LTSV - Harbingers of Change - 33 (Patreon)

"It is. It seems like he's really happy about Viola's awakening," Mira said coolly, "Have you tried the buffet?" she asked, in hopes that he'd take the escape rope and maybe get some food to go with all the alcohol in his system.

He was close enough now that she could tell his glass had originally had near pure tequila in it. Now, it just held ice and a sad orange peel. If this was anything like the last party, each glass had two drinks worth of liquor in it and little, if any mixer.

Andre blinked slowly at her. It was less of a reaction and more the time it took him to parse her words. "Uh, yeah. M'gonna hit it in a sec. You—uh, you look different."

Mira saw Adra slowly start to turn his gaze in Andre's direction.

"Seriously?" Mira said flatly.

Unfortunately, Andre was too trashed to notice her tone and took her statement at face value. "Yeah, seriously. You kind of had that runway model 'bag of coat hangers on legs' thing going on before." In his defense, he sounded very earnest. "Did, uh, Bryn do that?"

She sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose and answered, "Yes, he's been practicing with his cooking skill. It helped a lot."

He actually brightened up. "That's cool!" Then he slumped down again. "…is he doing okay?"

Damn it. Mira wanted to tell him to fuck off, but it was hard when he was showing a human emotion. She was a strong believer in positive reinforcement and, for better or worse, she was stuck with him indefinitely. Still, she wasn't about to repair this relationship for him and she wasn't sure she wanted it repaired at all.

Luca had been kind of a dick when she'd first spoken to him, but she'd warmed up to the man considerably since then and she liked the way he talked to Bryn when they weren't fighting about Andre the third wheel. There was no way she'd facilitate Andre's way back to Bryn before Andre had shown evidence of frankly unrealistic levels of character growth.

"He's fine, Andra. Luca has been looking after him," she told him.

Andre flinched. "That—that's good. Uh, hey, while I've got you here…"

Alan chose that moment to slide into the space between Cece and Mira. He slung one companionable arm around Cece's shoulders and let his hand rest gently on Mira's shoulder while he looked Andre directly in the eye and said, "Fuck off. Now."

There was a tense stand off between the two men for a minute before Andre threw back the tiny dregs in his glass, turned, and left.

Alan removed his hand from Mira's shoulder with a tense sideways glance at Adra, who had reverted to his mask of apathy and was pretending not to pay attention to anything concerning Mira. His arm was tense under her hands and she risked giving him an encouraging squeeze to show she knew this was hard for him.

"You shouldn't give him that much attention," Alan grumbled, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I know that type. He'll act pathetic so he doesn't have to apologize for what he did or change anything he's doing. Then we'll get stuck with him again, somehow."

Not for the first time, Mira realized Alan had a surprisingly high level of emotional intelligence. He'd sort of stepped into the role of their team's 'face' by default, but he seemed to place a high priority on protecting the group's boundaries too.

More and more, Mira found herself regretting all the times she'd assumed she already knew everything there was to know about these people. The more she learned, the more she wanted to know and the more she understood what she'd been missing out on.

"He's involved with my little sister, somehow," Mira told him quietly. "It turns out, she got pulled into a dungeon too. That boy hanging off her was there too and he seemed to be hanging around Andre."

Someone tapped the mic just then and Mira found that Virgil Bellamy had taken a place just in front of the small instrumental quartet that had been playing atmospheric instrumental music for the assembly.

Helena stood next to him, beaming at Viola, who was standing on Virgil's other side with Raoul and Andre. Andre looked a little ruffled and wild-eyed, like someone had just dragged him across the deck out of nowhere. Given the timing, they probably had. Mira doubted that this speech had been planned.

"Thank you, my friends, for coming out this evening to help celebrate my little girl," Virgil said into the mic. "I know the invites were sudden, but our good news was every bit as unexpected. You all know, by now, that San Aurelio has been granted two Guild permits in order to do our part in subjugating the Gate Crisis. I am pleased to announce my youngest daughter, Violani, has been scouted for the SunBlade Guild and will officially become their youngest active hunter!"

Virgil beamed as he soaked up the applause that followed. He extended an arm and directed someone to place an additional spot on someone in the crowd. Mira scowled as she recognized who it was.

Blake Heron had been in the middle of talking to someone and the spotlight caught the momentary dark stillness that came over his face as Virgil singled him out, apparently without warning.

"I'd like to invite Guildmaster Heron to say a few words," Virgil said as he waved the man over, totally blind to his quarry's displeasure.

'Well, shit,' Mira thought to herself and settled in to watch the show. Viola must have gone crying straight to her parents and triggered this spontaneous event. She was confident that she would not be featured in any of the announcements or celebrations this evening, but that was fine. She didn't want attention right now.

"He looks pissed," Cece murmured as an aside to Alan.

"Yeah, you'd think he'd be happy for a chance to do some self promo," Alan muttered back.

Mira was pretty sure that Blake Heron didn't want that much publicity around him hiring a teenage girl fresh out of boarding school to go fight monsters, but it was too late now. He proceeded to give a brief, impersonal little talk about how he was looking forward to the future of SunBlade, how fortunate he's been in the talent of San Aurelio, etc, etc.

Mira took a covert peek in the direction of Blake Heron's conversational partner and saw Julian Cross putting some rapid, if inconspicuous, distance between himself and the spot where Blake Heron had left him. He was, sadly, headed in her direction and she saw the moment he spotted Cece.

She hadn't seen any of the other Magnates yet and she'd been resigned to seeing Julian Cross again, since he ran in her parents' set.

"Oh, shoot," Cece hissed as she too noticed the oncoming man.

