Instructions,

Luce

The next morning Tara wakes with blood in her mouth; new blood, fresh, the copper tang of it alive against the back of her palette. The room is still, the bed empty. The narrow outline of made by her domitor against the soft sheets rumpled, like a watercolor painting sluiced with rain, the brush marks softening to indifference.

The building is still, quiet, old. Pipes tick in the solid brick walls, and there's a hum from somewhere outside, but the upstairs still feels like a warren. When she swallows the blood in her mouth - that reflexive, morning gesture - she'll feel it open in her, that blood, like a rope being slowly woven between them. That niggling little obsession that always characterizes the first stages of a new crush.

If Tara did not know better, she would think -

- oh, but she does know better. She knows exactly what is happening to her now. Has felt this before, though rather never this strongly. Still, it is there, opening beneath her skin. What is that sound from downstairs - is she here?

--

Downstairs, the Toreador slips back in through the back door, tobacco smoke in her hair, and the salt scent of the bay against her skin. Eyes bright; it's a cool night with a stiff, westerly breeze rolling in from the Pacific. There is a flush of blood beneath her skin, the unaccountable warmth that lingers for an hour or two after she has fed opening up through her body, deliciously slow. She pours herself a tumbler of Scotch, then circles the car, kicking off her shows as she throws herself into one arm of the threadbare red velvet sofa. Puts down the scotch on a convenient Mission-style sidetable and sits down, cross legged, with the day's papers, scanning efficiently through the pages. After a moment's thought, she digs out a small remote control and flicks on the stereo. Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 - the Leningrad Symphony - fills the lower level of the old garage.

Tara

She's lost this much blood before. Admittedly, she was quiet and lost and confused at that moment. She had been young and had taken a fall down the stairs. It was stupid and a mess. She remembers her boyfriend being an absolute mess because he'd felt like shit and he was sorry and it was killing his ever loving high to see her at the base of the stairs. It was unpleasant, to say the least. It was the warm right before being cold. Tara's lost blood before. She remembers that much. She remembers the high.

This is better. This is better than coke. Better than good sex. Better than bad sex, and she's had more than enough of that nonsense to last her a lifetime. Enough bruised ribs and awkwardly made beds and bloodloss. She remembers bloodloss. She doesn't think about these sorts of things.

----

Tara wakes up in the morning, and she is less than pleased at the notion of actually rolling out of bed. She stares at the spot in the bed next to her. Tara raises a brow, and her hand moves to the spot on the other side; it's cold. She figures that would make sense. Of course it would be cold. Luce doesn't have a pulse. Why would the spot in the bed be warm?

Tara eventually staggers off to the kitchen. She doesn't wake up pretty. Sure, she wakes up and she's attractive, but Tara doesn't seem like she cares much about the world aside from eating something with protein and something with iron in it. She's still pale. She's pretty damned pale, all things considered. People are supposed to bounce back faster than she is.

"Y'even wake up classy," she mutters on her way to the kitchen, "and normal. Anyone eer tell you how normal you are?"

Luce

"No," the creature looks up, over the edge of the newspaper. Her eyes are not a deep blue; not the color of near-midnight, but they are saturated, like a sunlit summer sky, the edges of it where the depth of color is substantiated with light, beginning to wash away. And they are sharp eyes, lively, tracking Tara as she walks toward the kitchen, to search among last night's groceries for something that will put the iron back in her blood. "No one has ever told me that."

The attention lingers as Tara 'rounds the corner. Stays there as the light comes on, retreats to the newspaper while the young woman sorts out an appealing breakfast with new groceries and old, indifferent kitchen supplies, cooking - if she does cook - her eggs and bacon on an avocado green electric range from 1976 that must have been hip in its day. She will find salt and pepper, but none of the other herbs and spices one expects to see in an ordinary kitchen. No hot sauce unless she bought it herself.

When she's done cooking - or if she emerges, briefly, mid-meal preparation - the conversation continues as if there had been no interruption for ordinary, mundane things. Sharp pale eyes, smooth features that seem all too young when scrubbed clean of make-up, and a low voice, music of a half-hidden accent buried in the vowels, in the dark places where the consonants meet. "Is it the newspaper? That makes you think normal?"

Tara

She isn't an amazing cook. It's something that seems to be rampant among the women in the city. They either cook like Betty Crocker or they cook so poorly it's humorous. Tara is neither of these because she can make something passable. her bacon is floppy, her eggs are scrambled. Salt, pepper- ugh, that tastes bad- more pepper- okay, better. She doesn't even bother with anything else. She just wanders back out to the living room with a glass of milk, and a plate of eggs and bacon. More bacon than eggs.

In the back of her head, she kicks herself. Maple syrup would have been a good investment here.

Tara doesn't look up for long from food. She's got a fork full of eggs in her mouth when Luce responds. She washes her own answer down with milk, and she knows the differences between her usual fascination with the rather unusual fascination that she has with Luce. The not so young womanw ho looks damnably young without her makeup on.

"It's the routine," she says, "you get up, you read your paper. You start your day with booze, which is a Hell of a lot better than coffee."

