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Lourdes of Loki part 27 - The wicked step mother

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The very notion of a wicked step mother might sound like THE cliché of western culture, or at least this side of the Grim Brothers (who seemed obsessed with the matter, so I can imagine that their upbringing would be something for a Freudian to delve into.)

Nevertheless, Fiona Monserate did live up to that epithet quite a bit. Dad's new wife was not in any way happy to see me that night, when I came down the broad stairs to the sitting room outside the dining hall. With the look she gave me, it was as if she regarded me as something the cat had dragged in. I couldn't for my life explain away the chill she transmitted towards me in any other way, as dad called me over. Anyway I came up to take Fiona's hand (which was rubbery and cold as a dead fish, and provided with as much responsive persistance too).

"Fiona," she said as she let go of my hand – or rather slithered away from it.
"Lourdes, pleased to meet you," I replied, doing my best to not bother with her attitude while flashing a toothpaste add smile. I was not going to play along in her game. And I was not going to make her attitude problems mine.  

"Now, Loki tells me you live in the Hollywood," Fiona said, cooking a too-well plucked brow, her voice was haughty and edgy, with a notable Swiss accent.
"That's correct," I replied, my eyes darting over dad, standing next to Fiona, as she had tucked her arm under his in that very mid-European way I've always found as awkward as the chin-kissing thing.
"So what do you do then in Hollywood," Fiona smirked. "Don't tell me you're an actress, right?"
"No, I'm doing... something else."
"Should've known, waiting in a bar, right."

I had to bite my lips to not let something wile and toxic evaporate trough them. Instead I pretended she was kidding me and made a face which could, if you stretched it, be galled a grin.
"No, since I'm a bit more well educated, I make my living in the medicine business. Thus I'm doing quite well income-wise and do not have to marry rich to afford a Prada outfit."

As I ran my eyes over her dress, I heard a strange sound behind me, like a hydralic pressure machine kicking in gear. It was Fenrir stiffling a laughter with dry martini in his mouth. (Now, werewolves and alcohol, that's actually a dangerous combination, but that's another story.)

"Oh, you don't have to be snotty with me," Fiona shot back. "Loki told me about your little dabbling with plastic surgery. Now, I imagine anyone can press some botox in a face on another person, so don't try to impress me that way."
"Of course anyone can do that," I said and made a notable scrutinizing of Fiona's face. "However for the people in Hollywood the faces are their tools of the trade. They don't let 'anyone' touch it. However around here I can imagine it's not really that essential to aquire that combination of realism and youthful freshness. And to be able to actally move your eye brows while expressing something. That is important for an actor, you wouldn't know how much of our expressions are shown using those little muscles in the face. Muscles a badly performed Botox shot will kill. You do end up looking like – plastic."

"That's quite a lecture from someone who has hardly finish grade school," Fiona chided.
"So what do you do yourself?" I returned, and now dad had obviously had enough, he couldn't pretend to not hear, while listening to Igor talking about deer hunting.
"Lourdes, Fiona works for me."
"I can tell she does," I couldn't help responding.
"With public relations," dad went on, but I clearly felt that I had pushed him to the limit now. Lucky for me, Lucrezia came down the stairs in the same instance, involved in an avid phone conversation.

"Dad!" she held out the phone to our father. "It's Thor. He's been trying to reach you for hours, he says."
"Which means ten minutes the maximum," Dad replied as he grabbed the phone.
"Loki!" Fiona tried at the same time.
"It's urgent," Lucrezia went on, while Fiona turned her icy attention over to my sister. But she never got the chance to say anything, because Lucrezia has this rare skill of reading people and situations quickly, and had naturally taken in mine and Fiona's oral battle. So in two quick steps she was over to me, grabbed me and turned me around and pulled me around the sofa and over to the bar.

"Loki! Not anther one of your..." I heard Fiona insist from behind and dad hushing her off. He hated people talking to him at the same time as he was on the phone.

"How rude," Lucrezia said. "Nobody made you a drink, Lourdes! Now, let me take are of that!" she said and begun tinkering with the bottles.
"I'm not really..." I begun but my sister went on in a low voice.
"It's Fiona. Now, she's a bitch, but it's a no-no to start a fight with her, if you don't want her to turn your holiday into something miserable. Because honestly, she can do that."
"She started it," I whispered back, leaning my elbows on the bar while my witch sister poured white wine in two glasses. And since this is Europe, no ice.

"Doesn't matter," Lucrezia hissed and I saw her eyes dart over to where Dad was still on the phone. I took my offered glass and sipped on the pleassantly cold drink. I seldom have starter drinks, but today I felt that I needed it. Lucrezia corked the bottle and returned it to the bar fridge, stood up and raised her glass. "Chers, Lourdes. Welcome back to France! Now, that woman is so full of venon, I'm surprised she doesn't burst from it and it starts leaking out, corroding the floor tiles. And she's all little needle stings and sarcasms when she talks to you. But don't let it get to you, because that's exactly what she wants. So she can tell dad what rude and ill-bred children he has. Which he dones't need to hear. Because trust me, whatever there is to say about Loki Laufeyson, he TRIES. Even if... ah, shit, forget it!"

