enter the labyrinth
Of course, it wasn't something he could go to deal with immediately. Tony and Carol were speaking with Fury to get a couple of people to interview Yardley, and Stephen didn't want to wander into SHIELD alone. There were plenty of ways that could end tediously.
Grace came to the Sanctum door, wearing a leather jacket and motorcycling trousers, hair braided back and eyes dancing around as if she could see the spellwork and ambient magic in everything.
“The job isn't done, then?” she asked.
“Apparently not,” Stephen admitted, leading her into the living room. It probably was properly something like a sitting room or morning room, given the layout and size of the house, but it was more or less the space he'd kept mostly clear of the dangerous or distracting relics when someone came for a consultation.
Wong had gone back to his puzzle box, swearing a bit under his breath.
“Can I take a look?” Stephen asked. Wong gave him a searching look, before handing it over.
It was then that Stephen realized he'd taken off his gloves earlier, and never bothered putting them back on. Ah well, Grace seemed to be trying not to be obvious as she studied everything.
“I am going to go interview Yardley,” he told Grace. “Most likely with a few other Avengers. Maddy Pryor, most likely, and either Ms. Marvel or Iron Man.”
It wasn't that the team didn't trust him, he knew, shaking fingers tracing over the looping ribbons of brass, but they knew he and the Order had a long standing... complicated history with the idea of government work. And SHIELD was not overly fond of him, given his habit of portalling agents who harassed him to various inconvenient places.
“May I come along?” Grace asked, curling herself up a bit on the couch. “I know something happened with Yardley and one of the Courts, but it wasn't mine, unfortunately, and I am thinking it was the Frozen Day, and trying to get an answer out of them...” She wrinkled her nose. “Zita's the only half-decent one of the lot, and she's younger than me, so she wouldn't be likely to know.”
Stephen reflected that it might be an awkward time to ask her age- he was fairly certain it was mid-thirties, but time, immortality, and cross-dimensional things could make it tricky. (See Clea, who looked to be a bit younger than Grace seemed, and was easily twice his age.)
“I was eleven, so Zita would have been seven or so,” Grace clarified, smiling a bit. Her eyes had darted down to his hands, but that might easily have been the puzzle box. “I can change my illusion, if you think it might help?”
“She could pretend to be a sorcerer for the Order,” Wong offered. He looked faintly amused, which meant Stephen really was terrible at hiding his expressions right now.
“I'd need to be honest with whichever Avengers come along, but I don't see why not,” Stephen worked it out in his head. “Given how nasty breaking that curse was, it might be a good idea.” Maddy and Illyana had similar sources for their power, but Illyana was better at cursebreaking and necromantic spells, while Maddy was better at transformation and compulsion spells.
Illyana was also currently across the Atlantic, on vacation with her girlfriend.
Grace hummed a few notes, and the illusion she was currently wearing collapsed like a wet paper bag, sharpening her features, making her eyes entirely black, and revealing rather sharper teeth.
She also seemed to slump in relief, rolling her shoulders and wiggling a bit. “It itches if I throw it on too long,” she admitted.
“Or if you wear it in a home filled with protective spells meant to prevent people from trying to hide things?” Stephen asked, raising an eyebrow. He was wiggling a ribbon a bit, wondering if he had the trick of it...
“That would do it,” Grace agreed. “Or on and off too much. I'll throw on the new one when it's time to go?”
“That works,” Stephen agreed, before a rough bit of metal caught along his finger, slicing in surprisingly deep. He hissed, nearly dropping the box.
“That was why I was wearing gloves,” Wong pointed out. “Are you alright?”
“I will be,” Stephen said, taking a look at it. “I'll just rinse it out, we still have the liquid bandages Ana makes, right?”
Wong nodded. “Want me to take a look?”
Translation- were his hands up to it?
“I could...” Grace blushed a bit. “I learned a few healing spells, if...” If he would accept the help?
Or, he thought, as he tamped down his pride, she was worried he might have reservations trusting a fae to put a spell on him. They did have a reputation.
“I spent a lot of time with my Learmont cousins- the human side- and we got in enough scrapes it seemed easier than trying to convince Eilidh to give me charms for them,” she continued in a rush, tucking a bit of night-black hair over her pointed ear. “Er, the Court's main healer. Cuts and bruises are about the limit of what I can do without materials, but...”
