get the party started

No had never been a word she’d particularly paid much attention to. Phoebe figured she’d heard it too often as a child, as the coven and her parents had sketched out a life for Lawrence, then for her, that neither of them – OK, certainly her – had no chance of actually living out. God, being a mother with a handful of kids clinging to her, snotty noses wiped on her skirt, grubby hands clinging as they sobbed – just sitting at the bar in Emerald City she shuddered – it was a nightmare she would’ve been trapped in for the better part of what she liked to think would’ve been a century. Lawrence had been wrong when the rat had tried to throw her under the bus with Teddy when he’d screwed up, she didn’t hate kids, she liked them just fine from a distance of about a hundred miles or so.

After she’d swept out of the apartment she’d ruminated on it – well, had brooded on it – over a bottle of vodka with Kitty. She hadn’t unpacked the peanut butter sticky little problem, but eventually it had become apparent that if Teddy did soften enough that he would tolerate her slotting into that part of Lawrence’s life that was intimately adjacent to his, then Julian would be right next to her in that little slot. Uncle Lawrence’s sister held onto with those mucky hands.

Lord help her.

Phoebe eyed Lawrence as she tossed back the however many-th birthday drinks Lawrence was ‘buying’ for her, her brows knitting as she sank the rest of her drink. No party, no fries shared with Teddy, not even a toast over the first drink to go down. There was that warm spot in the pit of her stomach though, the one that hadn’t filled often in the first couple of years. It had been a barren, frozen wasteland, much like the world their parents had cast her out into. The ring on her finger might have stopped her from burning up in the sun, but it hadn’t exactly provided some sort of glorious second life for her. Joshua had done that, until he’d been hollowed out by that damned disease.

She tipped her glass up again, only a drop of watered down alcohol rolling into her mouth before the near melted ice cube followed. Phoebe’s teeth cracked what was left of it, regret sliding down her throat with it. It wasn’t as though the years with Joshua hadn’t been good, but they had been human and that certainly wasn’t left to any of them now.

At Lawrence’s suggestion she go get more ice, Phoebe hissed out a cool breath, eyes as amber coloured as the whiskey she’d been drinking rolling at him. ”Happy birthday, Phoebe. Go and get the ice if you want a cold drink, Phoebe,” she bitched as she strode towards the fridge. ”So much for being treated like a queen on my birthday. You’re lucky I’m feeling benevolent.” A sharp smile was shot back over her shoulder as she disappeared into the store room with its adjacent freezer, promising not so much benevolence tomorrow – it wasn’t like Lawrence hadn’t been deserving of it for weeks.

The freezer door hissed open, a plume of vapour escaped. In the space it would’ve taken her to draw in a single breath it cleared, revealing racks of ice cube trays and vodka, and the plastic wrapped dead body. ”Oh, God,” Phoebe muttered, disgusted and disconcerted in equal measures. Lawrence’s arrival set the plastic to fluttering and her stomach to twisting. ”A reaper…” Phoebe echoed slowly. The laugh bubbled out of her, tinged with just a little hysteria. She’d learned about plenty of things that went bump in the night but that was a new one on her. ”How did you end up working here again?” One brow winged.

Most women would’ve run shrieking, but a century of being a blood thirsty monster at worst and an ice cold bitch at best meant that Phoebe wasn’t scared of one body frozen solid. She stepped in, bending to peel back the plastic. The skin was coated in frost, but the dark scruff of beard, man bun and pretty face were still recognisable above the deep slash that bisected Raik’s throat. Phoebe crouched, studying his face for a moment with a tinge of regret before she pointed at him and then looked up at Lawrence. ”The next time Teddy cries on your shoulder about me, you can tell him this is why I don’t get involved with men. You honestly didn’t recognise him?” Lawrence had been at the bar the night she’d met Raik, all the better to talk drinks out of, and honestly, she doubted that had been the only time Raik had tailed his brother there.

Tagged: LAWRENCE MURPHY * Word Count: 798

Their mom had tried. Tiny lights in a pretty grim existence (looking back it was grim at least, at the time it was more restrictive than anything), candle flames to blow out on the cake, frosting to look from her fingers, much to their dad’s disappointment. She still did it, a mental two fingers up to their dad every year. The year before last it had been a single candle in a salted caramel cupcake in the village, set down on her desk by one of her deputies. Make a wish. Lawrence. The same wish she’d made for years, like somehow it would magic her brother up. Well, Phoebe guessed that maybe it had come true in the end, it’d just taken a while to end up here.

