A Place to Belong: Chapter 10

Chapter X

The One Who Made Me

Looking up at yet another church, though one in much poorer condition than the one the Baroness made her haven in, I couldn’t help but let out a small sigh. In life, I’d never been one for churches, but it seemed now like death took every opportunity it had to force me into one. It was not large, by the standard of a Catholic Church. From the outside, I could see that it had a chapel area, several side rooms, and a bell tower that rose high enough to get a view of the surrounding area, though in Dilworth, that wasn’t particularly high. 

We were just outside of the city proper, right on the edge of the historic district. This church, known as the Aerie, apparently, was condemned but marked as ‘historic’ and thus could not be torn down or repurposed for any reason. There was an iron gate around it to keep people out, but I’d never known one of those to do that job properly. Despite that, there was no graffiti anywhere on the old stone, which surprised me more than anything. Perhaps the people who lived in this area held reverence for something with historical value, or perhaps the fact that a shell company owned by a vampire had purchased the building years ago had something to do with the clean, if crumbling, walls of the Aerie. 

“Another church,” Callie scowled looking up at the decrepit building. “What is it with the elders and churches?”

“Maybe it’s a ‘fuck you’ to god?” I suggested, keeping my tone neutral. Despite that, I still received a scowl from her. 

“Charlotte is known as the ‘City of Churches’,” Diego said, giving me a pointed look, most likely in reprimand for my use of the word ‘god’ and the phrase ‘fuck you’ in the same sentences, but he didn’t press the issue. “Lots of historical churches were erected here. Presbyterian being the first major religion in the area, but Baptist, Methodist, and Catholic churches are everywhere too. The city may be more progressive than most other places in the state, but it’s still part of the bible belt. Or at least close enough to it.” 

“Makes sense,” I said, with an apologetic shrug. “I suppose with that much evolving religious tension churches rose and fell pretty commonly. It explains all those repurposed churches becoming housing and businesses. Back in New York there was actually a really good pizza place made out of an old church. Kept the stained glass and everything.” 

“Sounds blasphemous," Diego said, slight disdain in his voice. “Was the pizza good at least.” 

“Pretty good,” I nodded, hoisting my duffle bag onto my back and pulling my suit bag from the car before the ghoul driver took off in it, leaving me and my new coterie standing alone with the key to the iron gate. Callie went to unlock it, but as the key hit the metal, the gate swung open.

“They didn’t even bother to lock it?” she said, disbelief and scorn in her voice. “How do they expect us to feel safe in a place they don’t bother to protect?”

“They don’t protect it because it doesn’t need protection,” Isadora said, her tone flat as she walked forward though the gate and up to the church steps. “Why waste energy in protecting something that protects itself?” 

The rest of us watched as she slipped into the dark church, the night air feeling eerily still and quiet in her wake. We all exchanged looks, though each of our faces appeared to be expressing a different thought. Diego seemed unnerved, potentially even fearful. Callie was putting up a tough front, but I could see that there was a sense of unease creeping into her face. I attempted to keep my face neutral, but that was one of my weaknesses when I was alive, I was far more expressive than was good for me. I may not be as easy to read as I’d been in the past, but apparently my curiosity at Isadora was evident to the other two. 

“So, you into creepy chicks, then?” Diego asked, putting on his ladies man front as a means of trying to force away his own fears. “Can’t say I’m surprised.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I responded, and for once, I was being completely honest and direct. 

“Oh come on,” Callie said, rolling her eyes as she picked up her bag. “Anyone with eyes can see the weird, creepy chemistry between the two of you. It’s wrong and messed up.” 

I watched her more than I listened, registering her words while studying the way she carried her bag. It looked like she struggled lifting the suitcase a bit, which surprised me. I barely noticed the weight of everyday items anymore with my newfound vampiric strength. I couldn’t bend steel bars or anything, more like I was as strong as I’d been when I was training consistently, but now without the consistent effort. Callie looked as though she could hardly lift the bag without exerting herself. There were even small grunts of effort as she walked with it. 

