Thia slammed the door of her room and locked
it behind her, shoving the keys in her pocket. She ignored the drilling
sounds coming from Calliope's room. Mages were crazy, and this was her
final thought on the matter, although she liked Ed well enough. Running
up the creaky stairs, she slammed out onto the parking lot, squinting into
the gritty wind. It was an ugly day out, but things were less pretty inside.
Maul had up and disappeared, she found S.H. disturbing, Jan was being stubborn
again, and Cal... well, the kindest thing Thia could say about Cal at the
moment was that the Hermetic was a total flake.
A moment later, she was crunching across the broken
glass of the parking lot towards her car. She approached it and took a
moment to walk around it slowly. She ran a hand over the right front fender
and across the door, where the metal was still faintly dented. They'd done
a good job restoring the damage, but it would never be the same as it had
been.
Walking around to the driver's side again, she unlocked
it and got in, sitting still for a moment. Then she put the key into the
ignition and gunned it into life. The Rodeo's engine purred softly, and
she patted the dashboard, then turned up the radio. Tori's voice floated
into the cabin. ''Sleeping Beauty trips me with a frown/ I hear a voice/
'You must learn to stand up/ for yourself, cause I can't always be around'/
He says/ 'when you gonna make up your mind'...'' Oh yeah... Jan's CD.
Guess I ought to return it.
Buckling her seatbelt, she backed the SUV up and
then roared out of the parking lot. She had no idea where she was going,
just that she needed to get out before she started screaming. Normally
she got along with everyone, but the current situation had her nerves quite
on edge. First Ed moved in some flaky mage without so much as an if-you-please,
and then Maul showed up from out of nowhere with his... friend.
I mean, sure, so they don't take up much room in that water tank in
the basement, but really... And that whole thing with the BSD alpha...
She jerked herself back to awareness as she almost
ran a red light. Guess I should pull over before I freak out. She
drove slowly downtown, pulling off at the riverfront and getting out. Locking
the car behind her- only sensible here- she walked down the bank, peering
into the swirling, muddy sludge that was the Mississippi as if it could
tell her where Maul had gone.
At last she turned away, when a creeping sensation
along her back insisted that someone was watching her. She made her way
up the slope and back to her car, relieved to see it hadn't been vandalized
while she was gone. The keys were out and in her hand when a scrawny figure
edged out from behind the rear bumper. After a moment's shock she snarled
at him, unable to help it, and wondered why she didn't smell him from a
mile away. He was obviously a Bone Gnawer. Like that Hidey pretended
to be... she thought, a feline growl working its way out of her throat
with the memory. The little dirty man stepped back, raising his hands,
manner deferential. "Easy there, kitty-cat."
She breathed in deeply and said in a voice still
thick with the urge to change and attack, "What do you want, dog?" He stepped
away from the car, trying on a macho expression, and she saw that beneath
the dirt and bravado he couldn't be much older than Jan. She relaxed slightly
as he said, "I thought you wanted to know about that scaly guy who was
down here earlier." He skipped backwards lightning quick as she went to
grab him, and she folded her arms and waited, refusing to bite although
she squirmed with the impulse.