Summer signing were the worst. First of all it cut into time she could be spending trotting around the globe, going to parties, and in general living her life separate from whatever had been happening the previous spring. Secondly... Flourish & Blots was not ventilated properly to deal with the mass amounts of perfume women wore to book signings involving the Great Dolly St. James. When you threw into that mix Hogwartians and squalling children on their mother's hips getting last minute school shopping out of the way it was enough to give Dolores a migraine. Every time she heard a baby cry she was pretty sure one of her eggs dried up. She had thought, for a little while at least, that she and Dom would settle into one another and maybe have a few of their own. Over the course of the summer that plan had changed and now the idea of sticky fingers and mess and the never ending crying made her panic.

She had felt the pressure of obligation for a little while, the idea that was just what you did after a certain age. Now... well while Dominik sorted out his life she was sorting out hers. It was not something they were doing together at this point. There was no fight, no moment it all fell apart again, it just hadn't worked out. They hadn't given themselves a real shot at it, if she were honest with herself she'd been chasing a ghost that didn't even want to exist anymore. So she did what she always did when life blew something she didn't like her way, she left. First Italy, then America, then home, then Paris. She drank good booze, ate good food, and for the first time since March felt like her skin fit again. This pleased both the papers and her favorite cohort to no end. What better way to ensure a steady stream of high profile clientele than having your designs globtrotting on the fabulous form of Dolly St. James?  Darian was, as Dolly often told him, a very lucky man.

Today was his turn to pay in kind and keep her company at a boring book event. It would give the gossip hounds something else to speculate over, which she was sure he enjoyed. Darian liked seeing his name in print, it meant sales and attention. If Dementor's fed on happiness and souls, Darian Morgan fed himself well on compliments of every variety. One would be hard pressed to wrestle the limelight from him - but why in Salazar's name anyone would want to was beyond Dolly in the first place. He was hilarious, a spectacle to be sure but a desirable one. Besides, the stories people came up with about the two of them were outstanding. Some mornings, if they were gracious enough to one another and stay over the pair would read the articles aloud to one another in between fits of laughter and tea. Of course she knew Landis had to be squirming in his skin - and while she didn't go out of her way to cause him discomfort...it had never ceased to amuse her how knotted up he could get over her antics.

Glancing up at the mousy haired woman asking her to sign a glossy 8x10, she offered a dazzling smile though her blue eyes flickered just beyond the woman's shoulder to where Darian had a small gathering of twittering fans all his own. The fashion groupies, they amused Dolly in their own way, at least enough to sustain the Author through another twenty minutes of signing little fan messages and book jackets. She couldn't believe the turn out really, the book had been on the shelves since February but sales were brilliant. Of course it meant she'd have to get herself settled on the last book. She had toyed with the idea of killing Odette off all together or maybe Rhys. She never really could decide because the whole series was based around the idea that true love could conquer all and that was a fairytale she didn't know if she wanted to further propagate. Resting her chin in her hand, she twirled her quill between her other fingers, as a new wave of people piled through the door. The life of an Author, how riveting.

Today Darian had tied his hair back in a poncy little tail, set low on the back of his neck in an extremely rare display of strong jaw, sharp bones, and plush lips. He looked for all the world like a fluffy-headed Edwardian who'd forgotten the era's somber sensitivities, his jewel-toned suit richly and expensively flattering. It covered up his skin but, as all good tailoring, hardly hid anything. The impression of a gentleman from century past did not abate as he raised the hand of one of the clustered woman to his lips, but the hungry dart of his eye under lowered lid - the kiss, the look, that smile - prompted a momentary dizzying disorientation that allowed him to bow out and beat it back to Dolly's table with a minimum of charming smiles and courtly comments. It was a good flight, a smooth extraction, and would not look like fleeing at all to anyone who wasn't so familiar with celebrity as Dolly.
 
He dropped heavily into a chair, casting but a glance at the woman whose photo Dolly was signing. "Love me," he sighed, producing a thermos out of apparently nowhere and sliding it down to Dolly. "I fought through a horde to bring you tea heavily laced with whiskey instead of the coffee your silly assistant thought you wanted. You ought to hire me; I'm much better at this than she is."

