Chapter 9 ( I think I have given up on naming my chapters
Hunter was sitting across from the owl lady. He was panicking a little on the inside before he remembered she was ‘Luz’s guardian.’ It wasn't like he trusted her but if she hadn’t done anything that would make Luz think badly of her before she probably wouldn’t start now.
He quickly did his best to analyze her person.
She had grey hair with a streak of white but he knew for a fact the age she seemed to be was magical. She was far younger than she looked. He cursed himself for not watching her for weaknesses while standing but he’d have to make do.
She wasn’t going to do anything bad in front of Luz so she couldn’t beat him up too badly as then Luz would know. Would Luz believe him? He pondered it and decided yes. She would believe him if it did happen she always did say he was a bad liar so she would know he wasn’t lying. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that though.
“Kid,” she said and he thought she saw her eyes narrow. Did she seriously just narrow her eyes at him? She wasn’t the one who had reason to narrow their eyes.
“Owl lady” he nodded at her slightly not exactly in respect but at least in acknowledgment. Then for good measure, he narrowed his eyes back at her. They stared each other down for a moment before he rolled his eyes and looked away.
The best choice at the moment was to establish himself powerfully and the narrowed eyes hadn’t exactly helped. It was a tad immature but he could recover from that. “I suppose I should brief you on the latest news”
“Brief me on the latest news?” The owl lady squinted at him in what looked Like genuine confusion, was she just playing dumb? Why the heck would you want to brief me on the latest news? Aren’t you a coven scout? What kind of statement is 'I suppose I should brief you on the latest news'.”
Hunter took a deep breath. The tone of her voice sounded like she was insulting him but that was most likely not the case he reminded himself. He decided to ignore her reaction.
“No, as in I was just talking to Luz and I want to tell you what she and I were talking about. He gritted his teeth.
“Oh yeah I heard all about that”
“What” a strange new expression appeared on the owl lady’s face. It seemed to be caution.
“I caught the tail end of your conversation” Right now he was deeply doubting it was just the tail end. This was far from the best news. He seemed to have shown weakness in that conversation which was definitely not great in accordance with his goal of appearing in some sort of position of power.
Oh well, it wasn’t like it would have gotten him much further. Even if he dreamed of catching the owl lady and saving the isles from her when he was younger(he had seen what she could do with his own eyes in both her human and cursed forms).
It wasn’t like he could catch her now. He supposed the second best opinion was proposing cooperation. First, he still needed to do damage control though. Even if he could not appear as powerful before her he at least he could make sure he didn’t appear weak.
He relaxed his stance and crossed one leg over the other.
Then he crossed his arms for good measure. He almost rolled his eyes but Luz said that was part of the ‘moody teenage vibe’ and Luz said he already looked a bit like one.
From the snickering, he deduced that was definitely not good. “How much did you overhear?” “A bit.” I thought I heard something but I only realized that it wasn’t just her talking in her sleep when she said it was me that cheated at cards.” she threw up her hands.
“I don’t even do that very much anymore, only like 1 in 3 games.” He did his best not to glare at her any more than he already was. He didn’t know if he believed her but it was rather common for people to be alerted to a conversation at the sound of their name the stalktail effect he believed it was called.
He hadn’t done anything too embarrassing, just agreed to what Luz asked him. He relaxed a little for real now. “So I supposed that’s good you're already up to speed I can get straight to my proposal.” The woman looked like she badly wanted to make a joke about that (curse his wording) but she refrained.
“Your proposal?”
“How I see it in this situation there are two options”
“Just two?” the owl lady snorted and Hunter glared at her more so she snorted again but this time seemed to make some effort to conceal it. She gestured for him to continue. Hunter didn’t trust the owl lady. He didn’t even know if he trusted her when it came to Luz but what he did trust was the fact the owl lady didn’t want to seem bad in front of Luz.
