~~Jack~~
"Mary?"
No answer.
"Mary, you there?"
No answer.
His mom sighed and shook her head as she pulled out a chair and sat down at their old kitchen table.
"I talked with her last night. She... She's pretty angry. Not at anyone, except maybe herself. She thinks she's not Mary."
No one thought she was Mary anymore. Everyone at the ball heard what she said, and considering her body had gone from perfectly fine, to dead, in five minutes flat, it was pretty obvious there was something wrong with whatever his mom and Triss had done. Or, if not wrong with the process, wrong with the target. And as much as it hurt to think about, it was probably the latter. She wasn't Mary. She was an afterimage, an echo, some ephemera remnant, and the body had rejected it.
"You know what I'm thinking," Jack said as he pulled out a chair and sat beside his mom.
"I know."
"And I know what you're thinking. That it doesn't matter that she's not Mary."
His mom nodded, eyes hardened and pointed down at the table. "It doesn't matter."
"I think it does."
"You're wrong."
Jack opened his mouth, but closed it after a few silent seconds. There was no arguing with his mom when she was like this. Logic, out the window. Evidence, out the window. As much as he loved his mom, her absolute refusal to use her brain and break things down into cold hard math, ever, was infuriating. Antoinette did cold logic with everything, even the things Jack wouldn't. The Prince and his mother were polar opposites.
"Alright, we'll do this your way. What do we do now?"
"I don't know."
"Mom, you have to know your next step. You can't just blindly drift through your second life reacting and never planning. You're going to catch a sunrise like that. You have to figure out what you're going to do."
"I am going to make sure Mary... Mary's ghost, is given everything she needs to be happy."
"She'll never be happy, Mom. She's a ghost, and an angry one." No need to recount what happened yesterday. If his mom hadn't been there to stop Mary's ghost, she would have done some real damage to the people in the ball. Even a vampire would struggle to survive getting cut to bits in a tornado of broken glass, which he was pretty sure Ghost Mary could do.
"It's better than being alone," she said, "haunting an old house with no one in it, until she turns into some sort of... local legend that turns out to be real, and hurts people."
Jack raised a brow. That was a specific example. Probably some horror movie his mom saw at some point, with teenagers breaking into a haunted house at night on a dare, only for some of them to die. She never could handle horror movies. Horror anything.
"You said she talked to you yesterday?" he asked. After the incident, he knew his mom went to visit her. He also heard Jacob went with her, which made him nervous as all hell.
"She did. She was... crying. She..." His mom took a slow breath and looked behind her, at the stairs up to the bedrooms. "You heard her, at the end. She was happy she got to... to see us again."
Lowering his head, Jack reached out across the table, and set a hand on his mom's. She turned it enough to hold it, and the two of them looked down.
"Mom, I... I don't want you to tear yourself up over this. Mary's gone, and her ghost... Maybe she's just like Mary, whole enough to even be considered Mary. She certainly seemed like her when she was in a body, and... Fuck me, I should have told Sándor to check her dreams, or Fiona."
"She got three days with us again. I spent every moment of those three days with her, and we had fun, and we talked and cried and laughed and..." Her voice caught in her throat, and she squeezed Jack's hand as she shuddered for a moment. "I'm not going to lose her again."
She was already lost if Triss's ritual didn't work. His mom knew it, too.
"I guess we're back at square one again. It's easy to keep this house locked down, so Mary's... Mary can stay as long as she wants."
"Yeah..."
"But, what're you going to do? Are you going to try again?"
She shook her head. "We had to do some... bad stuff, to make that body, and to do the ritual. And we're pretty sure we did it right. Doing it again will lead to the same result, and I... I can't do all that, just to spend three days with her again, and see... see that again."
Jack squeezed her hand back. "No one would expect you to, Mom, especially Mary."
"Then I guess we go back to the way things were. I'll talk to Mary again later, maybe tomorrow night. Me and her, we can... figure something out."
It was like watching a desperate rat try and figure its way out of a maze. No matter what path his mom took, she wouldn't be able to get free. The shit reality that Mary was dead and gone was closing in around her, and watching her struggle against it made Jack want to puke like he was still kine. Everything sucked.
"Sounds like a plan." Nodding, he got up, and pulled on her hand. She resisted for a bit, but he was determined, and eventually she got up. He didn't let go of her hand until they were out of the house.
