Dark Cotillion (First in the Brenna Strachan Series)

  Chapter Fourteen

  My father built the house in a crop of woods. The house is large, too large in my opinion. There are four floors plus a basement. If you had to classify it, you’d call it a mansion, but that would not be exactly accurate.

  “I’ll leave you and your men to it,” Beezel said as he stopped near the door.

  “Sure thing, thanks, Uncle.” I got out and began the short walk to the steps. When I reached them, I sat down and turned to look. The trees were swaying in the wind, not hard, just a strong enough breeze to make them move. Their leaves made fluttering noises.

  “Brenna, what are you doing?” Gabriel asked.

  “Have you ever just sat and looked at this place?” I took a deep breath.

  “I have never really thought about it, no.”

  “A half mile long driveway, lined with woods. The house suddenly appears and seems to be out of place. Woods also surround it. You walk an acre back behind the house and find fields of crops. Dad calls it his garden but you shouldn’t need a tractor to plow a garden. There are cows, horses, hogs, chickens, sheep, and goats, but no dogs, and no cats. We never had pets growing up. It just struck me as odd.”

  “You need to sleep,” Anubis took hold of my shoulder and helped me to my feet.

  “Probably.” I let him lead me inside.

  If the outside of my parents’ house is impressive, it’s only because you’ve never been inside it. The ceilings are impressively tall, standing nearly twenty feet above our heads, except in the living room, which is actually forty feet tall. The ceilings are carved and painted. The floors are marble unless it’s a bedroom, and in those, there is carpet. The furniture was all custom ordered, custom made at my father’s request. Half of it is old, antique, but still very serviceable. The place is half museum and half home. There is a wide, winding staircase, all dark metal and marble construction. It does a half circle every floor. I walked over to it and felt the world begin to fade away.

  It was dark in my dream, very dark. A pinprick of light somewhere off in the distance provided the only light. I could feel the sun, but not see it. My body hurt. No, it didn’t hurt, it ached. Every wound and injury I had ever healed was suddenly present. Too sore to move, I stood and stared at the pinpoint of light, wishing it would come forward, and move towards me. I needed to be close to it, needed to see everything it could illuminate, but the light didn’t come closer. It stayed steady, pulsing ever so slightly at the very extent of my vision. Something was telling me I needed to wake up, something was telling me I was dreaming, but my body refused. My brain refused to be distracted from that light.

  “Brenna,” my name was being called very softly.

  “No, a couple of more hours of sleep,” I moaned just as softly. “Sleep.”

  “Brenna, you need to wake up and eat,” the voice told me.

  “I need to sleep,” I snapped at it, curling up, feeling the blankets as they hugged my body and slid against me. That woke me up. I was naked in my bed with someone talking to me. My eyes flew open and I peeked under the blanket.

  I was in my old room. The ceiling still painted black with glow in the dark stars on it. The walls were mint green. I was snuggled into my KC Chiefs blanket, all warm and wonderful, but I was sure I had been wearing clothes when I started up the stairs.

  “I’m naked,” I told the voice, still not sure who it was. My brain seemed foggy, except for the realization I was nude.

  “Yes, you are, I undressed you before putting you to bed,” Gabriel’s voice. That was who was talking to me.

  “I don’t feel very good,” I admitted.

  “I know and that’s why you need to eat. Elders do not require food in the same way that mortals do. You passed out from lack of it. We have an assortment for you. Anubis has spent the last hour whipping things up in the kitchen, and we of course, have donuts.”

  “Donuts,” I sat up, hugging the blanket to me.

  “Donuts; pasta with an herby oily coating and cheese, a sandwich with ham, bacon, turkey, cheese, onions, mayo, lettuce, and more cheese and some crackers. A Cesar Salad with all the trimmings that you like and no anchovies; a slice of pizza, and some vanilla ice cream with fresh fruit mixed into it.”

  “Wow, that is quite a spread.”

  “We realized when you passed out that your body is used to a certain amount of calories a day, it is particularly high since you are a Demon. It would be nice if you ate healthier, but the donuts help with your calorie count, especially when you’ve been healing. However, since most of the stuff on the platter is healthy with the exception of the donuts, we made you a variety with medium sized portions.”

  “Is that why Demons eat so much?” I had never really thought about it.