Drinking on her birthday – shocker. Lawrence hadn’t exactly been original with the gift, not the way Josiah had been. There hadn’t been much out in that wilderness, but every year Joshua had brought out some tiny memento, even it was just a piece of honeycomb, or some tiny wooden thing he’d whittled himself. It wasn’t riches, but she hadn’t wanted those. Phoebe supposed Lawrence could’ve bought her something expensive today. She wouldn’t have cared though – a woman could buy her own Louboutins after all (well, alright, she could compel them, but that wasn’t exactly illegal, was it?) – being with her brother was what she’d wished for and it was what satisfied, even if it was likely to come with lectures about making it right with Teddy … or bodies.

Good lord. Maybe she should’ve asked for the knock off designer heels instead. Lawrence could’ve compelled someone into opening up their shop after hours if he’d tried hard enough. Plenty of things were slipping his mind though.

Any huff about having to fetch things for herself on her birthday vanished as she’d practically tripped over the body. At least it wasn’t fresh enough to have a pool of blood on the ground – that stuff didn’t come out of leather easily and she obviously couldn’t rely on Lawrence to stump up replacements. Lawrence was there before she’d had a chance to do much more than recoil at the sight of the body (vampire she might’ve been, but she wasn’t your stereotypical monster, she had no interest in having to dispose of such things). Her brows arched as she stared at Lawrence. She thought he’d been joking about reapers. ”Just popping in and out for a drink I suppose. Let me guess, they’re the espresso martini sort? Or is it always a Dark and Stormy?” She’d known there were more things outside of the valley than in it, but honestly? Reapers?

Phoebe made a small sound, pushing her hair back from her face, fingers brushing her forehead like she was checking herself for the fever she wasn’t capable of now. ”I’d say there’s a reason for that. A little bit of advice, dear brother, get job hunting again.” The benefit of free drinks didn’t seem worth this. Almost shaking it off, Phoebe stepped in instead of out – although Lawrence seemed to chicken out, stepping back as she started to probe. Maybe the cold had started to get to him, addling his brain like he’d forgotten how to handle it in the years he’d been south of the border, so to speak. She rolled her eyes at his dumb sounding ‘huh?’. Phoebe sank into a crouch, balancing easily on her heels to wrap her arms around her knees. ”I’m not going to tell you if you’re not going to listen,” she said with exasperation. It would go in one ear and out the other, like almost everything else seemed to.

Slowly, Phoebe reached out and brushed Raik’s hair back from his face, nobody deserved to look their worst when they were laying in state, even in an industrial freezer. His skin was ice cold as she brushed her fingers over his chest, then he had been warm, hot even, against the perpetual cool of her skin. ”Bingo, you’ve got it,” she said dryly. Finally she looked up at Lawrence, her expression growing tight, almost as if the cold were leaching into her. ”I’m guessing you were keeping his wayward little brother company while we were … well, having some fun. I hope you managed to keep him out of trouble. That seemed to be Raik’s full time occupation. Have .. have you seen him in here since?” Had Remzi gone off the rails without Raik there to watch over him – the same way Lawrence seemed to have done without her there to slap some sense into him.

Sorry. The word echoed in Phoebe’s head as Lawrence rudely grabbed the ice and started back. She lingered a moment, leaning down to press her lips where her fingers been a moment before. ”Rest in peace. You deserved better.” Maybe that was the plan in keeping him here, finding a way to that better for him.

Nausea rose in Phoebe’s throat as she covered Raik’s face back up and left the freezer. She strode back to the bar, ignoring the ice Lawrence was dealing with. She went straight for the bottle, uncapping it, wiping the top (just in case), before she belted back a mouthful. It burned on its way down, driving some of the chill out. ”Did you lose some brain cells in there?” she asked, her face screwing up. Phoebe took another belt before she let the bottle thud down on the bar.

The frown slowly bled in, her eyes settling on the bar instead of meeting her brother's. ”I kill them, they don’t usually end up playing popsicle at the end though. I wasn’t a nun all those years you know. I … there was someone after I left. I loved him Lawrence, I had years with him and in the end I killed him. Do you expect me to go looking for someone else to have that with? How about Teddy, do you want your sister to be the reason he’s not around to raise his son?” Joshua had died of cancer, not from her murdering him, draining him, tearing his throat out, but she’d wondered a thousand times since if he would have ended up sick if he hadn’t found her. If he hadn’t spent years portioning out his blood to her, maybe he would’ve lived a longer life, a happier one. Her expression startled to settle into those softer lines, the tears burning at the back of her eyes that she would not let turn into those self-pitying tears. It might’ve been her birthday, but she wasn’t going to cry, even if she wanted to.