And it would give him more excuses to flit about instead of sitting at this table. Darian didn't begrudge Dolly this favor - if one could call it that - but he'd already been to the loo four times in the hour and was running out of ways to entertain himself. No one needed to check their hair that much and Dolly was going to call him on it if he went a fifth time. This event was deadly boring. No wonder she'd dragged him along (and by "dragged" he meant she'd lowered her voice and did that thing with her tongue and oh, she was too crafty by far. Next time he would know better).

He propped his chin up on one hand, casting a dispassionate gaze over the long, long line. One of his groupies waved to him. Darian smiled. "I'm madly jealous of your teaming crowd that made it so difficult for me to get up here in the first place," he confided.

Dolly's smile was nothing if not bemused as Darian settled himself next to her. She added a flourish to her signature and handed it back to the woman who was now solely focused on the fashion designer. He had a way of doing that, pulling focus. Objectively Dolly knew it was hard not to stare at the silk tone'd designer. By virtue of being incredibly fabulous herself, Dolls had built up a small immunity to him - not complete by any stretch of the imagination, but a high tolerance. In some ways it was because they were the same sort of people; played the same tricks, spoke the same language, lived by the same rather loose moral code. Dolly was, without question, softer than Darian - at least now. There might have been a time in her life when she was hungry and ruthless enough but her bite wasn't as pronounced as it had once been.

"I could only afford to pay you in kisses I'm afraid," she leaned over and dropped peck against his well sculpted cheekbone, "and you, we both know, cannot live on love alone," her voice was smooth as she nudged his ear. It was hard for her not to feel a little more vibrant with a personal audience. These things were terribly tedious but Darian was amusing for the most part. Well, when he wasn't whining for attention. She graciously took the tea, though she rolled her eyes at his commentary about Molly, "You're a terrible influence, Darling. It's why I have to keep Molly about. You'd have me dancing on table tops and singing absolutely wretched muggle music if you had your way. It wouldn't be good for business". That wasn't actually a dramatization or embellishment. She didn't have a doubt in her mind that what Darian loved most about her was the Circus aspect of her life.

She gave him a sympathetic look as he confided his jealousy over the room teaming with her supposed fans, giving his leg a playful squeeze under the table, "Jealous of me or them, since they'll always be my one true love? Have heart, there'll always be room for you," her tone was teasing as she glanced up, smiling broadly at a girl around twelve or thirteen clutching the first book of the Slither Girls between her fingers. Her pleasing features belied her action horror at someone so young reading her books. She didn't believe it was her job to mold her life into something girls should look up to, she didn't change who she was to please her readers but she was always mildly horrified when reminded just how young some of them were. It was like giving an eight year old a bottle of wine and pack of cigarettes for their birthday. She wondered what mothers could have possibly been thinking.

Leaning close to Darian's ear she held a finger up to the girl, her voice a low whisper, "Sweet Salazar's knickers, it's another sprog! She's younger than the last one. I realize that I lived a life with no parental supervision and turned out impeccably but really? She can't be more than twelve. Even I still had dollies at twelve". She knew her mild outrage would probably be lost on Darian. He saw nothing shameful about the way they lived their lives - and to a degree Dolly agreed, it was just a matter of the difference between being twenty-five or twenty-seven and being, well, a child. She could do what she liked because she understood the repercussions (most of the time). Even if she had taken Livi on a brief tour of all things fabulous over the summer and granted the girl a lot of freedoms she also kept a sharp eye on her when Liv wasn't looking. 

"I could try," he purred, head turning to block from their audience's sight her progress from the kiss on his cheek to her lips against his ear. His eyes flicked down across her body, stretched out so prettily to whisper to him. It would have been too easy to turn his head a little more and turn that kiss into something a little less platonic, but he was behaving himself. He was being a gentleman, a real gentleman, not the wink-wink-nudge-nudge kind. Although that was boring too. Maybe he wouldn't keep it up: a venue with both Darian Morgan and Dolly St. James was practically a promise of scandal. He'd hate to disappoint anyone, least of all Dolly.

"You're a terrible influence, Darling. It's why I have to keep Molly about. You'd have me dancing on table tops and singing absolutely wretched muggle music if you had your way. It wouldn't be good for business."