She shoves a few more fork fulls of food in her mouth. And Tara does eat. Swallows again, "Can't picture Broderick or Eleanor ever bein' somethin' kind of understandable."

A comparison with admiration on the edges

Luce

"I'm afraid I don't drink it." Could there be a wistful note in her voice. "Not if it cannot be avoided. I enjoy the aroma. Sometimes I let it evaporate on my tongue." This is quiet, almost as if she were speaking to herself rather than Tara.

Then, the sudden flash of a wry smirk. "They probably have People," the capital letter is audible; the wry emphasis of it. "To handle such things for them. I could not say for certain. I've never met either." The newspaper crackles as she folds it back against its own spine. "I've looked for Broderick. He holds an official position in the Camarilla, and I mean to ensure that he knows I have been acknowledged and will not chase me from the domain. To no avail. Eleanor left before I ever met her.

"I don't usually haunt Elysium nightly, but sometimes the company of one's kind is - " a sharp pause, pale eyes flickering over the plate in Tara's hand. " - welcome." She has folded the newspaper in half, to the police blotter section, scanning the reports with a practiced eye. There was a light on in the back office tonight, beyond the kitchen. Tara might well have noticed the maps of the city plastered around the walls, like wallpaper.

"How did you come to their attention, anyway?" a sharp pause, pale eyes rising from the newsprint to fix on Tara's profile. "Why did they do this to you?"

Tara

It has to be strange. This is more than likely the first time someone's cooked in the kitchen in years. Well before Luce got here, that much is certain. She takes another bite of bacon; Tara's done a good job of all but decimating the stuff. We digress. There is food to be had; she doesn't eat enough. Not anymore, at least.

she doesn't ask if Luce misses it- food, that is- because she already knows the answer.

"I don't know what a Camarilla is," she says, "an' I know it ain't a car."

You know, like the Ford Camarilla. It's not known for its gas mileage.

Back to the question of herself. What did she do to get where she is? What ended her up on the way to being some kind of eternal page to this particular Toreador. "I was out at the park with Tom. I didn't.. y'know... you him before that. But we were there and... and I remember getting mugged. And I remember getting shot... the next thing I know, I'm in the back of a van," and Luce can hear it. It's on her face, in the way her eyebrows knit together and her brow creases and the corners of her mouth draw in.

Dissonance. This is dissonance on her face. She forgets about her food, "and I know that Tom's hurt really bad, and I don't remember how he got shot, but he's bad. And this lady- Eleanor- is lookin' at me like I'm a godsend and like I'm somebody, and asks me if I want him to live. She told me that she could save his life if I did somethin' for her. I said okay, because I don't know where we're going or why we're in the back of a van, but I didn't want him to die. So I said okay, she told me to close my eyes, and I drank. Then he drank. An' that shit healed, it was insane, I thought I was high or something but-but I wasn't and I know I wasn't, I'd been clean for a fuckin' year, I knew I wasn't high," she is insistent.

"They took us back, I got my own room, I cleaned up, and I wasn't allowed to leave. I wasn't allowed to make a phone call. And we get led out and we're in some big room and she can't stop sayin' how pretty I am, and how lovely my skin is, and wondered how my haired stayed that blonde and all I can think is that this bitch is going to sell me to some fucker in Mexico or to one of them guys in Hostel or something.. well.. uh... that wasn't it," she exhales.

A moment passes.

"... you wanna hear what actually happened, too?"

Luce

"Like everyone else, vampires have governance of a sort. Factions. Rebels. The Camarilla hold domain over the city. I will give you a quick and dirty guide before the night's over."

During the first half of the conversation, Luce has given half her attention to the newspaper. She knows how the words float together, how the ink comes off on her fingers. The patterns of human life; the way lives get sliced open, briefly vivisected in just these pages, and others. How the words are passing things; the world moves on, spinning all around them.

There is a certain intensity in the spare way she folds the paper, into halves and then quarters, turning in inside out. Beneath open the inward fold. She does this without precisely looking at the paper, with the practiced hand of someone used to doing this to read her quartered pages on the subway, the metro, some train passing through dark tunnels, but she pays it no more mind just now.

The soft lights in the room glimmer across the surface of her eyes. Her quickness, that rapt fixation of her sharp attention has bled into something rather more quiet, as if she were watching Tara from some window inside her own body, alive to the negative space in the story. The pale eyes narrow briefly, but otherwise her reactions are internal if she were eating them. As if she were swallowing them down.

Tara asks a question. Luce nods once, spare, her features still. "I do."

Tara

"I found out later, not from Eleanor or Broderick, that I didn't get mugged. I got shot, because somethin' was happening that was weird and I ran. I.. I still don't know what the Hell it was. I don't remember any of this," and there was something that faltered. She looks at her plate. She doesn't seem hungry anymore, but she doesn't quite know where to put her plate, "apparently there was something there.. because, y'know, Eleanor had the presence of mind to fix my memory, but she didn't fix his. we got chased down by some federal agent lookin' guys, shot, and then dragged off to a van. I find out from some weird talkin' guy later that he... there were other people there, and he said there was some weird wolf-thing and that he'd tried to save us but he didn't catch up and he was sorry.. and he kept sayin' that he was sorry and I left. I don't even remember that guys name, but I don't know who I believe on that."

