Chapter Text
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex felt a little bemused -- and a little off-put -- by all this. He really would have thought that Lana's first recourse for learning more about her dead parents -- and possibly-alive father -- would have been something more practical. After all, Lana had a photograph to work from and Chloe Sullivan had every yearbook the local high school had put out digitized by this point -- an image search would do it. And, if that failed, certainly there were gossipy Smallvillan old biddies that Lana could talk with, couldn't she? It wasn't as if the closed-mouthed Nell Potter was the only person she could ask.
But no.
Instead she wanted to hold a seance at his mansion. To talk to her dead parents.
Lex found this disturbing on many levels.
First and foremost was the fact -- which he'd learned from Clark in passing awhile ago -- that Lana talked to her dead parents at the cemetery already, so why she would want to hold the seance here in the house where he lived instead of where she usually tried to talk with them was beyond him.
Second, and not least, was the fact that she'd barely missed being embroiled in the middle of yet another Smallville-ian nightmare, this time in the form of a meteor-freak who sucked the life out of people and turned them into old, withered husks, and when she had not gotten enough 'youth' to hold her over, had herself disintegrated into graveyard dust -- something he'd also learned from Clark in passing this week.
Third, and not last by a longshot, was the fact that the Talon was expected to have a full house all-day, and it was hosting its own festivities tonight along with the rest of the town. As co-owner and not-silent-partner, Lana should have been there and directing said festivities.
Oh, and it was Halloween.
And Lex's blind father was probably wandering about the drafty old castle someplace, and that was both a mood-setter and a deal-breaker.
And with Lex's luck, they'd either get Lionel, or Lex's own mother -- or, god-help-him, his dead little brother -- haunting said seance-ish "festivities" that Lana wanted to have. In his house. On Halloween. At midnight.
This was not cool. Lex was not okay with this.
Lex thought of voicing some, if not all, of these very valid concerns to the young teenage girl he was facing down at present, except she had a very determined and almost mad gleam in her eye of the sort that vaguely and sickeningly reminded Lex of a few meteor freaks in his time in town, and so he kept his damn fool mouth shut and lived to see another day.
He hoped.
This was assuming he survived the night, first. She'd sprung it on him at the last minute, probably wise to the idea that Lex might try to come up with a way to absent himself from the proceedings, or otherwise find an excuse to leave town and skip out on the mess that was quite probably going to go the way of all things Smallville-ian and turn into one horrendous meteor-rock "enhanced" nightmare that would try to eat his face.
Or concuss him, tie him up, wait for him to wake up again, and then try to eat his face, with hopefully a timely last-minute save from Clark at some point in there.
Or worse. There could be yelling from Clark afterwards. That would make it worse.
So would a no-show from Clark.
--Again, not cool.
Lex ground his teeth in frustration. The things he did for Clark. Up to and including keeping his pined-after potential-girlfriend-to-be happy ...or, well, something like it. Lex had already had someone do the initial groundwork for her, discovering that her parents had been separated for about a year at one point, and who the man was -- Henry Small -- at Lana's inital request. He'd even warned her that she might not like what he might find. So why couldn't she take it from there? On her own?
Lex managed to shoo his father out of the mansion for the night to some Metropolis party or another. The rest of the staff he gave the night off and strongly suggested to vacate the premises by the expedient method of informing them of the many spectacles in town that they could partake in, instead of 'hanging about' the castle after-hours. He was hoping for a minimum of casualties in his house that evening. ...Except for maybe him, because these sorts of things tended to end with him getting concussed or otherwise tossed about, which was decidedly Not Fun in his book.
If -- when -- this went badly, he was getting a written apology from somebody. In thick card stock and gold-embossed ink. So help him god.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lana was back at 8pm with a carload of "supplies". She said she wanted to "set things up properly."
Lex found her a good room for it, all armor and weapons and odd hangings and devices, and was promptly told that the library was the perfect room and that they was doing it in there instead.
Lex thought about arguing with her over it. He paused to order his thoughts, framed his disapproval as a thoughful and suggestive aside rather than as an outright refusal, then finally took in her body language -- feet planted, hands on her hips, chin raised -- and reflected upon her rather belligerent stance.
...He wished her well, and a Happy Halloween.
And then he got the hell out of the way.
Until she found him around 11:48pm or so, hiding in the winecellar, drinking heavily, and corralled him into the library.
It got worse. It seemed "they" hadn't meant "Clark and Lana" -- apparently Lex was the only one 'invited along' to the proceedings that night.
It was Lex and Lana, all alone in the mansion, trying to talk to Lana's dead parents' ghosts.
Yeah. This was going to go well.
At Lana's insistence, Lex lowered himself to the floor on the opposite side of the Ouija board and arranged himself in a kneeling posture, on the premise that he would be able to get to his feet or roll out of the way more quickly from such a posture if -- when -- they were attacked. It was a Smallville surety.
He contemplated getting the hell out of there and leaving Lana alone to it, but then he had a vision of the sort of disappointed look Clark would give him when he heard about Lana's dead, dessicated corpse -- or whatever state she would be found in the next morning -- if Lex didn't stay and try to keep from getting her killed. The really, really disappointed one.
...Argh. The things he did for Clark!
So instead of doing the smart thing and running away like he should have done if he had had any sense at all, Lex stayed where he was and glanced around the room suspiciously at the creeping shadows. Lana had had him turn off all the power in the building -- not just flick off a mere lightswitch or two -- because the electricity apparently might interfere with the 'dead reception'. The only light they had was from two lit candles -- one that Lana was holding, and one that Lex had been given.
Lana held hers daintily. Lex clutched his like a weapon. He'd never really had anything against the dark. It was just that it tended to herald things to come. Surprises. Nasty ones.
No, he had no issue with darkness. He'd always had more of a problem with the things that tended to lurk within it.
Lana pulled out a book and started reading aloud from it, lighting a few more candles around them as she went. She set down her candle, burned incense in a bowl, tossed more herbs onto the fire, the spoken words becoming a strange non-melodious chant...
Lex heard the clock chime once...
twice...
three times...
The sound seemed to echo in his head.
He blinked fuzzily, confused, and swayed. Odd. He hadn't thought himself quite that drunk...
His head felt like there was a pressure all around it, within it, but now it felt a little overwhelming, and he slowly let it drop. His hearing narrowed to the clock chimes, which at first sounded rather quiet, but seemed to grow louder and louder at each strike, until they were drowning out the sound of Lana's voice.
His breathing slowed to the speed of the long, deep, sonorous chimes and his vision narrowed, growing ever more dim, and he vaguely realized that it was because his eyelids, suddenly too-heavy, were becoming increasingly harder and harder to keep open. And he was having trouble caring. He couldn't remember why he was here...
He frowned as he felt a sudden chill.
His hands loosened and he barely felt the candle slip from his fingers, hardly sensed the little flickering light vanish red-to-nothing behind closed eyes when it fell to the floor and went out.
He didn't hear Lana's startled complaint.
The clock struck twelve.
~*~*~*~*~*~
And then Lex woke up in his bed.
Flat on his back, he blinked up at the ceiling.
Sunlight was streaming in the windows between the curtains. It was the next morning.
He couldn't remember the time that had passed in the interim.
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