The Locket

And she has a thousand virtues and not one acknowledged sin,
But she is the sort of person you could liken to a pin.
And she pricks you, and she sticks you, in a way that can't be said,
When you seek for what has hurt you, why, you cannot find the head.

-Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 'The Signboard'-

Chapter Eight

The man who opened the door was much younger than she had expected, and relatively tall given his Indian heritage. Though his face was heavily bruised, she could tell that he had dark skin and a starting shadow of an unshaved beard. His eyes were bright, however, and looked over both the girls with a questioning gleam. His gaze flicked down to the markings on their bodies that denoted their status as slaves.

"We are here to straighten the room," Selene said, answering his unspoken question. "And attend to any needs you may have, Sir."

He did not speak but moved away from his door to facilitate their entrance. Felicity was bubbling with inquisitiveness and the rush of adrenaline that comes from satiating a long-pent curiosity. She could barely keep herself from running into the room as she stepped through the portal. When both girls had entered, the door shut behind them. Magic, Felicity thought.

The prisoner shot it a weary look but returned to his chair and slumped back into it.

"Two others were already here," he said at last in accented English.

Felicity glanced back at Selene, catching the taut, nervous expression on her features. She thought quickly to fill the ensuing silence. "Lord Voldemort expects your stay to be comfortable," she said at last. "We will, however, reduce the frequency of our ministrations if this is displeasing to you."

His features remained impassive, but there was a subtle flicker in his expressive eyes that might have been amusement. "Comfort," he finally said, and pointed one long finger at his face. "Yes, the Dark Lord makes me quite comfortable."

Felicity could feel the withering look from Selene boring two small holes in her back. She took a laborious swallow, forcing the spittle down her suddenly dry throat. "Do you require any topical ointments to ease your injuries? Sir?" she hastily added.

The flicker in his eyes was completely extinguished and he continued to regard them in silence, his eyes blank.

But before she could get any further with her rather feeble attempt at justifying their presence, Felicity was surprised to see the gleam of amusement rekindled in his eyes and spreading down to the corners of his thin lips. "Let me guess. Two slave girls hear of a muggle who is educated, and wish to see him for themselves." He grinned at them both, the whiteness of his teeth emphasized by his skin. "And here you are in this room, the goddess room, expecting to see something amazing." He steepled his fingertips and leaned back in the chair. "Did you get your wish?"

Felicity could only gape at him, opening and shutting her mouth so she looked like a fish. Whatever internal dialogue Selene was doing ended when she stepped forward. "We meant no offense," she started, but he waved his hands to silence her.

"I would be curious in your place," he said, picking up the paper on the table beside him. "A muggle is the lowest on this lovely new social scale of ours, and some here like to remind me of it. In any case, I am aware of my status as a...novelty." The last word was spoken with a trace of sadness, but his eyes did not waver. "In any case, I'm not one to say no to a plate of food."

"I'd seriously reconsider that," Felicity muttered under her breath, but he heard her anyway, and grinned as he accepted the plate. She could not help but notice that despite the bruises and the general unkemptness of the man, he was rather attractive.

Selene smiled, though to Felicity it rather resembled an animal baring its fangs. "We depart then, Sir. I hope everything is to your liking." With a final curtsey, she gripped Felicity's wrist tightly and stepped quickly from the room.

Felicity allowed herself to be led for a short distance before she snatched her wrist back. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"I-nothing." Selene shook her head and started to walk at a faster pace.

"Seriously, what's wrong?" Felicity said as she struggled to keep up. And then a thought struck her. "You did this for me, the food duty."

