Emit is perched next to Arion, watching them as well. However, he’s far more conspicuous about it.

I abandon the bare footage and go to join them. Marta rummages in one of the many bags she’s been going through since we showed up, as though she’s searching for something.

She’s yelling in a way that just seems like tense, loud talking, and Violet’s only slightly more animated than usual, as though she’s attempting the same peculiar thing.

It’s like watching the enemy in their natural habitat, and learning you never really knew all you thought you did when they still manage to confuse you.

“I accept that things just blow up around you. I accept that you’ll wear a sheet without shame. I accept that you attract things that like to kill you. But how does something like this just happen, Violet?” Marta asks in that loud, incredulous tone, looking up from the bag as she pauses her rummaging.

It’s going to take some time to get used to this very young version of her.

Violet blinks at a space on the wall, like she’s in her head and trying to figure out a short summary. She finally blows out a long, confused breath.

“They’re monsters, I’m a monster, and we’ve all got monster parts,” she settles on, essentially recycling it as an answer.

Marta’s lips tighten, and she continues staring very expectantly.

“I don’t know. It just did,” Violet says more seriously, throwing her hands up as she keeps her booted feet propped on the table in front of her, leisurely lounging in one of the five chairs around it.

“Do you know what they’re capable of?” Marta snaps.

Just how many bags of shit does this woman have after only being up a short amount of time?

“What happened to all your money? Did someone steal it?” Violet asks her in deflection, though it seems to be something that’s been driving her crazy, given the intent expression on her face.

“Of course you’d ask about my money. I’ve told you before, and I’ll say it again, that’s my money. I hid it so you didn’t bury it in some snow-capped mountain where it’d probably be lost forever,” Marta drones on, not making any sense in the slightest.

“Fair enough,” Violet says with a nod.

“Do you know what they’re capable of?” Marta asks her again.

Damien grins, and I see some flush hit Violet’s cheeks, as her eyes widen. She darts a scolding look his way, while her mother’s head stays focused on the seemingly bottomless bag.

“She knows what we’re capable of,” Damien murmurs, still grinning, as Violet glares at him for whatever image he’s manipulated into her mind.

She finally looks back at her mother when Marta pulls a hideous, cheaply-made, fabric doll out at last.

All that digging for that very anticlimactic, sad, somewhat disturbing little doll?

Violet’s eyes light up, intently devoted to the doll, and Damien shoves by me so he can study her better. There’s a look of pure awe and joy on her face, as though she couldn’t be any happier in this moment.

“Where’s that one from?” Violet asks her.

“I found it in a boutique just north of here after I came to,” Marta says, pausing her harsh tone and the palpable tension like it’s easy to do, as she puts the doll down on the table.

It has button eyes. It’s been a while since I saw a doll with button eyes—

I see the glint of a knife, and just barely stop myself from throwing a sword at Marta’s neck. Because her knife doesn’t threaten Violet; it stabs the…doll.

Violet gasps, eyes widening on the doll. I scratch my head, because this is becoming akin to some tragically degrading parody of Marta Portocale.

“They’re insane,” Marta says, using her loud tone.

Stuffing tumbles out of the doll, and Violet grimaces, as Marta rips it from stem to forehead, using the knife.

“Bit of a pot-to-the-kettle thing to say while gutting an unsuspecting doll,” Damien quietly points out, drawing a glare from Marta.

“Let’s go to the cellar for some privacy,” she growls, while Violet starts digging in the same bag Marta pulled the doll out of.

“Like the cellar is going to deafen us to you,” Emit states with a roll of his eyes.

Violet shoots an oddly apologetic look toward him, but he ignores it. She quickly returns to rummaging through Marta’s bag.

“You did a zigzag. You know I hate the zigzags,” Violet tells her, even though I’m so lost by this point I don’t really know what’s going on.

Is this how Violet feels around us when we’re talking?

The normalcy Violet uses to pull out a peculiar sewing kit, that she quickly examines, is unnerving, as she stuffs all the loose stuffing back into the doll.

“Follow me,” Marta says to Violet, who is collecting the sewing kit and doll, as she nods in compliance, distracted more by the doll now.

“I feel like I’m missing something,” I confess.

“She has a collection of stitched up dolls very similar to that one,” Arion tells me, as daughter and mother head down to the cellar. “They’re tucked away in one of the spare closets. Girl’s a bloody hoarder. She has storage sheds at the edge of town for a whole mess of other random childhood toys.”

“Bobo and Caroline always had toys in their rooms,” Emit says very quietly.

“In other words, I should have been buying out toy stores instead of chocolate and flower shops. Duly noted,” Damien states with a frown. “Why can’t I hear or smell them anymore?”

