Faith turned up the volume on D! Online.

She'd awoke this morning to find social media had begun a guesstimate countdown on her own communion with twoddle articles leaking lace frosting designs, What to Wears describing opulent robes by distinguished designers and theories on wild flower arrangements handpicked from all nine circles. The extent of sheer fiction the damned press could spin was phenomenal.

Faith gazed at the late arriving guests on screen knotting her arms more tightly around herself. D! mostly did commentary on two things: gifts and clothing. A paradox, most were wearing little more than effigies of Christ. The gifts were Faith's favorite. The Titans, oversized Grecian-esque statues with the galactic magma of star cores trapped behind their eyelids and soft tissues of blue diamond, black opal and jadeite, had brought house Barbas the cornucopia. Faith guessed the T's and C's of this would be discussed at a more appropriate time.

The cornucopia, which D! had clued to and fixed a live camera on, resting on a gifts table in Plcaenta's entry hall, kept dishing out all sorts of goodies. A frolicking baby unicorn. A fireball spluttering dragonite who began chirpily chasing the frolicking baby unicorn. A cloud of green tipped, pointy pixies who got drunk on a stolen bottle of nail varnish remover and began clumsily granting wishes and a pastel orange toadstool which could be ridden like a hot air balloon but was causing a havoc trapped in the dance hall.

Clothes interviews gave supplier names of the silks used to drape otherwise bare figures, the age of pearls and the petals in flower garlands. Gemstones tucked into pendants, earrings, belly buttons or artfully speckled over chests, curtaining waists and up necks required the host to cut to a consultant interpreter their wealth of ulterior meanings for each type was so densely complex.

Some were more conservative in tapestry robes and hand painted togas, other's much more flamboyant. The entire thirty top order members of House Pucel, Jez's, for example had taken a mermaid interpretation in nothing but semi-spectral teal and magenta water vapors which licked their bodies as though submerged undersea.

One woman, heralded as the damned's Kitty Spencer, had extended her lynthe-like legs onto the carpet in nothing but ectospectral highlighter setting off the undertones in her Californian balayage, defining the valley of her breasts and the bulbous inverted heart of her hips and behind. She dazzled so powerfully her companions had been forced to wear very dark sunglasses for the evening and the cameras were unable to get a decent picture. The later brought D! into an apocalyptic panic and someone had ran off to grab a stash of art supplies and the woman stood for two hours as a man with a handlebar moustache painted furiously a camera propped eagle eyed over his shoulder.

Kneading the joints at the back of her fingers against her lips Faith gazed out an upper east wing window. At the edge of the cliff side she looked out onto the deep inkiness of the Dordogne hugged by sloping banks of summer-seared golds, rubies and ambers. It was building to be a day of low-slung sun on dried-out earth, crispy leaves and warmed through brick, one of the last embers spat from a burnt out season. Within the several mile view the only neighbor was a forgotten church its crucifix oversized and slapped on the building's front as though attempting to repel De Gaul at arm's length. The rest was forestry.

She wished she could say How was this happening to her? But Blair wasn't the only witch in the room. Faith had had a sense, it was why she'd kept such a low profile.

Her attention kept yanking preoccupied to the presence downstairs. Marc felt very nice pulsating on her conscious awareness. Color and the outline etchings of each moment appeared sharpened. A feverish preoccupation with the idea of him blurred her stream of thought, she was flushed and the future prospect of popping downstairs felt exhilarating. Faith kicked the wall. Shiesera appeared to have mutilated some section of her, without so much as being in the same room as the man, into a skipping, pigtailed halfwit perspiring fairy dust and humming Joe Cocker’s You Are so Beautiful. This was not how she saw herself nor how she ever wanted to see herself. This was why she was inclined to believe Gremory wasn't manipulatively lying to her about shiesera.

Faith cast her conscious mind out to feel for her familiar. Level 7. Violence. A small smile played on her lips, Khaos, cub of Anarkohos, hellhound son of Cerberus, had been born on Level 7, his ginger coat a camouflage of autumnal tones adapted to the circle's native forestry hellfires.

Khaos, a half-breed between hound and hyena, smaller than Anarkhos was largely unknown. Like Faith once upon a time. True to his name Khaos thought chaotically and knew only that he loved Faith and that she was his. He imagined one day she would turn human to hound. Faith could hear his wet panting in her mind. Out breaking wines and low, pup pleading. The flickering dance between the shadows of tree canopies and the spotlight strike of daylight. The thick stench of musk from pink speckled skin and lining the russet spikes of dog hair. The violently overwhelming bursts of sharp mania. His desperation to be torn free from the heavy skin he didn't feel welcome within. Do something. Anything. Any temporary cure from the unyielding bombardment of his mind and the inwardly protruding, sharpened ache of his carcass. He didn't know what. Relief. Something and it had to be vivid, fierce, and now.

Always now. Anything and now. Faith thought remorsefully "Khaos" she breathed.

Child-like Kay Kay, seven circles of inferno down, bulked excitedly at his name in her voice .

"My boy" Faith took a deep breath. Rightly so.

Faith yelped. The door to the guest room had slammed back on itself. Koki, had bounced a fleshy ping pong ball up the door frame, and jollily awaiting praise, swung from the handle beaming a toy gorilla after temporary immersion in hydrochloric acid. Faith sighed pivoting both hands on the dressing table to hoist herself up "'Lright then."