“I don’t think it’s wrong,” Diego said, clapping me on the shoulder supportively, as if Callie’s words had bothered me in the slightest. Apparently the way I was studying her came across differently in his eyes. “Pretty much everyone that saw Morticia and Gomez thought their love was wrong too, but when it comes down to it, who’s more relationship goals than them?” 

He sauntered past me, probably feeling pride at finally being the one to give me advice. There wasn’t any reason for me to tell him otherwise, as what was the point of love in a world full of so much distrust and fear? Our entire society was built off of individual agendas hidden behind a facade of communal goals, and that was before we were turned into vampires. Since then it’s only ever gotten worse, especially considering my own sire, the one who supposedly saved me from a savage death and trained me to survive in this new world I’d awoken into, seemed to only be doing so as a means to her own ends. Love required trust, and trust was not a readily available commodity anymore, if it ever had been. 

Rather than musing on the concept of love after life, a song parody that would probably be quite entertaining to the right market, I collected my things and followed after them, stepping through the doors of the church and into the vestibule. Against one wall was a worn table, dusty and scratched from years of use, covered in long abandoned plastic stands and moldering pamphlets. Even without direct sunlight, the plastic was warped and yellowed from time and cheap production. A sturdy looking coatrack leaned against it, heavy brass hooks long blackened and tarnished from time, unused and unneeded, a relic that had long since fallen out of fashion to own. 

Two doorways were set into the walls adjacent to the pair we walked through. To the immediate left were a pair of warped wooden doors, not completely closed, but partially ajar because there was no way they would fit together anymore. They had at one point been grand, though time and neglect had taken their toll on them. I assumed these led into the chapel proper, then turned my attention to the other door. 

It was nowhere near as well crafted, though that seemed to work in its favor as it still appeared functional. I turned the knob and it swung open with just a little effort and a small cloud of dust. A staircase stood behind it, one flight going up, the other going down. I assumed that the flight going up would lead to the belltower above, while the flight going down would lead to a basement of some sort. 

“I’ll be taking the chapel,” Callie said, definitively, wrenching open one of the warped doors, this time unable to even disguise her grunt of effort. It moved a few inches. I took a step forward, but paused, realizing that helping Callie was more likely to foster irritation between us than any good will. 

Diego didn’t have such an antagonistic relationship with the Ventrue. He stepped forward without hesitation and pulled the door open with ease, swinging it wide enough that a person could comfortably walk through carrying several bulky objects, not just the one suitcase. Callie turned, gave him a small nod of appreciation that was barely discernible, and stepped through. 

“A room full of windows,” Isadora murmured as she watched Callie stake her claim in the largest, grandest room this church had to offer. “An odd choice.” 

“There’s usually an office in the back where they keep the sacrament and a place for the priests to get ready. Probably no windows in there,” Diego explained with a shrug, almost trying to tell us that even he didn’t know why he was defending her. “She can set up a perfectly good sleeping area in that room while still getting the biggest room in the house.” 

“Ventrue like their displays of power,” I said, looking at the stairs then the other two. “If no one minds, I think I’ll go up.” 

“Towards the sun?” Diego asked me, cocking his eyebrow. “I know the princess is getting under your skin, but you have so much to live for. Well… not live, but I suppose not die over.”

I shook my head and smiled slightly. “There are usually platforms that sit under the actual hatches that open up to the bell itself. I can set up on those and have easy access to a view point of the surrounding area should we ever need to post a lookout at night. It also is a defensible position. Should anyone invade our haven, it would be easy  for me to come down at them. Tactically, it’s valuable real estate.” 

“If you say so,” Diego shrugged before turning to Isadora. “I think we should do what our kind do best. Head down into the dark. No windows down there.” 

Isadora didn’t respond to him, though she seemed to be listening intently to something. Her eyes were glazed over, staring into space before stepping towards the stairs that led down. 

“I know where I will stake my claim,” Isadora said, her voice taking on a dreamy tone that was unusual for her. “Diego, there is a space for you down here as well, but not too deep. That’s for me.” 

Diego held his hands up in a mock defensive tone. 