She sighs. She swallows. She looks confused and lost, "but after that night, eleanor didn't explain a lot. I tried to throw a chair out the window to leave and it didn't work... and they took Tom away because he took the rap for me doin' that and Eleanor was furious and next time I saw him, he was dead. I mean, he was dead like you're dead... but he didn't look right. We ran off, were gone for a month. Fuck Broderick and Eleanor didn't even fuckin' look for us. But Tom wasn't eating... and he started lookin' dead and I tried t'get him to eat or somethin' and he wouldn't until I told him I'd go back if he didn't. Then he went to go get food and he never came back. I went to go look for Eleanor and I couldn't find her. I met you. Still couldn't find her. I went to some club and Broderick told me Eleanor's had pets before. The last one was blonde, too. She had some psychotic groundskeeper and I figured it was only a matter of time before she'd get tired of me. Until.. y'know... I wasn't pretty and novel anymore. I don't know what holes I'm missing at this point, or.. y'know... what someone else wasn't there to clarify. It didn't matter how frustrated I'd get or anything, she had a way of snapping her fingers and it's like I trusted her."

Luce

Luce listens to the whole of Tara's story, her eyes still. Her only movement is that steady rhythm of her shoulders moving to breathe. And she does breathe, almost every waking minute, intercostal muscles and diaphragm moving in that constant, tidal rhythm. Expanding and contracting. Pieces do not fit; odd holes - in Tara's memory, or her understanding. When Tara is finished, the vampire beside her glances down at the half-finished breakfast, the plate now held awkward in her right hand.

"You should finish your breakfast. I took a good deal of blood, and you still look pale. You need to regain your strength." This faint pause, a flicker of her pale eyes over Tara's frame. " - and some weight, to be frank. You're too thin."

Then she puts aside the newspaper, uncoils her long legs and stands, glancing briefly back at Tara. "Can I get you another glass of milk?"

--

Tara is left to finish her breakfast in silence. Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 has moved from the Allegretto - from the chaos of its climax - into the quiet, lyric second movement. The theme echoes between the strings, and the sound gives the air in the high-ceilinged garage an aura of richness, as if the space had been burnished by sound. If Tara requested another glass of milk, Luce retrieves it for her, lights a cigarette. Makes a phone call, the back and forth of French quiet in the background as she lounges against the wall by the kitchen, smoking, speaking low and rich, fine fingers moving thoughtfully over the teeth of a metal gear.

When Tara's plate is clean, or she can no long be coaxed or cajoled into another mouthful of bacon and eggs, Luce returns. Takes Tara by the chin and lifts her face to the light, looking down at her clear-eyed. "If I hear anything about Tom, I will let know. If he runs away from his Sire again, though, you do him no favors by haboring him in the city. Should he contact you, you should call me. He cannot hide here, a neonate, not from his sire. Not from the Camarilla. Particularly if he does not know how to survive. He must either suffer his Sire's tutelage, or run south, to LA.

"And no further. Mexico is infested with Sabbat. They'd destroy him, or make him a monster out of nightmares. I know you don't understand the terms, not yet. But do you understand the seriousness of what I am telling you? Once you enter this world, there's no real way to leave it. Not know, not until you know the shape of it, inside out."

Tara

She finishes her breakfast in silence. She doesn't really have much left in her to eat, but she forces it down. Bite after bite until she doesn't have anything left. She gets mil. Drinks. It's methodical. Practiced. Food goes in, and her focus stays where it should stay. Luce is talking to someone somewhere. In French. Tara chews in four/four time.

She has lost a fair amount of blood. She finishes off her food and waits.

Her eyes meet Luce's and she is only half confused. Lost, somewhere that rounds to scared. They could be stuff out of nightmares, you see. If Tom heads off to Mexico- it's enemy territory, Luce says without saying. "Like y'all aren't already?!" She snaps. She finished off her food, and her nerves bare, "I got shot, kidnapped, and y'all burst into flames during the daytime and it gets worse? What about that guy! that-that guy that looks like a corpse that was with you yesterday?! And-and it gets worse?"

She would take a second. Her hands go to her hair run through blonde tagles and get stuck. She exhales.

She's quiet and she looks back at Luce. The outbreak is forgotten in favor of an apologetic look. Tara shudders.

"Just like any other gang, blood in and blood out. I-I get that this is serious, you're tryin' to be helpful-but-this.. this is weird- what else don't I remember? I'd rather know than not."

"I'm sorry... I... I'm really sorry..."

Luce

"I can't tell you what you're missing. I can't restore it, either. Maybe with some digging I could figure out who the men were you say. If you had something of theirs - a card or a key, something one had touched, I could read whatever remains of them from the object. But your missing memories are gone; even if they could be restored, I don't have that skill." Standing now, attention fixed on Tara, not quite rapt, not entirely in the girl's space, as if she thought it necessary to give the girl room to digest all this.

