Κασσάνδρα

For a brief pause, she's not pushing or excitable - she's studying Jamie and listening to her words. Unfortunately, the idea of some cursed, enchanted object does excite her, but she doesn't wanna push and ruin stuff.

But she was glad she took a chance on Codie to change that. Whatever this was between them, it was new for Jamie, and sometimes scary, and embarrassing, and annoying... but she would gladly take all of that with the girl's company.

Cool or not, though, it being sold for money makes her stomach all knotted up, and she can tell Jamie's getting even more annoyed by the second. Hands clasped together, Codie gave her a tight squeeze, and made a face at the rest of the witches at they walked away.

"Is that, like, possible?" She almost doesn't hear the apology and her mind stop-stutters until she catches up, "Oh! It's fine. Witches are weird. I'm kinda used to it, Ma's always thinking up crazy stuff." She loves them, obviously, but. Weird.

She waits a beat, tilting her head, "You okay? You're all tense." That will not do.

It's hard to move on from what happened, though, or Codie's curiosity. Jamie herself feels her mind wandering and thinking back on what the Wyrmwood witches were saying, "it must be possible. That coven, they deal with all kinds of magical artifacts. Enchanted objects and all that. Cursed, more like." With the corner of her eye she looked back to see if the witches were still hovering them. Gone, thankfully. "Not the type of witch you wanna deal with, trust me."

But that's an edge she's walking that never quite comes to cut, and she's looking for a way to re-enter the flow of traffic when a voice trails a chill of familiarity up her spine like a spider.

She turns to look at her, and suddenly they're back in Owyhee Canyon, her mother's bones sinking into mud.

She narrows her stare for a second, trying to figure out if this is friendly 'we're accomplices' type talk or something a little more ungenerous. "Could ask you the same," she says, and the grin on her scarred face is cheeky more than anything. "Help anyone else bury a body lately?"

She never expected to see her again, though. Jamie's not ready to call this a nice surprise, but she's hoping that it might be. She shakes her head at the girl's question. "Just you, hot stuff. That bond we have is one of a kind," she replies playfully.

She wants to ask why Jamie did it, what she had seen that made her feel like she needed to do such a thing, but the younger witch's next question cuts her off. Oh. Kore understands a bit better what Jamie is asking.

"It sucked at first... I had a panic attack the first time I think, but then they handed me this guy's liver, and I saw... everything." Her voice breaks with awe and a bittersweet reminiscence. "I saw who he had been, and the threads branching out to people his life had brushed up against." It's hard to decipher what any of it means sometimes, but with enough bodies, she's learned to pick out the overlapping patterns and predict how people will react to certain events. "It feels good, feels... right." It's the first time she'd admit it to another witch. "It's just the way my magic works."

"Sounds wonderful," and she means it. Jamie might hate her own magic, but she doesn't wish the same for everyone else. She knows Kore, and Nadia, and everyone else in the coven are much better off enjoying what they do. "If you ever want help to do your magic... count on me? I would like to see it in action someday." Jamie isn't exactly sure what she just signed up to, but it doesn't really matter. Kore's helped her so much through all these years and this is the least she can do.

Then she pauses and looks down, rubs her hands together for a moment; she can't hide her nerves and and at that point doesn't even tries to. "I never felt any of that. Not with my visions, anyway. And I think it's getting worse lately. It's affecting me physically. I almost caught on fire the other day." It was entire possible that she was just doing something wrong, being as unpracticed as she was with any kind of magic, but it didn't really matter, the final result was the same. She takes a deep breath and speaks again. "I think I want to get rid of my magic."

"So anyway, that's the story of how Flick and I ate her dad," he finishes the tale off with a smug grin.

Ramadan came and went, a portion of which he spent on Jamie's couch. New York came and went. Khaos came and went. Now, Avi still finds himself on Jamie's floor, drinking and rambling away. He yaps, she scowls. She bitches, he toasts to it. He begs her to watch every live performance of Espresso and rank them, and she scowls even harder. She tells him to get the liquor from the top shelf, and the short king that he is, he jumps up onto the counter to deliver.

What started as two acquaintances bar hopping and drowning their miseries has grown into something else. Avi wouldn't admit it, but he may hold some love for his drinking buddy. There's a quiet friendship there blooming beneath the surface, ever since she cast that spell for him. Ever since she found Flick.

Where there's friendship and affection, there's also concern. There's an uncomfortable, gnawing sense of guilt. She screamed, she cried, she sobbed. She lit herself on fire for the spell, she seemed to hate every second of it, but she did it. And afterwards, all Avi could see was a distant haunt in her eyes that, up to this point, he's dutifully held his tongue about. She didn't want to talk about it then, she didn't want to talk about it after, and she doesn't look anywhere close to wanting to talk about it now. But Avi is impatient, and he cares.

