undergrounds | Street where the riches of ages are sold (OPEN)

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Street where the riches of ages are sold (OPEN)

A: Barnet

Kenzi and Jennifer weren't friends by any stretch of the word. Acquaintances was a closer definition but even then, they didn't run in the same circles. The only reason she even knew Jennifer was the girl found dead in Barnet was she might... be following police intel. For a friend.

It was weird for her to be doing something that wasn't outright for her own self interest but it was shockingly helpful. After all, once she heard the description of the Jane Doe it was only a matter of time before her research and connections (however small they might be) told her one thing.

Jennifer - a Circle Midnight witch - was dead, killed by someone invested in the Redbright takeover in Barnet. Kenzi hoped that nobody from Circle Daybreak, The Night Council, or any vampires would go where Jennifer lived and take things. She didn't think they'd be that stupid - or that smart.

So Kenzi went in the morning, when everyone was headed to work and acted as if she knew exactly what she was doing. Confidence would get you access to more things than fake badges. But she had one of those too just in case.

It would be a tough sell, though. Considering she was wearing stiletto leather boots that went all the way up to her thighs, and had green threaded through her very black hair. Not a cop, by any stretch.

But that didn't stop her from breaking the seal of tape and touching her little wooden key-chain to the door. There was the tell-tale click of locks being undone, by the sound of how many there were - it seemed like Jennifer either had something pretty valuable inside or was super paranoid.

Well, she did get murdered after all. Maybe she wasn't so paranoid.

Kenzi spends a good portion of her time frame that she allowed herself roaming around the apartment and stuffing things she wants into her backpack. Hey, Jennifer wasn't going to be using them anymore. Might as well make sure they stayed out of Redbright's hands in the meantime. A few books for magic, almost all her jewelry and her little black contact book that had all the phone numbers a witch could ask for.

Maybe there was something important in there?

Kenzi is leaving the apartment with her backpack filled to the brim and going straight for her car.

B: Portobello Road - Friday

It was a cheap gimmick, and something that usually only got the stupid people and tourists interested - but that was what she wanted. It was easy to fleece someone who was too busy listening to what she was saying about how fascinating their life line was to notice her lifting their watch or hand jewelry. And it didn't hurt that she asked for 16 quid before even speaking to them.

"Ladies and gentlemen, don't be shy. Come, see what the future has in store for you and your loved ones!"

She had a little stall on the market road, something her cousin had hooked her up with. It was all decked out in exactly what you would expect from a Russian fortune teller, except she was about fifty years too young to make it especially hokey.

Kenzi was dressed like a hippy. Not a scrap of black on her, and her make-up was done so as to look as natural and flower-child-y as possible. To top it off, she was wearing an ashy blonde wig with some stuff woven into the hair.

She might also be selling knockoff charms to normal people. They're in the approximation of the real charms that she makes, but they're completely useless. Still, a witch or someone who knows her work might recognize them.

C: Late Night Munchies

There was a plus to living in London. There was always something open and ready to serve you greasy, disgusting food. Which was exactly what Kenzi wanted late at night after working in her shop all day long. She might just be making Day and Moonlight Jewelry and other little charms and sundry items that she sells to people who want them, but she is only one witch. And that means constantly flexing her magical muscles for a whole day makes her exhausted, and starving too.

She's sitting inside a little pizza place, whose front of house is so small they only have room for a counter to order at and chairs along the walls and front windows to sit at while you wait for your food.

Kenzi is dicking around on her phone when suddenly, her nose starts to bleed. Yet another lovely side affect of not having a coven.

D: W-W-WILDCARD!!

Make your own up if you feel up to it!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Kenzi is mean, so she expects everyone else to be mean back. It's how the world works: you dish shit out, you take it back. Asshole's karma or so her cousin told her.

"In real life or in here?"

Kenzi has family that can tell fortunes. Her aunt runs a business out of her trailer - it's legit but barely anyone but the desperate go to her anymore. She has a loyal clientele. If she could do it, why not Kenzi?

She's never actually tried however. The tarot deck she uses is mostly for show, she doesn't read the cards back accurately. The runs in the bowl on the table? She lies about what they mean.

Palm reading was a total sham, but they didn't need to know that either.

“Uh.”

Brow furrowing, he struggles to discern what real life might mean to Kenzi. After a moment, he gets what she’s saying and makes a dismissive gesture at her stall.

“Real life, duh. C’mon, give me a reading. I’ll buy you booze if it turns out accurate.”