He began “Option one. I do nothing to conceal my disdain for you and vice versa we both show intense dislike throughout the entirety of the brief duration of my stay here. In that circumstance, Luz is all upset that we don’t get along, and quite possibly all of the fun she seems to believe we may have being here does not happen.”
The owl lady is looking at him and her brow is furrowed. “And option two is?” I’m not going to suggest we be civil. You're a wild witch so the idea of that is ludicrous.
“You do know Luz is a wild witch too, right?” The owl lady interrupted
“She’s different.” The owl lady opened her mouth. "And before you say she's not technically one. The law dictates that if someone does not join a coven by their 18th birthday or slightly past it in special circumstances they're declared Wild."
He placed in palms on the table and leaned forward a bit before delivering his closing shot. "Luz is far from her 18th birthday and therefore by no definition is she a wild witch.”
“Okay, nerd.” Hunter did his best not to get any angrier.
“Anyway, I suggest we ignore each other. I won't be here long, only around 24 hours. We just have to pretend each other aren't there for that long.” He pauses to let it sink in.
"Then we won't have to see each other again. Luz isn't upset, neither of us looks bad to Luz" he hates that he is compromising with a wild witch so well known for her illegal acts. He hates, even more, compromising with the reason Luz is so flippant about doing illegal things but it won't be for long and it'll make Luz happy so he can ignore the owl lady for 24 hours.
Maybe he can even find blackmail that will stop the owl lady from doing illegal things in front of Luz! The damage has probably already been done but the illusionist friend of Luz looks younger so hopefully, Hunter can at least stop him from becoming positively accustomed to crime if he visits her house. In 24 hours he probably can't find any blackmail but It's worth a shot.
He extends a hand to her. He started at the hand. Is he really doing this compromising with a wild witch as infamous as the Owl Lady? At a movement, he looks up. The owl lady has a look he can't read in her eyes what is she thinking?
Eda
Eda looks at the strange boy. She's met him once or twice but he seems to be shockingly less complex than she would have thought. He doesn't look like he could lie and he surprisingly seems to care about her kid. She shook it off he was one of the Belos's lackeys he probably had ulterior motives. No. Eda decided saying probably wasn't fair she decided she'd keep it at 50/50 until she got more evidence.
She looked at him and there was something about this kid he had been sitting with an obvious purposeful carelessness then he relaxed for real when she lied about how much she heard from there on out she got tenser and tenser.
He had been staring at his hand rather than her. The look on his face was kind of sweet. He looked like a dorky kid. The kind of person Raine or Lilith might have been friends with back at hexside and he was Luz's friend.
He genuinely looked like his hand being out was some sort of betrayal. His brows were furrowed and he looked annoyed at his hand and the entire situation.
Something about him seemed entirely genuine and she reminded herself the genuine thing could be a trap she extended her hand. His eyes were locked on her and his look went from surprised to angry his glare met her eyes.
"What is it, kid"
"I'm not stupid owl lady"
"What do you mean"
"The hand" she had no idea what the kid was talking about. She decided honesty was the best way to calm this kid down.
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
He rolled his eyes. “I don't know why you tried to pull something so basic It's akin to crossing your fingers behind your back.” She made her stare as blankly as possible. “You shake with your right hand.” Eda blinked. "You shake with your right hand?" Eda and he looked at the hand in question. Eda blinked again. Why had she never heard that was important before?
She was a little surprised most of the she broke the rules someone told her. She would have been angry no one had told her (things like shaking hands were important to some people in business) if it hadn’t been so inconsequential. Seriously, why did this kid notice or care?
Eda almost sighed, She wanted to tell the kid she didn’t care but she thought that might be a bad idea. This kid did not seem like he took anything lightly and saying she didn’t care about something protocol-related seemed like an awful idea if he was trying to make peace.
It was honestly (if this wasn’t a trap) kind of mature of him to do this. Even if he did seem a little too much like a little kid trying to act like an adult.” “is-”- “I-” “that-” Eda tried several sentences before deciding on one. “Kid, I genuinely did not know that. I thought a handshake was a handshake was a handshake.”
