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scribal_goddessWarnings: Elena Lincoln, child molester, makes an appearance in this chapter. Dr. and Mr. Grey are up a river in Egypt without a paddle. Taylor has PTSD and is still the better man. Panic attack. Mentions of public sex act native to fifty shades canon. Standard warning for all party chapters: Grey's Aura is a creeper in it's own right.
As the first dance auction started up, Allie explained her shiny new plan to me in a low voice. With all of the technical terms stripped from it and all of our subsequent discussion removed, it was simple: Allie was going to attach a spell to Anastasia that would protect her and allow us to track Grey so long as he was with her.
That was assuming that we could get her to hold still long enough.
Allie and I managed to approach the stage from the side as the dance auction went on for the first two candidates; people were milling around now, some walking out onto the lawn, others headed for the bathrooms, and a few just table-hopping, talking to people who they hadn’t been sitting near at dinner. Our protracted admiration of melty the swan and his twin brother was hardly noticeable, even if Allie was muttering under her breath in Latin.
The first candidate, whose name started with a J, was bid on and exited the stage, blushing and smiling and waving, then the second. I paid little attention to their unlikely biographies, even though I wasn’t much use during the spell casting process except as a buffer to keep people from knocking Allie into the dripping ice sculpture, and perhaps as moral support.
“Damn it,” Allie said, sometime during the second miniature bidding war, “This would work so much better if we could get closer to her!”
She went right back to casting her spell before I could reply. I couldn’t think of any way that we could approach Ana outside of following her to the bathroom, and I very much doubted that it would end well. I contented myself with glancing around the crowd over my glasses in quick bursts. I saw green and gold and red in one corner, blue and purple and an oily black in another, motion and stillness, sounds and smells, twisting and glowing and pulsing low across the backs of my eyes in a kaleidoscope of humanity, but nowhere did I see magic happening, so long as I didn’t turn towards Allie and risk an instant headache, the kind that you get walking out into a sunny afternoon after sitting all day in a dark room staring at a computer screen. So far as I could tell, Allie’s magic was meeting no resistance whatsoever from any of the guests, including Christian Grey, whose aura lurked slimily around him at the table closest to the stage, pushing away the auras of those around him.
“Beautiful Ana plays six musical instruments, speaks fluent Mandarin -”
I looked up at the stage involuntarily, and saw that Allie’s spell, searingly bright, was busy tearing grey vines off of Anastasia, crunching them into ash, but I had to look away after that fraction of a second’s glance. I pushed my glasses up and closed my eyes, kneading the bridge of my nose.
I missed seeing Grey approach the stage, at least until his ridiculous opening bid of ten thousand dollars.
Possessive bastard, I thought, hoping that the bidding war would take a while, because by the concentrated look on Allie’s face, she wasn’t quite done. What she was attempting to do might take a while to get right, especially without prior preparation. In the meantime, miss Anastasia Steele could do worse than to stand on the stage and look pretty.
Another man, this one rather older than Grey, bid against him, and kept bidding against him, long after the money had crept up from stupidly expensive levels to ludicrous and onwards towards levels where I assumed they had to be bidding with fake money or with arcade tickets. In the end, however, Grey won, and I realized that the other man probably hadn’t intended to win, just to keep driving Grey to bid higher.
It was over too soon – for Allie at least. She swore as Ana and Christian walked away towards the house.
“Didn’t get it?” I asked.
“I didn’t finish,” she snapped, pushing her hair out of her eyes, “I should have started the protective spell first, not the tracking spell -”
I cut her off by offering to get her a glass of water, before she could give me a play-by-play of what she ought to have done, and headed out into the crowd. I thought as I passed that I could sense a bit of discontent, but that could have just been me. The first half of this party had dragged on and on, but there was only about half an hour left in the first dance auction, judging by the rate at which the previous three bidding wars had gone, and I suddenly felt rushed. The maple ice cream and the roast duck were eyeing each other distrustfully in my stomach, and the whole party seemed brighter and faster after I had spent so much time looking at their auras, though not much more relevant.
It took me two tries to find our table, and a waiter to fill the decanter of water. He tried to offer more wine, which I stoutly refused. By the time I made it back to melty the swan, who was starting to sag more than a little, Allie had left for the nearest chair, and was sitting in it with closed eyes, outwardly quite calm.
I bumped her hand with the glass of cold water and she swallowed half of it in one gulp.
“So what is done?” I asked her, as she sipped the remainder and smoothed her dark blue dress back down over her knees.
“The tracking spell,” she said, “I didn’t quite finish the protective spell. It was harder than I thought, with some resistance. Did you see -?”
“Yeah, I saw,” I said. “It was odd – he wasn’t doing anything, at least, his aura didn’t get brighter, but the part of it that was attached to her just kept flowing back into place whenever your magic got a hold of it.” Just like the vines that had covered Sophia. My temples were starting to ache in a distant way; I should have gotten myself a glass of water as well.
Allie nodded. “At this point, I’m not certain I trust myself to tell whether or not he’s a mage,” she said, “but whatever was interfering with me, it was definitely not just lack of preparation and complexity of the spell.”
I mulled this over a moment in my mind. “I’m not certain he’s a mage,” I said, after a moment, “If he is – or if he knew that he was – I think he would have confronted you. He doesn’t seem like…” I realized that I was talking mostly to myself as Allie stared tiredly into her water glass. He hadn’t seemed like the type of person not to attack a potential threat in any way he could, and if he were a mage, there was almost absolutely no way that he wouldn’t have sensed Allie’s interference with whatever his aura or his magic was doing to Anastasia Steele. Allie is many things when it comes to magic, but subtle isn’t one of them, not when she’s pressed for time.
Once you removed all of the therefore, what was left very strongly resembled a hunch.
“Come on, you need to get out of the crowd,” I told Allie, and hauled her towards the nearest empty table, before shamelessly flagging down the next waiter and asking for a whole pitcher of water. In the background, the master of ceremonies’ nattering monologue on the life story of the next girl in the auction wormed its way into my distant headache. Wasn’t this party over yet?
We hadn’t been at the table for long enough for Allie to recover when we were approached by the orchestrators of the whole tacky fiasco, Dr. and Mr. Grey.
Dr. Grey was wearing a dress that could only be described with the word sparkles, and Mr. Grey was still wearing his ludicrous gold mask. It gave his face an eerie, carnival-like quality, especially when he was negotiating a glass of red wine around it. I wouldn’t have recognized them from a distance without it, but I very much doubted that I would ever have been permitted to get a word in edgewise before I found out who they were if I hadn’t.
Dr. Grey greeted me with a stretched, chirpy smile, what was obviously her “hostess” voice, and long road of words that she didn’t wait for a reply for. I was lost for a second, smiling and nodding, until she got to the point.