"Blasphemer! Muggle music is fantastic." Right on cue he began to hum a horribly off-tune version of 'Womanizer.' Whomever'd let him listen to Britney Spears had a lot to answer to. But he let it go as soon as he'd begun, restlessly twirling one of Dolly's spare quills. "That's a horrid lie anyways, I'd be fantastic for your career. I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps, didn't I? If you could turn down the wonderful world of cabaret which, by the by, you should not, then I'd pave your way. Famous writer? Incredible beauty? World-class traveler? Done, done, and done! Why, by the time I'm finished I'd even get you a signing at the local bookstore. The only place left to go is up, Dolly, so naturally the Wizengamot's next."

She leaned close to whisper to him again at the advent of a particularly young lass. Darian smiled at the girl, his pleasant expression not budging even as he turned his head to whisper back, "Oh, half of it'll go over her head anyways, don't fuss. It's you or the public school system, and we both know Hogwart's sex ed leaves something to be desired." One particularly cringe-worthy talk from one's Head of House did not effective contraception make. If any professor had been able to pull off the I'll-sneer-at-you-so-hard-your-genitals-wither approach it'd have been Snape, and Darian's school career was a lesson in how that hadn't worked. He dipped both his head and voice a little lower, the flicker of his eyes beneath heavy lids no betrayal of his next victim's identity. "The woman with the rather tacky muumuu and the hopeful expression, however... typical escapist, isn't she just? Your older fans do have a certain type."

Dolly laughed coyly behind her hand and shook her head, these were the little moments it payed to put up with some of the more vexing personality traits Darian possessed. He was two-faced and thought mostly of himself; but he was also extremely charming and amusing when other people were terribly boring. Much like the part of her personality that allowed her to know that Dominik had murdered at least one person in cold blood, yet allowed her to have loved him blindly despite it... she could know the good and bad of Darian (and also the very real possibility he was a Sociopath) and still appreciate the positives in his personality. She was aware this made her strange but being like everyone else had never been high on Dolly's list of priorities.

"I would make an excellent Elder wouldn't I? Only we'd have to find a better word for it than that because Elder is rather depressing," her grin was playful, voice low as her laugh tickled against his ear. "Of course I wouldn't completely rule out cabaret, if you'd been smart enough to be part of the inner circle when I was nineteen you'd know all about the little club in Paris I worked when Mumsie and Daddy threatened to cut me off," she fluttered her eyelashes at him before turning back to the line. She wouldn't openly concede that he had a point about Hogwartian Sex Education. It was nonexistent, and they did have to learn about it somewhere. She just wasn't completely comfortable with the idea it was from her. Let someone else educate wizarding youth, she just wanted to entertain people.

She had to bite her cheek to keep her smile in place as her eyes fell on the woman in question. She was going to be a gusher. With her voice still low and a note of laughter still found within, she commented back, "Better than the obvious perverts who say they're buying them for wives they don't have". Dolly was more than aware that there were several demographics she appealed to and all for different reasons; the young ones wanted to be older, the old ones wanted to be younger, the men wanted the fantasy, and the boys wanted ideas. In the beginning she didn't give much thought to what it was they wanted, then she had...and now she didn't again. Chalk it up to her not getting her fairytale but she rather wanted to off Odette and put the poor character out of her misery.

Jeanine Roux looked fabulous.

She'd never really believed in all that modesty nonsense in the first place, and it could hardly be called vanity when it was true, right? And timing never hurt. Jeanine stepped into Flourish Blotts at just the right moment, when there was the ever so faintest hush, a momentary second of lull in the hustle and bustle. She beamed beatifically at the wizard who held the door for her, staring stupidly up. "Merci, sweetie." She purred through slickly painted pink lips and half-lidded grey-green cat eyes framed by a tumble of golden hair. She caught his chin and placed a cheerful kiss on his cheek that had him stammering as she swished past in her stylish turquoise robes and bright, sky-high white lace pumps. She looked young, fresh, and absolutely devastating.

