The world audibly collapsed with the familiar voice's words. The noise of tearing fabric rippled through the air, attacking from every direction at once, then Loch found himself facing a familiar, fearful expression. Like a well-practiced marching band, the pixie's older advisors stepped back in unison.
"Why are they afraid of you?" Skye's whispered in his ear.
"I'll... explain later." If he was lucky, Skye would forget to remind him. But he was not lucky, otherwise Trinity would have never found the CD. The pixie in question, however, showed none of the fear that decorated her advisors' faces. Loch felt a familiar smirk spread across his face. "You're younger than four hundred, aren't you?"
She nodded, then noticed for the first time that she was now alone in facing him. "What are you?"
"He's the face changer!" The familiar voice came again. Loch turned and saw the vampire, Dixie, standing in the doorway with a lopsided smile. How she of all people could remember him and break the forgetting spell, he did not know. "I remember you! We met in the fourteenth century when we were leaving the same town. You made yourself look like you could be my brother, then you changed your face to be an old man so that rich old guy would give us a ride in his carriage. Then we met in Venice, then in Paris, then Russia when you were working for that tsar and I was trying to kill him." Perhaps it was the length of time that they had known each other that made her of all people remember him. Her memories were positive, somehow, which was also different from every other living creature's memories of him. At the moment, however, her smile was fading. "Don't you remember me?"
"You were Isotta, originally. You changed the name a lot." She had always recognized him, despite his changing faces, so perhaps it made sense that she could recognize him now. Unfortunately, her moment of recognition could not have come at a worse time.
Loch decided to bring the conversation back on track. At least he no longer had to act like a submissive human or a lesser warlock. "Where were we? Ah yes, back to the subject of me not joining your little crusade. Trinity, if you want to know why you shouldn't work with me, ask the dryads and naiads behind you. I'm sure they would be happy to explain. Dixie, we need to talk about the Hancocks. At a different café, for the sake of privacy. And -" He turned and saw Skye's torn expression. "Oh. Your uncle's here, isn't he?"
"Yup." He looked none too pleased about it.
"Bring him with. Tell him I don't bite." Loch glanced at Trinity's trio of naiad advisors, and unfortunately, none looked friendly. The snakes in his stomach woke up again, and the fact that they were in sympathy for someone else did not make them any less miserable. If Skye's life crashed and burned, his life would crash and burn with it. The phrase 'love is a disease' made much more sense to him now; if he were still sane he would have left the naiad by now.
The naiad Skye selected from the crowd looked similar to him; the same narrow eyes, the same black hair. However, rather than showing the fear Loch had seen in the other advisors, the naiad's eyes glimmered with curiosity.
As soon as the café door had fallen shut behind them, the uncle opened his mouth. "You're the Loch Ness monster. You were one of the younger warlocks when I first met you. Still powerful, but you made up for your youth with cleverness. Will your wit be on our side this time?"
Gears began to turn in a long-forgotten corner of his mind. Loch squinted at the naiad and ran the name Darius through his memories. Unfortunately, his memory was a couple thousand miles from perfect. If they had met, it could not have been an important meeting. "I'm on Skye's side. I have a plan, and I'll explain it as soon as we order breakfast." After checking the area for eavesdropping Others, Loch stepped into the café they had come upon.
Dixie followed, squinting at the naiad as well. Recognition dawned on her face, but Loch's gears refused to lock into place.
"You're the one who he got the scrutatio orbs from, I assume?" Perhaps he could not recognize the naiad because he had aged. Naiads did not have to physically age, but some of them chose to for the sake of superiority. Loch found it petty, though long ago he had altered his own appearance to incite fear and respect.
"Yes. I have a collection of relics. If you ever need anything, ask Skye and I'll see if I have it." He did not want to talk to this man, let alone chat politely with him. However, Skye was clearly delighted by their friendliness. Skye had never mentioned his parents, so this uncle could be the one he had to earn the approval of. Loch knew that much from the movie research he had done.
"Do you still have the golden orchid we found in Iran?"
