Suzanna was pacing furiously at having to wait for him, a puppet, to call for her to enter. The waiting room is too small for pacing, she barely takes two steps before turning around and angrily taking two more steps, only to repeat the process. She’s forced to slow down when she begins to get dizzy. She’s clothed in a yellow long-sleeve dress with a plunging neckline, purposely showing off her augmented cleavage. The shade of yellow, chosen with care in case the puppet’s master is watching.
The waiting room is typical for the business front he’s using, an accountant, or a lawyer, or some other bland and forgettable profession. Four chairs in the center of the room, in pairs, back-to-back. The walls are decorated with faded reproductions of some famous landscape paintings, things she does not care for, and below her to notice.
A sound from behind her, has Suzanna spinning around one step early, the door from the street opens and a dowdy lady enters, eyes Suzanna, frowns, and takes a seat facing a painting of a tree by a lake with her back to Suzanna.
A dozen paces later the office door opens. The puppet looks at the two women as if he doesn’t recognize either of them, then calls out blandly, “Ms. Chow, I can see you now.”
Suzanna believing he’s summoning her, is wondering why the subterfuge using that name, when the dowdy woman stands.
“Thank you for seeing me on short notice,” Ms. Chow replies.
“Not a problem, I have nothing more important to do today than to help you understand your home title. The wording can be vexing, even to us professionals.”
The conversation moves on to small talk like there’s no rush as they enter the office and close the door.
Suzanna occupies her time imagining fileting the two alive and consuming their uncooked flesh. She was left alone for another hour before the office door finally opened, she was making a list of wines that pair well with human meat. She fumed while he flirted with the dowdy Ms. Chow and stood with an eyebrow raised as he closed the door to the street.
The man, the name he’s using is Todd says, “It’s so gracious of you to wait while I preserve my cover. Please come into my office and have a seat, you look like you’ve run a marathon. You shouldn’t pace, it’s unbecoming of a woman of your stature.”
Suzanna ignores the puppets patter and pushes past the man and enters the office. There’s a large desk with a chair, behind it is a window facing the other street that makes up the corner his office occupies. She ignores the guest chairs that would have her sitting with the sun in her eyes and takes the chair behind the desk. She puts her feet up on the desk, not caring that she’s wearing a dress and it's riding up, showing her stocking clad legs.
Todd smiles at her childish response at being made to wait. He knows she’s stronger than he is, but he wasn’t bested by an untrained child as she was.
Todd doesn’t wait for her to continue her pouting, “She’s back in Thuma are you prepared?”
“How are you so sure this is her? There is something off about the description, it matches, but why is she making herself appear larger than life?”
“She’s a kid, maybe she wants to be seen. It doesn’t matter my spotters found the signal that only she could have triggered. The pest named Luscin is back in Thuma. Are you prepared?”
“Of course, I’m prepared. She caught me off guard is all. You were not there; she is not untrained like you keep insisting. Nobody can both counter and throw a spirit spike unless they’ve been trained.” Suzanna knows she sounds defensive but it’s the truth in her mind.
Todd looking fed up, “That’s where you are wrong, she’s a savant of the highest order. You have to count on her hitting you with anything you use against her. More so now that she’s spent the better part of two years at Mammatus Study learning from those bastards.”
“If they’re that much trouble, why doesn’t he do something about them?”
“You dare question him,” Todd asks quietly?
Rolling her eyes, “Of course not, that was rhetorical.”
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Todd’s eyes turn black, and he stands up straighter as if he just grew by an inch, “It sounded very much like you were questioning me.”
Suzanna knows she’s on thin ice, she’s no longer talking to the puppet. He is here now. She takes her feet off the desk, stands, then walks to the front of the desk, “Forgive me Master, I was goading the puppet. He was being condescending, he is below me and should not be allowed to speak to me in such a way. I meant no offence to you Master.”
“No offence was taken, but you are wrong about the hierarchy of your relationship with…,” he pauses a moment to recall the name, “Todd. You are ranked below that of a runaway five-year-old girl. Until you defeat her you will remain under the watchful eye of Todd. You will obey him or face the same punishment I served your sister.”