“And I couldn’t help but notice, you aren’t Mr. and Mrs. Kavanaugh,” she said.
“Obviously,” her husband put in, and grinned at his own cleverness.
“And I was telling Carrick that they must have sold their tickets to you,” Dr. Grey continued on as if she hadn’t heard him, her arm still threaded through hers and her smile barely moving as she talked, “so I thought we just had to come and meet our new guests, it’s so seldom that we meet friends of the Kavanaughs that we don’t already know! Though, I have to say, you both look a little young to be friends with Roxanna or Alexander, maybe you’re friends with one of their children?” She finally paused for breath, while I debated whether or not to bring Kate into it, then decided that it couldn’t hurt to tell select portions of the truth.
“Kate suggested that we use the tickets,” I told her quickly, “We’re new to the area, and she thought that we could really use this sort of introduction to -”
“Wonderful!” Dr. Grey beamed, “Just wonderful! It’s so seldom that we get young people at these balls, and if either of you are looking to settle in the area, I have a friend who is in the real-estate business – she can find just the spot!”
My smile felt stiff. “Why thank you very much, Dr. Grey,” I said, “I’m sure that would be very helpful.” And then, because I was, deep down in my soul where I couldn’t quite see it, angry enough to tear down empires and stomp on the smoking ruins, I opened my mouth again and took the offensive. “Allie and I are hardly the only young people here,” I said, “there were plenty at your table.”
Mr. Grey laughed loudly, “Oh yes, our children! Christian hardly counts as a young person, though – he’s always so serious.”
“Now, Carrick, that lovely young lady of his is doing him some good,” Dr. Grey said, in a tone that didn’t match her plaster smile. “I’ve never seen him look so satisfied and relaxed.”
“He isn’t doing her any good.”
The Greys blinked at me, and Dr. Grey’s expression flickered from anger, to insecurity, to dismissal, all in a moment.
“I’m sure that it isn’t any of your business,” she said, “but I only want what’s best for my son, and if after all this time he has finally found the love of a good woman, I don’t intend to question it. It will be the best thing for him.” Her voice was decidedly chilly. “For that matter, I hear you were also quite rude to my daughter when she asked if you would help with our little auction, and I’m not sure who you think you are, behaving so awfully as a guest in our home…”
“I’m not certain what you or your daughter know about manners in the first place -”
Allie’s face emerged from the tablecloth. “Linds,” she said distinctly, “leave it alone.”
I remembered that we weren’t here to fight anyone, and shut up. Dr. Grey smiled at me triumphantly.
“Yes,” she said to Allie, and the hostess voice was back, filled with sugar. “Let’s have a pleasant conversation, with none of this silly jealousy.”
Allie gave the Greys a look that was all eyebrows and nostrils and the echo of a family tree with roots so distant that they required a telescope to see.
“What I meant,” she said, “was that everyone here has said all that they really need to say, and since the first dance is over, I intend to find a much more pleasant way to spend my time and Lindsay’s. If you are jealous of us, Doctor, then I suggest that you stop sticking your head in the sand and admit that not all is perfect in your little world, and certainly not with your daughter, who clearly learned her manners from you, or with your son, whose manners you witnessed much more closely than us during the auction. Good evening.”
We left for the dance floor as Dr. Grey turned red as a strawberry.
“You could have just asked me to dance,” I said to her as we started what was most likely a waltz. At least, Allie led and I followed; she was taller, and she knew the steps.
“I don’t like them either,” she replied as we stepped sideways.
“Clearly. Now we know exactly how miss Mia Grey came to be,” I muttered. Then, a thought occurred to me. “You’re feeling better, then?”
Her lip twitched. “I think I can manage a waltz. Besides, we can keep a better eye on the happy couple this way.”
I rolled my eyes at her, but managed to keep an eye on Christian Grey and Anastasia Steel whenever my head was pointed in their direction. We danced at least two dances in a comfortable silence before I thought of something else worth mentioning.
“What did you mean, about Grey’s manners?” I said, “I saw everybody at their table giving him the stink eye, but I don’t know what for.”
Allie’s voice was dry, but not at all amused. “Three words: public hand job.”
Well, that was now firmly number one on my list of all the things at this party that were in bad taste. Allie cracked a small smile at my expression. “Couldn’t it have waited?” I asked as we revolved on the spot.
“Apparently not – wait, she’s making a break for it.” Ana was headed towards the house, and Christian was following her, though several other partygoers kept accosting him.
“Time for me to earn my keep,” I said. “You keep an eye on Grey, I’ll snoop after Ana.”
I wandered off in the direction of the house and presumably the toilets, keeping Ana in sight a good ten or fifteen feet ahead of me, and then made an absolutely stupid-looking turn towards the food tent when she appeared to change her mind halfway there. The tent was empty except for a couple in a back corner and a woman in black checking her phone, and I could see through the side that had been rolled up that Ana was heading for her table and the purse sitting on top of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was missing some cash.
It would be far too obvious if I followed her in, so I stood out of sight in the shadows and pretended to be rummaging through my purse.
The woman in black approached Ana, and though I wasn’t close enough to hear what she said, I was more than close enough to hear the tone of the conversation. If Anastasia Steele had been a porcupine, the woman in black would be surgically removing needles.
They sat down, and I gave up pretending to look through my bag and walked right into the tent and sat down at a table with my phone out. It was nearly out of battery, I noticed, and there was almost no signal, but it meant that nobody would give me a second look, not that the people I was eavesdropping on were particularly observant.
“I’ll be brief, Anastasia. I know what you think of me . . . Christian’s told me.”
The woman in black had at least figured out Ana’s hostility towards her. Maybe if I listened long enough, there would be a clue in there somewhere. I glanced briefly around the tent and noticed two men standing military straight in the middle of the doorway, looking around their surroundings on a wary schedule. Then, I mentally cursed. I hadn’t thought to look for other people who were watching Ana and Christian.
“… be obvious to you that Christian is in love with you. I have never seen him like this, ever.”
I bristled a little, and made a note to investigate the lady in black, because it was just too much of a coincidence that she was walking up to one of Grey’s potential victims and boldly declaring that he loved her.
“He won’t tell you because he probably doesn’t realize it himself, notwithstanding what I’ve said to him, but that’s Christian. He’s not very attuned to any positive feelings and emotions he may have. He dwells far too much on the negative. But then you’ve probably worked that out for yourself. He doesn’t think he’s worthy.”
No shit, I thought. Considering that from all I knew about him, he got off on his own arrogance and his ability to intimidate and terrify women, ‘not attuned to positive emotions’ was the understatement of the year.
