A Birth day

"I think we could put off shop talk quite awhile, as far as I'm concerned. You know, you ought to make egg custard instead with the eggs. Or custard pie," Angus said.

"I hear there's an old fashioned beverage in America called an Egg Cream. Maybe that would do the trick," Marcus said.

"Um. Nope. There isn't any egg at all in an American egg cream," Angus said. Marcus stopped and turned and frowned at Angus. "I'm serious. Not a bit of egg in it."

"Then why is it an Egg Cream?"

"Apparently, it used to have eggs back in the 1800's but nowadays, an egg cream is carbonated water, chocolate syrup, and cream. That's it."

"Sounds like a carbonated chocolate milk," Marcus said, looking rather disgusted.

"Yeah, basically. As I hear, it's supposedly quite good, but I've never tried it," Angus said. "They used to sell it in ice cream parlors apparently."

"I think I'd pass on that one," Marcus said, plating up the eggs and toast and setting the plates on the table. "They're not your eggs, but they'll be edible."

"Good enough. Thanks," Angus said. He took a bite. "They're actually quite good. Light and creamy. Well done, Marcus."

"One of my few culinary achievements. I can survive on my own if I have to, but I certainly don't have your skills," Marcus said.

"Good plan," Angus told Ruby.

"Plans for today," Marcus said. "Angus?"

"I need to do some weeding," Angus said. "It looks bloody awful out there. The weeds are choking out the plants entirely."

"You're going to be a bit too sore and stoved up to do all of it by yourself, not if you want to get through the bulk of it today. I'll give you a hand. Do you still want to talk to the landscapers about fruit trees too?"

"I'd like to, if I get the weeding done."

"We, Matey. We," Marcus said. "Ruby, I know you like gardening. You up for some weeding? There are a lot of flowerbeds around this house, not to mention the garden, and the tea garden. It might take us a couple days if its as bad as he says it is. I honestly haven't looked. Let's get this business overwith with Robert straight after breakfast before he buggars off to St Mungos--unless, of course, you'd rather see him in the A&E."

"No, I would not," Angus said, scowling deeply.

"Come on. Let's go next door and get it overwith. I'll clean the breakfast dishes up when we get back," Marcus said.

"Oh fine," Angus said, knowing he wouldn't hear the end of it until they did. "Let's go." He looked at Ruby. "You coming, or you staying here while we're next door?"

Angus went with them over to the main house, not saying anything, and he followed them obediently into the library. Robert was awash in runes books he had brought back late last night from the farm. He hadn't actually slept yet. He had books in two piles. The ones on the left were the ones he had already been through. The ones he had yet to look through were on the right. And, as he flipped through the books, page by page, he was lazily stirring his teacup with a charm on the spoon in his cup. He looked up when he saw the three of them come in.

"I didn't expect to see you three so early. I haven't found out what the rune on the coin is yet, but I've found thousands of runes that it isn't," Robert said. "So what brings you?"

"She's penetrated through the sleeping potion," Angus told him. "I'm not taking it anymore. All it did was trap me in it and kept me from escaping til morning." Robert looked up at him, now quite serious indeed. This was the last he had expected to hear.

"That should not be possible," Robert said quietly.

"Well, somehow she did it," Angus said.

"New marks?"

"A few."

"The worst one is on his chest," Marcus said.

"Show me," Robert said. Angus opened his shirt, and Robert frowned even deeper, not liking at all what he saw.

"Reveal," Robert cast a spell at the marks on Angus's chest. The spell made the marks move, and it was not painless in the least. Angus winced but didn't make a sound. The marks shifted and made words. Robert read clear letters now, but they didn't make sense. The letters were "ousepamml"

"What does it mean?" Angus asked, feeling somehow like he already knew.

"I don't know, but we're going to find out," Robert said. He opened the floo to call Lee, and he got a woman's face in the floo.

"Tig here," she said. "Hello, Robert. Lee's catching just a wink or two. How can I help?"

"We've had another attack from the creole woman," Robert said. "She's etched some letters on Angus's chest, but they're nonsensical. Can you decipher creole?"

"I can't, but I brought in a bloke who can. Beau, could you lend a hand here, please?" Tig seemed to look behind her. "I'll write them down so we can research them." A young black man came and joined her.

"What are the letters?" he asked. Robert recited the letters to him, and Tig seemed top be writing them down.

"You don't need to research it," Beau said, seriously. "It's a phrase of possession. It's Creole, and it means, 'You are mine.' The last two letters are initials. ML. Presumably, in this case, for her alias. Marie Laveau."

"Is it a spell?"

"Well, I need to research it to be sure, but it may well be part of one. I don't know if it was completed or not," Beau said. "I'll research it. I might need to come and talk to the man she's targetting."

"Permission to come back, Robert?" Tig asked.

"Certainly," Robert said.

"Did she do this again in his sleep?"

"Yes," Robert said.

"Even with the potion?"

"The potion seemed to make it worse," Robert said.

"We're on our way. We'll be there in a bit. I need to wake Lee and update him. Give us an hour or two, would you?"

"Absolutely," Robert said.

"We'll see you then," Tig said, closing the floo.

"This looks like a burn, Angus," Robert said. "Let me go get a topical potion for treating burns. I'll be right back. We can at least take the sting and the heat out of them." He got up and left for a moment.

"She'll keep doing whatever she can get away with," Angus said in a quiet calm. "I think that's part of what Suzanne has done all along. She must have given this woman the same sort of instruction, I'm guessing. I don't care what burning or branding or whatever else she does to me. I'm not hers. She can't claim me, and she won't ever own me. I probably should be afraid of her, but I'm not. I just don't know yet what I need to do to stop her."

"We'll figure it out," Marcus reassured them. "She hasn't figured out what sort of a stubborn little git you can be." He flashed Angus a grin of amusement.

"Oh, I haven't begun to fight her yet," Angus said.

"We know that, but she doesn't have a clue," Marcus laughed. Robert returned with a bottle of potion for burns, and he dabbed it on the burns.

"That should help," Robert said. "So, do your best to stay awake today, and I'll get back to you on what you can do to get some sleep tonight, Angus."

"I'll manage," Angus said.

"Just make yourself available for Lee's team today, would you?"

"Tell them I'll talk to them so long as they help pull weeds," Angus said. That made Robert and Angus both laugh.

"Thanks, Robert," Angus said.

"Angus," Robert said, ever the father figure that directed this team of fighters, "I can't blame you for being angry and perhaps a bit distant. I think I'd probably be in that same mood. but be careful with it, would you? Distance, in this case, is her weapon, not yours. The more distance she manages to force you to want, the less ineffective we could be in functioning as a team to defeat her, and in this case, I think that would be extraordinarily bad. Stay close to us. We need to know everything you see, everything you experience, everything she says. I could be entirely wrong, but with overly confident people like this, the devil very often is in the details. We might find something significant with something she doesn't intend at all to show you."

"I'll be watchful," he replied.

"Good man. I'll send Tiggy over when she gets here," Robert said.

"Okay," Angus agreed. He looked at Marcus and Ruby. "We have weeds waiting." He left, and he headed back to the duplex and started to work on weeding the front flowerbeds. Marcus settled in to join him. It wasn't one of his normal duties, but Marcus wasn't without some basic plant knowledge. He was able to identify common flowers from common weeds. Edward and Simone came out in their jeans and saw the others at work.

"Looks like we've been slacking a bit. How about we give you all a hand? We'll start in the tea garden and maybe we'll meet in the middle somewhere," Simone said. She and Edward headed out to the back yard to weed the tea garden flowerbeds.