  “No, that’s why Elders eat so much. Magic drains energy, or rather, is energy. Harder to do magic if you are running low on energy, a good meal and some sleep recharges all those batteries. Unfortunately, during Maturing we have to maintain the same calorie count, but we forget we have to do it more often because we are mortal, and food is processed slightly different.”

  “Great, could I have the food now?” My stomach was starting to growl.

  He handed me the tray. It took about three seconds for me to start eating. I spun the fork in the pasta; twirled up the noodles, and shoved as many as I could into my mouth.

  “About this room…” Gabriel was frowning as he looked around.

  “It isn’t a bedroom, it’s a magical cell,” I said between mouthfuls of pasta and salad. “Always has been, hence the lack of windows. Glass has trouble containing magic.”

  “Why, uh, well…”

  I let him struggle with what to say next for a long time. I finished off the pasta, salad, and sandwich, ignored the ice cream which has never been one of my favorite foods, and moved onto the pizza. As I chewed a chunk of it covered with mushrooms, black olives, and pepperoni, I too took a look at the room.

  “Why did my parents put me in a magical cell instead of a normal room?” I smiled. “No great mystery there, I used to cast spells in my sleep. Bad dreams and what not, so my mother enchanted the bed and all the bedclothes, and then the room itself and moved my bedroom into it. The bed cut down on the bad dreams, the room has protection spells carved into the layers of building materials. That way, when I did cast spells, they couldn’t leave the room. At this point though, everything in here has been bespelled in one way or another by me, most of it while I slept.”

  “And you picked out the color scheme?” He was still frowning.

  “At one point, yes.” I laughed and finished the pizza. “You still aren’t getting it. My parents’ house, this room, the opulence and grandeur, it’s a sham. It does look like extravagance, but it serves a purpose. The marble on the floors and in a good number of the walls, the silver that you can’t see, all of it is spell protection. This room, made of six solid slabs of marble and the door, well, it’s not much of a door. The outside is wood and the inside is solid silver. Same for the space between these marble slabs and the outer walls of this room, all the walls that touch these walls are marble. Silver was poured between them. It really is a cell and it’s also a fortress. Spells can’t get out and magic can’t get in.”

  “Really?”

  “When you are raising a house full of half Witches, you do what you can to protect them from the outside and themselves.” I told him. “Very little of this house is actually constructed like a normal house. The dark metal staircase is blackened silver. All the doorknobs, light fixtures, even the freaking plumbing pipes are all made of pure silver. It’s why we run to the house when Daniel begins to lose control, and it is why he can only make it rain, hail, or whatever in one room at a time. He has to be in it. Same for me. I can cast all the spells I want in this house because they can’t travel between the walls. The Council chamber looks like it is in an aluminum building, but it’s actually silver shee
ting. The magic can’t get in or out.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I am not sure very many beings do.” I finished off two of the donuts. I was beyond stuffed. I felt like I would explode.

  “Every time you do magic, you need to eat immediately afterwards,” Gabriel said as he took the tray. “Now, about the paint job?”

  “What paint job?” I looked around the room. The cool mint colored walls, the black ceiling, and the glowing stars were of my own making.

  “Why?”

  “Because at one time I liked it.” I closed my eyes, opened my mind, and said the words in my head. Gabriel made a small gasping noise next to me. Nice to know I still had it. I opened my eyes and watched the magic from my childhood.

  The color was draining back into the marble, as they became perfectly white slabs. Blank canvases for me to draw whatever my imagination thought of. I held an image in my mind and concentrated. The color began to flow back out, run, and take shape. It took about five minutes, but it was a completely different scene. The ceiling was now bright blue with a large yellow sun in one corner. The walls were a lighter blue, filling with shapes, and objects not yet defined. I concentrated harder. The outline appeared, the coloring changing as necessary. My mind created the image of Gabriel, head thrown back, light coming from his mouth and fingertips. He was almost perfectly white, whiter than the marble had been. Next, I drew Fenrir as the wolf. His dark grey coat, so dark it was almost black, stalking around. The muscles were bunched, frozen in movement. Ba’al was third, his wings spread wide, they were creating a shield for whatever was behind him, but his eyes were welcoming, warm. His arms were open to receive. Finally, I focused on Anubis. The head first, getting every detail correct. I moved to the body, his long legs, long arms, long torso, he was well tanned and a perfect replica of how my mind saw him.

