Chapter #49A Girl and Her Secrets by: rugal b.   That catches you off guard. They're not who you thought they were? What's that supposed to mean? "What are you talking about?" you ask. "Who isn't?"
"All of it, Will!" she exclaims. "Charlotte and... and Macgregor and... fuck! I can't believe this! It's just all so... so..." She pauses and buries her face in her hands. "My head is so fucked right now; I can't think straight. I can barely even see straight."
She looks up at you again and her eyes look like they're starting to water. "Sydney, hey! Come on now!" you say as you grab her hands. But that doesn't seem to calm her down any. "Did you order anything?" you ask and she weakly shakes her head. "Alright then, let's get out of here. Whatever it is you want to talk about this isn't the best place."
"Then where?" she asks. "I don't... I don't want to go back to Charlotte's place right now."
"We'll go back to my place, to Lina's I mean. Her roommate's going to be in class and then at her job so we'll have the place to ourselves for a while. Okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah, alright."
You apologize to the guy working the counter telling him that you decided not to stay after all and, helping Charlotte up, lead her out of the cafe and to your car.
* * * * *
Back at the apartment you make sure to lock the door so nobody can bust in and if Melody does, for whatever reason, come home early you'll be able to hear her unlock the door and have time to shut up. Charlotte sits down on the couch and you offer her some water but she asks if you have anything that'll give her a buzz. You do have some cans of beer in the fridge so you pull one out and give it to her.
"Alright then," you say after sitting down next to her. "So let's start over. What was all of that you were talking about before? About how Charlotte and all of that aren't what we thought?"
"Does Lina know her? Charlotte I mean?" she asks.
"Not really. I think she's bought from Lina a few times but nothing significant."
"Right, okay then," she starts. "So anyone who knows Charlotte Dahl knows that she's an exchange student from England. Liverpool actually, Beatles and all that. Probably why she's always liked music I guess."
"Is that why she's involved with Macgregor and why she's keen on K.C. and her band?"
"Maybe a bit, I dunno. She can play some too and is apparently pretty good at writing. But fuck, none of that's important," she answers as she takes a sip of the beer you handed her. "Anyway what I said? That much is true and yeah she really is interning for Macgregor. But that's not really why she's here."
You cock an eyebrow. "What do you mean? She flies from Europe to here to enroll in Keyserling and that's not why she's actually here? That doesn't make sense."
"Let me ask you this then: does the name Fane mean anything to you?"
"Can't say that it does," you state.
"It shouldn't, not normally anyway. It's a big transatlantic corporation that's got branches here in the States and back in Britain. They own Macgregor. Have their fingers in a lot of pies actually." She takes a deep breath and pauses, trying to gather herself. "Will, I want you to promise me something because I'm about to drop some shit on you that's going to sound like the most whacked out conspiracy theory garbage you've ever heard. But it's real. I want you to believe me. Promise me that."
You can tell that she's being one hundred percent serious and given everything else up to this point what's a little conspiracy nonsense? So you give her your assurance that you'll take what she says seriously.
"Thanks, okay," she starts. "So Charlotte plays music, writes music. People around Liverpool like it. She plays a show at some small festival. Some shit happens and she's brought into Fane. Only it's like some mega top secret part of the company called Hermod. After the Norse god I think. Anyway this Hermod they're researching... well, a lot of things really. Things related to persuasion, control. One of them is using music to sway peoples' emotions, influences their thoughts."
"Like what musical mind control? Like what you were joking about?" you ask.
"Yeah," Charlotte nods, "only they're not joking. They feel like Charlotte's a great candidate for this and they like what she writes for them but when she's playing them it's just not there. But there's other groups like Hermod in Fane and one of them has someone right here in town. That person, whoever it is Charlotte has no clue, passes along that there's some promising bands in town. So Charlotte's enrolled in Keyserling, sent across the Atlantic and given a bullshit internship with the Fane-owned Macgregor Media."
"Meaning...?"
"Meaning Charlotte's not here for an education. She's here to scout; find promising talent for Hermod and try and bring them up. Subtly at first before slowly getting them in deeper and revealing the whole thing. And in Slow Fast Hazel? In someone as insanely charismatic as K.C.? She thinks she's hit the jackpot." She looks at you, deathly serious. "This music festival is a load of bullshit, Will. It's basically a disguised audition for K.C. and her band so some other Hermod guys can evaluate them and if they can snag another band or two then even better."
You're blown away and can do nothing more than just kind of sit still and stare at, or really past, your girlfriend blankly. So this girl whose face she's wearing is, what, some kind of mind control advocate-slash-spy for some shadowy British organization? It does sound like insane conspiracy theory nonsense but again you think of the book and where you are now and it's hard to dismiss it out of hand.
"That's not even the worst part," she continues. "Because Fane also owns Parsons Collegiate Media, the company my dad and Nicholas worked for. That Nicholas still works for. It's a name that basically burned itself into my memories from when I was in that bastard's head. I don't now if he did something to piss them off, was going rogue, they thought someone like Nicholas would be easier to manipulate and control or what. But they promised him nice promotion if he 'got rid of' my dad."
Your eyes go wide with shock. "Got rid of...? What are you saying?" you ask.
She looks at you very sternly; as serious as you've ever seen her. She holds your gaze. The words are cold in their delivery and hearing them causes your blood to run cold.
"Fane killed my father, Will."
* * * * *
You spend another couple of hours with Sydney trying to hash out what all of this means. Coming up with ideas and debating what all of it means. She definitely wants to do something about Fane. Look into them more, look into this Hermod group more. See what can be found and what can be done to them. With Charlotte you have yourselves an in but you don't know where to go from there. For a start there's another Fane agent lurking about in town and neither of you knows who it is. And the fact is you're not sure if they'd even be the only one. Because if there's two there might possibly be more.
Where would you find them? You don't have the faintest clue.
But even though she wants to do something regarding Fane, Sydney is also still serious about Baphomet and the coven you're building. Charlotte knows plenty about the research that was done by Hermod in using music to control minds since she was right at the center of a lot of it. The two of you wonder then if you can't do anything about Fane and Hermod right now, why not get back at them by appropriating their own research to benefit your own project?
But even that seems a little bit absurd and the two of you also wonder if it's not best to just cruise along for right now, finish setting up your coven and doing your research on Baphomet and all this other stuff and then figure out what your next steps should be? If nothing else should you decide to do anything it'd probably be a good idea to have an entire coven at your beck and call, identities you can slip back into if anything happened, than going in half-cocked.
By the time the late afternoon rolls around you haven't made any kind of decision but Sydney is feeling better and decides that she's fine enough to go back to Charlotte's for the night. The two of you bid goodbye for the day and there's no kissing, no playful banter or sexy shenanigans. Just promises to discuss it more later and a tender parting hug.
You feel mentally drained and collapse onto the sofa deciding to just lay down and take a nap. By the time you wake up it's already evening and you hear Melody in the kitchen. You decide to get up and see what she's up to.
"You go shopping?" you ask when you spot some bags on counter.
"Yeah, with no help from you," she replies sarcastically. "Guess you decided to wake up. Something happen?"
You grunt. "Nothing you really need to worry about," you tell her. "Today's just been kind of an exhausting day. I have a lot to think about."   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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