Wednesday
It was well into the early hours and not even close to dawn when Logan felt the coldness enter his bedroom. Snapping instantly awake, he lay silently and tuned every heightened sense into the atmosphere of his room.
The ghostly bastards were back. Through slitted eyes he could see their silhouettes against the moonlight soaking through the window.
Same camo paint, same camo fatigues, same slashed and torn flesh and stench... they stood over him before the one with the shredded face reached out and laid a cold hand on his bared left ankle. Logan felt the coldness seep into his bones, through the metal, and the very air felt heavy and dank around him. Suddenly lunging upward, the claws sang out and he actually felt the metal from one hand sink into the one who touched him. His other claws went for the soldier beside the first, and Logan’s arm sank elbow deep into the wraith before he recoiled. There was nothing there.
Turning to the one who had touched him, he saw nothing - thin air. That soldier was gone again. Rogue’s scream down the hall brought him leaping out of the bed and he literally ran through the remaining invaders who faded into the night.
Without even realizing the process, he was through his door and down the hall and through her door to see one of them standing over Rogue’s bed. She was struggling in his grip, her hair locked in one hand and the other hand pulling her from the bed by her throat.
An inhuman sound escaped Logan’s own throat as the Wolverine took over and he launched his body between Rogue and the soldier, breaking the grip he had on the girl. Feeling solid flesh beneath his hands, Logan sank the claws through the man’s chest and nailed him to the floor. But the man simply faded into nonexistence, leaving splatters of blood on the carpeting.
Panting for breath, he muttered, “This shit’s gotta stop,” then reached an arm to embrace a trembling Rogue.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, this is all my fault...” she mumbled into his shoulder before he hushed her.
“No, it’s not. You didn’t want this, and you didn’t bring it here single-handedly. I was there, too. I didn’t know what would happen, neither did you.” He stroked her hair as she started settling down. Onlookers padded down the hall and left again more quickly as Logan glared at the curious faces in the doorway. Only Ororo and the Professor remained as the mansion settled down again.
“I did not have a chance to consult with Bryony again after our meeting this afternoon. Logan, you were the last to speak with her. Did she have any early conclusions about the events we’re suffering here?” Charles sipped at a cup of tea as the foursome gathered in his office to settle nerves and plan a strategy. Ororo wrapped her long, brown fingers around her own cup and listened.
“We talked about a lot of things, and she laid down some sensible theories, if you can call any of this sensible.” Logan waved off Rogue’s offered cup, and she kept it for herself, settling next to him on the leather sofa. His arm automatically went around her shoulders, and she snuggled into him.
“Did she give you a time frame for taking some kind of action?” Ororo asked, and smothered a yawn behind one hand.
“Soon. She wants to research a few things, and lay out a plan, some sort of ritual. I guess it’s like a reversal of what the kids did -- pulling in the welcome mat, so to speak. Beats me -- she explained a lot of things over dinner, but some of it is stuff I don’t really understand.”
“You had dinner with her?” Rogue asked in as neutral a voice as she could muster.
“Yeah. Had a lot of questions, figured it was easier that way.” His free hand fidgeted slightly, tracing a seam in the leg of his jeans.
Sipping one more time from her cup, Ororo added, “I can tell you this much: she is a friend of mine and she won’t jerk you around. She’s not a flake, if that’s what you’re thinking, Logan. I trust her judgment. I trust her. That’s rare.” Logan noted the almost-warning look on the woman’s face.
“May I suggest we all try once again to get some sleep, and I’ll contact her tomorrow. Speed would seem to be of the essence. These late nights are becoming an unwelcome habit lately.” Charles eased his chair back from the desk and ushered the others from his office.
Walking back toward their rooms, Rogue baited Logan.
“So, you’re dating the ghost-buster now?”
“I don’t think one dinner constitutes ‘dating’. I don’t ‘date’.”
“What do you do with women, then? Entice? Coerce? I doubt you ever had to do that, you’re too good-looking. Charm her? Seduce her over a steak?” Rogue grinned with a hint of a teasing laugh, but her fingers were laced tightly together to stop the slight tremble.
“All of the above, and more,” Logan opened her bedroom door and checked the room thoroughly before walking back into the hallway.
“Did you kiss her?” she asked quickly.
“Are you jealous?” he replied just as quickly.
Hesitating a moment, she confessed, “Yep. Now, you answer my question, and tell the truth or I’ll suck it out of you with my pinkie finger.” She wiggled the small weapon at him, making him chuckle.
“You never asked that about any other woman you’ve seen me with, or heard about. Why this one?”
“Because this one is close, and even I can see how you started glowing when you met her.”