"You wanted to get away from the kitchens." Selene shrugged. "It was a means to that end."

~~~

The food was not spiced to her liking, but her hunger was not as fussy as she, and the food was eaten, if not with any true gusto. The fool seated to her right was prattling on endlessly about some human uprising in a labor camp he owned in Berwick, just south of Scotland. She wondered if he would shut up if she stuck her fork in his gullet, but doubted it. His voice droned on an on and she longed to silence him so she could speak to Zabini, seated to her right at the circular table.

Her talkative dinner companion was an older man with a Polish sounding surname. She did know that he had married into the Rookwood family, and was only here because of his experience with runes, muggle Viking runes to be exact. How such a man came to hold a semblance of expertise in the area was unknown to her, but she had no interest in finding out the circumstances of it.

Alaric, she remembered. His first name is Alaric. Surya realized then that he had gone silent. "I'm sorry," she found herself saying. "Did you ask me something?"

The man's eyes regarded her face carefully. They were a watery gray, and squinty in a way that made Surya distrust him instantly. She knew that he was looking at her scar, though he made a pathetic attempt to seem disinterested by it. She would have preferred that he stared at it straightforwardly.

"How did you come by such a wound?" he repeated. His attempt to sound nonchalant was so pathetic it made her wince. "I hear talk that it was in service of Our Lord," he added.

She could see Zabini almost choke on the morsel he was chewing and shake his head at the man while trying to catch his eye. With a lazy smile at her friend, she leaned in closer to Alaric. "This scar?" She let her voice linger on the words, allowed the perfume she was wearing to permeate the man's nostrils.

Surya knew she was beautiful no longer, not with the ropy, stretchy scar tissue marring a face that was so praised in her girlhood. But she still had half of her once beautiful face, half her face and the wiles she had learned after the scar was given to her. Zabini had told her once that he thought the scar made her even more beautiful.

My mother used to make a grape wine when I was little, he had told her. She always said that a few rotten grapes made the final product taste even better. He had tapped on her scar. A bit of ugliness to make a more desirable whole. She had smacked his hand away and chastised him for saying untruths and false flattery, even though she knew full well that Zabini never dabbled in verbal chicanery.

Alaric stared at her wide-eyed as she leaned in closer. "It's none of your concern," she whispered. "But if you like it so much, I can give you one of your very own." Her fingers tightened visibly on the dinner knife. Needless to say, he avoided any conversation with her for the rest of the night.

After the little encounter, Zabini leaned towards her. "You really could be nicer, you know. There's a reason people shy away from you and it has absolutely nothing to do with your face."

"He could have been more direct," she whispered back. Then she remembered Alaric's directness when it came to questioning her scar. "Or subtle. Or an equal measure of both." She shrugged. "Best if he just shut his mouth."

Zabini shook his head and removed a small handkerchief from his robes to wipe the sweat from his face.

The poor man, Surya thought. Everything here makes him sweat. The heat, Our Master, his wife, the food. She watched him slurp down his third glass of water. Especially the food.

It seemed as though he read her thoughts, as he leaned towards her. "Sweating is a sign of the efficiency of the body," he said softly. "A muggle told me so."

"Is this before or after you were torturing him?"

He grinned sadly, shook his head and returned to his food.

Surya was well aware of the cold eyes of another member of the table, watching every second of her interaction with Zabini. Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini had troubles in their marriage, some whispered, but the exact nature of this was not known to anyone. What Surya did know was Pansy was intensely jealous of the close friendship between Surya and her husband. This jealousy had grown into intense hatred that had finally manifested in the form of a poisoning attempt three years ago.

Pansy had misjudged her assumed rival badly. Surya smiled as she remembered encountering the woman after receiving the tainted gift. Pansy had been alone in her estate, her children at school, her husband away. Surya had easily broken through the wards, and crept up on the woman as she applied her glamour charms in her bedroom mirror. The wand was knocked aside easily and Pansy had struggled for breath as Surya held her against the wall by her neck.

"I am not fucking your husband. Is that what you wanted to know?" She had squeezed her fingers ever harder around the soft throat. "The polite way would have been to ask."

Pansy's lips had turned blue and flecks of spittle danced across her lips with every agonizing rattle of indrawn breath.

You picked the wrong woman to start one of your catty little fights with. I have nothing to lose. She released the woman and had watched with a sneer as she sank to the floor. If you ever make any attempt on me or mine, I will kill your children. If you think I give a damn about what your husband thinks, you're very deluded. But you're not going to mention this to him, are you? She had twirled the woman's wand in her hands. You remember how your children entered this world? In a mess of blood and pain? She had snapped the wand in half and thrown the pieces at Pansy's feet. I'll see that they leave that way too.

Surya smiled at the memory and looked across the table, right into Pansy's eyes until the other woman looked away. Damn it, she thought, aching for a bit of a fight. Couldn't the bitch grow some spine?

Her thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a slave girl bearing a sealed parchment. The girl was reed-thin and had eyes that looked ready to pop out of her forehead. Strangely, instead of making her appear dull-witted, they lent her face a piercing quality, as though she could read one's very thoughts. Too much danger in that, Surya thought, grabbing the message and shoving the girl away from her. The hapless slave girl bumped her elbow sharply into the corner of a chair, and scurried away

When she was gone, Surya broke the seal and unrolled the parchment. "It seems," she said, tossing the letter to Zabini, "That our Master wishes to see us tomorrow."

He made no comment, but she could see his reaction clearly in his eyes. "We are honored that Our Master singles us out for his notice, are we not?" she said, a touch forcefully.

He looked at her and gave a smile that was hollow, empty. "Of course," he said softly. "Of course."