And she'd have to, wouldn't she? Witch Weekly's newest darling hadn't quite worked her way up the ranks to doing any of the truly great stories, but they were running out of options to deal with the fabulous Dolly St. James. With the penultimate book out, her fanbase was positively salivating for any scrap of new gold about the author's life and the 'truth' in her books—and Dolly's fanbase was Witch Weekly's fanbase. And Witch Weekly Jeanine thought with a small giggle that she smothered, thinking of the number of her…oh, she hated to call them colleagues given that this was more an amusing hobby for her than anything…well, whatever they were, they had the Slither Girls  series stashed all over the office, and some of them had bit their lip and sighed when Jeanine had been sent on this particular attempt, and others had narrowed their eyes for an entirely different reason…

An entirely handsome, utterly devilish reason, currently whispering something to Dolly dearest.

And he was, wasn't he? If she were sixteen again, she'd have licked her lips like a cat near a bowl of cream—for either of them, honestly. But she wasn't here—at the moment, anyway—for the Delectable Darian or his dazzling designs. The young woman had been accused of being two-faced, and in a way, she was, though it was hardly intentional. She simply responded to people differently because they were different, and she had a veela's knack for the more baser aspects of things.

There were times when you played damsel in distress, and times when you played distressing damsel.

So with a sweet, secretive smile that was all mischief and purring sin, Jeanine slipped up to Dolly's table and placed a bound copy of the latest on it.

"Would you make it out to Witch Weekly, gorgeous? We're quite hooked."

Darian snapped his fingers. "Damn! Did I miss that? We'll just have to stage a reenactment." Technically this was an old fantasy, as Darian's brief foray into women's lingerie in his early twenties may or may not have been largely influenced by what Dolly would look like wearing it. The classics never really got old, though; he was willing to go another round. "Of course your desperate measures are classy and stimulating. I will not regale you with tales of the depths to which the great House of Morgan has fallen at the hands of its most recent heir; suffice to say I was in Paris at 19 too, and I was not dancing cabaret."

How intimate, the two of them, how they drew everyone's eye! Darian loved it. He tilted his face up, inched closer, nearly brushing her lips with his own. "They're my favorite," he confided, lashes fanning his cheeks. "Those men with their secret lives. Don't you wonder about the depth and breadth of their imaginations? Most of them I wouldn't bugger with a three-meter broom but oh, Dolly, they're so fun to tease."

A honeyed voice slid between them like a blade, dripping syrup and sexual appeal. Press! Darian's metaphorical tail started wagging. He uncoiled from Dolly's side, head and hand and glittering smile turned towards Jeanine, body still angled towards the authoress. Half-divided, he and Dolly were no longer an impenetrable whispering front. The reporter was easy on the eyes in a way that Darian (from his loads of experience that in no way began with his promising away the family fortune to Fleur Delacour during the Triwizard Tournament at age 14) recognized as not-quite human. He wouldn't presume to know how much - a lot of wizarding families had mixed ancestries - but there was something about her, a certain glow, a vitality, that had to come with at least a drop of Veela blood. Either that or he needed desperately to know the maker of her magical enhancements. 

But this was Dolly's table, and Dolly's event - he remained poised (to strike) but smirkingly mute, as if Dolly had a penchant for wearing beautiful men like some women wore jewelry. It was bad manners to bag another person's press, and he didn't need it anyhow. He just liked them with their sharp robes and their giggling smiles and their sudden switch to cutthroat reporter when they thought they smelled a scoop; he loved the I've-got-you-now! expressions on their eager little faces, the maddened quills, the colored ink. Bless them, the dears. Witch Weekly had been good to him, but they adored Dolly. When he hadn't seen her in weeks or months, he always picked up an issue.

Dolly's expression was coy on the topic of desperate measures. She had done a lot more than dinner theater to make ends meet but she left it up to the reader to suss out how much of what she wrote about had actually happened in dark corners filled with dangerous men, the gritty underside of glamour - it had all come at a price. That, of course, was not the kind of story Darian liked to hear. He preferred the opulence of what came after she was back on her feet. It hardly mattered to Dolly, most of those other stories were locked away for safe keeping and would only be published in her Memoirs - posthumously. Dominik wasn't the only very bad man Dolls had mixed herself up with over the years, he was just the only one who wouldn't try to kill her outright if she tattled on him.