  “That’s amazing,” Gabriel said as the new colors finished replacing the old. I had one Overlord on each wall surrounding me with their powers, protecting me.

  “That is child’s play, quite literally.” I told him. “That is just a very simple spell that my mother taught me when I moved into the room. The walls have always been my canvas. When the dreams were really bad, my mind would draw whatever I was dreaming on them. My parents would wake me in the morning and find them. It worked, I stopped having nightmares eventually.”

  “You should eat again.”

  “Witch magic doesn’t take much out of me, especially that one. I just have to hold an image in my head; the magic does the rest for me.” I took a donut from the tray that was still in his lap and ate it. “And let’s face it, that spell has been done so many times in this room, it lingers in the air all the time.”

  “You did it a lot?”

  “I changed it every day to reflect my moods or whatever was happening outside, hence, the stars on the ceiling.”

  Anubis opened the door. He stopped and stared at the pictures on the wall. He tilted his head to one side and walked over to his own image. Gently his hand touched it.

  “The room was not painted like this when we put you in here. You were supposed to be sleeping,” he said to me without turning around.

  “I was sleeping. It only took a few minutes to do these.” I told him. As I talked to him, I painted another bit on the wall. I placed a small dog at his feet. I added a second wolf, this one with tiger-eyes next to Fenrir. Beside Gabriel, I placed the Strachan Family Sword and next to Ba’al, I put a stone statue, a near exact copy of Ba’al.

  “Oh, it is a spell. You shouldn’t be doing magic, Brenna.”

  “It’s Witch magic and not that powerful of a spell. As I just explained to Gabriel…”

  “I know because I helped your parents build this room,” he interrupted me. “I have seen some of the pictures you have put on it before. I had just forgotten for a minute that you could do it. Feeling better?”

  “Yes, the food was yummy, thank you.”

  He finally turned and looked at me when I said “yummy.” Anubis threw his head back and laughed. It shook the walls of the room.

  “That was impressive,” I told him.

  “Sorry, I just haven’t had anyone call my cooking yummy since you were a child.”

  “Must be the room,” I shrugged, “but it was.”

  “Glad you enjoyed it.” Anubis bowed slightly to me.

  “Why do you guys do that?” I frowned. “I mean, you don’t do it often, but every once in a while, one of you will bow when you talk to me. It’s unsettling.”

  “It’s just our way,” Anubis looked at me. “So, do you feel well enough to get dressed and come into the living room? Fenrir is insisting that we all do something. He is bored.”

  “I do, but you should all leave.” I remembered my clothing. “What happened to my clothes?”

  “The ones on your body or the ones from the car?” Gabriel asked.

  “Uh, yes.” I responded.

  “The ones from the car are in the closet. We couldn’t get the dresser drawers open. The ones from your body are in the wash.”

  “Do I want to know how they got in the wash?”

  “I undressed you,” Gabriel looked at me. “We figured I should do it. Fen volunteered for the job, but we knew you would be upset about that. We weren’t sure about Anubis doing it since…”

  “And Ba’al was just as disagreeable to the idea of undressing you as I was,” Anubis cut Gabriel off in mid-sentence. “That left Gabe.”

  “I was very careful when I did it, but I have to ask about the mark on your,” he paused.

  “Breast,” I filled in the word for him.

  “That sounds so much better than what I was going to say,” he nodded.

  “It’s a bloodline mark. My mother has one, too. All of my siblings have them. It’s a mark we are born with as Strachan Witches. Always somewhere concealed,” I pointed out, “which is why mine is on my breast. My mother’s is as well. My sister’s is on her butt. And poor Nick, well, his is even more intimate.”

  “The Strachan’s bear a bloodline mark?” Anubis looked at me.

  “All the great houses have them. There are fifteen bloodline marks, there used to be twenty-one but six have died out. Magnus’s is in his hair.” I moved the blanket a little to look at the mark. “Magnus actually carries a double mark, one from his mother and one from his father, he’s double Witch. Lesser Witches don’t get them, but there are far more Lesser Witches than there are Bloodline Witches, which is technically what we are called.”

  “I knew about the Lesser and Bloodline, I just didn’t know that some bore marks,” Gabriel told me.