Unfortunately, I’d sat down at the wrong table to be able to see Ana’s facial expression, so I had no idea whether or not she believed what she was being told, and I didn’t dare get up now and attract attention. She’d stopped giving off the body language of a porcupine, though, which wasn’t good, considering the situation.
“I’ve never seen him so happy, and it’s obvious that you have feelings for him, too,” The lady in black continued. “That’s great, and I wish you both the best of everything. But what I wanted to say is if you hurt him again, I will find you, lady, and it won’t be pleasant when I do.”
Ana laughed nervously while I tried to puzzle that one out. My best guess was that the “again,” either referred to one of his many exes, or to the brief amount of time that Ana had broken up with Grey.
And if I’d truly been a great detective, I would have known ahead of time that I ought to record that threat for future reference, because it seemed rather more ominous than the mere words that it was made of.
The lady in black got angry. “You think this is funny, Anastasia? You didn’t see him last Saturday.” She was flustered and started the sentence twice, probably spraying the tablecloth at the same time.
Ana rose to the occasion admirably. “I’m laughing at your audacity, Mrs. Lincoln. Christian and I have nothing to do with you. And if I do leave him and you come looking for me, I’ll be waiting—don’t doubt it. And maybe I’ll give you a taste of your own medicine on behalf of the fifteen-year-old child you molested and probably fucked-up even more than he already was. Now if you‘ll excuse me, I have better things to do.”
The first thought that went through my mind was What? which was followed closely by Who? and then, tagging along in the back, the realization that Ana had just gotten up and was marching right past me, leaving the lady in black with her mouth hanging open, and me in the lurch.
She’d made it to the flap of the tent and walked directly up to Christian Grey at the same moment that I noticed that I had forgotten to act like I was quietly texting someone, and hurriedly buried myself in my purse. I had my tube of lipstick and tiny mirror out by the time that the bodyguards glanced at me, and was in a prime spot to gaze directly at the evil scumbag while pretending to carefully apply my makeup.
He was frowning at the lady in black while Ana wisely walked right past him.
They left the tent behind quickly, and I had no hope of catching up with them. I did, however, have a hope of following the lady in black undetected, so when the bodyguards had melted out of sight and she had stalked off towards the house, I followed her.
The dancing was still in full swing as I walked out of the food tent, but the Lady in Black wasn’t headed towards the dance floor. In fact, she was headed towards the house, and I hurried along behind her, staying out of sight. Since it was quite dark by now except for those pink lanterns, it was quite easy to go unremarked, but not very easy to see where I was putting my feet as I cut across the lawn. I could only tell the location of the Lady in Black from the glitter of her gold mask ahead of me, at least until she approached the house, which was lit up like a Christmas tree, and had columns looming portentously over the entrance.
She walked right into the house uninvited – to be fair, the doors were open and there was a decorative little sign affixed to one pointing the way to the bathrooms – and I got to the open door just in time to see her open a door.
I followed her down the hall, past a pair of rooms that were bleached white, aside from eye-assaulting peacock blue and gold curtains, a staircase that very clearly intended to sweep, and a chandelier that dripped crystals. I listened at the door she’d left open a crack, and discovered that it was an empty hallway.
A hallway that was, thankfully, carpeted. My shoes weren’t going to make a sound. I crept down it anyway, being careful about where I stepped, and listening hard.
“… seems so careless,” I heard the voice of the lady in black saying as I approached a door that stood conveniently ajar. “You know, Grace, how much I care for your son. I hesitate to tell you, but I don’t think his girlfriend is really that good for him... I spoke to her only a few moments ago, and I’m afraid to say that I think she’s only after his money.”
Whatever Grace replied, I was at the wrong angle to hear it. Eavesdropping in houses was a lot harder than eavesdropping at a party – though I still had my near-dead phone as an excuse – because I had to be wary of every other noise besides the muffled conversation taking place in the room at the end of the hall, just in case someone snuck up behind me and caught me poking my nose where it didn’t belong.
“I know, it’s just terrible how many conniving women have gone after dear Christian,” the lady in black said, and I heard a rustle as she either got up or shifted positions on her seat. “I assure you, Grace, I will do everything in my power to continue to give him good advice and keep him out of their greedy clutches.”
When I heard Grace speak, I recognized in a moment the voice of Christian Grey’s obnoxious mother. I also wondered if everything around here always revolved around Christian Grey, or if it was only when he was present.
“I… thank you, Elena,” Grace said in a tired voice that didn’t match the one she’d confronted me with at all. “Thank you for looking out for him. I know that he’s headstrong, and he won’t listen to me at all – but I have to believe that he’s going to be all right, that Carrick and I raised him right.”
“Don’t mention it,” Elena - Elena Lincoln, I guessed, the one who owned Esclava and who had her business firmly in Grey’s pocket – said in a tone that seemed a little too smug and condescending for me. “After all, it isn’t our dear Christian’s fault; you and Carrick have done so much for him, raised him above his heritage and given him all he could ever want. He’s done so much, and it’s all thanks to you and not his crack whore birth mother.”
There was some more murmuring, and I snuck back towards the foyer, playing it safe. I had a sinking feeling in my gut as I headed back outside, walked down the long drive lit with its paper lanterns, and went to find Allie. By the dying clock on my phone, it was only about half an hour from midnight, and the party should be breaking up soon.
I found her standing casually next to Melty the Swan, who was now looking positively droopy, and looking warily out at the now-thinned crowd.
“Where were you?” she asked me, “Mr. Egotistical has been ready to blow a gasket since the last dance.”
Even as I watched, Ana’s dance with the elder Mr. Grey was rudely interrupted by his son.
“Eavesdropping,” I replied shortly, “on Mrs. Manners and her seriously creepy co-host.”
Allie made an encouraging noise in the back of her throat, and kept scanning the crowd, “There’s a lot of security around,” she said to me without looking at me. “I wonder what’s up?”
I followed her gaze and saw the two military-stiff outlines that had followed Ana to the food tent earlier. In better light, I could tell that they were both wearing suits that would have made them recognizable as security guards even in a movie.
“No idea, but they’re with Grey,” I told her.
“Want to cut out before the fireworks?” she asked, “I don’t like the look of this lot, and it’s not as if we have an exact mission here... we can’t exactly prevent Ana from going home with him.”
Especially since they had arrived together, I thought. Still, we’d definitely learned something tonight, and I was starting to worry a little about Leila alone in our apartment. It was probably the safest place for her, all things considered, especially since Christian was definitely here, but it wasn’t as if she knew that.
“Yeah,” I said, not relishing the long and decidedly chilly walk down the driveway before we even found the street. We’d have to find a place to catch a cab, and it was looking like it would be well past one o’clock when we got home. “Are you done working magic for one night?”