“No worries, no woman has ever accused me of going too deep,” he said, then paused. “Aw, damn it, that was a self-own, wasn’t it?” 

“I’m afraid it was,” I said, grinning, but caught my eyes watching Isadora disappearing down the stairs. Diego caught my expression too, and grinned at me. 

“Hey man, I may give you shit, but life’s short, and unlife is long,” he said, lowering his voice so as to not be overheard. “Maybe now’s not the time, maybe you need to get to know her better, but don’t dismiss her. Your options in this world are always more plentiful than you think. Don’t do the devil’s work and close doors before you get to them.”

With that, he walked away, heading down the stairs as well, leaving me with more things to ponder than I wanted in my mind right now. Instead of thinking too hard on it, I began climbing the stairs to the bell tower and was pleasantly surprised to find that not only had I been correct about the platform, but there were actually several. One appeared to be a sleeping area with a rotting cot in one corner that I would replace without ever using for myself, and a ladder that went up to a hatch that opened to what at one point must have been a rookery. 

Odds are, based on the size of the perches and the small writing desk in the corner, this rookery never housed any actual rooks, as they were much larger birds than what could potentially be housed here, but it was the perfect size for pigeons. In fact, there were still a few cooing in corners, their bright eyes gleaming out at me in the dark. A small door led to a ladder going up into the belltower proper, and had an open ceiling and rope that allowed the bellringer to pull the cord without actually needing to go out into the elements. 

I closed the door and went back down to the lower platform and began setting out my clothing and belongings. There were cuts in the stone that seemed a bit off, metal hooks hammered into stone that made good places to hang my suits, but some walls that appeared to be cut incorrectly. I inspected them a bit closer and found a groove that looked more like a handhold than a natural malformation of the stone. Slipping my hand in, I pulled, and the wall opened easily on oiled hinges. 

Every sense of danger in my mind went off all at once. I closed my eyes, pushing my power into my hearing and listened to the world around me. The flutter of feathers and rapid heartbeats of half a dozen pigeons echoed in the other room. A low, moaning wind and whistle of air through tree branches came muffled through the thick stone walls. Callie’s puttering trying to get her space to look like something that approached her standards came drifting up from the floor below… but the room in front of me was completely silent. 

“Silent as the grave,” I muttered to myself, enjoying the irony. I released the power, feeling my sight return as my hearing faded back to normal. Sensing there was nothing to fear beyond the hidden door, I stepped inside trying to exude confidence in case I was wrong about being alone. At least then I would die looking as though I had no fear of what lies beyond. 

Even more fortuitous, I found the room to be devoid of both life and unlife alike. Instead, I found a small shelf, clumsily nailed into the stone wall, housing a smaller collection of roughly bound books. I recognized some titles: Grapes of Wrath, Animal Farm, and 1984 were easy enough to identify. But there were others in different languages. French, German, Italian… Whoever was reading these was well read and well educated. 

I reached out and picked up the copy of Grapes of Wrath, one of my favorites of the classics, and one that I tried to incorporate each year that I taught, back when I taught high school. Those years were not as long behind me as I would have liked, but still felt like they were a lifetime ago. Before I could muse too long on the life I left behind, a piece of paper… though more like parchment, fell from the book. Peering down at it, I saw that it wasn’t the right shape to have come from the book itself, but rather had been slipped inside the cover. 

Picking it up, I flipped it over and began to read the neat, looping handwriting of the message. My curiosity was overwhelming me: a secret message hidden in a book stored behind a false door? The espionage level paranoia made me think that perhaps I’d stumbled onto something out of a Lovecraftian story or that perhaps we weren’t the first Kindred to use this church as a haven. 

Entry #0583 

I watched Ventrue and Toreador preen at Elysium, treating clan meetings like fashion shows and war councils like dinner parties. Of course they could treat everything like a game. To them, those who never have to face down the dangers of what lurks in the night, those who never have to wonder if they could get to safety before the sun rose or the Garou sniffed them out or before the Anarchs discovered you in the walls and took their time removing parts of you like a team building exercise, of course it could be a game. It’s always that way to the people who hold the power. They know they have value, but refuse to recognize the value in others. 

