a struck link // christopher lightwood {3}

sixteen // under pressure

It was early morning and Matthew had been to see Moira again the night before. Of course, that meant he showed up on Pluto's doorstep to beg them for a spot downstairs with the rest of Castle at one of Saoirse's famed breakfasts, and to complain about what an asshole Moira could be sometimes.

"Why do you keep going to her, then?" Dash asked, barely looking up from the copy of Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf Pluto seemed to have lent them.

"Because she's good in bed," Matthew answered.

Dash made a disgusted noise and wrinkled their nose.

"They make a good point," said Pluto. "Hm. What've you got there?"

Matthew had picked up the color photograph (polaroid, Pluto called these) xe'd left on the table. It showed a slender, ebony-skinned werewolf with a round face, seated on a porch swing. She had her hair in zillions of black microbraids, each streaked with electric blue, and she wore very short denim shorts with a t-shirt that read "BLACK LIVES MATTER" in huge white block letters against the inky fabric. Her delicate little feet were bare and she smiled almost suggestively into the camera. The back of the square print identified the time of photographing as "August 2020." The same month before Pluto had arrived in London of 1903.

"She was turned really young and doesn't remember her birth parents," Pluto said, "but she says they must've been assholes, because no real parent would name their child so obviously after a car. 'Out of all the first names they could've chosen to go with Benson,'" xe quoted, xyr voice taking on a slight hint of a Southern drawl, "'they could've gone with Sonequa or Lakeisha or Ciara, they had to choose Mercedes.' I told her it's a Spanish name meaning 'gifts' or 'mercy' but she never bought it."

Ah. So this was the infamous Mercedes. Matthew could see why Christopher had resigned himself to sharing Pluto's heart with her ghost.

"Doesn't?" Pluto said absently. "Didn't? Won't. Right. She doesn't exist yet, so that's the right tense. She will be turned and she won't remember. That's right. Yes."

49 Place seemed frighteningly deserted, even for the lunch hour. Whoever had been operating the establishment in Bryn's absence was gone. Instead, there was Bryn's familiar blue hair just visible above the lacquered hardwood, the thin six fingers of her pale hand braced on the edge of the bar. She sprang to her feet a few minutes later and shot Pluto a look. "You keep showing up here looking threatening and people are going to have questions."

Pluto shrugged. "I'm a Shadowhunter. It's my job to show up places and look threatening."

"Yes. I suppose so."

"I want to talk about Dash."

Bryn said nothing.

"You promised me nothing would happen to them." Pluto crossed xyr arms and started toward the bar. "And then I find them this morning blanked out in front of my study window, their mind looping back uncontrollably through their memories because they've had their thoughts read so many times it's damaged them permanently!"

Bryn jumped a little, her eyes wide. She closed her eyes and ran her slim, six-fingered hands down her face. An old wives' tale lightninged through Pluto's mind like an acid flashback. If ye meet a man on the road, count his fingers lest ye deal unknowing with a fae. But Pluto knew what Bryn was already. Xe splayed xyr own hands on the bar. Four fingers to each hand, plus a thumb. Brutally short nails, the skin chapped around them. Tiny scar in the corner of xyr left-hand thumb. Voyance rune on that hand. Darkish knuckles. Two freckles on the back of the left hand, a big single one on the right. Normal hands. Normal Shadowhunter hands. No sign of faerie heritage. The only place one might ever have noticed it was in the faint points of xyr tiny ears, and even that so subtle as to be mistaken for ordinary ears with a faint point or lop.