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"We have something we must do," Tessa looked up at the girl leaning across the table towards her who spoke in a heavy Russian accent at a rapid fire pace. She had bright orange hair and horns that curled back from just above her forehead. She was carefully dressed today in a very fashionable green mod dress but when Tessa had met her in a Downworld club in Moscow in 1961 she'd been drinking men twice her size under the table. That had been 2 years ago and they’d somehow become friends after Tessa had pulled her out of a burgeoning brawl.
"Natasha," Tessa started but the other girl waved off whatever she was about to say. Tessa wasn’t quite sure what she was going to say so she fell silent at the wave.
"It is important," Natasha said. "You are bored. That book, it is boring. It is a boring spell book. Put it away and come with me. We'll do no more magic today."
Tessa and Natasha had been spending the morning digging through spell books. After leaving the Clave in the 1930s Tessa had been studying up on all the magical arts she could to find the limits of her own abilities. Magnus helped when he was around but she did most of the studying on her own. She'd found Nat by accident but Nat had needed someone to drag her through Downworld without getting on the wrong side of the law and Tessa had needed a friend who wasn’t rooted in her past. Learning to throw a basic glamour had changed Nat's life and she'd loved Tessa for teaching it.
Nat was young. She looked about the same age as Tessa but was barely 30 while Tessa had just crossed her 100th birthday. Nat had also just left behind the Soviet Union and taken up freelance magic in London. She took any job that paid which Tessa worried would get her killed but it paid well. Natasha wasn't rich. She wasn't even close but she was richer than she'd ever been in her life and had decided that shopping was the way to celebrate this fact.
Tessa looked up at Natasha and down at the book. It was boring. She snapped the book shut with a thump, "What will we do instead?"
"You will come to the 20th century with me," she said.
"The 20th century? Is that a bar?" Tessa asked.
"No, don't be stupid. The 20th century. Now. Now is the 20th century. My grandmother, my little babushka grandmother, has more fashion than that thing you are wearing," Natasha told her with a wave at her clothes. Tessa was wearing a blue, knee length dress with buttons down the front. She hadn't considered recently if it was in fashion or not. She looked down at it and tried to remember when she'd bought it.
"This isn't that old," Tessa protested. "It is definitely from the 20th century."
"It is at least a decade old. You look like a housewife waiting for her nice little war hero husband to come home from Normandy. It is a boring dress. You are too pretty for a boring dress. We will go shopping," Nat said. "Now."
"A decade old? My goodness, it’s prehistoric," Tessa tried to tease and she had to force her memories away from nights when she had actually sat and waited for a war hero husband to come home though it hadn't been from Normandy.
"Yes! That is old for fashion," Nat said. "It is ancient. You need something that shows off your legs."
"The last time a girl dragged me to a boutique we ended up almost getting eaten by a goblin a park," Tessa said conversationally as she gathered up her things. If she was going to have to battle through the tide of memories today, she was going to force them to be ones that she could manage.
"I will not let goblins eat you," Natasha said throwing up her hands and grabbing Tessa by the arm. She didn’t even question getting eaten by goblins anymore and Tessa wondered how much she could convince Nat to believe if she tried.
The book store was a small place that had been opened up right after the rebuilding had finished following the Blitz. The owner claimed the paint had still been drying when he’d moved in and that Tessa had been his first real customer. They had an arrangement, he let her use the back room and she sold him rare books she dug up on her travels at low prices. She found more books than his suppliers because she visited bookstores in every town she went through. He had the sight but wasn't closely connected to Downworld. He knew what she was and didn't question the fact that she'd looked the same for years. It wasn't a magic shop, just a book shop and it was one of the reasons that Tessa liked it.
"Have a nice evening Mr. Daniels," Tessa called over her shoulder as Natasha dragged her out onto the London street.
"You too, Mrs. Herondale," he said absently without looking up and Tessa blinked in surprise but Natasha was still pulling and Mr. Daniels had his head down. He didn't usually call her by name. She counted back trying to remember how long she'd been coming there. Nearly every time she was in London since she'd started visiting again after the war. She must have used the name when she'd first come through. She almost dug in her heels but then they were out onto the pavement and headed for her vehicle.