"I do have a golden or–" The gears slid into place, and with them came a flood of memories.
Loch stared at Darius in horror. He still had a few hundred years left in his sentence, and this naiad was the only one who knew. He had been the only one present when that wretched werewolf had convinced him to make the deal, and when Loch had blocked everyone's memories of him, he had erased all physical records of that meeting as well. "Darius from Baltak Valley."
Skye glanced between them and cut in. "Have you met before?" His voice was quiet, as if he knew their history was negative.
Darius smiled and waved a waiter over to their table. "I'll have the country style breakfast, and they'll have..." He turned to Skye and Loch with his eyebrows raised, waiting for them to order. It was as if he wanted them to wait with snakes in their stomachs for his response. Unfortunately, his face was as locked to their understanding.
Dixie had been sitting low in her seat, but she perked up at the mention of food. "I'll have a strawberry sundae with a BLT. Take off the tomato, though. That stuff's nasty." She slid a flask out of her coat pocket, most likely filled with blood to accompany the meal.
"We'll have hot chocolate and French toast." Skye turned to Darius as soon as the waiter had left, raising his eyebrows expectantly.
"The most feared warlock in the world for hundreds of years, and you let my nephew order for you." The naiad chuckled, shaking his head. Dixie seemed to share his amusement, but she stayed quiet. "Yes, Skelly, we've met before. A long, long time ago, I made a deal with him on the behalf of the Others of the Baltak Valley. If you've ever read stories about genies tricking people when they make wishes to make their immortality not include agelessness or to give them true love with an idiot, those stories came from him. Only the desperate make a deal with a warlock, and I was very desperate. As a result, I ended up working as his servant for hundreds of years, though clearly I didn't make an impact on his memory."
Loch remembered him perfectly well, now. "In my defense, I did release you three hundred years early. You also got your side of the deal for every year you worked for me."
Darius turned to Skye. His half-smile and relaxed posture did not disappear, but his voice lost all liveliness. "You didn't make a deal with him, did you? Has he ever had you shake his hand? How did you get him to give you the scrutatio orbs? And the dragon keys?"
"I never made any kind of deal with him, I promise. He just gave the relics to me," Skye promised.
The old naiad did not appear convinced. "Why? He always has a motivation. You don't just trust an ancient warlock. I've told you this." His half-smile had begun to slip, and Loch could see panic setting in. Skye struggled for words and looked to Loch for help.
"Sometimes when you have a crush on someone you do whatever it takes to please them. Alright? Now, back to business." Loch tried not to smile at Skye's delight, forcing his mind back to his impending doom. "I'm sure you remember the deal I made the day I released you from my service?"
The naiad looked between Loch and his nephew in shock, but managed a nod. Loch continued. "Do you think you could keep quiet about that deal? For eternity? I would really rather not have to follow through with the remainder of my... promise." He altered his word choice as the waiter approached their table. If he called it a 'sentence', the nosy human would assume he was some kind of prisoner. There were enough conspiracy theories on the internet about him after the previous year's events; he did not need any more.
Darius nodded, still staring incredulously. Loch took this as permission to cast a light tongue-holding tongue on him, only in regards to that information, of course. Fortunately for him, most of the older Others did not realize warlocks could cast spells on people regardless of whether they gave their permission or a handshake. The naiad would believe it was his own decision when he found himself incapable of mentioning that centuries-old deal.
"Skelly, are you... dating..." He shook his head, as if it would shake the memory from his mind.
Skye nodded, his smile all teeth. Every opportunity to tell someone was like Christmas for him, from what Loch could tell. Personally, he found it unbearable. As much as he enjoyed Skye's company, being in a relationship was too compromising. People, especially humans, found it 'adorable', and from that point on they did not take him seriously.
"Huh." Surprisingly, Dixie's expression matched Darius's. They had called themselves a married couple when they had arrived at the Hancock headquarters, but clearly she had assumed that was part of their disguise.
