The color of you is on this palette, too

Niccolò Belmonte

As Miranda slept on, Niccolò dithered around downstairs, alternating between catching up on some work and merely lazing about like it wasn’t a working day for him. (Technically everyday was, except for Sunday mornings.) Eventually, however, he came to the conclusion that she probably was out for the night and that there wasn’t any point in waiting for her to come back down. He made himself a simple dinner –thaw, unwrap, microwave, done –and ate it while checking over his emails.

Unusually, Paschalis had actually contacted him for once. Clicking that email open, Niccolò found that the opening was a very politely worded paragraph about his guest, which also radiated such a very Paschalis like air of This is now your problem and not mine that the lawyer couldn’t help but smile.

There was an attachment, too, of some pdf that was written entirely in Swiss French, to his dismay. Although, the last line of Paschalis’s message did say something along the lines of Sorry, I couldn’t find a translation. With a contemplative sigh, Niccolò glanced over at a rack of wine against the wall. Well, seeing as Miranda was asleep, just a few drinks couldn’t hurt, right? A little alcohol was just the thing to dig up his long since buried knowledge of French.

It was a pretty nice night, too, so maybe the cool air would help. Wine bottle in one hand, he stacked a French to Italian dictionary and a wineglass on top of his laptop and headed to the frontyard.

Niccolò Belmonte

So, just to reiterate, Niccolò really liked to drink. Alcohol was like a balm on the soul, although he tended to keep that part to himself unless he was going to come straight out and add in the next part -Niccolò was almost certainly incapable of being drunk off his ass. Okay, maybe it wasn't the best use of his self healing powers but it wasn't like he was in a particularly dangerous profession, and he couldn't use his powers on other people anyways. At least this way, they got some use from time to- every day, actually. Niccolò would readily admit that his life was kind of made.

So as he got onto that line between being tipsy and relatively drunk, that was when "Miranda" finally came out of the house. He turned to greet her, but it wasn't clear if she had gotten the message because she started to. Go off. That was the most polite way of putting it. And then she kept going, into things that Niccolò's blurred mind couldn't quite catch. If she had been going off into law, that was a different story. He knew the law like the back of his hand, alcohol be damned.

He delayed for a moment, but as "Miranda" continued rambling, the man managed to get his phone out and start recording what she was saying. He figured that this was all part of that split personality that Paschalis had told him about. In which case, he should not encourage her by interacting with it. Something about not having all the pieces of the puzzle or something like that. Paschalis hadn't been too clear on that point, and Niccolò thought that it was probably because his cousin only had a little more information than he did on the subject.

The aura around her, though. That was the worrying part. It was dark with splashes of red and stormy blue, so different than the one he had seen earlier that day. It was like she was a completely different person. No, that was a bad way of putting it. It was like she had a completely different soul.

His alcohol addled mind took the leap of logic. Well, damn. I wonder if I should ask Joshua to come around.

Niccolò Belmonte (with Paschalis de Santis)

Niccolò was used to being called stupid. Frankly, he had stopped caring about stuff like that a long time ago because no matter what anybody said, it took real skill to be able to get through law school with perfect grades and a blood alcohol level that was just pushing illegal. So matters of pride aside, Niccolò did what Niccolò was unexpectedly good at and simply kept the record going, on his laptop after taking a few seconds to get the program on, so that this little mystery could be solved by somebody who actually some of the keys.

"You know, to be perfectly honest, I don't know why you're telling me this at all," the lawyer said sagely in the middle of the feral woman's tirade as he upped the pickup on his laptop's built in microphone. "I'm pretty sure your kind never operated in our area. I don't really have anything to do with this but I mean, if it helps to get things off your chest..."

As the split personality was about to carry on, however, she froze suddenly, looking like a deer caught in headlights. The alcohol was going through Niccolò's veins pretty good but he was still coherent enough to sigh and reach for his phone again. He hit speed dial as another aura came into view.

He cleared his throat a little but before he could even say anything, a collected voice on the other end spoke up. "So the double came out after all?" Paschalis asked, sounding completely unsurprised by the development.