When she'd gotten her first car, she hadn't liked the things. The Institute had two by the time Will had decided to retire as Head and she rode in them but had never driven. She learned later on the back roads in Wales where the roads were sometimes closer to cow paths with big dreams. She had tolerated driving because it was useful and cars were easier than horses.
But that was then and this was now. What she'd driven in the 1920s had nothing on what was being made in the 1960s. She had had a car, a proper one, in New York but she'd sold it when she'd come back to Europe after completing her university degree in 1958. She'd studied at a mundane university and majored in medicine and English literature which her adviser had thought was absurd. The medicine classes meant that she studied physiology which helped her understand the physical side of the change that her magic could do.
"It's magic, and magic is magic," Magnus had told her when she'd tried to explain why she wanted to do it at the end of her first year. Part of it was curiosity but part of it was practical and part of it was that she was bored. Magnus told her that you weren’t allowed to get bored in your first 100 years, it was tacky and silly but she needed a distraction.
"Magic makes it happen but what if I wanted to just change my hand? I have to know how a hand works before I can just change it," she said. "It helps. I promise. Besides I like it. You spent a month living in that Disney theme park. You don’t get to judge me for attending a school, Magnus Bane."
The English Literature was because she missed having someone to discuss books with and it was nice to sit in a room full of bright young people and listen to them wax poetic about the books that she had grown up with. It made her feel that maybe, just maybe those books would always be there. If the books were always there then so would the memories that went along with them.
After four years at her decent American college under an assumed name, she’d returned to Europe as Tessa Gray, Warlock. She’d settled in London only a few months ago. She’d arrived in early January 1963 because she was always in London in January but this time she’d stayed.
It had been a test. Could she live in a city so steeped in memories. Could she stand in places she hadn’t stood since Will had been with her and bear it? She felt she was doing well with it and having Nat visiting made it even easier because now she was seeing London through new eyes. Nat didn’t see the ways that Fleet street had changed or comment on the difference in the air quality. She’d never asked if Tessa had ever been kissed under that arch or walked with her children through that park.
Natasha saw London through new eyes and Tessa got to play the guide. She'd bought a scooter just before Nat had been scheduled to arrive because she wanted something to drive her around that wouldn’t get stuck in the snarling traffic. It was a powder blue thing with two seats and a little compartment to hide things in. She liked it. Natasha loved it.
"A lambretta!" she'd exclaimed when Tessa had met her off the ferry in Dover and they'd driven back into London. Tessa had apparently chosen a fashionable one but she had mostly chosen it for the colour and the fact that it had been easy to learn how to drive. Natasha had been badgering to drive it since she'd seen it and Tessa hadn't let her near the keys. The younger woman had once almost driven into the side of a bus in a Peugeot just outside of Moscow and Tessa had never forgotten it.
Nat sat backwards, held onto the seat below her with both hands and leaned into Tessa's shoulders which was probably illegal and definitely dangerous and she made little whooping noises as Tessa darted the scooter through traffic. She drove fast but she had magic on her side. She felt the wheel skid as she pulled too far out around a taxi and muttered a spell to restore the traction and then pushed ahead of the cab.
"You're like a librarian most days all serious and wearing those dresses," Natasha said when she'd finally found the shop she wanted and had pulled Tessa's hair until they'd come to a stop. "And then you get on this thing and you drive like a crazy person."
"Coming from you that's frightening. Should I go slower?" Tessa asked.
"God no, it's just good to know you've got a wild side," Nat said with a big grin. "How old are you anyways?"
"A lady never says," Tessa said. They'd had this conversation more than once and Tessa had never said. She didn't talk about her past with Nat. It sometimes made her feel old and lost to be faced with Nat's rampant energy and enthusiasm about the future so she turned it into a joke and then threw herself into learning something new to try and make the future seem a little less like a distant country she didn't understand.
The shopping trip was less painful than shopping with Jessamine had been all those years ago but that mostly came down to Nat being better company and the rules being different. They tried on things that they couldn't afford and things that came in colours that were too bright for Tessa to look at directly and clashed too severely with Natasha's hair to be considered.
Tessa showed off a little breezing into a high end boutique that took one look at Nat's hair colour and tried to shoo them out. The glamour hid the horns and could have tricked people into seeing brown or blonde or a ginger colour that appeared in nature but she was Nat and she wasn't going to do that for love nor money. Tessa glossed them in and then glossed them back out again.
