LTSV - Harbingers of Change - 37 (Patreon)

The Volkov family lived in a large multi-family home out on Lantern Island, a tidal island down the coast a short way from San Aurelio. One approached it over a bridge, but you could walk across the sandy shallows at low tide if you wanted to although the municipality frowned on it. A lot of endangered species of bird nested in and around the area that would be disturbed by foot traffic.

Lantern Island was a wealthy suburb of San Aurelio with most of the island taken up by large properties that were terraced up the sides of the island's central hill. The Volkovs lives halfway up the hill in what Adra described as the sweet spot where they were elevated from flooding risks, but not so high up the hill that they were in the area where all the roads became narrow switch-backed nightmares to travel.

Although the family had previously been engaged in certain lucrative ventures, Mira had the sense that they'd moved to more legal forms of theft. Still, she could see signs of their past and Adra's influence as Adra pulled into their drive way.

The Volkov villa was surrounded by a tall stone fence that had been topped with shiny new razor wire. There were men at the gate who were not obviously armed, but she could see the slight bulge of gun holsters under their arms and she was pretty sure she could see a rack of large caliber rifles through the window of the gatehouse. The roofs of all the outbuildings had thin metal spikes like the sort used to discourage pigeons, only much larger. They too were still shiny and looked to have been recently installed.

So far, these people were more prepared for an uncontrolled dungeon break than anyone else she'd seen so far—not that she got out much.

Mira looked at Adra as the guards waved them respectfully through. "You like these people."

He didn't bother defending himself. "I chose the family along with my host. Illya was something of a black sheep here, but it wasn't because of the Volkovs. He was a bit arrogant and privately looked down on his family not only for how they'd made their money, but the fact that they've been trying to whitewash their background. It's why he reinvented himself as a doctor and philanthropist. Fortunately, he never said anything about his feelings to them. He still cared for his family in his own way, but he didn't necessarily want to be associated with them. His brothers and grandfather were very happy when I came back to convalesce at home after being released from the hospital."

"What do they think about your new career as a guild master?" Mira asked.

Adra pulled up to what appeared to be a small motor pool made to look like a large stable house, except it was full of expensive cars and rugged utility vehicles.

"They were surprised, but supported my decision to seize the opportunity."

Adra let himself out and tossed the keys to the Volante to a young lady who trotted out of the motor pool building to greet them. Her name tag read 'Sofiya'.

"Would you like me to fill up the tank while you're at dinner?" Sofiya asked, looking back and forth between Adra and Mira as Adra helped Mira out of the car. She seemed to settle on Mira as the decision maker, presumably since she didn't recognize the vehicle even if Adra was the one driving.

"Yes, please," Mira told her with a smile. "Can you let Illya know the cost?"

"It's free to guests," Sofiya assured her. "There's no gas stations on the island or for some distance once you're over the bridge. It's a matter of safety."

"Then thank you, Sofiya."

Mira patted herself down and examined herself to make sure her skirt was laying properly after the long drive. She'd chosen a loose-fitting linen shirt dress with a thin burgundy belt and a hemline that hit slightly above the knee since this was a sit-down event. She'd paired it with chunky gold jewelry that had appeared in her jewelry box overnight and a pair of tall nude heels with a metallic gold sole.

A chill wind blew off the coastline and she grimaced. It was still warm during the day, but that night wind cut.

Adra set his jacket on her shoulders without comment and Mira pulled it close around her. It smelled a bit of the cologne he used, which was very similar to the one he wore in their last life: woody with hints of resin and pepper.

They were met at the front door by a housekeeper, who appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She had a utilitarian apron on over her cable-knit sweater and expensive slacks. Her nametag read 'Zoya' and had a gold rim on it that presumably denoted her managerial role. Her makeup was sedate, but exquisite in application. Everything about her said 'old money' except the two unmistakable markers of her employment.

"Mr. Illya," she greeted them. "Miss Bellamy. Please, come it. Dedushka and the rest of the dinner party are waiting for you in the lounge. Dinner will be ready to serve within half an hour. Cocktails will be served in the meantime."

Mira let herself relax a little as Zoya gave her professional speech. Given the fact that this world had started out as a Soap Opera, she'd been a little worried when an attractive woman in Adra's age bracket who referred to his grandfather as 'Dedushka' appeared in front of her. That type was all-too-frequently an adopted daughter who wanted an official integration into the family. She didn't have time to fight with someone who viewed herself as an incumbent future granddaughter-in-law, but that sort of woman would not have been wearing flats and name tag. She would have made her status as ambiguous as possible.

Zoya showed them into the lounge and quietly excused herself just outside the threshold.

The lounge was a small den with a few conversational groupings of furniture and a pool table off to one side, right next to a large set of sliding glass doors that let out onto a deck that overlooked the bay. Someone was standing out there, watching the moon.

Two men were playing a lazy game of pool that they wordlessly abandoned upon Adra and Mira's arrival. They looked uncannily like Adra's current form, except one was slightly taller and was starting to get a touch of early gray at his temples. The other was a touch shorter and more muscular.

"Nikolai, Lev!" Adra greeted them. "Mira, these are my older brothers."