Allie nodded. “It will take a little bit for it to take – the resistance was a lot higher when she was dancing with him – but yeah. Let’s just stick around for a few more minutes and then cut out the back way – I think that if we cross a few of these golf course lawns, we can cut out some travel time.”
Since we were hardly the only ones who decided that the end of the dancing was a good time to leave, we had to wait several moments until much of the remaining crowd had dispersed, to avoid making it obvious that we hadn’t come in a limo. If I hadn’t been the one to insist on blending in originally, I’d have been even more tempted to just leave. It had gotten awfully cold, in a pervasive, clammy way that made me think longingly of hot cocoa, quilts, and Allie’s ridiculously tent-like greatcoat. We didn’t have any of those on hand, and I was counting down the minutes until we entered a heated cab. We stood there, staring alternately at the badly concealed security guards and the stars in the night sky, until half the party started to head down to the lakeshore to watch the fireworks.
We got swept in that direction by the crowd, away from the road, and I had finally had enough.
“Let’s just sneak out that way,” I said to Allie, pointing northward. Somewhere out there, I knew that there was another road, which led back towards the country club that we’d passed on our way in, which just had to be an acceptable place to obtain a taxi. “Nobody’s looking at us.”
We headed towards the cover of the trees, being careful not to trip over anything ornamental in the dark.
The music burst over Lake Washington with a deafening sound, and the first fireworks screamed up into the air in a metallic wail. We hadn’t gotten far, merely a handful of yards from the small crowd installed on the lawn, but it was quite dark. Even so, I noticed movement by one of the giant oak trees ahead of us, and sped up a couple of steps to have a look. Behind me, I could hear Allie, who attempted to follow my abrupt change of direction and cursed as she tripped over something, but I my attention had been adjusted for me.
The first word that came to my mind was panic attack. The man who was standing with his back pressed flat against the oak tree was clearly one of the security guards, and he was just as clearly trying to keep control of the fact that he was shaking like a leaf. I didn’t want to crowd him, but when the third firework went off he flinched and overcorrected so hard that I was surprised his teeth didn’t rattle in his skull. I could tell that he was trying to take deep breaths and failing.
“Excuse me,” I said as I walked forward, so that I didn’t startle him, “but are you okay?”
He turned to face me and I only saw two definite things in the faint light from the house: the first was that his face was nearly drained of expression, and the second was that yes, he was definitely armed. The gun that he’d whipped out and trained on me was my first clue.
I held my hands up and looked as non-threatening as possible, which is easy when you’re blonde and five four. I prayed quickly that Allie was still out of sight and cursing at an azalea or whatever other shrubbery had gotten in her way.
“I just want to know if you’re all right,” I told him, and gave a very non-threatening smile, which he probably couldn’t see. After a second, he blinked and tucked the gun away.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Another round of fireworks went off, in a series of sharp, stattaco snaps, and his head whipped around towards the lake for a second. “You looked very different in the dark.”
I ran the wars of this world through my head. Afghanistan or Iraq? It didn’t matter, though, because even if this man had just pulled a gun on me, this was no place for him, especially if the next person to walk up on him was just as twitchy.
“We all look strange in the dark,” I told him, and offered him another invisible smile. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Do you need a… glass of water, or anything?” I didn’t actually move, aside from the smile. I just didn’t really know what to do – or rather, I did, but the knowledge had been startled out of me a few seconds before. Who knew I’d end the night feeling sympathy for one of Grey’s security guards?
I heard a step behind me and saw, out of the corner of my eye and around my glasses, a familiar cobalt blue light. More fireworks exploded over the water, but I had all but stopped hearing them. I was seeing them as they battered the poor man in front of me instead.
“Or you could go inside, if you like,” I said after a moment of silence. Allie was right behind me, not saying anything just yet.
That finally got him to respond. “No thank you,” he said, a little roughly. “I’ll be fine.”
I doubted that. “I’m Lindsay Pilot,” I told him, stepping forward slightly and giving him my hand to shake. “This is Aliea Veldon.”
After a second of hesitation, he took the required step forward and shook my hand. “Jason Taylor,” he said.
“Security Guard,” I finished for him before I even thought, as he stepped back.
I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell by the silence that I’d startled him. Then, he seemed to gather himself together a bit.
“We ought to leave, Lindsay,” Allie said behind me as a stream of roman candles echoed into the night. Reluctantly, we walked away and faded like the crackle of gunpowder into the night, beneath a black sky traced with lines of reeking smoke.
* This line is straight from canon: “Beautiful Ana plays six musical instruments, speaks fluent Mandarin -” It is now duly attributed. Likewise, all Ana and Elena Lincoln’s lines are grabbed directly from canon, though the atrociously meyeresque use of the dash may have been corrected to commas. Then, I shot the canon. With a cannon.
**Again, Kate’s parents have no canonical names, so I invented.
*** Dr. Grey is like a snippier version of Esme. Since Carrick doesn’t seem to have a personality, as such, I imagine that most of the denial is coming directly from her.
**** In case you missed the original post, Grey Manor is based on Elvis’ mansion, Graceland. (Which is unintentionally hilarious, because it is so obviously Grace Trelyevan-Grey’s tastes that influence this house.) In any case, I have taken a minor liberty with the floorplan and added a hallway that allows for direct access to the “Jungle Room,” from the main foyer, because I really have no idea how that wing is even connected to the main house. As it stands in the floorplans I found, you’d either have to go outside or up the stairs to get to it.
***** This chapter’s brick reference is to the Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet, by sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Cookies for everybody who gets it!
Warning: The editing buffer has been reached and I’ve got thesis presentations next week. New chapters will not be up by next Tuesday.
As the first dance auction started up, Allie explained her shiny new plan to me in a low voice. With all of the technical terms stripped from it and all of our subsequent discussion removed, it was simple: Allie was going to attach a spell to Anastasia that would protect her and allow us to track Grey so long as he was with her.
That was assuming that we could get her to hold still long enough.
Allie and I managed to approach the stage from the side as the dance auction went on for the first two candidates; people were milling around now, some walking out onto the lawn, others headed for the bathrooms, and a few just table-hopping, talking to people who they hadn’t been sitting near at dinner. Our protracted admiration of melty the swan and his twin brother was hardly noticeable, even if Allie was muttering under her breath in Latin.
The first candidate, whose name started with a J, was bid on and exited the stage, blushing and smiling and waving, then the second. I paid little attention to their unlikely biographies, even though I wasn’t much use during the spell casting process except as a buffer to keep people from knocking Allie into the dripping ice sculpture, and perhaps as moral support.