Loch intervened to get the conversation back on track. "Now that we're on the same level of understanding, let's move on to the Hancock business. Skye and I have been working there for a few days, and Dixie here happens to be their head biochemical engineer – or something like that. She knows where all of their buildings are located, so she can help you and your little Other friends out with human surveillance and whatever else you have planned." The dumbfounded expression still stuck to Darius's face, so Loch could only hope that he was still listening somewhere beneath it. "I plan on continuing with the rescues, but I'll need transportation for the rescued Others and safe houses to keep them in. Nobody is staying at my building again."
"I can give you my number, and you can pass it on to that pixie chic. She's your leader, right? I moved into this craphole somewhat recently, so I'm not up on all your little elections." Dixie spoke with a mouth full of food, a red liquid tainting her teeth the same color as her strawberry sundae.
The naiad nodded, then finally found his voice again. "That would be wise. You're working with the humans?" Dixie smiled and nodded, while Skye grasped for a way to explain.
"We're working on the inside to find their weaknesses. The vampire gives the captured Others fake drugs, and Loch has been adding extra shadows to every Other hideout the humans have discovered." His uncle nodded as Skye spoke; Loch guessed he had filed the dating information away to gape at another time. "And the stuff I told you about that draconem-mix came from Loch. She confronted him after she realized he was a warlock."
Loch shuddered at the thought of the rotting creature, then checked that they were blocked from her all-seeing gaze. He had yet to decide how he was going to have her repay her end of the deal. It would have to be something miserable, he knew that. Something to teach her not to mock a warlock.
"You've spoken to Vivian? Why didn't you try to kill her?" Darius's gaze had become calculating, searching for Loch's past flaws.
To be honest, Loch's reason for not killing her was purely selfish. He could wrestle a grand variety of favors out of a living villain – they had no moral boundaries blocking their actions as the goodies did – which made them very useful. A dead villain, on the other hand, was nothing more than a bore. Unfortunately, this explanation was unlikely to please Darius. Loch ran through a list of excuses and selected the best one. "If I had killed her, the humans would go on believing that all of the Others were murders. However, if we keep her alive, we can force her to confess to the humans and save ourselves from future kidnappings." Skye believed the story, to Loch's relief, but his uncle was skeptical. Loch could only hope that Darius would not tell Skye about the darker details of his past.
Whether the uncle believed his reasoning or not, it made sense. With the humans kidnapping Others every day, they were fighting two wars.
"Did you say Vivian?" Dixie had stopped eating mid-BLT, so she had to be very surprised.
Darius nodded. "Why? Do you know her?"
"You could say that. She sponsors the Hancocks." Now it was Loch's turn to stop eating. This was an interesting development. "She could just be another person named Vivian, though. I've never actually met her. I should actually probably avoid meeting her, since she would see through my shadows." Dixie's eyes widened in fear as she realized the true danger of her workplace.
Loch decided a little act of kindness could help his case with Darius, so he added some shadows to Dixie's layers. She almost looked human to him, now. "I fixed your shadows. She should see you as a human if your paths happen to cross." He would have preferred that Vivian kill the vampire that ruined his forgetting spell, but Skye's relations with his relatives were more important. Loch shook his head at his new priorities; he had clearly gone mad.
His insanity pleased the uncle, however, and even earned a nod of approval. "I'll explain all of this to Trinity. She'll probably expect you to work more directly with her." Darius turned to Loch. "You can't rescue Others and bring them to our safe houses without working with us."
It was the unfortunate truth, but Loch still had a way around it. He turned to Skye with what he hoped was a winning smile. "Skye is much better at coordinating such things. Just keep him in the loop, and he'll keep me in the loop. We do the rescue missions together, anyway. Now, I think that's enough filling in of details for now. Skye and I have other matters to deal with."
The uncle frowned, but as long as they weren't making any deals, Loch did not have to listen to his requests. He stood and felt Skye's arm drape around his shoulder once again. The sight struck Darius into silence once again, which made their exit much smoother than he would have expected. This relationship had actually become useful again; perhaps he was sane after all.