My sister's eyes suddenly teared up and then they dried off as quickly again, if you had blinked, you'd miss it, so fast did it go. And I remembered that her mother had left dad head over heals as well, even if she had taken little Lucrezia with her. Now Jourdette Lemenoir, Lucrezia's mother, had remarried some excentric, Italian director and was living somewhere outside Verona, while Lucrezia had returned to Paris, where she had a studio in Montmartre. However apparently dad kep asking her to come here all the time, especially when our brothers were visiting, no doubht to somewhat keep an eye on them.

"I mean really, Lu, what does he see in her?" I asked and Lucrezia shook her head.
"Beats me, she's an ice queen after all."
"Perhaps it makes him remember Jotunheim," I suddenly heard Igor's voice in my ear as he handed the phone over to the witch. Taking it and snapping it shut, she snorted out loud.
"Getting all nostalgic for the frost giants, you mean?" she asked. "However trust me, wolf, they are in general warmer than madame Monserate."

Igor rolled the glass thumbler absent mindedly in his large hands.
"I wouldn't know," he said. "I've never been to Jotunheim."
"Give it a try," Lucrezia adviced. "It might be cold as hell, but it sure is a beautiful place. And it beats Chamonix. Any day. Both when it comes to skiing and partying."
"You've been to Jotunheim?" I couldn't help asking.
"Sure thing," Lucrezia replied. "Dad brought me there last year, when he took me on board the business. Is a place you have to see one day, Lourdes."

Then dad cut us off and informed that dinner was ready, and we followed him and Fiona trough the double doors and into the baroque dining hall. This was one of two places which had kept its look trough all my childhood (the other one was dad's office.) There was the heavy dining table in hightly polished dark wood and set with more than century old china and crystals (that dad dared to use that with the wolves around!) there were the oil paintings on the wall with the haughty looking men and women in fancy 18th century dresses, there were the huge and partly lit crystal chandeliers hanging from a ceiling painted like a sky with fluffy clouds and pudgy cherubs.

And what can be said about the dinner? It could've been nice, had it been just dad and the four of us, but now Fiona was there, as was yet another sibling, Fiona's seven year old Fatima. A spoilt brat already at age seven who kept looking with a sour face at all the rest around the table, whilst picking at her food.
"I don't like," was her mantra. She didn't like the scrimps of the starter or the peas or the corn or the potato sallad of the main course, and no matter that dad kept trying to cheer her up, she appeared as tart as her mother.

"You're right, lass, peas ain't that good," Fenrir smirked, before he dug into his venison with good appetite. Fatima turned and stared at him and he went on. "That's food for rabbits, and you're not a rabbit I can tell."
"No," Fatima had to agree, before she turned her face down to her plate and kept on playing around with the green little vegetables.
"Can you not teach my daughter bad manners, Fenrir?" Fiona snarled at my brother and he grinned back, canines clearly shown, even as he was in human form.
"Your wish my comand, ma'm," he responded, the derision clearly heard in his voice while raising his glass to Fiona before he drank from the red wine.  

I met Lucrezia's eyes across the table, they were full of mirth and I couldn't help pulling my lips either. Meanwhile Fatima was saying something about rabbits as she kept pushing her food around at the plate.

"Loki!" Fiona almost snarled as she turned to dad, who looked up from cutting his steak.
"Yes, dear?"
"Is he supposed to be speaking like that to me?"
"Fiona!" dad sighed and put down his cutleries. "He was merely making a joke."
"And how many times have I expressed my clear voice about that. I do not appreciate to be the object of your children's jokes. Not me, nor my daughter."
"She's my dauther too," dad huffed.
"Yes, and as such you should help me rise her, but instead I bet you don't seem to mind her turning up as insolent as the rest of your off-spring."

It was at that time Igor had had enough with his step mother and slammed his large hand in the table so that plates and glasses were jumping.
"Will you stop this already, woman?" he snarled, glaring across the table at Fiona Monserate, with eyes suddenly shifting in wolfish yellow before turning back to their human gray. "Hold a mirror in front of your face one day, will you! You take the word 'insolent' in your mouth, and yet it's you who've been insulting people like pigeons shit all night long. Starting with Lourdes, who is a guest spending her first evening here, and then moving trough the rest of us as if you have a list to tick off before you can call it a night. What is you problem anyway? Loki having a history? Which includes the four of us?"

"Igor!" dad tried to berate his son, but Igor was having none of it.
"You were there too, dad! When that harpe..." he pointed with his knife at Fiona as if he wanted to stab her, "...began picking at Lourdes. Had you had your balls in check, you'd told her off right then!"
"IGOR!" now, dad was mad as hell as well, and I wormed in my chair. Now, it wasn't fun anymore. Igor was right, and I knew that dad knew it as well, but didn't know what to do with it. He couldn't back now and thus it became an impasse between father and son, where the air temperature seemed to drop several degrees in the room and the silence felt as if you could trough it with a knife. Even Fenrir had stopped eating and was looking at the two other men, trying to decide what to do.