Tagged: LAWRENCE MURPHY * Word Count: 1096

She could’ve laid down in the freezer butt ass naked and only felt the memory of being a lump of ice. The undead didn’t feel the same way the living did. They didn’t have that inner clock running down, cells dying, lines forming. Death and resurrection had taken all of that away from them, apparently without the interference of reapers. That had Phoebe shuddering. She almost wrapped her arms around her, warding off the chill that was rising off of the body as much as it was the metal walls with their load of super cooled pipes – all the better to keep the bodies fresh enough that someone could wave a wand and have them sitting up later. Looking down at Raik, Phoebe frowned and swallowed, the taste of the liquor (the free liquor) Lawrence had poured for her birthday already gone.

Had one of them come for Joshua? Strolling through the cabin without her having a single clue that Death literally walked among them. She didn’t want to picture it, the only thing that had provided any sort of blessing was that he had gone somewhere better. Maybe one day they’d be reunited, even if she was a blood thirsty monster (albeit one who tried to make up for some of the shittiness that happened in this world). ”Sounds like a lovely job,” Phoebe said dryly. ”I bet their parents are so proud.” It was heaven or hell at least, and there was no doubt in her mind which one both Raik and Joshua had ended up in. Neither man had a bad bone in their body.

Whiskey coloured eyes slid past her brother, scanning the bar beyond him as though they were lurking out there, about to pop in to join the celebration. They’d have plenty of work here when they were on the clock. The place was a cesspit, even if it was one she enjoyed (Phoebe suspected that had more to do with Lawrence’s presence here than anything). Her lips curled sharply as she looked back, her eyes rolling. All those years of life and Lawrence still didn’t have a guileful bone in his body. ”It’s called compulsion, Lawrence. Takes away all the obstacles.” Phoebe’s brows rose, a chuckle rolling out of her. ”How on earth did you think I got into Whitmore?” There’d been an application of course, but the wheels had been greased with a few words once she’d arrived at the school. The two had an undercurrent of vervain, of course, going hand in hand with people like Lawrence’s finger sucking friend, but there were still ways.

Unfortunately, it seemed, one of those ways had found a man who hadn’t deserved any of the violence wrought on him. The blood was dried, frozen into a ruby red crust on his skin, in his hair, but Phoebe imagined she could still smell it. She reached out, drawing the plastic up around Raik’s throat, hiding the wound that ran in a brutal line around his throat. A strangling. If she opened his eyes she probably would’ve seen the tell-tale petechiae in his eyes. A headwound inflicted first if the blood that stiffened his hair along with the cold was anything to go by. ”Before or after he lost his brother?” she asked hoarsely. Lawrence said he hadn’t really seen Remzi around since the body had appeared, but not really wasn’t a definitive statement. ”You should find him, tell him where his brother is. Nobody deserves to be like this without family around.” Only the two of them had been, hadn’t they? Spending years apart, believing each other dead for at least part of that time.

It felt almost as though she’d closed a door to a man’s tomb as they’d closed the freezer door behind them. Maybe with a little magic still in her blood she could’ve frozen her glasses for the rest of the night, avoiding any sort of trip back to the freezer – it felt disrespectful to just reach over Raik every time the ice bucket needed a refill. You had to have respect for the dead, especially when they’d meant something to you, no matter how small. Joshua’s death had hollowed her out, leaving room for something colder, more bitter to move into the space. She could still define each line of its border inside of her, and hadn’t planned on mapping them out for anybody else. It was her grief to carry alone, even if she would have cried on her brother’s shoulder if he’d been there then. There would have been somebody to understand.

Lawrence seemed to struggle with it now, leaving her exasperated until she cracked that space open and let something bleed out for the first time in decades. Phoebe’s lips pursed, her fingers finding her glass to toy with it – a distraction. ”Who’d mean to kill someone they loved? It breaks something in your Lawrence. That doesn’t go away, every time you let somebody else in, it’s there.” Her fingers found her chest, curling into her top before she forced herself to let go. She nodded mutely, her smile ghosting into place for a moment. ”Joshua. He got lost in the woods, as they all did, but … I didn’t let him go again. He loved me and I loved him. If this wasn’t such a … curse … maybe he wouldn’t have had to die.” It was a curse though, a down side so sharp that it could cut you to the bone.

Phoebe nudged her glass towards her brother, encouraging him to fill hers up again. ”Did you love her before she talked you into it? Were you happy?” With someone that callous, who obviously enjoyed the volatility not giving a shit about anything could bring, some part of her doubted that it would’ve been possible for her brother to have been happy in that. Amusement filled her eyes finally as she laughed. ”You have awful taste in women you know,” she said lightly. Her hand released the glass though, finding her brother’s hand to settle over it, to stop the rattle of that bottle lid and let him know she wasn’t an entirely heartless bitch. The heart wanted what the heart wanted after all.

Tagged: LAWRENCE MURPHY * Word Count: 1040