I thought: If I serve quietly, diligently, they will see my worth. One day, they would see that my efforts, the danger I put myself in, quietly obedient to their wishes, serving without complaint, that one day they would recognize that not a single one of them would have gotten to their precious positions without my help, without my intel, without the nights I spent risking my neck, they’d be sucking rats just like I have to. 

 But the Camarilla doesn’t reward worth. Only presence. I never had any. Why did I believe all this crap? This false narrative of what the Camarilla promised me? Because Fangface swallowed it long before he started shoveling it down my gullet. I remember he says to me, “Ledger, you’d do well to listen, boy. Keep your head down, your betters happy, and your debts paid, and you’ll be rolling in it. Can’t do the right thing and get the wrong results.” He said that nearly every day. And he’s right, you can’t do the right thing and get the wrong results. Problem was, ol’ Fangface had a different idea of what the ‘right thing’ was than I did. I got his results, wanting my own. 

So what is the right thing? Well, I don’t rightly know, now do I? But I’ve been doing the wrong thing for so long it’s all I know how to do. So the question remains… what’s the right thing to do… now?

I read over Ledger’s words again and again. The poor creature had spent its afterlife serving with the hope that his service would lead to rewards beyond measure. How many of us were promised the same thing, I wonder? How many of us were told time and time again the same things that he was told by the person who was supposed to be our mentor that if we just kept doing things the way we were told to do them, paid our dues, and kept grinding that we would eventually get everything we wanted and more? And how many times had we seen a different path, or just a deviation in that path, only to be scorned and scolded for even considering the slight change in approach?

Natalia came to mind, the most recent in a laundry list of people who had told me exactly what I needed to do in order to become successful. “These are the rules, follow them perfectly and you will have the same success I’ve had. Trust me. It worked for me!” I smiled bitterly at the idea. There’s merit in learning from the successes and failings of others, but to blindly accept that these successes and failures are direct results of walking the path so tightly that only the footprints of those who walked before you is evidence that anyone had walked there before… That seemed like a folly beyond measure. 

She was playing me. I knew she was. And I refused to end up like Ledger, a slave to his masters, hoping that one day the scraps would trickle down to him and he could lap his cut of the blood off the floor like a good dog and grow fat under slavery that wore the face of service. I don’t know what happened to Ledger, but I intended to search out more evidence of his existence. 

Folding the paper, I slipped it back into the book and placed the book back on the shelf. I looked around the room one last time, imagining what I could do with the space in time and stepped out, gently closing the wall behind me, making sure that I didn’t lose sight of where the hidden handle fit into the stone. Steadying my breathing and my mind, I walked down the stairs to see Diego and Isadora standing in the vestibule staring at the altar of the chapel. Isadora’s face was blank and seemed a bit more tired than usual, but Diego’s carried undisguised mirth and disbelief. 

“Princess thinks she’s holding court,” Diego said to me as I approached. Turning to look into the chapel, I saw Callie sitting behind the altar. 

The chair she used, one of those high back ones with the three points meant to look like the seat of a king or someone framed by a castle behind them, was much higher up than the stone of the altar allowed. Even I knew that the altar was supposed to be something that the priest stood behind. He’d normally have to step back off the dais and around to where he could sit and still see the congregation. 

Callie apparently envisioned things differently. She sat behind the altar as if it was a judge’s bench, a small collection of official looking files and even a small gavel present on the marble. She must have found something to pile up on the dais in order to generate the height needed to sit high enough to see over the altar and look down at us as we approached. Her shoulders were squared and set back with her fingers steepled in front of her, enhancing the expression of smug superiority she was currently wearing. 

“Welcome, y’all,” she said, her sweet act somewhat ruined by the visage she was portraying, exposing the edge in her voice like a laceration exposes bone. “Now that you’re all settled in, I believe it is time to set some ground rules in my haven.” 

