A.N) I’m not dead yet.

I’ve been nanoveling, doing excessive amounts of homework, and having minor nervous breakdowns.

But no more. Here’s your update:

Iris was mad.

Really mad.

No- not only was the poor girl mad, she was furious. Angry, livid, irate, infuriated, fuming, beside herself, up in arms, and also a little annoyed. She hasn’t seen Rowan since that day spent rescuing Vergil, but then she’d felt a little bad for her sister since, as you recall, she was being tormented by the demonic half of Leonora.

There was no pity now. And there was absolutely no hint of sisterly love. Those sentimental fools who believe that sisters can always be found hugging, telling secrets, and giggling together would have done well to observe these particular siblings. Rowan, walking down the hall calmly in olive green dress, and Iris, her hands balling into fists and her eyes narrowing as she watched.

But Rowan didn’t know that Iris was Iris- she saw only a strange girl with red hair and a very metrosexual looking boyfriend.

“Hi,” she greeted them, as she got near enough. She waved. Rowan was always very polite, unless she was doing crap like slaughtering her kid sister.

“Do either of you guys know,” she added, pausing at Iris’ mumbled greeting and Vergil’s cheerful one, “where I could find a girl named Iris Hopper? I heard she was here. She’s sixteen, black hair, green eyes-“

“Never heard of her,” growled Iris. Rowan looked alarmed.

“O…K…” she acknowledged.

“I don’t think she’s here,” added Vergil quickly, giving Iris a remonstrative look. “Actually, I think I saw her leaving early. She and that guy she was with- you know, reddish-brown hair, really, really good-looking? Vergil something? Yeah, I think she was sick or something. She didn’t look too good.”

“Oh,” Rowan frowned. “OK. Thanks…” and she made to keep walking.

“You know what?” barked Iris after her, her face contorted and her head shaking with anger. “That dress is really ugly. I mean…really ugly.”

Vergil elbowed her in the side. Rowan looked slightly angry.

“OK, like, sorry!” she replied, shaking her head and making a little “psssh!” noise of annoyance.

“Bitch,” Iris mouthed at Rowan’s retreating form, flipping her off with both hands.

“So nice to see sisters who really care about each other,” muttered Vergil, steering her away, “Come on. I want to talk to Leonora. I don’t like the sound of all this.”

“Can’t I just beat her a little?” asked Iris.

“Sweetheart, no,” said Vergil firmly. “Absolutely not. You’re going to calm down now.” He put an arm firmly around her waist as though to prevent her escape.

“OK, Mr. I like to chop limbs off!” Iris couldn’t understand him all of a sudden. “How about dear old dad, huh? Like you never freakin’ get violent, ever!”

“Iris,” Vergil’s voice was pleasant but contained more than a hint of warning. “Don’t bring up the old man it is not any of your business.”

“Fine,” said Iris, scowling and feeling bratty. “What are we going to do now, then?”

“Well, we are going to seek out Leonora,” explained Vergil, as they rounded a corner. “We’re going to tell her what we saw. To tell you the truth, I don’t like moving in this place without Leonora’s guidance. The lady is wise and all that.”

“OK.” That made sense. Leonora was to be desired at a confusing time like this. Plus, Iris had to admit she didn’t especially feel like carrying out her mission in life just yet.

Looking for Leonora wasn’t exactly the easiest and most enjoyable party game imaginable. For some reason not known to either Iris or Vergil, she seemed to be playing a game of “hide and go seek”, with a little less seek and a little more hide than was totally fair. They had to stick to maneuvering about the gleaming opalescent pink spectacle that was the ballroom, and that meant, in Iris’ case, crashing into a lot of dancing couples, and in Vergil’s, apologizing for Iris’ clumsiness.

“Iris,” he said, after steering her away from a very oddly dressed old couple who had been a bit slow in accepting that Iris’ hadn’t collided head-on with them on purpose. “Hon. You have eyeballs. Use them.”

“I can’t help it,” said Iris, seeing a nearby prepubescent girl who was eyeing Vergil in a way too checky-outy manner and making a hideous face at her. “I’m clumsy. Look, maybe Leonora’s in the bathroom or something.”

“Right, I’d agree with you, only Don and Herman and Jacob and Eddie-boy are nowhere in sight,” he told her. “And, OK, no offense, but the idea of them all going to the bathroom together is a little bizarre.”

Iris giggled a little at this. She had a mental image of Leonora, Don, Herman, Jacob, and Edmund all locked into one tiny bathroom stall like clowns in a clown car. Not that this made sense, but it was still kind of kooky fun.

“Well, them it could be that they aren’t in this room,” she said. “I mean, think about it. This house is tremendous.” She fished through the brief mental pictures she’d managed to gather of the place- she seemed to recall not one, but two wide hallways that turned away from the entrance room.

“You have a point most good, Iris,” he said sagely, nodding. “Well, we can vacate these premises and look elsewhere and I guess if we don’t see them elsewhere we’ll come back and wait. Only I don’t like waiting.”