“I think you’re feverish. You’re seein’ things. I’ve never glowed in my life. Well, I think I might have glowed a little after all the radiation on Liberty Island, but only for a few seconds.”
“You’re evading the question,” she reminded him, and he snapped back the answer she didn’t want to hear, but in a neutral voice.
“Yes. Get some sleep. Morning comes early here at Geek Central.”
“Yeah,” Rogue mumbled as she rubbed her hand through her disheveled hair, “sleep ought to be really easy tonight.” She closed her bedroom door, and heard Logan waiting a few moments before he moved away. She slept fitfully until thirty minutes before her alarm went off to start the day, jarring her from the only sound sleep she’d gotten all night.
The morning dragged by as she fought a feeling of inertia from lack of sleep. Lunch brought her and Jubes, Bobby, and Kitty all gathered around a table, heads close together, whispering.
Rogue noted a few glances and whispered comments aimed at them by the other students who kept their distance. “I think we’ve become the black sheep of the outcasts. Nice,” Rogue commented.
“They’re all just freaked, especially the younger kids. They know there was a seance, and ghosts are in the mansion now, and everyone here for the most part remember the soldiers. There hasn’t been a big influx of new students since then, just some.” Jubilee stabbed her icy drink with a straw and added, “Can’t blame them - the whole place has been in an uproar since the night ‘of’, if you know what I mean.”
“You mean, the Night of the Raising of the Military-Bigot Dead,” Kitty added, distractedly poking at a salad with her fork..
“Chill, Kit-Kat. We all know what she means,” huffed Bobby before stuffing a tuna sandwich in his mouth.
“Back off, Frigidaire,” Jubilee sniped before Rogue laid a gloved hand over Jubes’ arm to silence her.
“Look, we’re all under enough pressure here, and we’re all lacking sleep, and we’re tense, and generally in a bad place, so let’s not start shredding each other again. I really cannot handle that now.” Rogue’s eyes swept to the door and on to the hall. She felt her heart sink as she saw Logan leave by the front door with the ghost-buster on his arm. They were going out again, in the middle of the day. It was unprecedented. “I don’t believe it,” she breathed the words, but they were lost in the background murmur of the students.
Apparently, Jubilee missed nothing. The Asian girl switched her hand to cover Rogue’s, giving her best friend a comforting pat before adding, “Look, the gossip around the place is that Miss Ghost-Buster and the Professor talked earlier today, and she’s gonna try to ritually un-do what we did. Rumor is that it’s planned for tonight, to try to get the place settled down again.”
“I suppose Logan could be taking her out to get supplies,” Rogue pondered aloud, then blushed and studied her green beans.
Bryony noted Logan’s nose wrinkle as they stepped into the shop in the East Village. A purple crescent moon emblazoned “Enchantments” hung over the doorway. The scent of herbs and perfumes and incense and other unidentifiable things almost overwhelmed Logan’s heightened senses until he made a mental adjustment and followed the witch into the magical supply shop.
“Ever been in a place like this before?” she asked as he stood looking at a wall of shelving literally filled to overflowing with big glass jars of dried things: leaves, seeds, pods, chunks of resin, sticks, and more of the unidentifiable things.
“Honestly, no. Is all this stuff...” he searched for words, “You know what all this is?” He scratched behind one ear then stuck both hands in his pockets, afraid of bumping into and breaking something in the packed store.
“A lot of it, I do know. I even sell some of my stuff here. I raise organic herbs and I have a section of my garden that’s devoted to magical things: wormwood, mugwort, angelica root, belladonna... they buy from me during harvest season. I also get a big ol’ discount on purchases here.” She gave him a conspiratorial smile before turning to talk to a heavily-tattooed female clerk with a shaved head. He cast a surreptitious glance at the two women who were whispering to each other over a table full of scattered books, scales, and some fancy but pretty much useless daggers. The two women were as different as night and day. The clerk was pure city punk. The woman he came in with was pure country woman. Yet they seemed to speak the same language of magic and spells and things he didn’t want to bother learning. Adamantium claws solved a lot of problems. He’d stick with what he knew.
Logan strolled through the store taking in the strange atmosphere and the weird music playing on a stereo somewhere. Colorful candles in every shape, size, and scent were displayed along another wall, the wax worked into tapers and votives, chunky pillars, and others cast into fanciful shapes: cats, dragons, voluptuous women, stars, skulls, and even erect penises. Checking the label beneath a phallic candle, he noted the word ‘fertility’ scribbled on a little tag. There were more candles with seven knobs formed along the length. Another table held racks of stick incense and he avoided that like it was a table stacked with skunks - the smell was overpowering.