  “Oh yes, as much as Witches and Elders have cooperated over the years, they have kept some things secret. It was a survival technique. The marks were among them.”

  “So you just broke a family secret?” Gabriel grinned.

  “No, I told the Elders bound to me a little bit about Witch secrets, I don’t consider that breaking a family secret. You are family in a way, are you not?”

  “You seem a little different,” Gabriel squinted at me.

  “Sorry,” I shrugged again, “I’m accepting my life. I am bound to four Overlords. They should know what they have gotten themselves into. You may not be blood relatives, but I have enough of those to last me for eternity. Bound Elders, well, I imagine I will only ever have four of those.”

  “You keep saying ‘Bound Elders’.” Anubis pointed out.

  “I am trying to make peace with it.”

  “You guys are taking forever,” Fenrir came into the room. He stopped and stared at the walls. “You’ve been busy.”

  “We’re getting a history lesson,” Gabriel frowned. “One that I think we all need to hear.”

  “And see,” Anubis frowned even harder. “I’m sorry, Brenna, you’ll have to put your modesty aside for a few minutes. Get dressed and join us in the living room.”


  Anubis shooed the men outside the room. I stood and looked at my mark. There was no way really to show it without showing my entire breast. I took a deep breath. I could do this. Besides, I was almost convinced they would all see me nude at some point in time. Like my first encounter with Anubis, I imagined they would all get my blood boiling at some point during eternity.

  I dressed in a low cut blouse and didn’t bother with a bra. I took another deep breath as I finished the outfit with jeans, white socks, and tennis shoes. After a couple extra seconds of stalling, I opened the door and found the hallway deserted. That was a welcome relief. I had a few more seconds to convince myself that I could do what I was about to do.

  I entered the living room. The men were all gathered around, sitting clustered at the large coffee table. An ancient board game that I had never seen before was set up on the table. It looked complicated.

  “What are we playing?” I asked.

  “First, I think you should tell us some more about Witches,” Anubis stood up. “Since we have all dealt with them in the past, but always at an emotional distance, we never considered what it would mean to be tied to one or that they might have their own secrets.”

  “All right,” I sat down on the couch. “As I’m sure you know, at one time there were 21 Great Houses of Witches, Bloodline Witches. They were spread across the globe and each represented a great civilization or tribe. Six have died out, the great house from Egypt and I’m sure it was one of them that cursed Anubis, as well as Siam, Persia, Inca, Maya, and Carthage. My own, the Strachan Bloodline, is Scotch Celt which is different from Irish Celt. There are distinctions made between the Great Houses because there are different things they are particularly good at. The Strachan’s are great enchanters. Our ability to inject magic into an object is matched only by Magnus. Of course, we aren’t limited to that. As each house has something it is good at, each of us has a weakness. For me, I have a harder time using magic as a weapon. I can curse an item and use it as a weapon, but to use magic as a weapon is very tiring for me. On the flip side, I can repaint this entire house in about twenty minutes using magic. Furthermore, creating an object like the Strachan Family Sword wouldn’t take much energy from me either. I could do it without batting an eyelash. In fact, my bedroom was created to contain me and keep me from doing that to the entire house. The reason you couldn’t put clothes in my dresser is because I enchanted it as a child in my sleep. I used to cast spells in my sleep all the time. I still occasionally do. That’s why I keep a talisman over my bedroom door. It isn’t perfect, but it’s better than tearing out my walls, filling them with silver, and replacing the drywall with marble.

  “Last year, I actually woke up and had enchanted the dresser in my bedroom at the condo. It was talking to me, telling me what outfits to wear, offering me clothing suggestions. This is kind of standard for me though, and that’s why I don’t keep a lot of furniture in my room or in my house for that matter. I feel asleep on my couch once and woke up to find it had been enchanted. It ate books for about a month before I got it removed. Sadly, I am so good at imbibing magic into inanimate objects that it usually takes two or three of us to remove it. The bedroom furniture in that room has been enchanted so many times that we can’t remove the enchantments. Actually, the entire room is so enchanted that it can’t be removed, and that’s why no one but me has ever slept in it. It doesn’t like other magic and it will let you know it. You might be lucky that the dresser didn’t open for you, it might have eaten your hand or something since it is my magic inside of it and not yours.