Oddly enough, it was Fatima who broke the spell.
"Can I leave the table?" she asked, staring at her plate, where more than half the food was still left.
"But darling, it's Saturday," Fiona stroke her hand across her apply chin. "And there's a cake tonight."
"A cake?" the seven year old beamed up.
"Yes, dear, a chocolate cake," dad said and faced his youngest dauther, glad to be able to take his attention from Igor, however I could tell that none of them were done with each other.
"With whipped cream?" Fatima smiled and dad nodded his head.
"Yes, there's whipped cream too. So finish eating now and we can begin with that one soon."
"I am done eating this," Fatima said in a firm voice.

Now, Lucrezia and I returned to our discussions about what was worth doing in Paris this coming week. Antoine was taking us there already on Monday for shopping. Igor and Fenrir split the last part of the steak and dad served himself and Fiona some more of the wine. Then the serving personell was taking out the plates and the emptied glasses and returning with dessert plates and a cake, which looked like it was made in heaven. And for the first time I saw Fatima beam up for real. So that was why the girl was pudgy, I thought. The poor thing had not learned to trust other taste buds than those who were made for sugary and sweet things. And so she kept dreaming of cakes and cream all the time. And oddly enough Fiona didn't seem to care, no matter that she was thin as a stick, almost rivalling Vivek before Gaetania and I had turned her fat.

But it was a lovely cake. I had to admit that, and for the first time since Gaetania and I stopped our magic diet, did I long for a return of that one. Instead I pushed gluttony back in her box again and went for a small piece and a spoon with whipped cream. Lucrezia was moderate as well, but the wolf bros were serving themeselves generous portions. Just like dad. And oddly enough Fiona as well, and I wondered if there was more than Gaetania and I who were acquainted with that magic diet. I'd have to ask my sister about it later.

After the cake we had coffee, however Fatima left the table and ran away, out trough the opposite doors, where I saw the shadow of what I guessed was a nanny picking her up. The conversation had returned to quite a bit more neutral topics, but there was still a kind of tension in the air, and as soon as possible, both Lucrezia and I excused usselves and left the dining room.

"Do this happen often?" did I ask as soon as my sister and I were back in the sitting room.
"You mean Igor getting mad?" Lucrezia asked and I nodded my head. "Actually, no. But usually Fiona is a bit more restrained. I don't know where she got the courage from tonight, since she usually don't go for any of us in such an open way. It's more like tiny stings. Normally, she would've snapped something as wile back at Fenrir as he sent her way and that would've been it. For a while. But I guess you threw her off balance before dinner, and as such was she already a bit too mad to be able to keep her head as cool as it normally is. Then again, it was actually nice seeing Igor vent at dad. It has been coming for a while, regarding Fiona. And I guess this means that dad has to have a serious talk with her."

Then she shifted her attention, and her face lit up.
"Pierre!"
"Hi there," a deep, mellow voice was saying. "Did I miss dinner? Oh, how... Lourdes!"

Turning around I found myself facing another brother of mine. Pierre Laufeyson. A guy I hadn't seen in years and years. Gone were the gangly teen in glasses and in his stead a young man with a mop of dark brown hair was standing in the door frame.
"Pierre!" I echoed my sister's exclamation and then I received another warm hug.
"Great to see you, little sister," the tall man smiled. "Lu told me you were coming, I'm glad I was able to make it over here, to say hi, no matter that I seem to have been late for dinner. Now, besides the famous Saturday chocolate cake, did I miss anything particular."

"Oh well," Lucrezia shrugged. "Fenrir having a go at Fiona and Igor and dad this close to fighting," my sister made a gesture with her hand, just milimetres between thumb and index finger. "Then I believe there's a bit of the cake left down in the kitchen, should you ask. Are you staying?"
"Till tomorrow," Pierre replied. "I'm to discuss some business details with dad. I'm going to show him the new development of the Golden Dawn project."
"So how's it going?"
"We might be ready to launch early next year. February or perhaps March."

I had no idea what they were talking about, but it didn't matter, it was always nice to see Pierre, it felt as a relief after the tense dinner. There was something with him that radiated peace and calm, and I hoped he was staying. I was not in the mood for more clashes with Fiona Monserate.  
"Golden dawn?" I asked. "What's that, a new on-line casino?"
"No, not this time," Pierre shook his head. "It's the new boy band concept."

"Eww," I said. "You found a foursome of clean cut sixteen years old?"
"Yes, I have," Pierre smirked. "However not in the real world. You're familiar with Hatsune Miku, I take it?"
"Yeah, the virtual pop singer!" I nodded my head. "With blue pigtails!"
"Yes, well Golden Dawn is a bit of the same concept, however more fitted for a western audience, and with four cute boys instead. Just imagine four lovely forever sixteen's, no scandals, no drugs just perfect dancing and singing. Everyone's gonna love it, and we're gonna make so much money!"
"You really are daddy's boy, Pierre," Lucrezia grinned.  
Lourdes of Loki part 27 - The wicked step mother
Introducing more of Lourdes' family
© 2012 - 2024 LuckyLilith
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