Cohost writing prompt: Making-up-Monsters — Monster who's supposed to be somewhere else right now, but it's fine! It's all fine. Probably. Hopefully.
"Lemniscate Sept?" The iron-haired dowager, jaw clenched, does not immediately lower the ugly little arcane device clutched in her fist, radiating lethal potential. "What are you doing in the country? You're supposed to be in the Brennines, observing Cotton's movements—"
"Ah." The vampire, sprawled on the chaise in the dowager's unlit private chambers, smiles and winces simultaneously. "Yes, Cotton's movements are rather a subject for discussion, M."
"Is national security a joke to you?" M's lip curls, and she does a visual sweep of the room before pointing the lethal snub wandlet at the floorboards instead of the agent. "We have more than enough ambitious young things who'd be happy to fill your shoes—"
"I have something you need to see," the vampire says, tone smooth and careless, and M scoffs.
"Well, what is it?"
Lemniscate Sept reaches unhesitatingly for the frilled neck of her blouse, and begins efficiently unbuttoning it. M stiffens, half raises the wand again.
"Excuse me," she says, fiercely cold, and the vampire's fingers pause over a button.
"M," she says, louche manners dropping away, leaving only tired eyes and crisp soldierly address, "there's something you need to see," and pulls at the gape of her blouse enough to show the edge of a mark burned into her cold flesh.
M visibly swallows her initial reaction, too fast for it to be properly parsed. "What is that?" she says.
Sept silently looses the rest of her buttons and opens her clothes for inspection of the sigil seared deeply into her skin. "A compulsion," she says.
"Return to your—" M hesitates, reading the dense curl of arcane graphemes. "...Master," she settles on.
Owner, Sept mouths silently, not looking her in the eye, and begins re-buttoning her shirt. "I think Cotton wanted to express her opinion about being watched," she says aloud.
M compresses her mouth to an eloquent symbol of its own. "You'd better come into the office," she says frostily. "Q Department will need to study and defang...that. And then you'd better reaquire Cotton's trail, and don't let yourself be seen next time."
"Of course," Sept says, straightening her collar with a flourish, deference a cutting weapon in her mouth. "Dashed unprofessional of me, to get made and ambushed and branded and geased, what, ma'am? Better throw me back in as quick as we can. Best have a reprimand ready for me, in case next time Cotton sends me back piecemeal, by airmail—"
"Enough," M raps out.
Lemniscate Sept smoothes a hand over her belly, the hidden burned-in magical violence done to her, fingertips suggesting the shape of the sigil meaning more than Master.
"Ma'am," she says, sarcastically.