Another table held small racks of tiny bottles all labeled and sealed, with a row of testers mounted to the wooden surface. Some bottles showed floating leaves and bits of flowers in the contents. Yet another table held small baskets with a variety of things, from horseshoe nails to woven reeds in a four-armed cross shape to thorns to feathers. Another wall held bin after bin of colorful stones and quartz points, some encased behind glass in individual boxes. Everywhere else was books and more books. He tuned his ears into the conversation between Bryony and the tattooed clerk.
“How bad is it?” the clerk asked.
“It’s bad. They’re coming every night, and they’re starting to hurt people, physically hurt them. The manifestations are growing stronger and more violent.”
Logan watched the two women pulling jars from the herb shelves while the clerk measured out things into plastic zip-lock bags. One jar held little tins and Bryony picked up a little sealed tin, gave it a vague sniff and recoiled in disgust before adding it to her basket. Before the shopping spree was over, the basket held an assortment of candles, herbs, oil bottles, and a few of the unidentifiable things.
On the street again, they started toward the next block where the Professor’s sedan was tucked into a pay lot. Logan pulled the bag of purchases from Bryony’s hands and stepped to the traffic side of the sidewalk, putting her on his right.
“Ah, chivalry isn’t dead,” she murmured and smiled softly at him. “Others might call it quaint, but I kinda like it.” Her hand laced through his elbow and they strolled through the foot traffic, light for the middle of the afternoon.
“So, you’re really into all this witch shit, huh?” He instantly felt her freeze in place, and knew he’d once again insulted her.
“I thought we’d gotten past all that last night. Apparently I was mistaken,” Bryony’s voice had gone icy and she withdrew her hand from Logan’s arm. He could read the anger in her dark eyes. “If you consider my lifestyle and my religious beliefs to be shit, then once this manifestation issue is settled at the mansion, feel free to never contact me again.” She bit the words off and paced on toward the parking lot, leaving Logan standing there, silently cursing his own ill-chosen words.
“I didn’t mean that the way it came out,” he jogged into place beside her where she waited for the traffic light to change before entering the crosswalk. The light had just turned red, so she was momentarily his captive.
Shoving the sack under one arm and the other hand through his hair, he then reached for her shoulder and tugged at her to look at him. “All I know about witchcraft is the stuff you see and hear on TV and in the papers, and I know ninety percent of that is bullshit. I want to understand it, I think, a little...” His eyes went to the ground, then checked for anyone standing within hearing range, then back to meet hers, “I’m not a religious person. Being a mutant and seeing and living through the things that we do... well, it leaves me pretty skeptical about some kind of all-knowing, all-powerful God living up in the sky. I’m a hard-ass, darlin’... I don’t believe in anything easily.”
“I have been called brittle,” she interjected the confession with a nod of affirmation before he spoke further.
“I believe in what I see. Granted, I’ve seen some pretty wild things over the years. And yeah, I’m a sarcastic son of a bitch, and anti-social, and generally a pain in the ass. I’m sorry if I insulted you. Again.”
And before Bryony could form a response, Logan leaned in and kissed her soundly.
Before she was totally breathless, he pulled away one inch, waiting for a response. She started, “I... you... wow! That was one hell of an apology,” and she returned the kiss, both arms going around his shoulders and pulling him closer to her as his free arm went around her waist. The light turned green, and red again, and people on the sidewalk began applauding and laughing before they parted, she slightly red-faced and he strutting like a rooster as they eventually crossed the intersection together.
The witch had returned to her farmhouse that afternoon to prepare things for the night’s ritual, and Rogue had been invited to help. The two sat at the battered old wooden table in the farmhouse behind the mansion, and Rogue worked along with Bryony as they ground herbs in a mortar, mixed oils, and talked about the seance and the attacks again in intimate detail.
Rogue found herself enjoying the older woman’s company more and more, and experienced a sense of guilt for the jealousy she felt about her and the attention Logan was paying her. The two people seemed really well-suited for each other, but that didn’t change the fact that Rogue craved Logan’s attentions, too. They had a mess on their hands, and only Rogue was aware of it. If this jealousy she was experiencing was part of the pay-back for dabbling in magic without proper training, then the whole situation fiercely sucked.
“Do you enjoy Logan’s company?” Rogue asked in as vague a voice as she could muster. She watched Bryony stop what she was doing and think for a moment before answering.
“Yeah. He kinda jerks my chain sometimes, but he’s definitely... interesting. And really easy on the eyes.”
“You’re preachin’ to the choir, sister,” Rogue grinned at the witch’s laughter, and they went back to their chores.
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