“Damn it,” Allie said, sometime during the second miniature bidding war, “This would work so much better if we could get closer to her!”
She went right back to casting her spell before I could reply. I couldn’t think of any way that we could approach Ana outside of following her to the bathroom, and I very much doubted that it would end well. I contented myself with glancing around the crowd over my glasses in quick bursts. I saw green and gold and red in one corner, blue and purple and an oily black in another, motion and stillness, sounds and smells, twisting and glowing and pulsing low across the backs of my eyes in a kaleidoscope of humanity, but nowhere did I see magic happening, so long as I didn’t turn towards Allie and risk an instant headache, the kind that you get walking out into a sunny afternoon after sitting all day in a dark room staring at a computer screen. So far as I could tell, Allie’s magic was meeting no resistance whatsoever from any of the guests, including Christian Grey, whose aura lurked slimily around him at the table closest to the stage, pushing away the auras of those around him.
I looked up at the stage involuntarily, and saw that Allie’s spell, searingly bright, was busy tearing grey vines off of Anastasia, crunching them into ash, but I had to look away after that fraction of a second’s glance. I pushed my glasses up and closed my eyes, kneading the bridge of my nose.
I missed seeing Grey approach the stage, at least until his ridiculous opening bid of ten thousand dollars.
Possessive bastard, I thought, hoping that the bidding war would take a while, because by the concentrated look on Allie’s face, she wasn’t quite done. What she was attempting to do might take a while to get right, especially without prior preparation. In the meantime, miss Anastasia Steele could do worse than to stand on the stage and look pretty.
Another man, this one rather older than Grey, bid against him, and kept bidding against him, long after the money had crept up from stupidly expensive levels to ludicrous and onwards towards levels where I assumed they had to be bidding with fake money or with arcade tickets. In the end, however, Grey won, and I realized that the other man probably hadn’t intended to win, just to keep driving Grey to bid higher.
It was over too soon – for Allie at least. She swore as Ana and Christian walked away towards the house.
“Didn’t get it?” I asked.
“I didn’t finish,” she snapped, pushing her hair out of her eyes, “I should have started the protective spell first, not the tracking spell -”
I cut her off by offering to get her a glass of water, before she could give me a play-by-play of what she ought to have done, and headed out into the crowd. I thought as I passed that I could sense a bit of discontent, but that could have just been me. The first half of this party had dragged on and on, but there was only about half an hour left in the first dance auction, judging by the rate at which the previous three bidding wars had gone, and I suddenly felt rushed. The maple ice cream and the roast duck were eyeing each other distrustfully in my stomach, and the whole party seemed brighter and faster after I had spent so much time looking at their auras, though not much more relevant.
It took me two tries to find our table, and a waiter to fill the decanter of water. He tried to offer more wine, which I stoutly refused. By the time I made it back to melty the swan, who was starting to sag more than a little, Allie had left for the nearest chair, and was sitting in it with closed eyes, outwardly quite calm.
I bumped her hand with the glass of cold water and she swallowed half of it in one gulp.
“So what is done?” I asked her, as she sipped the remainder and smoothed her dark blue dress back down over her knees.
“The tracking spell,” she said, “I didn’t quite finish the protective spell. It was harder than I thought, with some resistance. Did you see -?”
“Yeah, I saw,” I said. “It was odd – he wasn’t doing anything, at least, his aura didn’t get brighter, but the part of it that was attached to her just kept flowing back into place whenever your magic got a hold of it.” Just like the vines that had covered Sophia. My temples were starting to ache in a distant way; I should have gotten myself a glass of water as well.
Allie nodded. “At this point, I’m not certain I trust myself to tell whether or not he’s a mage,” she said, “but whatever was interfering with me, it was definitely not just lack of preparation and complexity of the spell.”
I mulled this over a moment in my mind. “I’m not certain he’s a mage,” I said, after a moment, “If he is – or if he knew that he was – I think he would have confronted you. He doesn’t seem like…” I realized that I was talking mostly to myself as Allie stared tiredly into her water glass. He hadn’t seemed like the type of person not to attack a potential threat in any way he could, and if he were a mage, there was almost absolutely no way that he wouldn’t have sensed Allie’s interference with whatever his aura or his magic was doing to Anastasia Steele. Allie is many things when it comes to magic, but subtle isn’t one of them, not when she’s pressed for time.
Once you removed all of the therefore, what was left very strongly resembled a hunch.
“Come on, you need to get out of the crowd,” I told Allie, and hauled her towards the nearest empty table, before shamelessly flagging down the next waiter and asking for a whole pitcher of water. In the background, the master of ceremonies’ nattering monologue on the life story of the next girl in the auction wormed its way into my distant headache. Wasn’t this party over yet?
We hadn’t been at the table for long enough for Allie to recover when we were approached by the orchestrators of the whole tacky fiasco, Dr. and Mr. Grey.
Dr. Grey was wearing a dress that could only be described with the word sparkles, and Mr. Grey was still wearing his ludicrous gold mask. It gave his face an eerie, carnival-like quality, especially when he was negotiating a glass of red wine around it. I wouldn’t have recognized them from a distance without it, but I very much doubted that I would ever have been permitted to get a word in edgewise before I found out who they were if I hadn’t.
Dr. Grey greeted me with a stretched, chirpy smile, what was obviously her “hostess” voice, and long road of words that she didn’t wait for a reply for. I was lost for a second, smiling and nodding, until she got to the point.
“And I couldn’t help but notice, you aren’t Mr. and Mrs. Kavanaugh,” she said.
“Obviously,” her husband put in, and grinned at his own cleverness.
“And I was telling Carrick that they must have sold their tickets to you,” Dr. Grey continued on as if she hadn’t heard him, her arm still threaded through hers and her smile barely moving as she talked, “so I thought we just had to come and meet our new guests, it’s so seldom that we meet friends of the Kavanaughs that we don’t already know! Though, I have to say, you both look a little young to be friends with Roxanna or Alexander, maybe you’re friends with one of their children?” She finally paused for breath, while I debated whether or not to bring Kate into it, then decided that it couldn’t hurt to tell select portions of the truth.
“Kate suggested that we use the tickets,” I told her quickly, “We’re new to the area, and she thought that we could really use this sort of introduction to -”
“Wonderful!” Dr. Grey beamed, “Just wonderful! It’s so seldom that we get young people at these balls, and if either of you are looking to settle in the area, I have a friend who is in the real-estate business – she can find just the spot!”
My smile felt stiff. “Why thank you very much, Dr. Grey,” I said, “I’m sure that would be very helpful.” And then, because I was, deep down in my soul where I couldn’t quite see it, angry enough to tear down empires and stomp on the smoking ruins, I opened my mouth again and took the offensive. “Allie and I are hardly the only young people here,” I said, “there were plenty at your table.”