"Make it pizza and you got a deal, bud."

Kenzi could live off of booze alone, but a girl did - in fact - have to eat real food. And pizza sounded good all the time.

"So what do you want? Celtic Cross, Soulmate, Weekly, Year?"

She knows he probably has no idea what she's talking about, and might be listing card spreads just to get him interested.

Whew, that saved him from needing to utilize his very pathetic fake ID to get the alcohol for her. Agreeing enthusiastically, he considers the next questions with an expression that confirms exactly what she's thinking. Celtic Cross sounds vaguely ominous, and he's a hormonal teenage boy with sex always on the mind, so the choice is obvious.

"Soulmate."

"Okie-dokie. Take a seat."

Kenzi grabs the deck at the side of her table and starts shuffling.

"So there are a lot of romantic spreads. If you don't like the sound of this one, we can do something else. We're gonna be asking the question of if this person is actually your soulmate or not."

It all sounds very clinical. If Stiles asked, she'd probably end up doing her little accent. But for now she's going to do this as herself instead of Madame Czigany, her stage persona.

"With me so far?"

She will shamelessly lie if his spread comes out being what he doesn't want.

Seated, he watches her hands suspiciously as if expecting her to shuffle in some BAD END card or something. Not that he'd be able to notice any real sleight of hand, observant though he can be (at times). When she explains however, he begins to get the impression that she does actually know what she's talking about.

"Sure. But does that mean, uh, I have to tell you who I have in mind? Or will the cards just..." A vague, wiggly hand gesture. "...know?"

Kenzi flashes her teeth at him and the grin that follows is... mischievous. To say the least. At worst it's downright evil.

"They'll know. But you have to actually think about the person. No take-backs, no thinking about anything else. After the cards are drawn, you can do whatever."

She's done shuffling and sets the deck between them.

"Cut the cards once, and we'll get started."

Glowering distrustfully at that grin, he immediately imagines Lydia Martin in his mind before reaching out to take the deck. Stiles is tempted to cut the cards more than once, just to have some kind of control over all this, but decides against it. After it's done, he puts the deck back down and looks at her expectantly.

"What if you're my soulmate?" he asks, more out of curiosity than anything.

Kenzi waits until Stiles takes his hand away from the cards to put the lower half from where he cut on top of the top half. At his question, she almost laughs because ... well it's kinda funny. She can't keep a smile
from forming.

"Then they'll probably tell you your soulmate is really close to you, has keen fashion sense and a shitty personality."

She knows. It's not hard to figure out where she stands in the champagne thief's esteem. Not that Kenzi really cares one way or another.

Kenzi starts laying out the cards in the shape of an 'S' to a total of eight cards, then sets aside the pile.

"Ready?"

And in spite of himself, the smile is returned with the faint beginnings of a grin. Though, honestly, he can’t say that he necessarily agrees with the keen fashion sense assessment. …Then again, what does he know about fashion? With a little shrug to himself, he shifts in his seat and watches the cards. There’s a bubble of nervous energy expanding in his gut, because there’s always the possibility that Lydia could be his soulmate. If it’s confirmed…

He’s hoping against hope, mouth dry and palms damp.

“Ready. Hit me. Whoa, not like, literally.”

It's hard to pinpoint, Kenzi wouldn't blame him for not understanding it. The retraction of 'Hit me' has her snorting however. "Relax. I just got my nails done."

Besides, she isn't really the punchy type. Kenzi starts flipping the cards over to show their faces. The fourth one looks a bit ominous, however. A naked man falling from a lightning-struck tower.

Kenzi silently looks over everything for a moment before clearing her throat and speaking, touching the first card. Which is a picture of what looks like a stick and two hands hovering around it.

"The relationship is good for both of you; freeing." without the Serbian accent the reading sort of loses some of it's charm, Kenzi thinks. One of the key ingredients to a good reading is to never sound wishy-washy. Always know what you're talking about - even if you have no idea.

The second card should answer the question of whether or not the querent (Stiles) and the person he is asking about will be friends. The card itself shows a man picking seven pentacles off a bush, like they're being harvested. "Your relationship is hard work at first, and you gotta earn their friendship before you can reap the benefits. But you'll be rewarded for your efforts, if you put in the time."

The third is a bit less optimistic looking. A woman in bed with nine swords pointed down towards her. Her face looks just as unpleasant as the context of the card. Still. Kenzi can spin this. Every card has a positive meaning. In context. "If you want to go from being a friend to being a lover however," Kenzi's eyes flick up to Stiles - just to see if he gets flustered. "You'll need to stick through the hard shit. It's not all bad, but it doesn't mean things will be easy for either of you if you want the relationship to progress."