“Our,” Isadora said as she casually sat down in a nearby pew. There was no emotion in her voice to indicate she was trying to cut Callie down. She was merely pointing out the factual information necessary to correct Callie’s mistake like a teacher who wanted to move forward without spending time explaining something simple to a particularly slow child. 

“Someone here needs to take on a leadership role,” Callie sniffed, looking down at Isadora like something distasteful that had become stuck to the bottom of her shoe. I felt the beast rattling at its cage, but I silenced him with a thought angrier than it. I wasn’t sure if it was my own emotions generating the protective attitude I had for Isadora or if the comments by Diego and Callie were influencing me. Until I knew what the source truly was, I resolved myself to keep my mouth shut and let Isadora defend herself from Callie, should the need arise. 

“Does someone?” Diego asked, leaning against another pew, crossing his arms. “I mean, there’s only four of us. Democratic decisions seem a lot more doable than on larger scales.” 

“Are you saying democracy doesn’t work?” I asked, jabbing at him playfully with my words. 

“Democracies can work, when you don’t have a group of authoritarians masquerading around as democratic,” Diego shot back, and I felt my grin widen. “Even with the right limits on power a republic can work.” 

“We’re getting off track,” Callie said, banging her gavel once to try and get our attention back on her. “We need to establish the rules!” 

We ignored her and continued our conversation, me jabbing at Diego’s pressure points while he got more and more riled up. Isadora just sat, her eyes flicking between each of us as we spoke. 

“What evidence do we have of a democratic republic working?” I asked, cocking my head to one side. “The only examples I can see are Ancient Greece, which fell to the Romans. The Ancient Roman republic, which became the Ancient Roman Empire when it fell to authoritarianism. And then the United States, which is currently going the way of Rome, but a hell of a lot faster.” 

“What about the European countries? Their democracies seem to be doing fine,” Diego pointed out. 

“Fair, but they don’t have the folly of the two party system,” I said, seeing the blow land home. He knew I wasn’t talking about American politics anymore. At least, that American politics wasn’t my only target in the conversation. 

Callie began slamming the gavel against the marble with as much force as she could muster. The loud, high-pitched clacking filled the room in an annoying cadence that caused each of us to look at her, more out of irritation than any genuine interest. I stepped forward, held out my hands, and tapped into my Tremere bloodline. 

I felt my own magic pulling the vitae out of my body from my palm. It oozed out of my pores into a bulbous globular mass. I felt a bit light headed as it formed, and with a flick of the wrist, I sent it flying out like a whip, wrapping around the gavel in Callie’s hand like a tentacle of an octopus, gripping it tightly, and then wrenched it from her hand effortlessly. I reabsorbed my vitae as I retracted the tendril and caught the tiny gavel in my hand, examining it for a moment before tossing it over my shoulder into the pile of broken pews before returning to my place near where Diego and Isadora were sitting. 

“Right,” I said, reclaiming my position. “Where were we?”

“That was…” Diego said, a cocky grin breaking across his face. 

“Facinating,” Isadora said, her eyes lingering on my hand as if expecting the tendril to reemerge. 

“Rude,” Callie said sharply, clambering down from her makeshift throne awkwardly, clearly not expecting us to watch her ascend or descend her makeshift perch. 

“Cool,” Diego finally went with, grinning like a madman. “Gross as hell, but cool.” 

“And counter productive,” Callie shot back as she waded through the broken, splintering wood and discarded books. “We still haven’t set down the rules!” 

“Right, rules,” I said, nodding. “It’s important to have rules. But do you know what’s even more important than having rules?”

“Nothing,” Callie said, straightening up from where she was digging to find her gavel to look me in the eye. 

“Wrong,” I said, looking back at her, unwaveringly. “Knowing where the rules come from. The intent behind them.”

“The intent of my haven’s rules…” Callie started. 

“Our,” Isadora corrected again, causing Callie to let out a high pitched noise that clearly expressed annoyance. 

“The intent of this haven’s rules,” Callie practically shrieked, finding a middle road that allowed her to avoid giving Isadora any ground in this argument. “Is to ensure that we complete the tasks set before us by the Baroness in order to move up in our stations within the Anarchs!” 