  “Great Houses do not breed together for good reason. Most of the time, the Witch is born with so much power that it dies as an infant. Magnus is one of the few exceptions. For the most part, Great Houses have always bred with Lesser Witches. It’s safer than breeding with Humans since they have hunted us on occasion. Double Great House Witches carry two Bloodline marks and one is deeper than the other is to indicate which of the families is the more powerful. Single Bloodline Witches, like me, carry our family mark and the deepness of the mark is dependent on how strong our magic is. I have always known that mine is pretty good because my mark is rather deep. My mother’s is as well. She and I together are a force that even Magnus the Great can’t beat. We’ve tested it out. Should we enchant something together, Magnus and his entire double Bloodline can’t undo the magic. It makes sense in the grand scheme of things. The Strachans have had Elder Council Members in the past.

  “My mother didn’t know she was a Strachan until she mated with my father. Only then did her mother come clean about her Bloodline. She had wanted to keep her children away from magic as much as possible. She claimed they were Lesser Witches, only capable of a few parlor tricks. My father didn’t know either until he saw her mark. By then it was too late. I know that my parents union was a thing of great worry in the Elder community once it became public knowledge that she was a Strachan Witch. I also know that Elders had considered the Bloodline dead until then. What the Elder world doesn’t know is that it wasn’t just my grandmother’s decision. For about six generations, the Strachan Witches had been hiding in plain sight. They were using their magic to keep the Bloodline hidden. It was not an accident, it was intentional.”

  “Your family is strong enough to do that? We all thought it was an accident.” Fenrir gave me a look.

  “No, we are strong enough to do that and it wasn’t an accident. After the death of one or two Witches at the hands of Elders, the Bloodline in order to be preserved and protected had to hide. I know about the deaths or I knew about two of them, I didn’t know about the third until yesterday. The spell to hide the Bloodline is still being passed down in case it is ever needed again, but it is ineffective now that my mother has mated and created Half-Demon children. She can hide the Witch, but not the Demon. She has tried.

  “I bear three marks, two of which are hidden in my hair and one on my breast. I bear the mark of Demonnation and Lucifer’s Bloodline and both are on my scalp. Unlike most of my family who bear these marks on their horns. The Strachan Bloodline Crest is on my breast,” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes before pulling down my top and revealing the mark to the room. “I have kept it well hidden until now, when Gabriel so kindly got me ready for bed earlier. The Bloodline marks of the Great Houses are secrets, Witch secrets. They keep us safe, bearing their own little bit of magic, but they also denote us as among the Great Houses.

  “They have always been in places that you can’t see. My mother and I have them in the exact same spot,” I pulled the clothing back up. I opened my eyes. All four men were clustered around, still staring at my breast through the shirt.

  “I was examining that,” Ba’al stated rather flatly.

  “What is there to examine?” I asked.

  “Have you ever really looked at it?”

  “Yes, several times.”

  “Did you miss the detail that is in it?” Ba’al squinted at me and gave me a puzzled look.

  “Okay, I’m not real comfortable baring my breast again.” I told him.

  “Just do it,” Ba’al told me. I pulled the shirt back down.

  This time I didn’t close my eyes, I watched with intense fascination as the four of them stared. One long finger traced the lines in the air above it. I knew it was detailed, I didn’t know what they were seeing that I didn’t. I waited.

  “Go ahead and continue talking,” Anubis said, his eyes never leaving the mark.

  “Hard to remember what I was saying with you guys there,” I snapped at him.

  He looked up at me for a minute, “Do you realize that your entire family history is in that mark?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I look at it and see the names of every Strachan Witch ever born,” Anubis stated.

  “I do as well and how they died, when they died, when they were born and how many children they had,” Fenrir
said.

  “Oh, that’s interesting.” I frowned and moved so I could look at it.

  “I think you need to do a bit of magic to see it,” Gabriel responded.

  “Yeah, all I see is a Celtic symbol.”

  “It’s in the lines of the symbols, I think we can see it because we have excellent vision and you have kind of average vision,” Fenrir said.

  “Okay, I think I will ignore it for now,” I told him. “Can I put my top back on now, please?”

  “I’m not done yet,” Ba’al snapped at me. “There’s more than that inscribed in it. There’s a spell of some sort.”

  “Yes, I know there’s a spell,” I told him. “I said the marks had their own magic.”