Darian's attention was drawn away first but Dolly's soon followed. Despite the common assumption that Dolly loathed all attractive women that might take the attention off herself; the reality was she adored beautiful women who wore it like a badge of courage. There was something to be said for the brassy and bold, those blessed with come hither eyes and figures made of dangerous curves; and the newest arrival at their table seemed to have all that and more. Dolly's contact inside Witch Weekly hadn't been lying about the newest go getter. She was absolutely stunning; the true test to whether or not she and the Author would get along would come down to the kind of story Roux was after. If she intended to keep on the fluff pieces and brilliance of the books Dolly would love her.

Witch Weekly understood the demographic they had to sell to too, keeping Dolly happy meant their readers were happy. Sure they printed some of the more salacious gossip about Dolly; but what no one outside of the magazine would ever know was Dolly was commonly their source "close to the situation".  The rumor mill, speculation, and scandal were key to keeping Dolly on top of best seller's lists. She accepted this facet of her life and had a generous sense of humor for the whole thing. Which brought her right back to the leggy blonde standing in front of her. Taking the book she flipped open the cover before glancing up to Jeanine, "Are you sure you wouldn't like something a little more personal, Love? I know there already had to be at least one copy at H.Q. with my name on it".

She sat with her pen poised over the title page, blue eyes locked on the young reporter's, ruby lips twitching with an unknowable sort of smile, "Darian, Darling, this is - I believe, Miss Jeanine Roux. She's Witch Weekly's newest talent  acquisition. Do be a darling and have the shop boy fetch another chair. I'm sure she came down for more than just an autograph," and even if she hadn't... Dolly was intrigued enough to play a little cat and mouse with her. She preempted Dairan's sure pout with a silken whisper against his ear, hand once again on his thigh, "you did say you wanted to be my assistant didn't you," it wasn't actually a question, just a teasing reminder that she always had a certain sort of plan brewing. "So, that dedication then, Miss. Roux"?

Jeanine was not particularly prone to automatic hatred of anyone and everyone prettier than she—that aspect of her shining personality only surfaced when they stole direct attention from her. Otherwise, she adored, positively adored, the drama and sparkle beautiful people always seemed to sprinkle around them. Jeanine was a creature who detested boredom and yet was a frequent sufferer of it because she lacked the creativity to entertain herself.

A firm believer in indulgence, Jeanine allowed herself to revel for a moment in the dazzling brightness of Darian Morgan's smile in her direction. She wasn't easily dazzled—it was a fundamentally lacking part of her personality to notice other people since the world revolved quite comfortably around her bonny self—but there was a certain aesthetic presented by the picture that made her quite positively want to purr. She settled for licking her lips, once, with a satisfied but unmistakably dismissive sigh. Later. She promised herself.

And busted. Jeanine grinned as Dolly prodded her for a more specific dedication. Thinking fast, Jeanine shrugged. "Would you mind, too terribly, simply writing 'get well soon'?" She dropped her gaze so she was looking up through her eyelashes and didn’t explain further. Dolly St. James gives signed copy of book to terminally magicked Mungo's patient. That sort of feel-good thing would make her editor happy, right? And it meant Jeanine could be done with this silly work nonsense and just enjoy herself.

Oh did these two look like they could enjoy themselves.

She tittered in amusement, a sound that was saved from artificial vapidness only by virtue of being a lower pitch than one might expect. "Oh, you caught me." She may be a few ingredients short of a potion, but Jeanine wasn't hopelessly stupid. Readers only thought they wanted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But the reality was what they really wanted was simply, to want. Those ecstatic, desperate moments before unwrapping a package, the thrill of the hunt and all that. If Jeanine was an expert in anything, it was want. And in any case, she was neither good at depth nor interested in it, much to her editor's sometimes dismay. "I'm here for your secrets, sweetling. Life, love, the pursuit of fashion. Or pursuit of those who pursue fashion," she added with an ingénue smile in a certain direction. "Snippets, suspicions, scandal, style. I'm not particular."

And then she sighed, and rather than wait for a chair, scooted herself onto the edge of the table and crossed her ankles prettily and allowed the warm hum of admiration for a beautiful woman simmer in her expression as she got a closer look at the stunning other. It always, inevitably, came back to that. It came from spending your formative years with a particularly sensuous species with an incompatible morality system. "You know," She amended with a sly wink, "Maybe. Mind if I stick around a bit to watch the show?"