I looked at her, studying her frustration. The rage that was beginning to show through her cracking facade. She didn’t want to be here, we all knew that, but the answer as to why may not be as simple as I’d originally thought. It may not be her disdain for us, but the way she used the word “Anarch” carried a note of it as well. 

“And who set the rules for the Anarchs?” I asked, quietly. A hush fell over the rest of them. Even Callie didn’t have a smart remark for me, so I took that as an opportunity to continue. “Who set the rules for the Camarilla? Who set these rules for all Kindred and told us this is how it goes?”

“That question has repercussions far beyond the point you’re trying to make, Grey,” Isadora said. There was a warning in her tone, but something about the way she spoke told me she wasn’t the danger behind the warning, but something else. Something far worse. 

“Then let’s start small,” I said, pulling back slightly. “Who taught you what the rules were?”

“My sire,” Callie responded, her voice clear and sharp, finally confident she knew the answer to the questions I was asking. She reminded me of a lawyer, only answering or asking questions she was one hundred percent sure about. The rest of the time, she kept quiet. It was what allowed her to speak with such confidence at all times. She only spoke when she was confident. 

“Then let me ask you, as one who doesn’t know their sire despite knowing their clan,” I said, looking at each of them. “Who made you? What were they like?”

“Such a stupid question,” Callie huffed, crossing her arms. “You met him, you know what Marcus is like.” 

“Not like you do,” I interjected. “You know him in a way none of us ever can. He hates my guts. If I knew him like you did, he must hate yours too. Since he clearly doesn’t, you know a different Marcus than I do. Tell me about him.” 

Callie looked at me, her face hard, though not with anger as I was so used to seeing. Instead, her expression was pensive, her brow furrowed, concentrating hard on the question as if I’d just asked her to describe a color to me using only words. Absently, she chewed at her lip, a habit, I assumed, she picked up during her mortal life. It was a habit that fit a teenager better than the thirty something professional that stood before me, but I waited patiently for her response. 

“He’s… Complicated,” she said, like every other woman who was trying to describe a man she harbored ill feelings for but didn’t want to openly insult. “The way he speaks makes people listen. He doesn’t even need to use any powers to do it. He just has this… aura about him. I think the reason he hates you so much is because you don’t show him respect the way others do. Respect he’s earned over decades of work and struggle. Then you come in and openly defy him, cutting through years of work and effort. Can you blame him for hating you?”

“If a man’s skin is so thin that the jibe of a literal child is enough to send him into a rage, then he’s barely a man at all.” 

I was almost as surprised as Callie was when I realized those words came from Diego’s mouth instead of mine. Looking between the two, Diego was the picture of calm wisdom, while Callie’s face contorted between rage and disbelief at the comment. 

“H… how dare you?” Callie asked, and the question almost sounded genuine. 

“Because that’s what my sire taught me,” he said, shrugging. “Sandra was pretty no nonsense about my training. Never laughed at any of my jokes, no matter how funny they were.” 

None of us took the obvious bait. 

“Fine,” he said, sighing and continued. “She always told me that when you’re sitting in the shadows, you’re going to hear a lot of things you don’t want to hear. You’re going to want to cry, scream, rage, laugh, or even kill when you hear some of the shit these pendejos say.” 

He shrugged, looking away, and I could tell that these words he took seriously. It was when Diego was being vulnerable when I saw his strength most clearly. 

“She told me the solution to that is just to get thicker skin,” he said, not looking at any of us. “People are going to say things you don’t like. Do things you don’t like. And they’re going to say and do them in front of you, whether they know you’re there or not. Number one rule: take care of yourself. If I pop out of the shadows to save someone, or defend my principles, I’ll get killed. So… I grew thicker skin.”

The room was quiet for a while. Even Callie had nothing to say about Diego’s lessons. Silently, Isadora stood, looking at each of us in turn, and then finally spoke. 