"You speak fluent rich. I didn’t know rich was a language before today," Nat commented. "They all thought you were a titled lady with fancy lands. Are you a titled lady with fancy lands? Is that the secret?"
"The secret?" Tessa asked. "You think I have a secret that is The Secret. No, I have many small secrets." This wasn't completely true. She had many very large secrets. I'm 100 years older than you, have powers no one else does, have not only worked closely with the Clave but had a seat on their council for fifty years and have children. Any one of those could be The Secret but Tessa wasn't going to open a single one of those topics while they were rummaging through high end boutiques on Carnaby Road.
Nat had found her a black and white dress that was shorter than anything else she'd ever worn and then convinced her to put it on before leaving the shop. It left her arms bare and hung to mid thigh. The buttons were the size of silver dollars with checkered fabric stretched over them. The outfit came with a matching hat shaped like a little box. The shop girl had claimed that it was perfect and Nat had agreed.
Nat had found a little make up shop and they’d stopped to get their make up done. The shop was so small that it barely had enough room for the displays and the little counter where a clerk would demo the new products. Tessa looked over the supplies with interest but less enthusiasm than Natasha had.
"Why are you so weird about make up?" Nat asked as she sat in front of the clerk beside the tiny mirror. The girl was painting eyeliner on while Tessa watched in her new dress. She refused to pull it down even though it felt like it was covering far too little to be in public. If she started fiddling with it she'd look like an uncomfortable child. She comforted herself with the observation that the clerk's dress was even shorter.
"I was raised by my aunt," Tessa said. "Harriet was religious and had very set ideas about what was and was not proper. Her thoughts on women who wore so much as rough were .... strong."
"Would she call me a whore?" Nat asked batting her eyes at Tessa and trading places. She settled Tessa into the chair and checked her face in the mirror from behind her. She seemed pleased.
"God no," Tessa said. "She'd never say the word but she'd think it."
"And is your Aunt Harriet here?" Nat asked.
"No," Tessa said. "But I don't know how you put on make up. I don't even know what most of these things are." She waved her hand at the clerk's collection and saw the girl's face light up at the possibility of selling an entire set of cosmetics to the religious bumpkin.
"See," said Nat, "This is why you need me. You have been guided to me by saints or angels or whatever out there guides people like us to be educated.” She winked and then turned to the clerk and linked an arm with her, “We shall teach you, won't we teach her? You know she goes dancing with no make up at all." The clerk agreed that this was some sort of horror and started pulling out pencils and bottles and little flat cases and telling her about how to choose a lipstick colour.
The end result was shocking. She'd put on make up on before but never anything this dramatic. The dark pencil lifted off her eyelids at the corners in little swooping wings and the intensity of the colour made her eyes look paler and more gray. The lipstick wasn't nearly so extreme but it felt heavy on her lips and she had to resist the urge to wipe it off or worry at it. The clerk had also done something to her cheek bones that made them look sharper which just called that much more attention to the eyes.
"Storm cloud eyes," Nat said. "You’re beautiful and dangerous. You’re always beautiful of course but now you also look dangerous. Every girl needs to be able to wear eyeliner that could cut a man if he looks at her wrong. It’s a life skill."
Tessa let Nat bully her into buying at least a few of the products the clerk was selling and then they bustled back into the street. It was late evening by now, the London rush hadn't started to slow yet but the shops were starting to get ready to close and the sun was sinking.
"Do I look like I've joined the 20th century?" she asked Natasha who looked her up and down critically and then grinned and nodded.
"You'll do, Where do you go in this town to get into trouble when you look as good as we do?" Nat asked.
"Depends, how much trouble are you looking for?" Tessa asked running the list of Downworld taverns and Mundane dance clubs she knew of through her head.
"Medium trouble," Nat said, "I don't want to ruin my dress. I do want to make decisions my little Babushka would be offended by. Let's go do something Aunt Harriet and Babulya Galina would cringe at."
Tessa laughed feeling suddenly fearless with her storm cloud eyes and her new dress. The future didn't stop coming so you could either hide or you could go out and meet it. She felt like meeting it today.
"Get on," she said. "I'll find you some trouble."
With Nat in her bright green dress still facing the wrong way on the little blue scooter and her own eyes lit up with swooping lines and a lifetime of secrets, she pulled back into the rush of traffic.