Mr. Grey laughed loudly, “Oh yes, our children! Christian hardly counts as a young person, though – he’s always so serious.”
“Now, Carrick, that lovely young lady of his is doing him some good,” Dr. Grey said, in a tone that didn’t match her plaster smile. “I’ve never seen him look so satisfied and relaxed.”
“He isn’t doing her any good.”
The Greys blinked at me, and Dr. Grey’s expression flickered from anger, to insecurity, to dismissal, all in a moment.
“I’m sure that it isn’t any of your business,” she said, “but I only want what’s best for my son, and if after all this time he has finally found the love of a good woman, I don’t intend to question it. It will be the best thing for him.” Her voice was decidedly chilly. “For that matter, I hear you were also quite rude to my daughter when she asked if you would help with our little auction, and I’m not sure who you think you are, behaving so awfully as a guest in our home…”
“I’m not certain what you or your daughter know about manners in the first place -”
Allie’s face emerged from the tablecloth. “Linds,” she said distinctly, “leave it alone.”
I remembered that we weren’t here to fight anyone, and shut up. Dr. Grey smiled at me triumphantly.
“Yes,” she said to Allie, and the hostess voice was back, filled with sugar. “Let’s have a pleasant conversation, with none of this silly jealousy.”
Allie gave the Greys a look that was all eyebrows and nostrils and the echo of a family tree with roots so distant that they required a telescope to see.
“What I meant,” she said, “was that everyone here has said all that they really need to say, and since the first dance is over, I intend to find a much more pleasant way to spend my time and Lindsay’s. If you are jealous of us, Doctor, then I suggest that you stop sticking your head in the sand and admit that not all is perfect in your little world, and certainly not with your daughter, who clearly learned her manners from you, or with your son, whose manners you witnessed much more closely than us during the auction. Good evening.”
We left for the dance floor as Dr. Grey turned red as a strawberry.
“You could have just asked me to dance,” I said to her as we started what was most likely a waltz. At least, Allie led and I followed; she was taller, and she knew the steps.
“I don’t like them either,” she replied as we stepped sideways.
“Clearly. Now we know exactly how miss Mia Grey came to be,” I muttered. Then, a thought occurred to me. “You’re feeling better, then?”
Her lip twitched. “I think I can manage a waltz. Besides, we can keep a better eye on the happy couple this way.”
I rolled my eyes at her, but managed to keep an eye on Christian Grey and Anastasia Steel whenever my head was pointed in their direction. We danced at least two dances in a comfortable silence before I thought of something else worth mentioning.
“What did you mean, about Grey’s manners?” I said, “I saw everybody at their table giving him the stink eye, but I don’t know what for.”
Allie’s voice was dry, but not at all amused. “Three words: public hand job.”
Well, that was now firmly number one on my list of all the things at this party that were in bad taste. Allie cracked a small smile at my expression. “Couldn’t it have waited?” I asked as we revolved on the spot.
“Apparently not – wait, she’s making a break for it.” Ana was headed towards the house, and Christian was following her, though several other partygoers kept accosting him.
“Time for me to earn my keep,” I said. “You keep an eye on Grey, I’ll snoop after Ana.”
I wandered off in the direction of the house and presumably the toilets, keeping Ana in sight a good ten or fifteen feet ahead of me, and then made an absolutely stupid-looking turn towards the food tent when she appeared to change her mind halfway there. The tent was empty except for a couple in a back corner and a woman in black checking her phone, and I could see through the side that had been rolled up that Ana was heading for her table and the purse sitting on top of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was missing some cash.
It would be far too obvious if I followed her in, so I stood out of sight in the shadows and pretended to be rummaging through my purse.
The woman in black approached Ana, and though I wasn’t close enough to hear what she said, I was more than close enough to hear the tone of the conversation. If Anastasia Steele had been a porcupine, the woman in black would be surgically removing needles.
They sat down, and I gave up pretending to look through my bag and walked right into the tent and sat down at a table with my phone out. It was nearly out of battery, I noticed, and there was almost no signal, but it meant that nobody would give me a second look, not that the people I was eavesdropping on were particularly observant.
“I’ll be brief, Anastasia. I know what you think of me . . . Christian’s told me.”
The woman in black had at least figured out Ana’s hostility towards her. Maybe if I listened long enough, there would be a clue in there somewhere. I glanced briefly around the tent and noticed two men standing military straight in the middle of the doorway, looking around their surroundings on a wary schedule. Then, I mentally cursed. I hadn’t thought to look for other people who were watching Ana and Christian.
“… be obvious to you that Christian is in love with you. I have never seen him like this, ever.”
I bristled a little, and made a note to investigate the lady in black, because it was just too much of a coincidence that she was walking up to one of Grey’s potential victims and boldly declaring that he loved her.
“He won’t tell you because he probably doesn’t realize it himself, notwithstanding what I’ve said to him, but that’s Christian. He’s not very attuned to any positive feelings and emotions he may have. He dwells far too much on the negative. But then you’ve probably worked that out for yourself. He doesn’t think he’s worthy.”
No shit, I thought. Considering that from all I knew about him, he got off on his own arrogance and his ability to intimidate and terrify women, ‘not attuned to positive emotions’ was the understatement of the year.
Unfortunately, I’d sat down at the wrong table to be able to see Ana’s facial expression, so I had no idea whether or not she believed what she was being told, and I didn’t dare get up now and attract attention. She’d stopped giving off the body language of a porcupine, though, which wasn’t good, considering the situation.
“I’ve never seen him so happy, and it’s obvious that you have feelings for him, too,” The lady in black continued. “That’s great, and I wish you both the best of everything. But what I wanted to say is if you hurt him again, I will find you, lady, and it won’t be pleasant when I do.”
Ana laughed nervously while I tried to puzzle that one out. My best guess was that the “again,” either referred to one of his many exes, or to the brief amount of time that Ana had broken up with Grey.
And if I’d truly been a great detective, I would have known ahead of time that I ought to record that threat for future reference, because it seemed rather more ominous than the mere words that it was made of.
The lady in black got angry. “You think this is funny, Anastasia? You didn’t see him last Saturday.” She was flustered and started the sentence twice, probably spraying the tablecloth at the same time.
Ana rose to the occasion admirably. “I’m laughing at your audacity, Mrs. Lincoln. Christian and I have nothing to do with you. And if I do leave him and you come looking for me, I’ll be waiting—don’t doubt it. And maybe I’ll give you a taste of your own medicine on behalf of the fifteen-year-old child you molested and probably fucked-up even more than he already was. Now if you‘ll excuse me, I have better things to do.”