“I’m good at it,” said Iris for no good reason.

They scooched out into the hallway, past a fat man in a black suit who was standing in the ballroom doorway staring into space. They found that they had entered a large, gold-and black patterned room with long tables lining opposite walls.

People were moving up and down before the tables.

“Look!” whispered Iris, excited. “Food.”

“We didn’t come here to eat,” pointed out Vergil, although he too eyed the food table with interest.

“And yet we didn’t come here not to eat,” Iris countered. Holy crap, were those cream puffs she saw?

A quick and easy five minutes later, the two moved on to the next phenomenally gorgeous room, china plates in hand and loaded with food- all of which was most certainly not your average run of the mill store-bought party junk food. Debating with one another what they should eat first, they forgot momentarily about Leonora.

“You know,” said Vergil, displaying very poor manners and talking with his mouth full, “if my sister, Lilja, was here, she’d practically have internal hemorrhaging. She’s about as skinny as you, but she’s somehow gotten it into her head that she needs to be on a strict diet at all times. Which is really fun, because whenever I was home and eating- god, pretty much anything other than celery and water- it was so easy to piss her off.”

Iris smiled appreciatively.

“You don’t like your sister much, do you?” she pressed, smiling.

Vergil took a vicious bite of carrot.

“No,” he said, sounding oddly petulant. “Lilja is what is commonly known as a grade A regulation slutbag.”

“Ouch,” said Iris cautiously, and mentally, she kicked herself. She hated speaking ill of anyone behind their back- or, anyone that wasn’t Rowan, Flora, or Fauna.

“ And she’s getting breast implants probably as we speak,” he added, looking disgusted.

“You told me,” she said, nodding and recalling. “Back in the car a few days-“

This is the part where Iris does not get to finish her sentence.

At that moment, a horrible vision rather like a demon in her view appeared before her. It was of herself; or, rather, the image of herself reflected in the mirrored wall directly ahead of her. It looked far, far to much like…

Iris Hopper.

And the thing was, it wasn’t supposed to look like Iris Hopper; it wasn’t supposed to have black hair and a small nose and small army-green eyes, it was supposed to be a large-nosed, brown-eyed redhead. And Vergil should have been bleach-blonde blue-eyed and delicate-looking, but at that moment his features were turning sturdy and angular, his hair red-brown…

He saw her staring, and she could feel his shock in his hoarseness of breath.

They couldn’t think what to do but get out of that room, fast. They left their plates on the table with nothing but an exchange of horrified glances, and got walking, Iris mind turning flips and various other impolite gymnastics. What was-? But wasn’t that spell-?

“Where are we going?” muttered Vergil suddenly, stopping in the middle of the crowded dance floor. Iris was sure couples right and left were glaring at him, but that was OK. “I mean, what are we thinking?

“That is them!” exclaimed a voice.

Like an egg cracking over her head, a hot and horrible something melted down Iris’ neck and back. It was Rowan’s voice. She could see, even now, that perfect mask of badly-acted politeness that was her sister, picking her way through the crowd toward Iris.

People were even making way for her, not knowing what was going on.

Iris stared, unable to think.

Vergil all of a sudden grabbed her about the waist and yanked her off her feet. They were running like madmen (and women, one supposes) in a matter of seconds. Their forms cut through the crowd like water and a shocked murmuring sprang up wherever they passed. They didn’t care; escape had turned important, immensely important.

“I hate Rowan!” Iris was wailing.

“Iris, I’m dragging you,” Vergil muttered at her, clearly annoyed. “Walk on your own. Can’t you do anything without me to help you?”

She looked up at him.

“Fine!” she yelled, wrenching her hand out of his. “I will!” Suddenly, she was furious again. “You’re sick to death of having some clumsy little kid as your responsibility, I can see that.”

And she ran away from him and the ballroom as fast as she could propel herself.

Iris didn’t know how but somehow she had rushed out the doors and into the night air. The silk of her skirt brushed gently against her legs and the south wind gently against her face, and she was alone out on the sidewalk of a very still, elegant street.

She glanced behind her. There was no sense in going back to the party now, but she was going to have to get out of plain sight anyway.

She walked furiously fast, head down. Shadows lined the street, and when she kept close to these she found it was much easier to move about in a safe darkness.

She had never been so frustrated in all her life. Over the past week, she’d been scared, confused, annoyed, confident, bitter, shocked, depressed, overwhelmed, and wildly drunk, and now she could have sworn she was all of those things. Everything had met on this night.

Right now, she just wanted this to be all over.

Jacob’s house was across the street and three doors down from where the party was taking place, and, creeping a little and throwing a glance or two behind her, she raced across the street and up the house’s front steps. Never mind manners, she opened the door and let herself quietly in.

She sighed and sank to her knees in the darkness, her head aching, her mind spinning. In a few moments, shouts broke out in the streets outside, chaos and confrontation. She stayed where she was, too overwhelmed to move. Let the others fight their battles themselves right now.