Warnings: Language

By Blood Connected: Restoration

Chapter 07:

"Untrusting Jerkwaffle"

I'd never had much of a social life, to be honest. Just wasn't a particularly effusive or gregarious person. Too much snark, too little patience to put up with the annoying rich brats at my school. I spent my days at school, then at home doing homework, unless it was the weekend. Then I'd sometimes hang out with Ami, or spend time at my part-time job in town.

A teacher once asked if I had enough friends, and if I ever got lonely. I told her no.

That was mostly true. Some of the time.

Anyway.

Once selected to curate Aeneid's family's heirlooms, my schedule changed. Not by too much, though. I still went to school every day, but now I spent a few hours in the library each evening and on Sundays, cloistered in the research wing where I laboriously unpacked and catalogued the boxes in the stockroom. I swear to Christ I inhaled a metric fuck-ton of dust, but hey. Coal miners get Black Lung, archeologists get Dust Wheeze. Comes with the territory, I guess. I kept a cloth tied over my face to keep out the worst of it, until Ami took pity on me and brought me a mask from a hardware store.

Ami was a huge help in the first few weeks. She never complained as we took copious photos and dragged boxes into the main room, even though she wasn't technically a part of the project and it was eating up a lot of her social time. But that was Ami for ya. Always read to lend a hand—and, at times, the simple virtue of her presence.

She didn't like leaving me alone with Aeneid any more than I liked being left alone with him.

Aeneid haunted the library research wing like a particularly handsome ghost, but to my delight he rarely actually spoke to me. Just asked a few questions here and there about what I'd found, ho hum, nothing of substance and nothing at all personal (even if his icy eyes seemed to monitor everything I did). Maybe Ami at my side kept him distant, or maybe he just knew better than to ask about what music I liked after the royal go-fuck-yourself speech I'd given him the last time he tried. He even ignored me in class, for the most part.

Far as I was concerned, this was ideal.

Not that he was ever out of sight for too long. He liked to sit in a wing-backed chair grading papers in the corner while I worked (but only on weekdays; he didn't come around on the weekends). At first I thought it was weird that didn't he grade papers in his office like a normal teacher, but Ami reasoned that since the boxes all belonged to him, and he was the project advisor, he probably felt he had to be in arm's reach while I worked. Made sense, but I still didn't like him being so near. Just let me work in peace, dammit! I wasn't a little kid who'd get grubby fingerprints on your granddaddy's stamp collection. Jeez!

I bit my tongue and kept those thoughts to myself as the first few weeks of the project passed. September turned into October without noteworthy incident. Most of the time I just ignored Aeneid, (and successfully, I might add), but on rare occasion I'd catch him looking at me as I bent over a box. He always looked away as soon as I noticed. Probably making sure I didn't break any of his family's precious antiques, that untrusting jerkwaffle.

…then again, I didn't really blame him. Although the boxes mostly contained documents—birth certificates, journals, and an odd plethora of shipping receipts for some reason—many of the objects I uncovered looked expensive, though since I was still in the early stages of unpacking and cataloguing, I hadn't yet had time to research any of them. But lemme tell ya, even without appraisal I knew some of them had to be worth something: a necklace of shimmering white and blue stones, a golden vase, ancient books, clothes from bygone eras preserved carefully in tissue paper, chests of old coins, a collection of iridescent beetles under glass, and more than a few antique swords spoke of a fortunate family steeped in Old Money.

And that's saying nothing of the ties to Fortuna.

I discovered said tie entirely by chance. Found it a tin box, battered and rusted, wrapped in a swatch of moth-eaten cloth at the bottom of a crate. The box rattled when moved, little metallic pings of something bouncing off the interior walls. For a few days I left it sitting on my workbench as I catalogued all the items on top of the box, but eventually I donned my dust mask and undid the latches on the box's front. With careful, gloved fingers I lifted the lid and removed the tin's contents.

My jaw pretty much dropped when I realized what I was looking at. The minute Aeneid walked into the lab about an hour later, I pinned him with a glare and said, "Your family is from Fortuna?"

It was less a question, more of a demand. He took it in stride. Shrugging out of his coat, he paid me little more than a cold glance as he walked toward my work table. I shifted atop the stool I sat upon when he got close.

"Why do you ask?" he said, but his eyes were already on the box and its exposed contents.

"These are fortuns," I said. I pointed at the eight silver coins sitting in a metal dish, then shifted toward the small leather-bound pamphlet in the tray next to them. "And I'm pretty sure that's a Fortuna passport, circa the 1820s."

The coins and the passport both bore the stamp of a man in profile, a man with aristocratic feature and curling ram horns spiraling from his temples. I knew the symbol of Fortuna very well; there was no mistaking it, nor the image of a winged sword on the tail side of the coins. I'd seen photos of Fortunian currency, and of their crests and sigils, too many time to not recognize them.