The first thought that went through my mind was What? which was followed closely by Who? and then, tagging along in the back, the realization that Ana had just gotten up and was marching right past me, leaving the lady in black with her mouth hanging open, and me in the lurch.
She’d made it to the flap of the tent and walked directly up to Christian Grey at the same moment that I noticed that I had forgotten to act like I was quietly texting someone, and hurriedly buried myself in my purse. I had my tube of lipstick and tiny mirror out by the time that the bodyguards glanced at me, and was in a prime spot to gaze directly at the evil scumbag while pretending to carefully apply my makeup.
He was frowning at the lady in black while Ana wisely walked right past him.
They left the tent behind quickly, and I had no hope of catching up with them. I did, however, have a hope of following the lady in black undetected, so when the bodyguards had melted out of sight and she had stalked off towards the house, I followed her.
The dancing was still in full swing as I walked out of the food tent, but the Lady in Black wasn’t headed towards the dance floor. In fact, she was headed towards the house, and I hurried along behind her, staying out of sight. Since it was quite dark by now except for those pink lanterns, it was quite easy to go unremarked, but not very easy to see where I was putting my feet as I cut across the lawn. I could only tell the location of the Lady in Black from the glitter of her gold mask ahead of me, at least until she approached the house, which was lit up like a Christmas tree, and had columns looming portentously over the entrance.
She walked right into the house uninvited – to be fair, the doors were open and there was a decorative little sign affixed to one pointing the way to the bathrooms – and I got to the open door just in time to see her open a door.
I followed her down the hall, past a pair of rooms that were bleached white, aside from eye-assaulting peacock blue and gold curtains, a staircase that very clearly intended to sweep, and a chandelier that dripped crystals. I listened at the door she’d left open a crack, and discovered that it was an empty hallway.
A hallway that was, thankfully, carpeted. My shoes weren’t going to make a sound. I crept down it anyway, being careful about where I stepped, and listening hard.
“… seems so careless,” I heard the voice of the lady in black saying as I approached a door that stood conveniently ajar. “You know, Grace, how much I care for your son. I hesitate to tell you, but I don’t think his girlfriend is really that good for him... I spoke to her only a few moments ago, and I’m afraid to say that I think she’s only after his money.”
Whatever Grace replied, I was at the wrong angle to hear it. Eavesdropping in houses was a lot harder than eavesdropping at a party – though I still had my near-dead phone as an excuse – because I had to be wary of every other noise besides the muffled conversation taking place in the room at the end of the hall, just in case someone snuck up behind me and caught me poking my nose where it didn’t belong.
“I know, it’s just terrible how many conniving women have gone after dear Christian,” the lady in black said, and I heard a rustle as she either got up or shifted positions on her seat. “I assure you, Grace, I will do everything in my power to continue to give him good advice and keep him out of their greedy clutches.”
When I heard Grace speak, I recognized in a moment the voice of Christian Grey’s obnoxious mother. I also wondered if everything around here always revolved around Christian Grey, or if it was only when he was present.
“I… thank you, Elena,” Grace said in a tired voice that didn’t match the one she’d confronted me with at all. “Thank you for looking out for him. I know that he’s headstrong, and he won’t listen to me at all – but I have to believe that he’s going to be all right, that Carrick and I raised him right.”
“Don’t mention it,” Elena - Elena Lincoln, I guessed, the one who owned Esclava and who had her business firmly in Grey’s pocket – said in a tone that seemed a little too smug and condescending for me. “After all, it isn’t our dear Christian’s fault; you and Carrick have done so much for him, raised him above his heritage and given him all he could ever want. He’s done so much, and it’s all thanks to you and not his crack whore birth mother.”
There was some more murmuring, and I snuck back towards the foyer, playing it safe. I had a sinking feeling in my gut as I headed back outside, walked down the long drive lit with its paper lanterns, and went to find Allie. By the dying clock on my phone, it was only about half an hour from midnight, and the party should be breaking up soon.
I found her standing casually next to Melty the Swan, who was now looking positively droopy, and looking warily out at the now-thinned crowd.
“Where were you?” she asked me, “Mr. Egotistical has been ready to blow a gasket since the last dance.”
Even as I watched, Ana’s dance with the elder Mr. Grey was rudely interrupted by his son.
“Eavesdropping,” I replied shortly, “on Mrs. Manners and her seriously creepy co-host.”
Allie made an encouraging noise in the back of her throat, and kept scanning the crowd, “There’s a lot of security around,” she said to me without looking at me. “I wonder what’s up?”
I followed her gaze and saw the two military-stiff outlines that had followed Ana to the food tent earlier. In better light, I could tell that they were both wearing suits that would have made them recognizable as security guards even in a movie.
“No idea, but they’re with Grey,” I told her.
“Want to cut out before the fireworks?” she asked, “I don’t like the look of this lot, and it’s not as if we have an exact mission here... we can’t exactly prevent Ana from going home with him.”
Especially since they had arrived together, I thought. Still, we’d definitely learned something tonight, and I was starting to worry a little about Leila alone in our apartment. It was probably the safest place for her, all things considered, especially since Christian was definitely here, but it wasn’t as if she knew that.
“Yeah,” I said, not relishing the long and decidedly chilly walk down the driveway before we even found the street. We’d have to find a place to catch a cab, and it was looking like it would be well past one o’clock when we got home. “Are you done working magic for one night?”
Allie nodded. “It will take a little bit for it to take – the resistance was a lot higher when she was dancing with him – but yeah. Let’s just stick around for a few more minutes and then cut out the back way – I think that if we cross a few of these golf course lawns, we can cut out some travel time.”
Since we were hardly the only ones who decided that the end of the dancing was a good time to leave, we had to wait several moments until much of the remaining crowd had dispersed, to avoid making it obvious that we hadn’t come in a limo. If I hadn’t been the one to insist on blending in originally, I’d have been even more tempted to just leave. It had gotten awfully cold, in a pervasive, clammy way that made me think longingly of hot cocoa, quilts, and Allie’s ridiculously tent-like greatcoat. We didn’t have any of those on hand, and I was counting down the minutes until we entered a heated cab. We stood there, staring alternately at the badly concealed security guards and the stars in the night sky, until half the party started to head down to the lakeshore to watch the fireworks.
We got swept in that direction by the crowd, away from the road, and I had finally had enough.
“Let’s just sneak out that way,” I said to Allie, pointing northward. Somewhere out there, I knew that there was another road, which led back towards the country club that we’d passed on our way in, which just had to be an acceptable place to obtain a taxi. “Nobody’s looking at us.”
We headed towards the cover of the trees, being careful not to trip over anything ornamental in the dark.