He set aside the box, then held his hand out, trying to ignore the tremors and way his nerves burned near the cut. “That'll save me some time,” he said, easily enough, and ignored the warmth in his chest as she gave him a surprised, delighted smile. He continued, pointedly ignoring his companion, “and it'll allow Wong to pretend that he doesn't use the liquid bandages to patch his knuckles up when he doesn't want anyone to know he got in a fight.”
Wong gave a deep sigh. “Once.”
“A season,” Stephen said, as Grace hummed a bit, night-sky colored magic twining about his finger. She gave him a faint frown, before shaking her head and finishing the spell, healing it as good as new.
The pins, most likely. Or perhaps the spell gave her a glimpse of his pain levels, though most of the spells that would do that were complex and involved trickier injuries. The pins had the surprising side effect of blunting transformation spells and other hexes- he should have warned her before she tried her spell.
The damn puzzle box better be where Alastair had stashed information leading to a hidden fortune. Hopefully starting with the money Sara had been certain he'd been skimming.
~
Grace's next disguise was interesting- hair the color of tree bark, with a hint of gray, hazel eyes, a bit heavier, with a nose that looked like it had set wrong from a break.
“I'm not the best, but I can throw together about three illusions,” she shrugged. “My usual one, where I don't look too much like a vampire, this one based off of some old friends, and one other one, based off of dad's family. They tend to fray when I'm throwing about too much magic, too.”
“Eh, we'll burn that bridge when we come to it,” Maddy was looking at what she'd found online about Gregory Yardley. “So he was one of those television psychic types, like the guy who bent spoons meets Sylvia Brown?”
“For the most part,” Stephen agreed. “He did actually help find some missing people, though I suspect some of them were people who didn't want to be found for good reason. There were darker rumors, as well.”
“Deals with demons, messing with people's minds?” Maddy asked, curled up like a cat and enjoying Tony's flinch.
“And he didn't even have post-partum issues,” Stephen said, agreeably enough. Maddy looked pleased. “The whole Satanic Panic was ebbing at the time, and he had self-preservation enough to hide the worst of it.”
“Was the candle a tripwire, do you think?” Grace mused. “Hiding something deeper in the caves?”
“It's a possibility,” Stephen admitted. “And you think it was Frozen Day that might have done something to put him in that stasis?”
“That's all Dad Saw, him with someone who looked to be of that Court,” Grace tapped a foot. “It matches the rumors that went out about that time, apparently.”
“Frozen Day?” Tony asked, with an edge of mockery in his voice.
“I know,” Grace rolled her eyes. “There are thirteen courts, and they all have a name that tells you about the place. We're perpetual night, they are all cold winter day and frozen senses of... everything, really.”
“They don't seem likely to have made a deal with someone who went on Larry King,” Stephen frowned, absently rubbing the finger that he'd cut. It was healed, but the nerves got unhappy for a while.
“Ah, but Grace Learmont is an engineer known for her ability to be politely sarcastic, and Lady Grace is the Huntress of the Midnight Court,” Grace pointed out. “It seems like Yardley had his own version of that divide.”
Stephen had to admit she had a point. “But would he have something to offer? And...” he frowned. “I don't think he went missing where the swim team went caving?”
“Couple of states away, from what you said,” Maddy agreed, not looking up from her tablet. “Christ, what was fashion then?”
“Compared to eighties hair...” Stephen mused. “I wonder, could he have been trying to link it to the same power source? If he was running it out of energy from, say, the Purple Dimension, or something like that...”
“Two doors created, and in breaking the curse, we opened one of them?” Grace finished. Tony was almost nodding along, Stephen noticed. He normally was a bit skittish about magic.
“They said he was coherent,” Maddy flicked a hand back and forth, and he could almost see the shadow of an unformed spell racing up and down her arm. Hopefully she wouldn't reshape the couch, it was comfortable and Maddy in a mood made things very pointy. And prone to attacking people. “Same age and everything.”
“So more likely frozen in time, and he fell out as a result of whatever side-effects the spell had,” Stephen tilted his head. “That might be useful. It means that unless SHIELD got him up to speed-” he paused to allow Tony room to snort his opinion on that- “he'll be fairly at see on mystical matters as they stand. We might be able to use that.”
Grace tilted her head. “I have questions about the candle, and how long it took to start killing its victims, and if it's linked to his captivity.”
“We'll definitely focus on that,” Stephen said. He wanted to know if it was possible there were more of them floating about.
“And it's time to go,” Tony said, tapping his earpiece.