Suzanna shudders at the idea of such enslavement. At least the puppet Todd, goes to some opium dream paradise when controlled. To be controlled for years and be fully awake would be a nightmare turned real.
“Master, I am here to serve.”
“Convince me.”
Suzanna doesn’t know to what length she should go, falls to her knees, and presses her forehead to the ground and recites, “Master, I am here to serve.” Over and over.
At some point she feels his booted foot on the back of her head. He increases the pressure until she feels like her head will be crushed.
He is gone, Todd takes his foot off her head, “That’s more like, you can look up now, but stay seated on the floor.”
He then grabs a chair and drags it in front of her so he can sit looking down at her before continuing, “Yes, this is more like it. Now tell me how you think you’ll defeat this little baby girl that wiped the floor with you the last time you faced her.”
Suzanna felt doubly humiliated because she had no idea how long it was the puppet standing on her head as she pledged to serve him. There’s only one way out of this situation, and that is by moving forward. “I will set up another ambush of course. This time I will be sure to attack on multiple fronts. I’m thinking of poisoning her to give her pain and to fog her mind. Then I will attack her both physically and psychically until I overwhelm her with one or the other.”
“That will fail. She has trained at that study under a cohort of top Defenders for two years. Your poison will be neutralized by her body and spirit too quickly to be of use. You tried attacking her on multiple fronts before and lost. Have you developed some new abilities in the last two years, because she likely has.”
Todd stands and walks around the still seated Hedge Witch, “This is what you will do. You will set a trap, but not for her. You will trap and hold hostage someone she values. Perhaps her mother or childhood friend. You use the threat to their lives to trick Luscin into surrendering her own life.”
Suzanna has just about had enough of Todd, memories of her master’s threats fade next to the humiliation and attitude of this puppet. “That’s ludicrous, nobody would do that. What kind of fool do you take her for?”
“You can’t see it can you? Your failure to do your job properly for the last 300 years has allowed these humans to grow sentimental. Until you recently started trying again, Thuma was a happy joyful place to live. People were starting to care about themselves and then each other. The only upside of your failure is you’ve made this job easier.”
Suzanna’s ears are ringing from the boiling anger about to explode her heart, “I despise you. When this is over, I am going to eat you and vomit you into a gutter.”
“I look forward to the day you try. You’re not my only job you know. I’m executing another of his plans that outranks this one in importance a hundred times over.
“You’ll be conscious puppet if you disobey me; that’s right he let me listen.
“Go now! You know what you need to do, go and do it.”
The man calling himself Todd today, returns to his chair behind the desk, sorts some papers and begins to pen a letter. He doesn’t acknowledge Suzanna again.
Suzanna sits fuming, making lists of ways to kill Todd. Eventually her temper cools. Standing up, she leaves.
She puts on a disguise before exiting the building; nobody will see her as anything but a businessman leaving work early. She realizes the puppet is right, she must obey him, or she’ll end up like her sister witch, Greta. She’s dead and gone, not heard of in nearly ten years. Nope, she doesn’t want to throw away eternal life over a puppet with an over inflated ego. His plan isn’t terrible, but she’s already killed everyone close to Luscin in a fit of vengeance. Everyone she can anyway, her parents are off limits. They work for Him, even if they don’t know it. She’s going to need to learn everything there is to know about this girl, where she hangs out and who she hangs out with. One of her aliases is known to street gangs that execute the low-level crime in Thuma. She’ll ask for a dossier to be made. The more she thinks about this plan, the more she has to give the puppet credit. The more work she outsources, the more time she’ll have to plot the puppets death.
Todd watches a ‘businessman’ walking down the street. He didn’t have to pierce her disguise, visually her illusion is perfect, but the dimwit is walking like a woman. She is going to die, but that’s ok, Todd has a nice house in Thuma, and he wouldn’t mind a permanent assignment here. If he does well, maybe he’ll be freed of his pilot and allowed to operate autonomously in Thuma, turning it back into a rotting corpse of a city.
Those plans are for another day, he needs to get back to his other job in Mecanose where he is Grandfather Dorson Milner, one of the two surviving members of the exiled Milnor family of Brust Valley.
He can’t leave his ‘granddaughter’ Ahndra Milnor alone for too long or she could start questioning her situation and become another problem for him to fix.