Nikolai, the taller and presumably oldest one, took her hand and brushed a charming and featherlight kiss over her knuckles. "The famous Miss Bellamy. I am glad to finally meet you. I saw your video this morning. The tone was a departure from your usual content."

His accent was pure Alleghanian. His recent ancestors might be immigrants from Rusland, but he was either fully integrated or had put a lot of effort into speech training.

"It was a collaboration with the guild," Mira explained. "We were in a good position to release a statement and we decided to use my platform at first, rather than push the release to a new channel no one would be watching. We'll work on building an audience for LivingShadow's socials later. This message was time sensitive."

"Indeed it was," Nikolai agreed. "Here, this is our middle brother, Lev."

Lev had a quick shark-like smile, but he didn't trigger Mira's sense of danger. He offered her a handshake, which she accepted and he didn't try to crush her hand or anything like that.

This was the brother who was at school in the same year as Julian Cross; one year behind his younger brother which seemed more awkward now that Mira knew their relative ages. Lev's general appearance made it easy to assume he'd been held back, but Illya Volkov had been very young to work as a practicing surgeon so he might well have skipped some grades.

"Find me later and I'll tell you some stories about our Illyusha," Lev said and this time his smile got a little mean, but it was an older brother flavor of meanness aimed at Adra. "Mama isn't here to show you the baby pictures. She and our father were visiting her sisters in the old country when the flights stopped running. They send their regrets and asked me to embarrass him on their behalf."

"I can tell that you're a dutiful son," Mira chuckled.

"The most dutiful," he agreed. Then he turned and called over his shoulder towards the glass doors. "Ded! Illyusha is here!"

The figure on the deck lowered his hand from his face, revealing a lit cigar that he stubbed out on a nearby ashtray. He turned and revealed himself as a tall and elegant man. He appeared to be in his seventies and the source of Nikolai's superior height. His hair was steel gray with wings of white at his temples and he wore it brushed back from his face, with a few stubborn strands springing forward to brush his brow. He had a square jaw, which had softened a bit with age and the kind of mouth that appeared to be trapped in a perpetual frown. He wore slacks and a vest under a heavy fur coat draped over his shoulders and when he reached up to push the sliding glass door aside, Mira found that he had heavy rings on every finger except his thumb.

"Ah, Miss Bellamy," he greeted her with a deceptively soft voice turned rough by his smoking habit. "Illya, come show her to me."

Adra guided Mira over to the Volkov family patriarch. "Ded, this is Mira. Mira, this is Dmitri Volkov, my grandfather."

"Mira?" Dmitri asked as he, like Nikolai, graced her with a very suave hand kiss. Up close, Mira realized she recognized that fur he was wearing. It was from the Gévaudan that Adra had killed outside the gate. "Not Samira? Not Sammy?"

That background check must have been very thorough.

"I prefer 'Mira'," she confirmed.

"Then you will be Mira when you're here," he said with a nod and a sharp light in his eye that told he knew she had to be 'Sammy' elsewhere, whether she liked it or not. "Come, sit. Zoya will bring us drinks and you will tell me about yourself. Illya has told us some things, but I'd like to hear about your videos. Not the one from this morning. I have seen it. The ones from before, with the water cup and the yoga. Our Sofiya watched them even before the Gate Crisis and showed them to me sometimes."

"What would you like to know?" Mira asked, cocking her head quizzically.

"I am curious how a young lady with little to no support, with perhaps the opposite of support, managed to create a small media kingdom based on videos where she never says a word."

Mira chuckled and looped her arm into Dmitri's. It had taken her a little while to realize Samira's genius in content creation and self promotion, but now that she had, she kind of felt like a proud grandmother and had been sitting on the urge to brag. Yes, she was technically the Samira who'd done all that, but her hosts still felt like separate people whose wills she had inherited. "The beginning is almost always luck. I started out with a small vlog that was meant for myself as a therapeutic tool, but one of my videos went viral and I was able to learn how to take advantage of that opportunity…"

Dmitri and his grandsons listened as she gave a little elevator speech about what Samira had done to leverage her fleeting moment of fame. At Adra's prompting, she haltingly admitted to some of the ways she'd diverted cash from what she was obligated to remit to her father. At first, she didn't want to confess to a flaw in front of these people who Adra clearly liked and wanted her to impress, but the story ended being the opposite of a flaw.

"So, he doesn't know about this 'Coffee' account?" Nikolai prompted.

"Technically, he does," Mira said. "I have to report the income, but I hid it as a line item on a spreadsheet behind a pivot table. You can hide source data by disabling a cache feature in the table. He doesn't read the reports closely unless I'm losing money. The accountant sees it and factors that income into my quarterly tax payments. If father finds out, he won't be able to say I hid the money from him. It's not much, but it's an emergency fund."

Dmitri turned to Adra. "This is a good girl, Illyushka. Do not make problems for her in the future."

"I would not have made trouble for her even before she could conjure lighting bolts," Adra assured the elderly man.

Note: It is exactly like Adra to kill a monster with his bare hands and give its fur to his elderly relative to wear as a coat.

Rusland - Russia

Coffee - Ko-Fi