"And it gets worse. Most things do." A faint flash of an engaging smile. "But you can survive more than you know. Find a way to live inside this world, too. There are two main factions of vampires. Do you remember your history? Think of it like the cold war. The Warsaw Pact and NATO. The Camarilla are like NATO, the Sabbat the Warsaw Pact. Neither's innocent. You know, in the name of fighting communism, the CIA had Patrice Lumumba - the first elected Prime Minister of the Congo - assassinated. They thought it necessary, they said, to stop the spread of communism into Africa.

"In his place, came Mobuto Sese Seko, a brutal dictator, a kleptocrat who terrorized his people and stripped the country of its wealth for his own enrichment. There were no institutions of civil society, so when he fell, everything fell. Plunged the country into a terrifying civil war in the late 90s and early 2000s, one most people in this country have never heard of. Millions died. Because the CIA thought Lumumba was too sympathetic to the Communists. Americans think of the West as the heroes in the cold war, because Stalin was such a brutal dictator. But there were no clean hands.

"Essentially, the Camarilla want to live behind the mirror. We have traditions, the Masquerade - hiding ourselves from humans - foremost among them. The rest of the traditions enshrine the notion that we should submit ourselves to the eldest and most powerful and not murder each other. In return, we are meant to have the assurance that the eldest and most powerful will not murder us on a whim. But as in the human world, power is the most august currency.

"And so you end up with Broderick and Eleanor, playing games with mortals and ghouls. Because if they cannot be more powerful than the queen, they will be more powerful than someone. Not unlike - " a brief pause, her attention strafing away, then returning to Tara. " - overseers on plantations before the Civil War.

"The Sabbat promise freedom from the Elders, but in turn demand unrelenting degeneracy. They think vampires were meant to rule mortals openly; and expect their adherents to embrace monstrosity with religious fervor, sloughing off the remnants of their humanity."

Paycheck.

Tara Holly

Tara came to pick up her last paycheck for the Ecstasy Ranch. She wasn't having much in the way of luck with that, the club was open but she wasn't really having much luck getting ahold of the owner. She runs a hand through her hair, shaking blonde locks out and her hands are in the pockets of that very particular jacket she wears. Tara lingers by the bar for a second, but catches a look at the owner from across the room.

They make eye contact. He flees. Her eyes narrow.

Tara isn't a particularly assertive creature. Not exactly, but her patience it seems has run thin. She makes her way through the crowd, a few of the lonely men at the tables whisper under their breath. Doesn't she work here. One of her regulars sighs a contented sigh when he sees her, and the blonde girl in the short shorts with the long legs and the cowboy boots. We open out scene under the strobe lights dim flashing while a stripper (former stripper? What does she do for that money now?) tries to get her last paycheck.

Eddie Vakoj

"Dickhead."

Cold, even statement of fact. Eddie's deep voice follows the owner like a lash as the door to the back room slams shut behind him. For once, Eddie- that cop that sometimes works nights- actually speaks without grunts. The gaunt, forbidding detective's angular frame twists around to watch the bastard's departure... after a long enough time that it becomes clear he won't be returning from the back, Eddie swings back around- his eyes falling on Tara.

Tara Holly

"What, did Tony not pay you either, huh?" She looks at Eddie. Heel, face, turn and looks at him. The boss is stalking off to the back, presumably to not get Tara's money. Tara, for her part, is a little more sharp than she had been before. A little leaner, a little more toned and a bit on the underfed side.

She shoves her hands in her pockets.

Eddie Vakoj

A small chuckle- even white teeth flash briefly in a faintly olive complexion. Eddie takes a step or two toward Tara as he speaks, apparently amused by the idea of Tony not forking over his pay.

Or his bribe. THAT would be really funny.

"Nnnnno, babe. He's not a stupid bastard, just an ordinary one." He pauses, watching the once beautiful woman, transformed into something a bit more feral. Drugs, his cop- eye says.

"Here to pick up your last?"

Tara Holly

And let's not mince words, what makes Tara beautiful hasn't changed. She's still symmetrical, still lovely, still attainable. She's just... she's just... dirtier. She's the sort of pretty that you don't tell your parents about. That you stash underneath a mattress. Drugs do that, make a pretty girl lose some weight, lose some sleep, makes her look a little closer to strung out. She knows where her next fix is coming from [just have to time it right to not lose herself. Can't afford that yet.]

"Yeah, assuming that asshole doesn't say I owe him for renting the pole, he owes me close to five hundred bucks," she sighs, "I've got half a mind to go slash his tires if he doesn't pay me."

Eddie Vakoj

Eddie cocks his head for a second or two, considering the woman with pursed lips.. and yes- at least in part- he looks at her like his mattress might have a bit of room to spare. In a few seconds the thirty something detective seems to come to a decision, his gaze having traced a path toward a now invisible tattoo and remembering something.

His attention returns to her face- and there's no hint at all of embarassment should she happened to have caught him eyeballing her. Apparently Eddie isn't the guy to be self- conscious.

"Tell ya what... I'll get you the money you're owed tonight- right now. But you owe me a favor, huh?"

Tara Holly

"Depends on the favor. I don't do windows," she caught the look. He can tell that she caught the look, but this is five hundred dollars they're talking about. Tara folds her arms across her chest and cants her head to the side.