Whether Jamie realized it or not, Avi made a quiet promise to try again. To be there when she's ready.

Unfortunately for her, he's decided she's ready now.

"Oh!" he makes a sudden noise of realization, reaches back behind him into his duffel. "I picked this up in the city. Figured while Leiry can deliver on your tastes, it can't possibly deliver on mine." A leather jacket is thrown Jamie's way. One official promise kept, one unofficial promise incoming. "We even? I hope you didn't think I forgot."

She's done her best to forget it, but her best was far from good enough. Jamie can still feel the heat, she can still see herself in the middle of that fire, she's had nightmares — actual nightmares, for once — about what happened to her family. It was very clear that the end wasn't in sight. Jamie doesn't regret it, she did end up helping a friend with her magic, which was a rare occurrence for her, but she does hate it. She never wants to do it again and, frankly, she isn't even sure if she could.

It was almost as if she knew it was coming when Avi reached for the leather jacket, which she now badly regretted asking for. She rolls her eyes as she sits up to try it on — a little flashier than what she's used to, but she can make it work — but she doesn't want to give him too much time to start talking about that night, "yeah, whatever, looks good. Thanks."

And just like that she's back in her couch, with her arms wrapped in front of her, closed off to the world, "we're even, yeah, so no more reason to bring up that night anymore, yeah? We're done," she doesn't look at him, but her words are almost a plea for Avi, though one she's not entirely convinced he'll listen to.

But it soon became far too hard to see anything, much less walk with the wind and rain beating down on them. So a haunted house with fucked up, ratty costumes. She modeled for Jamie a bit, rambled on about her life a bit, and it wasn't long until the witch fell asleep.

She took the time to walk around the place, wincing a bit as she saw some places where the walls weren't quite as sturdy as they used to be, and some leakage in the roof. It'd have to hold or they were fucked.

She's almost done surveying when she hears Jamie calling for her, and practically sprints back skidding to a halt on her knees at the tone in her voice - "Why are you -- "

"I got it," she mutters as she grabs the fabric from Codie and wipes some of the wetness herself. It's pointless, really, she's drenched, as if she'd just walked in from the storm. And in a way she did, but part of her was still trying to act like nothing happened, regardless of how hopeless that was.

She stays silent for a few more moments, reaching to her phone in the hope of maybe talking to Jac's family to keep her safe, but it's not a surprise to find out it there's no signal. She sighs, tosses the fabric to the side and runs her fingers through her hair before turning to Codie with a closed off look on her face. "Sorry about that. It's uh — my magic. I can't control it."

There's an internal debate of how much she should share, how much it's acceptable, how much would be enough to drive her away, how much Codie deserves to hear. "I have... visions of when bad things are going to happen. Deaths, usually. It's like I'm there watching it as it happens. It doesn't happen every time I sleep but it's often enough that I try not to."

Dead boy walking. Okay, rude. But then, so is her entire...vibe. It's obvious, even without his abilities.

Still, Declan offers an apologetic, awkward smile. "Sorry, I'm not lost. I just - came here with Nadia not too long ago. I wanted to come see it by myself." He shifts, one foot slightly behind the other, like he's ready to leave if she tells him to. It's only respectful. He knows this isn't his place to claim.

"And I thought maybe I could sit. For a little. But uh, if you want me to go so you can continue your..." he glances to the candles. "...thing, I can do that. I didn't mean to intrude. I'm sorry if I did."

Still, appearances aside, Jamie actually gave a shit about people around her, and she didn't want this guy, whoever he was, to suffer because someone didn't lend a hand when he needed it. Even more than that, she didn't want to be the reason why he shows up in her dreams two months from now. So she rolls her eyes at him and nods for him to come closer. "Just be careful with these candles."

"It's not a thing, it's a ritual. I'm trying to tap into divination magic and this is the best place to do it." Jamie isn't exactly a good tutor (she'd much rather leave this kind of thing for people like Jac), but she is knowledgeable enough to explain the basics to someone completely new to the coven. She still remembered all the books that she read when she was a kid and was still passionate about all this. She might be a crappy witch now, but at least she still had that.

She continued, "Divination is just about revealing the truth, so if you want to find out about something, come here, light some candles, focus, and it just might come to you. Capisci?" Jamie moved back to her original position, and flicked her wrists so the flame from the would double in size — she didn't need to do that, but she wanted to see his reaction. "Give it a try if you want. You probably won't explode."