Arion is out of the room in the next instant, and we all quickly follow down the stairs to find a glass box at the back of the unusually large cellar. Not one sound escapes it as Marta’s lips move as animatedly as her hands.

“This is new and intriguing,” Arion murmurs just as I reach his side.

Damien and Emit move to take a seat on a covered, dusty, wretched sofa that has clearly been here for much longer than Marta.

“After being back for a very short amount of time, Marta Portocale—the most paranoid of us all—has a soundproof box, more information on Idun’s rising than us, and is mother to the forbidden fruit we’re all stalking,” Damien states idly.

“I’m still processing what all this changes,” Emit says in a register barely above a whisper.

Violet is sitting at one of the two chairs inside the box, her feet once again propped on a table, as she focuses the vast majority of her attention on hand-stitching the doll back together instead of using her Portocale threading gifts.

“Until you’re man enough, you’re simply irrelevant, at current. Take all the time you need to process, mongrel,” Damien says in an amused tone to Emit.

Leave it to the deviant to finally come to life when there’s something fucked up going on all around us.

Violet carefully continues stitching in a perfect, deliberate pattern, her spacing almost exact, as she uses the thicker, multi-colored threading. It’s as though she’s purposely adding character, instead of simply mending the doll.

Or maybe I’m simply reading into everything right now because even I find this…weird, for a lack of a better word to encompass this surreal, maddening moment.

Marta is talking with her whole body, and I don’t need the volume turned on to know she’s still very loud.

Violet is nodding absently, and I half worry the doll was a tactic to somehow stun Violet’s weaker mind, in order to make her compliant with everything—”

Violet’s eyes come up, silencing my thoughts, as the delicate creature casts a cold, somewhat alarming look toward Marta. We all forget she’s a new, naïve little monster. Marta’s an alpha. Violet’s not.

But I guess daughter trumps that rule in monster world in a way I never thought possible where Marta Portocale is concerned, because she doesn’t slap Violet to the floor the way she always has omegas or betas who dared to commit lesser offenses in the past.

“What’s…happening right now?” Damien asks as he leans forward.

We all move unconsciously closer in some way, because it looks like Marta Portocale is backing down, as she takes a seat, her aggression almost leaving her stance.

“I’ve never been good at reading lips, but I think she just apologized,” Arion says like he’s now suspicious, eyes warily darting around like he’s waiting for the trap to explode at us at any moment.

Violet’s glare is gone in the next blink, and she smiles over at Marta, as she resumes her task of stitching together the doll. Her lips start moving as she tells her whatever it is she’s telling her.

I think she says something about Anna.

Why is she talking about a decayed ghost right now? Of everything else that should take priority?

Marta palms her face, and I know without a doubt she’s lecturing her on how very sick and desperate a ghost’s mind can get. Anna was a very rare exception, and I deduce that Violet is calmly and effectively arguing that.

Marta shakes her head, running a hand through her own hair, as Violet finishes up the last stitch, holding up the freshly mended doll with pride and a genuine smile.

“Really…though. What is happening right now?” Damien asks again.

Everyone looks to Arion, since he seems to have the most answers at the moment.

“Why the bloody hell is she grinning about fixing the doll Marta ripped up? The doll was supposed to be a gift, right?” he asks with the same confusion.

“What sort of message is that supposed to convey?” Damien asks, now looking at me like I have a damn clue what’s going on.

I’ve been in her house numerous times, and spoken to her more times than I can presently think of, but never once—in any capacity—was her mother described in a way that could have suggested Marta, the doll-killing-paranoid-enigma, was her mum. And I didn’t know she collected those sad little button-eyed dolls either.

For a moment, Violet continues just smiling, and Marta just continues to stare, as Violet gives the doll a small, trepid wiggle, almost as though she’s oddly trying to draw attention to it.

“I think Violet is just trying to keep Marta from stomping all over her, and this is the only way an omega can do something like that with an alpha—even her darling mother,” I finally say on a long exhale. “There are no rules for Violet in our world because Violet is the first of her kind. But Marta could easily take a page from Idun’s book, and own Violet.”

“This is going to be a damn war over rights for her if Marta isn’t amendable in the slightest,” Emit grinds out, glaring at Marta as she just glares at Violet, while Violet continues to give her a hopeful grin.

“Idun won’t be a problem,” Arion assures me distractedly. “But what about the doll?” he adds, like I’ve somehow pieced together every piece of the puzzle.

Before I can answer, I see Marta’s jaw tic just barely before she pats Violet’s hand, saying something too fast for me to attempt to read her lips.