Alan blinked rapidly as she dipped around him and put herself between Mira and him. "Uh, is that something we need to know about?"

"He has a thing for her," Mira said shortly.

"It's not mutual," Cece told Alan, equally terse, before she put her social expression back on.

"Cecelia," Julian Cross greeted her. He paused to give Mason and Alan an evaluating glance.

He dismissed Alan right away. Adra deigned to acknowledge him and then tuned out once more. Julian's gaze slid naturally to Mira and almost past her before he did a double-take.

"…Miss Bellamy?" he asked. He didn't sound entirely sure.

"Mister Cross," Mira confirmed, politely. "Are you enjoying the party?"

"I—yes," he said and cleared his throat. "You, you look good. Different."

"So I've been told," she said with a neutral smile. "I'm sorry my father's speech interrupted your conversation. I'm sure Mister Heron will come back to continue once he's finished his speech."

Julian's expression shuttered. "No need," he said with a derisive sneer he couldn't or wouldn't fully conceal. "I'd already heard enough. In any event, I wanted to speak with you or Cecelia this evening, preferably both of you." He paused to give Cece a much warmer expression. "I'd heard you were both caught up in a Gate."

"We were both very lucky," Cece replied with candor. "We were with a larger group and we were all able to work together to escape."

"I hadn't realized the two of you were close," Julian observed. "Although, I did realize after Mrs. Bellamy's last get together that you've been taking an interest in Miss Bellamy's comfort for a while."

"She was always my favorite." Cece didn't look away as she said that, like she dared him to make it weird. "Anyway, someone needed to and it was arguably my job at the time."

"I suppose so," Julian allowed. "I've been told that you both accepted offers with LivingShadow. Is that true?"

"I'll stop you there, friend," Alan interjected. He'd been watching the back and forth with an air of amusement, while ignoring Julian's silent dismissal of him. Apparently, Julian had used up his five minutes of Mira and Cece's time. "If you have inquiries for our Guild, you can direct them to our front office."

Julian looked him over again. "You're one of Tanner's boys. The one who dropped out of college to start a band."

"Dad does like telling people that," Alan allowed. "I'm also a member of LivingShadow. I was in the Dungeon too." He jerked his head to one side and Mira realized that the other boys had arrived. They'd been standing behind Mira, just out of sight, and now they fanned out to bracket Julian in.

"I've heard some things about you too," Alan continued. "My brothers are a bunch of assholes, but we do talk. I've heard were were desperate to get your hands on one of the two Guild permits available, but you couldn't quite pull the funding together. You had a loan fall through at the last second, right?"

Julian Cross had made his money in venture capital, but Mira had the impression that those permits had gone for astronomical amounts of money. Adra had had no worries about his bottom line when they first arrived, but now he was talking about monthly budgets—not annual, monthly. It sounded like he'd bullied the System into giving him one of those permits, but the operation costs were stretching him thin.

She looked at Adra, but he was still acting as Mason so she couldn't gauge how interested he would be in an infusion of cash if it meant having one of the Magnates as a stakeholder. Her instinct said he wouldn't, but she'd known him to put up with a lot if it meant ensuring his demons' safety and comfort. He could have wiped her whole kingdom off the face of the map in her first life if he'd wanted to, but he hadn't because it would have exposed his people to reprisal from their neighboring countries.

That was the problem with living in a feudal society. You always had to maintain a balance between visible force and your likeliness to invade. Like any leader, Adra wanted a future where the demons in that world could participate in trade and culture, if they wanted, rather than being isolated in the north. Indiscriminate genocide made that future unlikely.

"Guildmaster Volkov would be the person to approach," Mira said. "If you're looking to invest. I warn you now, we have no expectation of turning a profit anytime soon. Our primary goal is stabilizing the Gate and securing the hot zones around them. If you're hoping for a productive addition to your portfolio, this is going to be a very long-term proposition."

Julian refocused on Mira and he had that look in his eye that people got sometimes when she'd stopped following her host's assigned script.

"I still want in," he said. "Would you be willing to speak to your Guildmaster on my behalf? I don't trust Heron any further than I could throw him. I'd rather support LivingShadow."

"I can speak to him." Mira carefully did not promise anything.

For one thing, she didn't fully trust him not to use the access he'd get to the Hunters, specifically Cece, if he came on as an investor. For another, she didn't know if Adra needed investors bad enough to give them access to his demons. She wasn't feeling that great about the idea either.

On the other hand, anything they received from Julian Cross wouldn't go to Blake Heron. Julian had said he'd 'rather' support LivingShadow. That meant supporting SunBlade was still an option if he got turned down.

'Sorry, love,' Mira thought in Adra's direction. She already had too much on her plate already between straightening out her legal situation, renovating her public image, and on her surprise spot on the spearhead of the Gate Crisis response.

This new wrinkle was going to have to be Adra's problem.

"Speak to me about what?"

Mira closed her eyes and counted to ten before she turned and greeted her 'Guildmaster.' No wonder Adra had been so quiet on her arm. He'd been up to something.

"Mister Volkov, I was worried you wouldn't make it," she said with a brilliant smile and a look in her eyes that told Adra he was going to get it later for springing this on her.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," Adra replied from his Illya body. "Dietrich, Syrith has an emergency at the home base and she needs your multifactor authorization to deal with it. I'll handle things here. You take my car back to the Tower and I'll handle driving our people home."

Note: Here's the bonus chapter for today. I couldn't quite pull one off monday because I had to think hard about how I wanted to handle the Viola scene. I hope today's extra long chapters make up for it.