Border, KS

“So you’re seven hundred years old, next year?” Antigone said with the same tone of stunned disbelief that almost everyone in the room seemed to be feeling. Her eyes were wide with consideration as she thought about what that would mean.

“Damn, girl.” Siobhan said, covering her own shock with whatever the hell it was Siobhan thought was a good idea from minute to minute. “Is it cliché to say you don’t look a day over five hundred?”

“Yes.” Morgan responded simply, to both of the girl’s questions.

“Did you know Shakespeare?” Antigone asked.

“Was Queen Elizabeth secretly a man?” Siobhan continued her unbroken streak of interjections that drew blank stares. “What…it’s a legitimate question, it’s a theory. Lay off.” She says uncomfortably at the sudden attention.

“No.” Morgan once more responded monosyllabically, able to answer both questions with the same answer again. “There was a great line from a television show that if everyone who claimed to have been at the crucifixion had actually been there, it would have been like Woodstock. The same can be said of knowing Shakespeare. And actually, I was at Woodstock—we both were.” She shared a fond look over at her sister, who did give a grin at that.

“Ok, this is all fascinating.” Walter said, genuinely as opposed to the sarcasm the statement normally conveys. “But what does this have to do with what’s going on with me being stabbed?”

“Because the people attacking us are also faeries.” Tania interjected, apparently deciding to be helpful for a moment.

“There has been something of a disagreement within our people over the last several centuries.” Morgan continued. “For a long time it was non-violent, a kind of political cold war as people decided which camp they belonged to and waited to see who would do something first. When it did happen, the camp that didn’t end up on top went in to hiding. From the beginning of these killings we thought it might be them, which is why Tania set Arthur to looking in to it.”

“And Arthur was…” Walter said, in the tone of a man tired of having to prompt the next piece of information.

“A Knight of the Seelie court.” Tania answered simply, looking at her nails. “Which is why, with the leadership unable to find answers, Morgan and I privately asked him to look in to it.” For a moment a flicker of sadness crossed her features, at the memory of what had befallen her investigator. “We tried to get him to take someone with him, to protect him, but he wouldn’t hear of it, the proud old fool.”

At that, Andre piped up. “Uh…wasn’t he like a million years old? He didn’t look like he was particularly spry when we found him.”

“We can be rather deceiving. He was no spring chicken even among the effectively immortal, but you’d be wise to not discount his abilities.” Morgan responded somewhat defensively, before she waved her hand. “But regardless, he would have been very difficult to take down with his knowledge, and the fact that he knew that he was a target should have put him even more on guard.”

“Then how did he get killed?” Walter asked. “I’m sorry if it’s callous, but if he was a badass and knew he was going to be targeted, then how did they grab him?”

“Magic.” Tania piped up once more.

“Oh fuck you, magic. That isn’t an answer.” Walter groused, pacing a bit around the small room.

“That’s where you draw the line, dad?” Siobhan asked. “We just watched her hair do magic, she claims to remember what it was like when ‘prithee’ was slang, but you draw the line at magic? Isn’t that kind of like living in Narnia but being agnostic?”

“I’m undecided on Aslan.” Walter answered, mouth quirked halfway between his scowl and the twinkle in his eyes that Siobhan brought out. “Fine. Magic. I suppose I’m accepting things I think are crazy, and there’s no sense in going crazy by halves, right?”

The Marshal had been mostly quiet this whole time, looking at Morgan very seriously. “You never told us you were seven hundred years old.” He accused.

“Would it have made a difference on your end, Bill? As Marshal?” Morgan asked softly, suddenly looking very much a woman in her late twenties or early thirties, her eyes showing a low glow of amusement matched by sadness. “Because I can tell you it would have changed a lot in how you treated me. It will, going forward—it always does.”

The Marshal didn’t have an answer for that, and took his turn at an awkward silence. Tania looked dismissive, shaking her head a bit as if the concern didn’t bother her at all, although it seemed a little bit hollow. And at that moment both Siobhan and Antigone leaned forward to embrace the doctor in a hug. The sudden contact drew a laugh from her, but she put her arms around the girls.

“Oh, typical. Your mother always favored her too.” Tania said, her voice sharp and sudden in the touching moment, as the younger set of twins looked up in shock at the older set with shocked eyes that Walter couldn’t help but match.