“He’s dead,” she said with no emotion in her voice, but she still seemed to take a moment to compose herself before continuing. “He’s dead and that is probably for the best. Everything he taught me was a lie. I don’t subscribe to the rules of the Camarilla or the Anarchs, because in the end rules given to you by others are just strings meant to pull you along like a good little marionette.” 

She turned and looked at Callie, a note of cold anger in her voice. 

“How do you wish to twist my strings, Callie?” she asked. 

“I never said…” Callie stammered, trying to backpedal under Isadora’s unwavering gaze. 

“Your rules. Your haven,” she said, her voice somehow getting icier despite her emotional register never changing. “Your strings. Do not lie to me, Ventrue. I do not take it well. I take it personally.” 

There was a long silence where the promise of violence hung in the air, unuttered and unresolved. Neither woman moved an inch, both showing the stillness of a predator like I’d seen Isadora do when I’d first met her earlier than evening. Unbridled passion meeting cold indifference was a fascinating show to watch, but I now knew each of them better than I could have hoped. 

“Rule one of our haven,” I said, my voice breaking the silence if not the tension. “Do not lie to Isadora.” 

“Just Isadora?” Diego asked, his confusion at my statement overriding his self-preservation instinct. 

“Callie wouldn’t believe any of us telling her we weren’t lying. She expects to be lied to. The nature of her clan,” I said with a shrug. “The nature of Kindred, in fairness, but Ventrue specifically.” 

“So we’re all liars?” Callie asked, her voice hard.

“You’re talkers,” I said, turning my head to look at her. “When people talk for a living, they are surrounded by lies. Either they’re supplying them, or receiving them, the lies are present. Would you trust me to say and mean that I would never lie to you?”

“No,” Callie answered without hesitation.

“Smart,” I said, turning to look at Isadora. “Would you believe me if I told you that I would never lie to you?”

Isadora studied me for a moment, her eyes lingering on me, then looking past me. She cocked her head to one side as if listening to an unheard voice. After a moment’s consideration, she slowly nodded her head. 

“Yes,” she said, the emotion gone from her voice, but a strong conviction had taken its place. 

“So you would lie to me but not to her?” Callie asked, more confused than offended. 

“Gomez knows better than to ever lie to Morticia,” Diego laughed, and suddenly the tension of the room eased away, and even I found myself smiling as the tension in my shoulders vanished slowly. 

“Rules will not work here,” I said to them, nodding slowly between Callie and Isadora. “We each need different things, hold different philosophies, and value different treatments. Callie expects there to be lies, so she won’t take the same offense to lying as Isadora does. No lying is a terrible rule for us, but we know that the best way to show respect to Isadora is to be honest with her.” 

“Learn each other,” Isadora said, her voice smooth and quiet. “Treat people with the values they respect, and we won’t have problems.” 

“Pretty much,” I said with a shrug, dropping into a pew. “We were taught right and wrong, or more accurately proper and improper. I've even gotten a lesson or two from the Baroness…” 

I watched a quick look pass between Callie and Diego and filed it away for later without comment. 

“But in the end, in this house, we choose how we operate. No one dictates that for us,” I looked up at Callie, sharp and clear, making sure she didn’t miss my meaning. “And no one is going to dictate it. We were made into what we are now, but we get to choose what that means. We don’t really have a choice but to play their game, but as we play we can watch to learn the truth.” 

I looked at Isadora. 

“We can thicken our hides against their manipulations.” 

My eyes fell on Diego. 

“And then one day,” I said, my voice deathly quiet but carrying throughout the entire cathedral as I looked up at Callie. “We make them hear us.”

She stood, silent as the others, her lips pursed. 

“What’s gotten into you, Pageboy?” Callie asked, a little of her old fire returning along with a smirk. 

I smiled back, but there was nothing happy about it. My mind lingered on the scrap of paper I’d found and the bitterness that grew from discovering the truth far too late for it to ever matter. 

“Let’s just say I don’t want to be another discarded Ledger,” I said, leaving Callie and the others with the mystery of what that meant as I stood up and made my way to the stairs, feeling the familiar pull of the daysleep drawing me away into blessed darkness, for a short while at least.