Recognize them, but not believe them.

I'd stared at the coins for almost ten minutes, silent with incredulity until the truth of them sank in.

Likewise, Aeneid stood transfixed at the edge of the table, staring at the coins and passport without speaking. His face didn't change, emotion absent from his cold blue eyes. Eventually I got tired of his stupid stoic act and rolled my eyes, huffing.

"Imagine my shock at finding a Fortunian passport, of all things," I said. "I didn't know they needed passports. People hardly ever even left that place." I knew of none in recent years, in fact, and I'd once did a school project on the subject.

Aeneid reached for the coins. Thought better of it and pulled back his hand.

"They usually don't," he murmured, "but my family did."

I stared at him. He stared at the passport. Inside the passport I'd counted nearly three dozen stamps from various countries—some of them no longer in existence—from every single continent excepting Antarctica. The name in the front (no photo; too early a time period for that) didn't ring any bells. "Antonio Redgrave." Sounded more Italian and British than Fortunian—although Fortuna was mysterious. Maybe it was a typical Fortuna name, after all.

Fortuna, that lonely island stronghold playing home to a society so mysterious, the outside world considered it on par with lost Atlantis. That island whose people traded with few, and communicated with even fewer. Little was known about that place. Some people said it was actually a stronghold for a shadowy military organization. Others said it homed members of a doomsday cult. There was talk of an ancient religious order on the island, though no one had ever proven the truth of that. Aside from half-baked conspiracy theories, all that came out of the place was the occasional smuggled artwork and a few blurry photos—photos of people dressed in old-fashioned clothes despite our modern era, with a few outdated cars lining streets flanked by cathedrals. An anachronistic place, one removed from the flow of conventional time by the whim of its unknown leaders.

Fortuna was one of the single most mysterious places left in the world…and Aeneid's family was from there? And Aeneid's family had left the island and all its mysteries, just like that?

Was that even possible?

"Wow," I managed to blurt out. "Wow. That's incredible."

He didn't seem to share my sentiments. He just turned his cold blue eyes my way with a scowl.

"How did you recognize the coins?" he asked.

"I went through a Fortuna phase as a kid." I scowled, defensive as his eyebrow lifted. "What? All historians have a conspiracy theory phase. Some people like Stonehenge or the Bermuda Triangle, I liked Fortuna. It's basically the most mysterious place on earth aside from, like, North Korea, only without the dictator and human rights violations." My scowl deepened as a thought occurred to me, kicking my feet underneath my stool. His family had to have left for a reason, so… "It isn't secretly like North Korea, right?"

His eyes slid away from my face, back to the coins, but he didn't look at them with my sense of wonder. He looked at them with a glare that put the setting sun to shame.

"It's a religious place." It was his turn to shrug. "An ancestor of mine didn't agree with their practices, and left."

"Oof. Theocracy, huh?" So it seemed the conspiracy theorists had gotten at least one thing right. Voice laced with irony, I said: "I imagine they do not take to heretical thinking very well."

He snorted, a sharp exhale through the nose. "You could say that."

"That's the beauty of America, I guess." More irony, considering the plethora of church advertisements preaching death to nonbelievers I passed on my way to school each day. "A nation built for religious freedom, even if that means freedom from religion."

That earned me some eye contact, at last. He didn't say anything, though. He simply looked at me, sizing me up as if wondering at my motivations for speaking—yeah, that was it. Suspicion touched his eyes at the corners like subtle steel. I bristled in response. I was just making conversation. No need to get huffy, buddy.

Even though it probably wasn't wise to press him, I decided his rude ass didn't deserve much delicacy. I was curious, so fuck it. "Did your relatives ever talk about Fortuna?" I asked with a bold stare. "When did they leave? And which relatives of yours were from there, exactly?"

Blue eyes narrowed, color obscuring. "Why?"

"Well, making this exhibit about a family's flight from an oppressive religious regime would be a pretty interesting subject for this project," I said, "provided that's actually why they left."

No reaction. He guarded his expression as securely as the island of Fortuna protected its walled shores. I rolled my eyes and sighed.

"Fine, whatever. Be that way," I said. "I'll figure it out eventually, probably. You'd just be saving time by spilling the beans now."

His lip curled over his teeth as I turned back to my workstation. "Manners, Miss Lancaster. It's impolite to pry."

Aeneid's dry, mocking tone set my teeth on edge. "It's also impolite to keep vital information from me considering the nature of this project," I snapped. "Impolite and unprofessional. Manners go both ways, professor."

I all but spat his title. His eyes flashed; with a flex of lithe muscle he rose to his feet, towering above my spot on the stool like a statue carved from malicious marble. I slid off my seat and backed away from him a few paces, movement spurred by instinct so animal I forgot how to think for a second. We just stared at one another, his eyes full of thunder and lightning, a hawk baring down on a helpless rabbit—and I knew I'd somehow crossed a line. Wouldn't let it show, though. I threw up my chin and heaved back my shoulders, doing my best to match his glare with a glower of my own, pathetic to him though it probably seemed.