  “You were born with this?” Ba’al asked.

  “Yes, just like my other marks.”

  “Wow, that’s some impressive magic to be born with,” Anubis looked at me. “Do you know the spell?”

  “No, no one does. Mine is different than my mother’s.” I admitted. “This brings me to my next point. Each mark is different in the magic they contain. We aren’t sure what the spells do, we just know that they are spells. My mother’s mark burns when she is around certain people. Usually people that want to do her harm.”

  “What does your mark do?”

  “My mark has never done anything. None of us understands the language they are written in, only that they seem to be the same language but not the same spell. One day, I’m sure my mark will do something, but until then…” I shrugged.

  “I don’t recognize the language,” Fenrir said. “It isn’t anything ever spoken or written by a civilization.”

  “I know, my father said the same about my mother’s spell. He couldn’t read it either. It is part of our legends though, at one time, we believe all the Great Houses had a single language that they used to communicate. Since they were each of different origins and had their own regional language. We have a legend that once all the Bloodlines had a single language that they could use to speak to other Great Houses and it denoted us as Witches. However, the language died out long before any of the Great Houses realized it was happening. Occasionally, you will find a scrap of it left in a spell book that has been passed down for generations. My spell book has a spell in it that uses the language, but not even the book knows what it is, what it does, or how to cast it. Since he gained Universal Knowledge when he was trapped in the book, it obviously was not Universal Knowledge, somehow predating that. It seems impossible when you think of it, but there you have it.

  “As for the other marks of my family, I know what all of them do. They have all revealed themselves over time. Some are frankly, scary. Some are protective, like my mother’s. And my sister’s, well, it’s just disturbing.”

  “What does your sister’s mark do?”

  “You don’t want to know, hell I don’t want to know.” I told them.

  “Then why do you know?”

  “It’s very hard not to know,” I told them. “Once the mark becomes active, the entire Bloodline can feel it come alive.”

  “So, what does your sister’s do?” Fenrir asked.

  “It glows when she has sex,” I told them. “Might be why I’m a prude. The more partners, the more it glows, when it has filled with enough magic, it brings them all to climax like you wouldn’t believe. However, if you put a person in it that she doesn’t like, it has the opposite effect. It causes the person pain, extreme pain, and bleeding genitals.”

  “Why would that make you a prude?” Anubis asked.

  “Ah, well,” I frowned, “I walked in once. I didn’t know. I was only a kid at the time and she had just finished Maturing. She was like three days out of the Maturing. She was having sex with seven different Elders at the same time. It was disturbing to say the least. Even worse, Chiron was among them. That is an image I will never forget.”

  As if to prove it, the floor began to change. The image burned into my brain so many years ago and possibly the root of my night terrors, began to draw itself on the marble floor.

  “Oh yeah, that’s the other thing, I don’t necessarily have to cast a spell for a spell to work, sometimes, I just need a severe emotional disturbance to do it. My brain just reaches for the last spell I cast and works it again. It’s a Strachan thing. Possibly, another weakness of ours, but at least I don’t have to explain the situation. You can all see it for yourself.”

  “Yeah, that’s disturbing,” Fenrir shook his head as the scene finished coloring itself on the floor.

  “Wow,” Gabriel frowned and turned up his nose, “that’s just…”

  “Uh huh, I was five when that happened,” I told them. “It was shortly after that when my parents created my bedroom.”

  “Could you make it go away?” Gabriel asked.

  “No, wait, look.” Anubis pointed on the floor. We all followed his finger. “What is that?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t consciously have to remember the details to get them right,” I told him.

  “But that was definitely there?” He asked.

  “If it is in the memory, it was definitely there.”

  “What is it?” Ba’al asked.

  “That is the answer to who the insider information came from if Chiron is imprisoned. I bet your sister wasn’t all that thrilled about going to Europe.” Anubis kneeled down and looked closer.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “When your mother is threatened, what color does her mark glow?”

  “Amberish, no orangish,” I replied.

  “The color a Witch associates with anger,” Anubis said. “Look what color your sister’s mark is glowing. It’s blue. She wasn’t angry; she was thrilled. By this time, we all knew that Chiron posed a threat to you, your sister should not have been thrilled to be fucking the man that was threatening her bloodline, and yet, she was.”