Eddie Vakoj

He nods once. Manner growing intense- a little pointed. Pale green eyes narrowing in on her face and widening, as though drinking in every nuance he can catch. The effect is somewhat avian. Like a raven waiting to pluck at a pair of eyeballs.

"Your tat. Are you still Affiliated?" Affiliated. With the capital A. Biker quickspeak for someone either owned by or a part of the club. He's leaning over her. Rather excited.

Tara Holly

"I still got friends," she says, "not like I used to, but it shouldn't be too hard to get an in again."

Pays to be someone's old lady. Better an old lady than a mama, that's for damn sure. She plays it off like she's calm and collected and like this ain't a thing. Maybe it's not, but her eyes are on his He's taking her in and she notices. Her weight is evenly planted, and her eyes flicker to the door. Back to Eddie. She's not clawing her arms off yet, or dealing with a persistent runny nose. Good times.

"You been good to me," she says. You're alright, is the implication clear in her drawl.

Eddie Vakoj

"Fine." The word is clipped. Fast. He doesn't move otherwise, though he looks as tightly strung as a bow string waiting to be released.

"You gonna be good to me on that score then?" He doesn't look at the bartender behind the counter, but does take a step closer to it.

Tara Holly

"Can I crash at your place for a little while?"

No harm in trying, right?

Eddie Vakoj

Blink. Blink blink.

Yeah, that's it. Just blinking. Well, that and his mouth drifting open a little. Just surprise. Then vague unease sharpening fully into real unease. A moment ago he'd been interested. Intense. Looked like a hound about to snap at the next thing she said- like her agreement would be a catalyst for... something.

Then she asks if she can crash at his place and Eddie's slow drift toward the bar comes to a halt. She'd thrown a wrench into a carefully orchestrated thing he was going to do. A bit of cool- something to prop up the already potent reputation Detective Vakoj has... then she had to go and get all personal.

"Y.. yuh.. uh... "

He swallows. Scowls. Then his brows lift.

"Sure. Yeah. I guess. You gonna feed me some info from time to time then?"

Tara Holly

"Yeah," she says, Tara even nods when she does it, "yeah, I'm good for it. Jus' don't let this go sour on me, okay? I ain't been around much since my old man went in, an' sometimes I don't wonder if some folks like that better."

She looks half relieved. Three quarters relieved, but the night is starting to drone on, and she doesn't have to look at a clock to know that... well... Tara has things she needs to get done and she needs to start moving pretty damned quickly. "Don't freak, I'm good at discreet... just... Tony? My money?"

Pascal

The only thing that would be likely to stop Tara's heart faster than the appearance of the acquaintance of her disappeared domitor and a tall, leggy, lovely creature who belongs to his ilk would be one of them draining her of blood and leaving her on the sidewalk to fend for herself.

It's a Friday night, and maybe in this very very low light, in this very very unsavory location, the gorgeous blonde and the wild-haired man with her would look as though they had any business being seen in public together. They're both young, eternally so, but while the blonde has life in her skin, in her eyes, her companion could be a corpse. There are more than a few folks in this building who have been in the presence of a dead body before, cold and stiff and yet not entirely outside the realm of possibility for reanimating.

That's really where the fear in being around a dead body comes from. Death is the last great unknown, and to sit beside something that used to be a someone causes the average person's skin to crawl. Being around Pascal is worse because death grabs his audience by the back of the neck and forces their face into the uncanny valley, forces them to look at this upright, talking creature and try to sort out on their own why it is he looks dead but isn't.

It doesn't help that he looks young, that he looks somewhat pitiable with his boyish features and his dark eyes. Even the naive know better when they look at him.

Tara had better start moving pretty damned quickly. He sees her immediately, and nudges his companion when he does.

Eddie Vakoj

"Right- JOE." He says it as he swings his head at the bartender. One long, skinny finger prods through the air at the door into the back room.

"Door!"

He's moving as he speaks. Its a stroll. That cop swagger one first adopts, then becomes. Eddie can be a dangerous, prowling creature when he choses, for all of his slightly too skinny angularity. Tall, olive skinned and beak- nosed, he still looks to have been hammered into his current shaped rather than pampered there at all.

The club is crowded. There are too many people and too many bodies for the tall detective to have noticed anyone in particular right off the bat, and in any case he's only a few yards away from the door to the hallway that will eventually bring him to the office and Tara's last wad of cash from the club.

Its still going to take a while to get there.

Luce

The blonde looks like she belongs to the neighborhood. Like she was born out of the broken crack vials and weedy asphalt of the neighborhood's empty lots, see. She's dressed in worn jeans tonight and a classic Ramones t-shirt, beneath a sleek leather jacket. Her pale eyes are ringed with a heavy fringe of shadow and liner, mascara darkening the natively pale lashes. The halo of a hood is dark over the crown of her pale hair. Heavy black boots covered in buckles complete the ensemble.

The creature's pale eyes sharpen on Tara. Narrow, from this middle distance. She mutters a florid, foreign curse beneath her breath, one that only Pascal is like to hear. Glances up at him, a sharp, sweeping look, nostrils flaring with awareness. Some tendon works across her temple.