I'm not sure how long we stood there trying to win that staring contest, but the spell broke when my phone rang in my pocket. I jumped, flinching at the bass-heavy rocky music blaring tinny from the speaker. Our eye contact broke at last.

Aeneid spun on his heel and walked away, toward the door.

Good riddance, douche-canoe. I turned my back on him, too, and answered the phone.

Sarita's voice greeted me with an apology and no preamble. "Sorry, J, but I can't drive you home tonight," she said. "I had a blowout on the freeway!"

"Oh, gosh," I said. I walked to the storage room door and braced an arm against the frame, phone cradled between shoulder and chin. "Are you OK?"

"Yeah, just had to put my car in the shop." She sounded thoroughly annoyed by this. Sarita had been driving me home for weeks now, intent on securing my safety since the Slasher still hadn't been found. "Are you OK getting home by yourself?"

"Yeah." I rubbed my eyes with my free hand, flashes of color and light bursting like fireworks beneath my lids. "Man, what time is it?"

"Late. Almost sunset."

"Ugh. Time got away from me. I might just sleep in the dorms with Ami or something."

"Good idea," Sarita said. "Better than you walking home alone."

I pulled my phone away from my chin and glanced at the time. "Well, I've still got an hour's daylight if I scurry."

The girl tutted. "Bad idea."

"Yeah, you're right." A lie; I planned on walking home in spite of her warning, but she didn't need to know that. "See you tomorrow?"

"For sure. Bye!"

"Bye."

She hung up. I stood there for a minute more, rubbing once again at my eyes as I considered my plans. I'd wanted to work a bit longer, but walking home after dark at this time of year would be somewhat unpleasant. The weather had already turned with a cold snap. Best get going soon if I wanted to make it home before night and cold weather—

"You live on your own."

I jumped. Aeneid stood maybe five feet away, hands jammed in the pockets of his slacks as he scowled in my direction. Sneaky bastard. I thought he'd left me in peace.

"Remind me to put a bell on you," I groused. "You keep scaring me."

"Perhaps you should attempt to be more observant," he deadpanned.

"Manners, Mister Aeneid," I said, voice pitched low as I mocked his earlier command. Before he could berate me, I stalked past him and headed for the wing-backed chair in the corner. My stuff sat in a pile next to it. I hadn't been wearing my shoes; I sat down and began the process of putting them on.

Aeneid wandered after me, taking a long route around the work table like a panther stalking prey. I tried not to notice the way his fingertips trailed along the table's surface, skimming like dragonflies over still water.

"Answer the question," he said.

"You didn't ask a question," I snarked. "You made a statement. Not the same thing."

His scowl deepened; he spoke between gritted teeth. "Fine. Do you live on your own?"

Suppressing a smirk (because I'd just won that little spar, thank you very fucking much), I stood up and reached for my coat.

"That's better," I said, "and yes. I live on my own."

"Alone?" Aeneid asked.

I rolled my eyes as my jacket settled around my shoulders. "That's typically what 'on your own' means, as far as I'm aware."

He didn't rise to my bait (that bastard) and pressed on, asking, "You have no family here?"

"Now who's prying?" I said. I grabbed my satchel and slug it over my shoulder. "And here I thought prying was impolite."

His fist clenched atop the work table. My eyes locked on it as if drawn there by a magnet. He pulled the hand to his side and out of sight. Aeneid wore an expression of barely-restrained impatience, desire to act—whether it be to snap at me or something else—itching behind his icy eyes.

Words bubbled from my chest before I could stop them.

"My aunt and uncle have a summer house here," I blurted. "They let me stay in it."

He relaxed, eyes losing some of their intensity. "Where are they?"

"Chicago."

"And where are your parents?"

"They're dead."

Euphemisms piss me off, so I didn't bother with any. I spoke the truth and let it hang in the air between us like a mist. Gotta admit that sometimes it's fun to watch people scramble for a platitude when I reveal the truth so bluntly, although I reserve that little trick for people I dislike.

Too bad Aeneid was so maddeningly unflappable. He didn't react at all negatively to my declaration. He just nodded. No apologies, no platitudes, no expressions of sorrow. Just casual acceptance of the facts, without drama or bluster.

And if I'm being honest…that was sort of nice. Most people tripped all over themselves to give me comforts I don't need when I told them the truth. But I never met my parents. It's hard to miss people you've never met.

Or so I told myself, anyway.

But I don't want to think about that.

"I see," Aeneid said. "So your aunt and uncle let you stay there alone?"