The kid got a weird expression on his face and then shook it off. He still looked incredibly wary. Did this kid ever stop being on edge? She went with what worked best with anyone like this. Pure logic.
“Kid you proposed the handshake, not me if I didn’t want to shake hands with you I just wouldn’t have shaken your hand. You do know not everybody is out to get you. Right?”
“Of course, I know that.”
The kid was looking even more offended now. As funny as that expression was, this was the opposite of what her goal should be. “Then just shake my hand.” The kid reached out and grabbed her hand. He closed his eyes as he shook it three times then dropped it. He pulled his hand away from hers in the same motion.
Cradling the sacrificed hand to his chest. After about a minute a look crossed his face. It was a look of frozen fear. His eyes flicked towards and Eda knew what he was thinking. It could be ages until Luz emerged from her room. Though the look went away some of the tension stayed His eyes would flick towards Luz’s room and then jolt back to Eda like he couldn’t believe he had looked away.
Empathy pangs made her skin feel too tight. At least she thought that’s what it was. She looked down, and no feathers. Yep, it was empathy pangs. Even if she didn’t fully trust him she didn’t want him to feel this uncomfortable. This type of discomfort was almost palpable.
She wracked her brain, what could she do or say that could stop him from feeling this type of uncomfortable and not make him start feeling another type of uncomfortable?
Luz had never said anything else about him; she'd met this kid so few times she knew so little about him she couldn’t think of- wait she had it. At Eclipse Lake, she had only been half listening but he said something. It was something like…
“I remember you talking about something about the titan's body. Do you want to talk about that?” She barely managed to not cringe at that. Do you want to talk about that? She sounded like a fool but she did know what it was like when you got someone started on talking about something they loved.
Special interests as Luz called them could get a person talking for hours. A large percent of the people Eda dealt with on a daily basis had one but she knew she asked him that all wrong it could offend him. Luckily he answered her.
“The titan’s veins. Though veins are usually located all over an organism’s body when witches talk about the titan’s veins they mean specific ones. The ones you specify are located in the titan’s knee.”
He repeated the facts in a bored drawing tone but something kindled in his eyes.
Not love but some interest. Something told her she just needed the right question and the dam would break and she remembered what he had been talking about more clearly now. She had spent enough years around dorks to know how to format a question right to break the dam. Why was she doing this again?
“You said ancient witches learned that magic in the titan’s veins would bounce back at you?” A perfect formula, a question not wrong enough to be plainly wrong but wrong enough that the targeted nerd could straighten out the facts, and then would need to say more.
“That’s not fully what I was saying but I suppose it was true. I was saying ancient witches mined the veins for Titan’s blood. When the Boiling Isles as we knew it was being built the titan’s blood was a valuable resource and mined because of it. Later on, I told you separately that the magic in the veins of a titan makes magic bounce back at you.”
He stopped. Why had he stopped? He was trying to keep up a face of calm attention but failing miserably his hands were in excited fists one step from wild gesticulation his eyes both sparkled and held back he desperately wanted to say something and part of her wanted him to as well.
He had similar energy to Lily back then but some small thing (she couldn’t tell what) gave the assurance that it would be interesting just like Raine had.
A stab hit her heart at that thought so she ignored it full force. Is that all you know? Just as she thought it spurred him into speech.
“Solid fact, yes.” He stopped. He had actually stopped and she was genuinely impressed. Not necessarily good impressed but still impressed. That usually would have worked on any nerd. “Kid, do you have anything you want to say?”
“No”
“Geeze kid just say what you want to say It's this or awkward silence. Anyway, this might be interesting.”
One tiny flash in his eyes. Something she couldn’t name and he began. This is strictly me theorizing. “I’m probably not the first person to come up with this of course but I didn’t hear it from anyone else I swear.” he rambled.