~~~

The bathwater was quite warm, and a small part of him wondered how the girl could find it refreshing in the stifling heat. Vincent traced his fingers across the surface of the water, watching the ripples form from the wake of his fingers, magic that was not magic. To think that Felicity has the ability to do it, he thought, not without a small jealous pang. I would be angry all the time too.

He heard a small rustle behind him and knew he was not alone in the room, though his body gave no outward sign of this awareness from years of practice. There was a feeling of power conferred upon appearing unannounced, like a predator lurching out of the shadows for its prey. Vincent had learned that allowing a false sense of this power resulted in greater reward from his patron. However, he knew he was not likely to curry any meaningful favors in this place, especially not with the Malinda Flint girl. Can she not see how people roll their eyes at her? he wondered. With an inward sigh, he allowed the last ripple to disappear and readied himself for the expression of surprise as he turned.

It was not feigned. A small smile graced the attractive features of Celeste Zabini, and she walked around him slowly, until she was on the other side of the tub. Her slender fingers joined his in tracing ripples in the bathwater. "You seem to have been expecting someone else?" she said mildly.

He quirked a lip upwards. It would be a lie for him to deny any physical attraction to the girl, although the circumstances with her father made interaction with his daughter somewhat uncomfortable. But she does not know that. Or need to, he remembered. "My lady is clever," he replied, his tone equally mild.

As a younger boy, Vincent had willfully deluded himself about his purpose in the brothel. He had initially imagined himself a hero, faced with trials of the flesh to overcome after which he would be rescued by those who knew his true destiny. He imagined himself a scion of a Love God, giving pleasure to those who were unable to find physical love in their own lives. But over time, his delusions crumbled away and left behind the sharp, acrid aftertaste of reality. He was a whore, and coin traded hands for the touch of his flesh, whether he was willing or not.

Vincent felt himself split into two halves at that point. One, deep down in his subconscious, was a little boy who hated what he did, and wanted to be free to love as he wished. The other half was the man who craved the physical release, and took pleasure upon getting it whenever he could. The boy was who he once was, and who he now longed to be. The man was who he had actually become.

Now, the man looked across from the pool and saw a sexually inexperienced female who found him to be physically attractive. Perhaps she thought herself subtle in the flirting games played among children of the wealthy, but she was no match for him. I wonder if I could do it, he mused. I wonder if I could have her and smile at the father when I see him.

She looked at him and her lips curved into an appreciative smile. "I came here with a message, actually."

Vincent wanted to wince. If she wanted to find him alone, brining a message was the least subtle way to do it. A slave does not have messages personally delivered by his master, he thought. And so what you really want is made more obvious. "How intriguing," he said evenly.

If she was disconcerted by his bored tone, she hid it well. "Malinda will not be able to come down as she had scheduled. Circumstances arose." She removed her fingers from the water and held them over the tub, allowing the water to drip from her fingertips. "A pity all your bath preparations should go to waste." Her eyes flicked up to his, and he could read the message in them. Or should they?

His face twitched with the fiercely suppressed need to grin. Baby steps, little bird. Instead he smiled at her, as innocent and chaste a smile as he could muster. "Such things happen, Mistress." he said. Reaching down into the tub, he found a small chain and gave it a quick tug.

The water swirled and gurgled as it spun down the drain. He didn't bother to look up. When the tub was empty, he finally raised his gaze and found that she was gone.

Author's Notes

So when I first started this, Felicity was going to be the main character, and the story told from her POV. I had a lot of trouble sticking to just her POV, so I figured I would add in a few others, it would be better for the purpose of this story anyway, so that's what I've done. Celeste Zabini will pop up in later chapters, she does serve a purpose, but not the way you would think after seeing her here. There is more to Selene than is obvious, she's not a nutter all the time. This also will be explained further in later chapters (as will the muggle doctor's role). Hopefully thinks aren't too confusing now.

A big thanks to my beta, Meucci Warlock!

Thanks for reading, and please, please review!