"Mhm. I think it left, though. Her aura went back to normal." Niccolò watched as what appeared to be a young girl suddenly attacked. "Ah, hold on a sec." In the few seconds of calm, the lawyer snapped a picture of the newcomer. "I'm sending something to your email right now. It would probably be best if you came in person, though."

Barely had he finished speaking, however, there was a quick flash of light next to him and his cousin dropped right out of thin air, a small purple marble between two of his fingers. As Niccolò watched, the object abruptly disappeared in a shower of sparkles.

"You sure confiscate some interesting things from your students," the lawyer remarked, looking back at the increasingly one sided fight. "I'm not sure I'm okay with just watching this, though."

"You won't have to," Paschalis said. That was the moment when "Miranda" seemed to undergo a change of a different sort.

Both men watched on as the much younger girl said something in what sounded like German before flying away. That left Miranda to deal with the mess. Soon, she turned her attention to Paschalis.

"Choose the first explanation off the top of your head and tell me what it is," Paschalis recommended coolly. "It'll make much more sense to go about it that way."

To Niccolò, he said, "Send what you've got to Durante. He's always been far better at these sorts of tasks."

Paschalis de Santis (with Niccolò Belmonte)

Paschalis simply looked at the girl for a moment before moving her a few rungs down on his ladder of priorities.

"This really is something that Durante should deal with," he said to Niccolò. For any other person, the tone might have been idle or maybe even amiable. In Paschalis's voice, however, it was merely coldly logical. "Or perhaps la direttrice o la preside. Questa è veramente una situazione inutile." Then as an afterthought, he switched back from Italian to English. "This is not part of my contract."

But despite that, Paschalis was also not allowed to perform lobotomy and end the entire mess quickly. Therefore, he had to deal with the situation at hand himself, with only words, to a girl who had absolutely no idea how deep she had just gotten. Thanks to her outburst, he now had an even better sense of what was the latest circus to make its way to Manta Carlos. And that was still absolutely none of his concern. A vague sense of responsibility was what had led him to dumping her with his cousin but that was where it ended.

"Reevaluate your own lineage for starters," the man said to Miranda in icy calm, "and then come back to me with your questions. Or, better yet, give them to somebody else who has more relevance to the case." Reaching into his pocket, he dug out a fresh bottle of sleeping pills and tossed it at her, ignoring Niccolò's grunt of disapproval. Paschalis was the doctor, after all. He had more of a say in this.

Without giving Miranda the chance to break in, he ordered, "Lock the door, lock the window, throw the key into the hallway, take two pills. If you wake up in your bed in the morning and everything seems to be in the order, repeat the process for a week until you are certain that it will remain that way. After that, just skip to taking the pills. If you wake up anywhere else besides in your bed, even if you might have only rolled out of it at night, still wait a week. If nothing else happens, just skip to taking the pills. If something does happen, you will most likely know and that is when the matter leaves all of our hands."

Actually, now that he thought about it, if he cared enough about the situation, he might be pressed to pay a visit to Ms. Merriweather. If he managed to catch her during one of her trances, he was pretty sure that she would be able to unravel this entire mess in five minutes. Being the vessel of omniscient primal magic would do that. If he did visit her, though, he would have to suffer through her hideously decorated house and to top it off, he would probably owe her favors for the rest of his life. Even if she never called them in -and knowing her, she really never would- Paschalis loathed the idea of owing debts.

Briefly, he considered redirecting Miranda to the woman but decided that in comparison with a lot of issues happening around the island, Miranda's was minor. After all, her problem seemed to mostly be kept in the family, and in a coalition that no longer existed. Even if that coalition did rise again, the times had changed. There were far more ridiculous things to worry about, like the students who kept mysteriously disappearing, the stranger and stranger creatures which were being drawn to the island, and the skyrocketing demonic population. The breaks in reality. Compared with all of that, the problem at hand was so. Tame.

A big hand clapped him on the shoulder. "Late night, then?" Niccolò asked him as they turned back to the house. Paschalis brushed his hand off.

"Maybe for you," Paschalis said dryly. "Excuse me while I commandeer your basement."

His cousin wondered out loud, "Of course, who else would I let do that? It's all yours."