The music burst over Lake Washington with a deafening sound, and the first fireworks screamed up into the air in a metallic wail. We hadn’t gotten far, merely a handful of yards from the small crowd installed on the lawn, but it was quite dark. Even so, I noticed movement by one of the giant oak trees ahead of us, and sped up a couple of steps to have a look. Behind me, I could hear Allie, who attempted to follow my abrupt change of direction and cursed as she tripped over something, but I my attention had been adjusted for me.
The first word that came to my mind was panic attack. The man who was standing with his back pressed flat against the oak tree was clearly one of the security guards, and he was just as clearly trying to keep control of the fact that he was shaking like a leaf. I didn’t want to crowd him, but when the third firework went off he flinched and overcorrected so hard that I was surprised his teeth didn’t rattle in his skull. I could tell that he was trying to take deep breaths and failing.
“Excuse me,” I said as I walked forward, so that I didn’t startle him, “but are you okay?”
He turned to face me and I only saw two definite things in the faint light from the house: the first was that his face was nearly drained of expression, and the second was that yes, he was definitely armed. The gun that he’d whipped out and trained on me was my first clue.
I held my hands up and looked as non-threatening as possible, which is easy when you’re blonde and five four. I prayed quickly that Allie was still out of sight and cursing at an azalea or whatever other shrubbery had gotten in her way.
“I just want to know if you’re all right,” I told him, and gave a very non-threatening smile, which he probably couldn’t see. After a second, he blinked and tucked the gun away.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Another round of fireworks went off, in a series of sharp, stattaco snaps, and his head whipped around towards the lake for a second. “You looked very different in the dark.”
I ran the wars of this world through my head. Afghanistan or Iraq? It didn’t matter, though, because even if this man had just pulled a gun on me, this was no place for him, especially if the next person to walk up on him was just as twitchy.
“We all look strange in the dark,” I told him, and offered him another invisible smile. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Do you need a… glass of water, or anything?” I didn’t actually move, aside from the smile. I just didn’t really know what to do – or rather, I did, but the knowledge had been startled out of me a few seconds before. Who knew I’d end the night feeling sympathy for one of Grey’s security guards?
I heard a step behind me and saw, out of the corner of my eye and around my glasses, a familiar cobalt blue light. More fireworks exploded over the water, but I had all but stopped hearing them. I was seeing them as they battered the poor man in front of me instead.
“Or you could go inside, if you like,” I said after a moment of silence. Allie was right behind me, not saying anything just yet.
That finally got him to respond. “No thank you,” he said, a little roughly. “I’ll be fine.”
I doubted that. “I’m Lindsay Pilot,” I told him, stepping forward slightly and giving him my hand to shake. “This is Aliea Veldon.”
After a second of hesitation, he took the required step forward and shook my hand. “Jason Taylor,” he said.
“Security Guard,” I finished for him before I even thought, as he stepped back.
I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell by the silence that I’d startled him. Then, he seemed to gather himself together a bit.
“We ought to leave, Lindsay,” Allie said behind me as a stream of roman candles echoed into the night. Reluctantly, we walked away and faded like the crackle of gunpowder into the night, beneath a black sky traced with lines of reeking smoke.
**Again, Kate’s parents have no canonical names, so I invented.
*** Dr. Grey is like a snippier version of Esme. Since Carrick doesn’t seem to have a personality, as such, I imagine that most of the denial is coming directly from her.
**** In case you missed the original post, Grey Manor is based on Elvis’ mansion, Graceland. (Which is unintentionally hilarious, because it is so obviously Grace Trelyevan-Grey’s tastes that influence this house.) In any case, I have taken a minor liberty with the floorplan and added a hallway that allows for direct access to the “Jungle Room,” from the main foyer, because I really have no idea how that wing is even connected to the main house. As it stands in the floorplans I found, you’d either have to go outside or up the stairs to get to it.
***** This chapter’s brick reference is to the Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet, by sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Cookies for everybody who gets it!
Warning: The editing buffer has been reached and I’ve got thesis presentations next week. New chapters will not be up by next Tuesday.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2013-10-22 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-22 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-22 04:02 pm (UTC)Grace and Carrick are definitely in character. Good for Allie getting one over on Grace.
Good thing Lindsay and Allie didn't like the public handjob either.
I also wondered if everything around here always revolved around Christian Grey, or if it was only when he was present. - That's a good question.
Elena is a sneaky, manipulative cow.
Melty the Swan was priceless!
Taylor's reaction to being approached was very believable.
Let's hope the magic works!
Fourth chapter of SC is on my LJ.
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Date: 2013-10-23 01:44 am (UTC)Yeah, when I read about the public handjob in the sporking, I went from 0 to "oh fuck not again, do they both have batteries or something!?" Pretty much anyone not Hellspawn would have been offended; my theory is that he only did it to show the entire goddamn world that Ana is his sex toy.
Yes, Elena is a sneaky manipulative cow.
I'm glad Melty has a fangirl, lol. :D Taylor... well, he's 1) currently armed, 2) still in a situation with threat to his loved ones, if not his own life, due to Grey's blackmail, 3) being forced to sit through one of his triggers for Grey's sick amusement. So yeah, there will be a gun! The poor man's got nothing resembling a chance of healing until Grey gets put away for good.
I'm headed over there right now. :D
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Date: 2013-10-22 04:27 pm (UTC)Also, way to go, Lindsay, calling the Greys out!
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Date: 2013-10-23 01:37 am (UTC)Thank you: I see Elena's few canonical interactions as being sort of contradictory and, if you try to reconcile them, sneaky, so I brought it in.
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Date: 2013-10-23 11:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-23 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-28 04:42 am (UTC)Also, Ana going against Elena was quite a shocker for me; I thought with Christian draining her aura, she would be some defenseless little mouse simply accepting anything that came. So she's fighting back too! :D :D :D
"And if I’d truly been a great detective, I would have known ahead of time that I ought to record that threat for future reference, because it seemed rather more ominous than the mere words that it was made of."
Is that a warning of the things to come? :O Something bad gonna happen?
And hmm, what drew Linds to Jason? I can only assume that Jason is going to be someone useful in this investigation! ;)
(Also, I chuckled every time Melty the Swan was mentioned. Poor guy. XD)
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Date: 2013-10-28 01:13 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, that's in canon too - Ana does not like Elena, though I think a large part of that is that she feels threatened by her.
Well, Ning, you see - [WARNING, THIS COMMENT HAS BEEN REDACTED BY THE SPOILER POLICE.]
Poor, poor Melty the Swan! Victim of a cruel world in which people with more money than sense leave him to slowly collapse upon a soggy outdoor carpet in June!
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Date: 2013-10-29 10:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-29 01:55 pm (UTC)