"Pardon me." The creature's voice is incisive, then. She slices between a knot of drunken dock workers flailing lewdly over the lap dance their boss bought for the new guy, headed straight for Tara and Eddie. Beeline. When she pushes free of the patrons, she picks up the pace, heels clipping crisply on the sagging floorboards.

"Tara!" Across the interval distance; a peripheral glance at Pascal. Her smile quickens, and her voice drops. "We've been so worried about you."

Tara Holly

"Shit," she hisses. Hypervigilance seems to suit Tara better than her shoes or that coat that isn't hers or the engine grease on her shirt. There is death, right there. Her attention hits a corpse and its company. She has a whole different load of problems to deal with at this moment. Where she's going to sleep, how much gas she has, and how she's going to make it through a sparse crowd [the place is busy, but doesn't matter how many people there are. There aren't enough to keep a wall of people between her and the walking dead] Eddie is getting her money, and Eddie, for what he is, should be good for it. Her attention flickers to the emergency exit, and Tara makes her exit there.

Or, well, attempts to make her exit there. That's the problem, see. She has a hard time moving the crowd without someone asking her if she's working tonight or why she hasn't been on stage and asking all sorts of questions about whether or not she's a good girl or not. It doesn't matter, though, because Tara isn't leaving. she's making an escape. "Shit, shit, shit."

It doesn't matter that she hears that someone's been worried about her. What she hears doesn't seem to compute. The female just tries to make a break for it. It is pretty loud, in here... maybe she just didn't hear them?

Eddie Vakoj

(Welcome! I've got AIM off for now so my connection won't just creep along. So feel free to message me here.)

Pascal

"Oh, my," Pascal says to Luce.

Though he looks as though he's either just stumbled out of bed or been up for several nights--or had done either of those things prior to meeting his untimely end and winding up amongst the annals of history, a footnote somewhere, an obituary that was never published--he's dressed about as well as one can expect out of him. He wears black trainers, black jeans, a plain, dark blue shirt and a black blazer. It's been getting cooler at night, meaning his flesh follows suit. He wears fingerless gloves.

It does very little, being as his own physiology is less than optimal, but it cuts down on contact between his flesh and his victims'. What mercies he doles out these nights are scant.

"You've got her in a right state, haven't you."

Eddie Vakoj

(Is it possible for Eddie to have heard either the 'Tara!' from Luce or the shitting and commotion from Tara? Or is he about to blithely wander off like the knight in tattered armor?*G*)

Luce

(that's up to you, methinks! anyone else?)

Luce

(By which I mean to say: I thought he was still around. I don't see why he wouldn't catch it?)

Luce

"I blame your dear friends, in polite society." Luce returns, low-voiced, tension bordering her spine, making her straight and sure. Pascal offers few mercies, and her own come back to haunt her.

Pale blue eyes narrow on the back of Tara's head, and she plunges into the crowd after the girl, offering weaving half-smiles and murmured noises of apology to the drunk minions pawing and panting after Tara as she flees for the emergency exit, the dim glow of the green sign electric in the gloom of a particularly filthy corner of this particularly filthy establishment. Lovely as Luce is, no one looks at her like they do Tara in a place like this. There's something difficult about her; the angular body, the narrow hips, the non-existent breasts. Nothing to catch the imagination of a drunk man used to seeing rather more pneumatic flesh on endless parade beneath the neon strobes that flank the stage.

"Pardon me," she says just once, pale eyes flashing winsome, hand staying on a stranger's chest as she pushes through a last knot to catch Tara as the stripper tries to pry a pushy drunk's hands off her chest. Sharp-voiced to the handsy drunk. "Get your hands off her," she works to fold in closer to the cursing, fleeing girl.

"Tara, darling. Are you all right? You haven't been using again, have you?"

All luminous concern.

Eddie Vakoj

Helpful Eddie- there he goes, vanishing through the door the bartender buzzes open for him. Its a short hall. The office is right there, at the end. Sometimes it feels good to help out- not that he'd ever admit it.

That girl out there, she's worth helping for several reasons. So, as Eddie makes his way down the ill-lit hallway he's all but licking his chops in the gloom.. eyes full of the wealth of information Tara could be able to bring him on the Angels.

Luce

Presence 1: Awe!

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 3, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Eddie Vakoj

((erm, Ignore my last post.))

Pascal

[Sweet Jesus have mercy.]

Eddie Vakoj

Something else occurs to the old-too-soon detective. He cranes his head around to shout something to Tara- which car to wait in, a warning about his errand taking a while, maybe to ask if she's hungry. Wants to stop or something. It had been a while since Eddie had shared space with anyone at all- maybe he remembers that there's nothing but coffee, beer, and amphetamines at home.

-Only Tara's not there. Pale green eyes linger on the area where the lovely ex- stripper had been standing and the rest of the angular cop comes to a halt a midst his confusion.

Eddie's attention swivels back and forth, meandering through the crowd until it lights on Tara again. She's damn close to the exit now- the emergency one, near the back.. and while there's nobody near her but a slight little female who seems all concern, something jangles in the back of Ed's head regarding Tara's body language.

Swirling colored light flickers against sharp, angular features as he narrows his eyes and watches.