"Charmed," Darian said, inclining his head to the newcomer. His eyes flickered to the side when Dolly spoke in his ear, the press of her hand on his thigh a preemptive but unnecessary tactic. He wasn't going to pout. At an event like this he'd welcome some fresh blood, and it was always advantageous to take the measure of new reporters in case they were the types to later publish something problematic. Maybe he could scry her soul by teatime. She licked her lips and sighed; he smiled, gaze lingering.

A chair came skidding over, zipping between people and around obstacles at the flick and swish of Darian's wand. But by then Miss Jeanine Roux had hopped up on the edge of the table with a flip of her hair and a crossing of legs. Oh, they had themselves a real go-getter. "If at any point you feel a bit tired and need to stretch out," Darian remarked, a touch of amusement in his tone warring with the inevitable purr, "Please, feel free."

At least she was up front about what she wanted. Secrets, scandal, style. The three S's of any celebrity's life. Darian exchanged a look with Dolly, who had countered deliciously forward young reporters too many times to be especially charmed.

"You could tell her about that one incident," he murmured, not so low as to keep Jeanine from hearing if she really strained. "With Fideon and the hag." There was no such incident, of course, this was only another game. Darian knew they shouldn't tease the reporters, but it was always so much fun. "Or what we did on my birthday." His birthday had been the 17th; people had seen them out and about together, and if Jeanine had done her research that she'd already heard. But what had the great Dolly St. James been doing the rest of the night? The public was dying to know.

Dolly regarded both her companions with a sly smile. She loved attention, it came from being starved of it so much of her young life and also being a sort of emblem of all that was gloriously wrong with Society according to people who found her too presumptuous or bold and never nearly apologetic enough for being who she was. Within five minutes of meeting the fresh and firm new reporter Dolly had basically sussed out she wasn't much of a threat. She was fluff, Dolls could live with that. It was the ones who went for the jugular...or had happened to have slept with Dominik she played real games with. She could be flirtatious and coy with this one. There would be no attack, no lulling into comfort only to have it ripped away. She'd be on her toes for the fun of it rather than survival. She liked those odds.

And, it didn't hurt, that Roux seemed as interested in Darian as the writer herself. He was a prize, she'd give him that. If she were going to marry for anything other than love he might be her first choice. Of course it would be a disaster, a hilarious scandal brewing disaster...maybe when her next book came out. She considered and then quickly filed the thought away for later speculation as she scrawled the requested inscription and handed the book back over. "I hate to be such a let down, I'm afraid these events don't offer much of a show - as Darian has been learning all morning. The poor dear," her voice was teasing as she leaned over and placed a fleeting kiss on his cheek. She glanced up at the long ago mentioned housewife and gave her a beaming smile, "The fans are so important though. I adore them"!

She only arched an eyebrow as Jeanie made herself comfortable, perched on the table's edge. She was sure of herself was't she? Of course that was probably part of her charm. There was something rather otherworldly and inexplicable about the fresh faced reporters draw. It was not human, but then who knew what kind of magic she had brewing in her, with hair like that odds were at least a fraction Veela. She seemed somehow incandescent, larger than life. Dolly wondered how she handled her firewhiskey and considered inviting her out for drinks after. That would be the true test of whether the dynamic duo could be come a troublesome trio. Glancing up from her signature at Darian she gave a lyrical chortle (if chortles could be lyrical), "Really? Your birthday? Are you sure you want me repeating that story"?

She didn't miss a beat however before turning back to the blonde, "Well, it's no secret Darling Darian is getting up there in years, so tragic really. Life seems to end at thirty, no? But, I digress. It was one of our better nights. I do believe at one point he tried to storm the stage of Signature in a pair of garters and feathers," she gave him a coy look from the corner of her eye before looking up at the next fan and scrawling her name, only pausing for a moment to ask just how they spelled Creodecessus, honestly the things some parents named their children. "Anyway, security had a ball with him that night, he's very slippery that one," she paused to look at him fondly, a certain adoring and amused softness to her voice, "worth his weight in gold as a stylist though. I hardly think I could dress myself without him anymore," which was a mild exaggeration of truth, but she did love having him around.