Then he shook his head and composed himself. “I think they are thinking wrong when they talk about it well actually I think one of two theories. The first I have heard spread around I can’t remember if I heard it first or thought of it before I heard it but one theory is that the Titan had some barrier and I think that specific thing is bullcrap.
The titan didn’t know it was going to die and did not know it might need magic to protect it on the inside however I do believe that there may have been a thin magic-resistant coating in certain areas to help it in day-to-day life like in the stomach and throat and so anything alive and kicking being digested can’t take too much damage.
My theory I haven’t heard anywhere else though I'm sure others have thought of it. He hesitated “I don’t think it really has anything to do with the inside of the titan. The veins of the Titan aren’t affected by magic I believe because most of it wasn't. I think the titan was impervious to magic.
Of course, most people think that but no one has talked about it in relation to the veins of the Titan. It makes far more sense evolutionary-wise that an outward manifestation would happen rather than inward. A material is the same on both sides so if the skin of the titan was impervious so was the internal skin.”
He suddenly quiets why am I even telling you this you’ll find a way to use it against Belos someday. That was probably your goal.”
“My goal?” Eda was annoyed now eda was trying to be nice to the kid but now he was accusing her of something untrue.
“I just wanted to let you talk about something you wanted to talk about”
He laughed what she was pretty was supposed to be a skeptical ironic laugh but what was not?
“That’s a stupid lie.”
“No, it is an honest truth.”
“You are the owl lady, you don’t operate on honesty.”
“Maybe I don’t operate it but I tell it. A decent portion of the time.”
“Whatever. You just want to use it against Belos”
How could I do that? I would use it against Belos if I could since he’s a bad guy but It's not like I even asked you that to get info to use against him.
He is not a bad guy. He is the savior of the boiling isles you should know that it says it everywhere.
They stare each other down chests heaving eda can’t believe this kid. How can he preach about belos like that? Does he know anything about him? His arms are crossed over his chest now. In anger, they continue to glare until-
“Guys, what’s going on?”
Luz stands in the doorway a tiny bit of sleep in her voice but she looks mostly awake and alert. Is she still acting eight? Eda studies her movements for a moment
“Luz you're 14 again!”
“That's good. I feel fourteen but I wasn’t sure. What gave it away?”
The kids darted his eyes toward Eda. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Let me tell you that is a good-” She stops as she sees their position, “you guys weren’t-”
“I just finished telling her about what I promised. We just started talking. It wasn't going great and I think we were just about to start arguing then you came in.”
Eda was a little impressed again. He told Luz a lie that wasn’t what she wanted to hear but that was closer to what she wanted to hear than the truth. That was definitely not a point in his favor in the her-trusting-him-department.
“It’s good you didn’t fight” She smiles showing that it was the right thing to say. She is obviously relieved
“But Hunter we need to talk”
“Alone,”
she says as Eda makes a move to follow Eda hates seeing them alone in the same room again she doesn’t trust him, no matter how dorky he is.
He’s alone with her kid again. Eda reminds herself that she has spent years seeing him and in places far easier to hurt Luz than in the house of the owl lady. He could be worse. She’d have him in her house a day, hopefully she could get a read on him in that time.
24 hours seemed like enough time to see if she could trust him near Luz.
What if the answer was she couldn’t? What did it say about Eda? What would it do to Luz? Eda shook it off that wasn’t what she needed to think about. She grabbed a mug and poured a drink. It would be a long 24 hours but when she saw the Luz’s joy in Luz’s expression when she exited the room a couple of minutes later she thought it might be worth it.
As she zoned back in she noticed something tear tracks on Luz’s face someone had some explaining to do. It would be a special 24 hours no matter what the outcome.
The kid seemed stubborn, it probably wouldn’t be any more than that. She prepared to head over and check the situation out. She would be as mature as she needed to be. She hoped Luz’s fun wouldn’t be ruined.