(Per- details+Empathy: Tara's body language)

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Tara Holly

This takes some clear maneuvering, keeping Luce between her and Pascal. She elbowed some guy in the guy hard nough that he thought he heard something crack. Didn't remember the blonde being that strong, but then she's impeded by some guy getting handsy, which the Georgia peach treats as little more than a passing inconvenience. It's a strip club, getting felt up, she's gathered.

And it's the funniest thing, really, because she goes from anxious to frustrated to... Her shoulders round in, she stands a little hipshot and the blonde girl smiles. A big, bright, embarrassed smile. It tones down, and her thoughts wander. All sunshine, this one, all... something. Her attention is on lUce, and not on the walking shambling dead man there with her. She all but forgets about her paycheck, the reason she was here.

"Yeah, heh, Gwen's a bit of a pusher, ya know? Spike yer drink and it all goes downhill," but damn if it wasn't exactly what she'd wanted, "she don't know that I know, but... Fuck, for all I know she's just another dealer. But... yeah. I have. Kinda fell off the wagon."

Pascal

[Don't wait for me to post, Pascal's hanging back for now.]

Luce

"And your Eleanor fled the city." There note of quiet, insistent sympathy in the creature's voice. Some direct clarity of purpose vibrates the tone like a well tuned string. "I can only imagine what you've been going through, these last nights. Come. This isn't healthy for you." The whole of the pale-eyed woman's sympathy is fixed and unswerving on Tara.

"You look - hungry. I'm sure you've not been eating. You look like you've lost a stone or more - " and so on, the constant, soothing murmur of her voice shimmering with the radiance of the blood-discipline she used immediately, thoughtlessly. When Tara smiles, beams, Luce takes advantage of the moment to slip a cool arm around her shoulders, intimate as an old friend. " - you need to eat. I'll take you someplace safe, darling. How does that sound?"

Tara Holly

"Tom was right," about a lot of things, but at that moment her not-so rational brain is telling her that he couldn't have been right about all things. That Luce might be different because she just seems so nice and so caring and she sounds so sympathetic. And Eleanor fled the city. Tara laughs, and the sound is tinged with base at the ends. It's bitter, could dissolve organic material if it were stronger. She's no chemical, though. Just a woman.

"Explains why I couldn't fnd her... she didn't even care..."

She looks hungry. There;s an arm around her shoulders and a friendly, comfortable arm slips around Luce's waist in kind. With heels on, Luce is taller, it's only comfortable. "I'm fine, I've got somewhere I can stay... but lemme tell ya, Icould use a hotdog right now."

Pascal

Tom was right.

For some reason, this makes the corpse behind Luce laugh. It's a high-pitched, out-of-practice sound, and it's mercifully short-lived, and it's the only noise he makes.

Luce

"And your Eleanor fled the city." There note of quiet, insistent sympathy in the creature's voice. Some direct clarity of purpose vibrates the tone like a well tuned string. "I can only imagine what you've been going through, these last nights. Come. This isn't healthy for you." The whole of the pale-eyed woman's sympathy is fixed and unswerving on Tara.

"You look - hungry. I'm sure you've not been eating. You look like you've lost a stone or more - " and so on, the constant, soothing murmur of her voice shimmering with the radiance of the blood-discipline she used immediately, thoughtlessly. When Tara smiles, beams, Luce takes advantage of the moment to slip a cool arm around her shoulders, intimate as an old friend. " - you need to eat. I'll take you someplace safe, darling. How does that sound?"

Luce

"Then I wouldn't mourn her, were I you. Living well is the best revenge, and the city and you are well rid of her." Just once, the gleaming creature shoots a winging glance back at Pascal, when that high-pitched, dead-hyena noise vibrates from his throat and chest. Lingers there, a certain tension in her tall, thin frame. The heels on her boots are enough to boost her above the general level of the crowd. She scans it, sharp-eyed and watchful, her attention trailing through the shifting lights, over the heads of the drunk patrons.

"You'll have your hot dog. Or filet mignon if you want it. Once I've assured myself that you're well. Come." The implied intimacy of sisters in their closeness now. Luce, magnetic, murmurs into Tara's ear and begins steering the young woman back through the crowd, toward the front door. "Have you been working on your show? Found a venue, yet?"

Pascal

Luce shoots a glower back at the Malkavian, who oughtn't be able to hear the conversation underneath the din of the crowd, the blaring of the bass, the sisterly closeness of the two women's conversation. When she does, he stifles a smirk and widens his already doe-like eyes at her, as if to say Oops, then flicks his eyes back to Tara.

She has every right to be scared of him, to find his mere presence off-putting. She knows what he is, more than anyone else in this establishment does, and she knows what he's capable of.

In some way, she has to know that if she were to try to do as Tom taught her, it would end in her being broken, not Pascal. Pascal came to this life broken, very little good left in him. Right? He hadn't been anything like Tom, good on the inside and with a long way to fall before he ended up being utterly warped beyond recognition. This won't happen to the man who had tried to save Tara.

Right?

The two of them begin to walk off, and Pascal stays where he is, hands in the pockets of his blazer, just watching them. He, apparently, means to stay.