And here is the worst card of the bunch. The Tower. Most people regard it as a negative card, but Kenzi's aunt did always tell her that it simply meant that: "This person has been brought into your life as a source of dramatic change and upheaval. The card is upright so this is a source of good change."

So far all the cards have been upright. So far. The next is reversed and shows a man carrying a bundle of ten sticks on his back. "You have been brought into their life to help lift a burden of some kind."

The next card is another one of those pentacle cards. This time there are three. "In order to become prepared and ready for this person, you should continue to grow intellectually."

The one after that is the only upright card after the tower, and it depicts a woman in a boat looking very somber with six swords protruding from the boat. "But in order to be with them, you must first work out your own bullshit." He's a teenage boy, Kenzi's sure he's rife with bullshit.

The last card is reversed and depicts a fat king looking guy looking pretty pleased with himself and sitting on a throne with a star on it. "This relationship has the potential to be very successful and beneficial to both of you."

What she failed to mention is that this spread doesn't always mean romance. But, she figured Stiles didn't care about that and would read into it anyways.

"There ya go. Fortune read."

Kenzi sits back in her chair and folds her arms across her chest.

Edited 2015-06-13 21:25 (UTC)

Stiles eats the reading up. Mouth hanging open, he inches closer and closer to the table as she speaks, drawn in despite his reservations. Naturally, he interprets the reading to mean that a future with Lydia Martin (romantic, of course) is far from impossible. His cheeks heat up a bit at the word lover, though he doesn’t avert his gaze even for a second. It all makes sense to him—especially the part about his own bullshit. With no small measure of guilt, he recalls the time he’d reluctantly left Lydia sobbing alone in her car. His promise to return and comfort her had gone unfulfilled, but he doesn’t blame himself for that.

“Wait. I’m not gonna see her for months!” Floundering, he struggles to think of something else for Kenzi to read for him; this is addicting. “If you want that pizza, we should do another one. Y’know, one we can test sooner.”

Kenzi arches an eyebrow in silent questioning at doing another reading for him. But still, she can't deny how fun it is to do readings. Even if she isn't that great at it. Almost all of her technique (what little there is) is stolen straight from her aunt.

Normally she'd close up shop and demand money from someone who was obviously hooked but as it is, all she knows she might get out of this is a pizza. One for which she's actually pretty hungry.

"Better be a large pizza," she grumbles, and starts shuffling again.

"So," she sighs dramatically. "What do you wanna know now?"

“A large with all the toppings you want,” he promises, eager to hear more about what the cards have to say. “And I don’t know. What can we do that’ll have quick results? I need to make sure you’re legit.”

Kenzi smiles eagerly, satisfied by the promise of pizza and she sets the deck in front of him for Stiles to cut after they decide what to do.

"If you want to really know if I'm legit then maybe we should do something that asks questions about your past or an already established relationship I don't know about."

Surely he had to have a best friend or something he could ask about.

Except, for Stiles, the word relationship holds a romantic connotation. So he awkwardly averts his eyes, embarrassed by the fact he's not only a virgin at seventeen, but he's also never dated anyone. The past it is, then.

"Okay, so how does that work? Like, do I ask you to guess what grades I got on my last report card or something and the cards tell you?"

He's totally clueless.

Stiles you're such a dork. Kenzi doesn't know what he's thinking but by the shift of his eyes, she can take a guess. The question about his grades however has her curious. Could she actually do that? Probably not. She could barely get a hook in for questions about love and money.

Still, she couldn't let him know that the reason she didn't want to do that was because she didn't think it'd work.

"How about something I can't find out through Google?"

And that inspires an idea.

"How about my name?"

Ha. Let's see her pull this one off. Good luck, Kenzi.

"If you can tell me my full real name, I'll get you that pizza right now."

"There's no spread for a name." Genius, she privately thinks.

Kenzi doesn't know if that's even true, but like hell she's going to try that one.

"How about you think about a specific thing that happened when you were in the States, ask a question relating to it and we'll see how that goes?"

Foiled. Sulky, he sinks in his seat and scowls at the cards. It takes him a moment to come up with another idea.

"Since we're both running with a particular crowd," he begins carefully, tone flat, "things tend to get messy fast. Tell me about the first death I experienced."

