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Mary’s smile is savage. Gertrude doesn’t return the look, but she honestly doesn’t even remember the last time she smiled anyway.
“The great Archivist has paid me a visit,” Mary says, stepping back and allowing Gertrude entrance into her home.
There’s a faint scent of old blood in the air. It’s as if it never leaves the walls of this place. Rather unfortunate, really, that Keay has worked so closely with The Eye and The End. She would have made a good candidate for Slaughter, the way she yearns to take people apart. All violence but carefully controlled bloodlust.
It’s been a couple of years since she’s last seen this monster of a woman. Her friend, sort of. Her enemy, perhaps.
Mary’s lack of allegiance is more a sign of her own self-centered nature than it is any true desire to be part of a power.
“I’m not the Archivist,” Gertrude reminds her as she takes the invitation to walk inside. Something whispers in the back of her mind, a flicker of power that’s unique and all hers.
She refuses to answer it.
“Such a curious person.” Mary’s fingers are rough when they drag along Gertrude’s cheek.
A frown tugs at her mouth, the familiar lines sinking into her face. She slaps Mary’s hand away. A shiver had worked its way down her spine, leaving a sickening warmth in its wake.
But worse, it leaves a longing for touch that she doesn’t wish to think about. Any warmth that presents from Mary Keay is merely an illusion brought on by herself, a desperate wish of a much younger woman.