In the driveway, Beatrice and Jennifer waited. They must have shown up while Jack was inside with his mom. Beatrice in her usual white tank top and jeans, Jen in a casual suit, and both of them looking like they'd just put their dog down.
"Sam," Triss said, taking a small step forward. "We... We were... We didn't know if..."
His mom ran the fifteen feet between her and Triss and Jen, and hugged them both, squeezing them both in her arms.
"Why didn't you come visit last night, after what happened!?"
Jen blinked at the woman between her and Triss, and then at Jack, who of course could only shrug. If they thought his mom would blame them for what happened, they didn't know her very well. But, they probably thought she'd be too upset to be reasonable at the time, which was actually a good bet.
"We just thought you'd want space," Triss said, and she hugged his mom snug and tight, before Jen did the same thing. "She in there?"
"She is, but she's hiding. She's thankful though."
"Not angry?"
"Not at you or anyone. Just... mad at herself." Samantha sighed as she relaxed her hug, and let both ladies go. "But she's thankful, super thankful, for what she got to have."
"She react to Jacob well?" Triss asked.
"She still remembers everything that happened when... when in the body. She reacted to him just fine." Jack's mom smiled and nodded, and took another step back. "I'm going to see my sire, and... I don't know, talk about stuff I guess. You two, you um--"
Triss put up a hand. "Everything's on pause until we figure out what to do. But..."
"But it's not looking good," Jennifer said. "And, you already know that."
"I do." Nodding, Sam gave each girl another quick hug, before she pulled out her phone. Probably texting for a ride. "We should talk, later, in the future. What're you gonna do, Jack?"
"Not sure yet. I got some time."
Triss stepped up to him and managed a quick look in his eyes before she looked down and away slightly. Shame? Guilt?
"Let's hang for a bit, then."
"Yeah, we can do that."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"So Jacob really had nothing to do with it," Jack said.
Triss shook her head as she sipped her blood. Back at his mansion and in one of the smaller dining rooms, they had some privacy, and a nice table to sit at. Plus, he had blood in the fridge, so he got the bottle before they sat down. Jen insisted he get his 'pets' to pour their drinks, but he wasn't that lazy. Jen also insisted getting ordered around would turn them on. He insisted that did not apply to orders a rude customer might give a waitress.
"Not really," Triss said. "I mean, yeah, he's a witch and he's helped me become a witch. He's taught me a lot. I've done some pretty intense shit, thanks to him. But resurrection? He's pretty much told me to give it up, multiple times. And I'm pretty sure he knew it'd fail, even with Sam's situation."
Jack sneered, but Jen reached across the table corner and gave him a firm shoulder slap.
"Jacob has treated your mother well, and is one of the few joys in her life, Jack," his fellow Ventrue said. "You may not like him, but he is very sweet, kind, loving, and tender with her."
"Tender?"
"Indeed. After he and Othello have fucked her into a near coma, he often spends time hugging and cuddling her, and asks if she's okay. It's very sweet."
Jack slowly pushed his glass aside, and let his head fall against the table, hard enough his forehead made the whole damn thing shake.
Triss laughed halfheartedly as she sipped her drink again. "Jen, that was mean."
"Well, he was being mean."
"No kid likes their stepdad. That shit takes time, you know?"
"Oh god kill me now," he said into the table.
"Alright, I think we're avoiding the serious shit," Triss said. "I know the Invictus, and the Prince, track murders in Dolareido. I bet you know we've scooped up some assholes from Devil's Corner, and killed them."
Slowly he sat up, groaning as he rubbed his temples, trying to scrub away the image Jen put there. No such luck.
"You're not the only vamps who do that. More than anyone else lately, sure, but... but I know the Invictus, and the Ordo Dracul, occasionally kidnap kine, and either kill them, or lock them up for experiments or blood. People the world is better off without." Though he said that with a little hesitation. It wasn't a healthy habit to go around playing God.
"Your mom was... involved in some of it," Triss said. "I'm not happy about it, but she insisted. She's seen... and done, some pretty dark shit."
"Fuck..."
"And you know we have Elen."
"Yeah." Which was pretty fucking terrifying.
"Well, she's been helping us."
"Not sure how you're forcing her."
"Black Blood. We got Elen at the center of a ritual room. Basically gives him the clear to, uh, half possess her. I don't think he can full possess her, or anyone with a pulse. But close enough."
He shivered. Okay, yeah, Black Blood being involved so directly was pretty fucking scary. Forcing Elen to work for them? Scarier.