The trick is—his mother's death had nothing to do with the supernatural.

Wow, grim much. Still, Kenzi isn't going to say anything because: pizza. It's the best thing that's ever happened to her. Pizza is always there for her.

"Ooookay," she allows slowly as she deals the cards out. It's a simple horseshoe shape, with about seven cards. Only one less than last time but still. A bit easier.

She turns over the cards one by one in silence. The last card in the horseshoe makes her think she's got this in the bag: The Death Card.

Kenzi keeps her smile to herself and begins going through the spread.

The first card depicts a small family. A mother, a father and a son all gathered beneath an awning with four points. The Four of Wands.

"Before your first experience - everything was really good. At least from your perspective. This is a card of family and happiness."

'Nough said. She moves on. The next card is reversed; a woman in a classic Egyptian looking lectica.

As this is Kenzi's favorite card - for completely superficial reasons - she'll read the meaning accurately (although it'll be tailored to the reading)

"The death itself was not violent externally and, to you, happened rapidly. Too quickly."

Yeah, this isn't her favorite spread ever - note to self: don't entertain dumb boys.

"There was a hidden influence.... a man of wealth or of some note to you and yours. I don't really know what that means,"

After all this is a past reading. She'll leave him to the interpretation. The next card is the magician, although it is reversed.

"You wanted to do something to change things, but at the same time didn't like what you were thinking. Probably wanting to disappear and run away."

Kenzi don't project.

"Everyone around you wanted you to be patient and not act on impulse."

"After it happened, you put in a lot of effort to make sure you healed. Or at least, made sure everyone thought you had."

And finally, they arrive at Death. Before she started the reading, Kenzi was going to use this one to close the deal. But now she just feels bad, and not for the first time, hates that she actually still has some empathy left in her tiny little body.

Seeing as it's Death reversed, she reads it as is. It's probably accurate no matter what. He isn't that old and it couldn't have been too recent a death - but still one that hit him hard if the careful measured way he asked was any indication.

"Afterwards you were depressed, making things more difficult for yourself by refusing to move on and ...yadda yadda yadda."

She spits out the last part eagerly, and crosses her arms over her chest.

"There - satisfied?"

Give me my pizza.

And once more, Stiles is drawn irresistibly into the story unraveled in the reading. Back and forth, his eyes dart between the spread and Kenzi. Even though this is an experience he hardly needs a third party to tell him about, there’s a tiny part of him hoping. For what, he doesn’t know. Maybe insight that doesn’t exist. Maybe possibilities that don’t either. Regardless, as the reading continues, the careful neutrality of his expression grows more and more frozen. Clearly, she’s hit the mark. The mention of a hidden influence seems to confuse him, however. Sitting back heavily in his seat, he mulls over what that could mean. There was no man of wealth…that he’s aware of. But one of note to him and his? His father…? Stiles doesn’t like the implication of that thought, and hurriedly dismisses it with a wave of his hand.

When she finishes, he exhales slowly. Well, that was a total mood killer.

“Sure,” he agrees wearily, shrugging. “Do they deliver around here, or do you wanna take a break and hit up a restaurant?”

Kenzi is honestly tempted to apologize. Which is weird. For her.

Then she reminds herself that Stiles asked for it - literally - and that he's a teenage boy. He'll be fine. At least that's what she tells herself to keep what guilt she has left in her body at bay.

"Break sounds good. And I could use a walk. Split the toppings with me?"

It's as close to an apology as she'll get today.

Pseudo-apology accepted. Expression relaxing, he nods before standing, eyes anywhere but the spread still face-up on the table. Once he slips out of the booth, Stiles makes a show of stretching casually.

“Sorry!” he tells the few people waiting in line. “Ken… Uh, Madame…Czigany—seriously?—is going on a lunch break! Come back later.”

Kenzi collects her cards and runes and stuffs them in her oversized bag. Everything else can stay - she doesn't care if people try to loot it, if they do there'll be some nice locating charms ready to lead her right to them.

But nobody had the balls to do that to an empty stall on a busy market road anyways.

Kenzi pops out the back of the booth wig-free and sporting some more inconspicuous garb than her love child clothing. She skirts around to the front where Stiles is and watches the line disperse with a hint of reluctance. That's probably fifty pounds down the drain.

Which she could make in about an hours time doing anything else. This booth was just....more fun.

"Kay, let's go."

Street where the riches of ages are sold (OPEN)

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this is so long im sorry /sob

OMG IT'S GREAT THO

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