalypse farm wife material,” she said. “Secondly, there is barely enough ambient mana here to even light a candle with. I don’t know how you’re managing so well and it’s giving me anxiety, but a normal demon would have health problems before long.” She gave him a sideways look. “You are managing well, right? I assume you would tell me otherwise.”

“I am a primordial creature of the Source,” Adra scoffed. “I was born at the dawn of time and I am a living gateway to all planes of existence for mana. I do not need this realm’s pathetic mana, I brought my own.” He paused, and added, “That said, I will be perhaps closer to you than usual unless something changes. I may not need external mana, but you have also been emitting some since you Woke and it feels a bit like standing underneath a heat lamp.”

She had to chew that over for a second before she could respond. He could tolerate low mana, but it wasn’t comfortable. There was something else about what he’d just said that had caught her attention.

“You mentioned this earlier, but I want to confirm; you arrived here before I woke up?”

That had happened in their last life too, but the circumstances had been different; Adra had just been released from his long imprisonment and had to go find her. This time, he’d been with her when she died, or—well, maybe it wasn’t that different after all. She wasn’t aware of how much time passed between her incarnations. Just because the transition felt seamless to her didn’t mean that it actually was. He might have had plenty of time to wander this world before Samira passed.

This discovery did lend some weight to her tentative theory that her memories of being Mira ‘slept’ in her incarnations until they were put into danger they couldn’t get out of by themselves and then Mira ‘woke up.’ She wasn't sure where her mana emissions fit into that hypothesis, though.

Adra glanced her way and slowly nodded. “I did not follow you immediately, if that is your concern. I made sure the children were settled and that your funeral was held to my standards. I would say it took me about a year to conclude my business, but then Miss Cecily’s health abruptly failed and I knew your cohort was about to move on. She is usually the youngest of the six of you and the others had been in delicate health for some time by that point. So I moved on to locate you ahead of time.”

Mira leaned into his side. “How long ago did you find me?”

“It’s been about three years,” he admitted, leaning his cheek on top of her head. “I arrived shortly after Samira first entered sobriety care. I took on the form of a stray cat to keep her company and help in her recovery as much as I could. You may notice that some of the material in your knee is not original to your body. Eliminating the source of her pain was all I could do to help at the time.”

Samira had torn her ACL playing field hockey in the expensive private girls-only school she’d attended as a girl. She could have returned to sports after a well-managed recovery period and a surgery, but that was not going to happen in a household like hers; one designed to ruin a young woman and build her up into a bitter, cruel villainess for the protagonist to defeat. No, Virgil thought women’s sports (or at least the ones without skimpy uniforms) were stupid and the care team had made the mistake of emphasizing Samira’s return to field hockey when they pitched her treatment plan to him, so that never happened. Then Helena interfered with what physical therapy and pain management that Samira did get by continually rescheduling her appointments. She also had a habit of deciding she didn’t like Samira’s doctors and constantly looking for new ones.

That said, the residential facility stood out in Samira’s memories as a surprisingly positive experience. There was drug counseling, yes, but the facility also limited her access to outside influences—like her parents. Mira didn’t like the implication of that at first, but further investigation of that memory revealed a lot of other girls in the program with similar so-called ‘diseases of affluence’ like eating disorders, self harm, and early-stage substance abuse. Most of the treatment plans there seemed to be showing the girls basic human compassion and giving them some structure.

Most of the girls had more visitation windows with their families than Samira had. Either Virgil and Helena had made an abysmal impression on the doctors at intake or the facility had identified a certain profile among parents of children with nascent drug habits and the Bellamys fit it. Either way, they were only allowed to visit her every so often and only under the supervision of a doctor or nurse, not that the Bellamys really used their opportunities to see their child.

Most of Samira’s therapy plan was addressing her initial injury, inasmuch as they could after her delay in treatment. She saw occupational and massage therapists way more often than she was expected to attend counseling, for instance. Mira could see why Samira hadn’t felt very stressed about the idea of her father trying to send her back there. The only thing she’d really had to do while she was in rehab was focus on her PT and finish high school.

The residential care facility honestly reminded her of the sanatorium Lady Carolina had been committed to in Mira’s previous life; a hidden lifesaving organization. That was a little surprising, considering this was meant to be a soap opera. Mental hospitals were not positive places in this setting, but then (according to the book) Samira was supposed to still have her pill habit as an adult so maybe the hospital was allowed to exist here only because they were supposed to have failed her.

The difference between the book and reality was that Adra had been there to intervene with her pain—and yes, Samira did have memories of a rangy black tomcat who’d get in her window and sleep in her bed. She used most of her limited pocket money to keep him in canned tuna because her knee always felt better whenever he draped himself over it and purred them both to sleep.

Mira flexed her knee. It felt fine. She’d been waiting to find out her limits with it. Bad knees always felt fine right up until they didn’t. The weather had been fine, so she’d assumed that she’d just lucked into a pain-free window in Samira’s life; apparently not. “I wouldn’t be able to tell if any part of that is shadow matter without access to diagnostic magic, but I haven’t even noticed it was injured.”

“It’s not my shadow matter,” he explained. “Anything of my matter that is separated from my core will decay after a few weeks or so, unless I reabsorb it or the host body can support it with their own mana and, as I mentioned, you were not emitting any until your latent memories broke through. No, I repaired your knee through a process similar to how I prepare a body for my occupation. I found an appropriate donor and replaced your damaged part with one from him.”

“You…” Mira blinked hard, trying to comprehend what she’d just heard. “....from who?”

Adra smiled and the elevator carriage darkened just a little so she could see his eyes glowing red in the reflective interior of the sliding door and his smile spread just a touch too wide to be natural on a human body. He looked very pleased with himself. “When you meet Samira’s father, you may notice that he walks with a minor limp. Strangely, he had no reservations about getting surgery when it was his knee that had been ruined.”

Oh, of course he had.

“Was he aware of this happening?” Mira asked. Surely not? She could hardly wrap her head around the idea of Virgil Bellamy sacrificing his own flesh for his daughter.

“Darling, you will note that I said ‘donor’ and not ‘volunteer,’” Adra corrected her. He put his face back together as the elevator reached the parking level. “I took what I needed as he slept. He thought he injured himself when he fell out of bed the next morning. I will note, he was in much less pain than his child was and yet he caused twice the noise.”

“Thank you for looking out for her,” Mira sighed as they made their way to the Volante. Although, with Adra on the lookout, she was surprised Mason survived long enough to become Samira’s fiance.

“Yes, well,” he grumbled. “My best was not good enough. I had a feeling that you would wake on your own, if there was no inciting incident, and yet one still occurred despite my best efforts.”

“Short of stealing Mason’s spot as Samira’s fiance, I’m not sure what else you could have done,” Mira mused and then noticed that Adra was looking awfully guilty after she said that.

She sat upright and turned to squint at him. He dodged her gaze and looked the other way.

“Adra. What did you do?”