Wow. He wasn't going to ask how my parents died? That was rare. Rare, and appreciated. I didn't like giving this guy credit, but even I had to admit he deserved a little for his discretion.

My lips pursed of their own accord. "I'm 18, a legal adult. 'Let' isn't the right word. And the alternative to me living alone is them living here babysitting me." I smiled, though ruefully. "They prefer to just let me be. To just get on with their own lives."

Aeneid processed this for a moment. Then his brow furrowed.

He asked, "And living in the dorms isn't an option?"

The question rendered me momentarily silent. Why was he asking if I could live in the dorms? What purpose did that question serve?

I wasn't sure. All I knew was that I'd been bullied when I lived there in elementary and middle school, and that I had no desire to return to the dorms after that experience. Even reconciliation with Sarita couldn't budge my thinking. All I wanted was to lie low, to escape this school and make my own way in the world as soon as I possibly could.

But I didn't want to confess any of that to Aeneid.

Time to deflect, Jira. It's what you're good at.

"Sorry, but dorm life ain't for me," I quipped, tone light and comically crabby. "Too much glitter everywhere, and I'm too grumpy to share a communal bathroom. Would never get any fucking peace—"

I clapped a hand over my mouth. Luckily Aeneid only scowled when I cursed, and didn't inflict me with a detention. I smoothed a hand over the front of my pea-coat and cleared my throat.

"I mean, I'd never get any fraction of peace and quiet in the dorms," I said in as prim a voice as I could muster. "I much prefer the solitude provided by my current living arrangement, thank you oh-so-very-much."

For a minute, Aeneid did not reply.

Then, in that voice of odd velvet, he murmured, "I can relate."

His face bore no expression whatsoever, aside from the barest hint of tightness at the eyes. He turned from me and gestured at the door.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Jira," he said. "Safe walk home."

I didn't answer him. It wouldn't have meant anything.

I just walked out the door.

The wind picked up as I journeyed home, a cold, biting force that made my teeth chatter in my skull. By the time I reached home, darkness had almost fallen. Sunset had started coming earlier and earlier as autumn faded into winter, and the temperature reflected the transition. My numb fingers trembled as I fumbled with the lock, eager for the blessed warmth of the indoors. I had already shut the door behind me when I realized I left the newspaper on the driveway; I dashed back out and grabbed the thing with liberal curses and more than a few dramatic shrieks.

When I had safely re-entered the house, the newspaper headline had me shrieking again:

THIRD VICTIM OF 'SLASHER' FOUND

POLICE SCRAMBLE FOR LEADS

I cursed under my breath. Sarita was right. I probably shouldn't have walked home, after all.

The article listed a scant summary of facts: scales and feathers, body found in several pieces at the ruins of a burned hours, etc. Same as the last killing. The victim—a twenty year old girl working at a bakery—had been heading for her country home, when for reasons unknown she abandoned her vehicle. Her body was found about one hundred yards away, butchered and bloody, head and legs disconnected from her torso.

Although she'd been found a few cities over, the police of my small town were now enforcing a curfew. No one was to go out alone after dark, and if travel by night was essential, we were advised to do it in large groups.

I gulped at the group thing. With night falling so early nowadays, trips home from the research lab fringed on twilight. Soon they would overlap with total darkness. If Sarita got another flat tire, I'd be stuck in the dorms.

But that would totally suck, so I didn't want to think about it. I ran my hands through my hair and tossed the paper on the kitchen table.

"Honestly, I'd be more scared if the media hadn't given this asshole that crappy name," I muttered as I fixed my dinner and started on my homework. The attempt to brace my nerves with humor worked; a smile cracked my worries like a hammer on ice. "The Slasher? C'mon. That's fuckin' lame."

Fuckin' cliché, that's what that name was. And with a name like that, I didn't have it in me to be scared for very long—even if there were dead girls just a few towns over.

I was just a kid, despite my status as a legal adult.

I had no way of knowing what was coming for me, nor what the Slasher intended to bring upon my sleepy little town.

NOTES:

So obviously the scene about Fortuna is brand new. Tying DMC4 into BBC this time around. The scene at the end, about loneliness, has dialogue lifted straight from the original story, but with more detail about Jira's living situation.

Vergil is sizing Jira up. What's he planning?

Jira has the teenage mindset of being invincible. It's tough writing someone rude and reckless and unafraid when I am generally none of those things anymore. XD But I want her to feel her age, so I'm resisting my 26-year-old impulse to make her act cautiously.

Things between Jira and Vergil start getting salty (for lack of a better word) next chapter.

MANY THANKS to those who reviewed the previous chapter! Things are really going to shift soon, and take the story in a direction the original did NOT go. So excited. You'll see! Thank you so much Ikara-O-Kage, Amethyst-Phoenixx, Flight of the Valkyries, Ariel Wild, Innocence and Instinct, noiroux, Guest, and The Bee's Tales!