Tara Holly

There's a burst of laughter, and she tenses up. Her fingers tighten. Tara doesn't actually move for a second. Pascal is right there, and Tara's not a bright girl but she knows what she's doing. She knows well enough to know when she is in over her head. That Pascal would leave her a little broken husk of a woman in an alleyway if she even thought about doing to him what she did to Tom.

Right now, she's the only one in this room who probably has any idea of what these people were. They walk off, on out of the club, "an' yeah, Gwen's been talkin' about gettin' me a place, but you know girls like that. All sortsa strings. An' I have been workin' on a show, spare time. Got an audition in LA for a real movie pretty soon, too, which'll be nice. Means I c'n quit shakin' it at these kinda places... where are we going? Is He coming?"

Because, in her voice, Pascal gets a capital letter.

Luce

"In this world, Tara, there's nothing but strings. Particularly when you're auditioning for a real movie and working on a show, and passing time with a woman who wants to get you a place, somewhere, when you've a perfectly adequate place of your own." Tara shoots Pascal the still look of a deer that has heard the wolf howl in the middle distance. Luce, luminous, delicate creature that she is, follows the path of the girl's gaze. Her own is distance and opaque. They are strangers. They are nothing close to friends.

"We're going to the drive-through at McDonald's for your hot dogs. Or any place else you prefer. And then we're going someplace safe for the rest of the night.

"You do remember the deal I made you, Tara. The choice I offered?"

Tara Holly

"Somewhere easy to keep track of me," maybe she's more clever than she lets on... "an' I do... I guess I didn't... uh... make good on that one since Eleanor skipped town."

Luce

"No," the creature returns, low and grave. "You didn't. Truth be told, I'm rather disappointed."

Pascal

Pascal stands and waits until the two are well out of earshot, until they aren't watching him anymore. The struggling ghoul may very well look back one more time, but when she does, the tall, wasted youth is not still standing there. That may possibly be more frightening than knowing exactly where he is.

Now he could be anywhere.

[Thanks for the scene, ladies!]

Tara Holly

"... you're going to take that third option, aren't ya? The one where you "fix" the problem and I go off to fuckin' Kansas? I ain't gonna bargain with you, Luce. And I ain't gonna make excuses, either."

Luce

"Good. I do not like excuses." There is no more discussion of the options, for now. Not in the strip club. Not until they are out in the rolling fog of the San Francisco night. Not until the night is opening up around them, the stars hidden somewhere above the gloom, the streetlights surrounded by rainbow rings, gleaming through the damp air, shortening the shadows, making them harried things, cramped and strange.

"You're dangerous to us, Tara. I told you that before. And you're dangerous to yourself. The authorities in this city could have my head for letting you run free. Did you know that? They've had other heads for less. They killed one of us because he did not know what his neighbors were.

"I'll give you the choice again, though less freedom in its execution. What do you say?"

Blind - Lurkery

((heya, would you guys object to an extra or no? and what's the setting ifyou wouldn't mind the extra. that is pressuming it's not gettingo n for vanishing time))

Luce

I wouldn't object to an extra, though it is getting to vanishing time for me. Heh. Am exhausted!

Blind - Lurkery

((as yer both close to vanishing I shall leave it this time, I hope to catch you some other time then, enjoy and take care. Thanks all the same.))

Luce

hopefully soon! thanks for understanding. :)

Tara Holly

Pascal is gone, and it doesn't do her anything to ease her discomfort. She swallows, and checks the corners of the strip club. When they're outside, she checks for people, places, anything that she could do to. There is no reigning in Hell, and there is no serving in Heaven. For her, it's just favors and bartering for things with a price. She has no bargaining chips, other than the fact that her meager bits of knowledge are dangerous to their continued existence.

"I'll take you over an unknown unknown. 'least you've been upfront with me," she says. It's resignation, but... not entirely unpleasant. Not entirely resentful, because this time? At least this time, twice now there's been a choice.

Bonding.

Luce

Half-way through the drive back to wherever she is being taken, Luce stops, idling in front of a 24 hour grocery store. Hands over a small fistful of cash and tells Tara to go inside, buy herself enough food to last three days. Whatever she wants. The vampire parks the car, and joins her inside, wandering through the flourescent aisles like a tourist, drifting, apart.

When they get back into the car, Tara is told to close her eyes. They pull over to the side of the road, then - some slanting street, all downfalling hill, quiet except for the ticking of the engine - and Luce tells her, I'm going to cover your eyes. Whispers in her ear, at that, her cool breath smelling of cloves and smoke. I'm not going to hurt you. It's just for my - piece of mind.

Maybe it reminds Tara, in a flash of insight, how vulnerable these monsters must be when the sun is high. How singular. How alone.

---

She has only the vaguest sense of where they are going after that. Once, an impression of height. The echo of a bridge beneath the wheels, and later, another. She might imagine that the creature is driving around in circles, taking her to some elevated neighborhood, the posh enclave where Eleanor and Broderick made their homes. The last sound is the rusty chain of a manual garage door being opened, and then closed.

Tara finds herself, then, what appears to have been - once - an inner city garage. The building is early 20th century brick, solid. There are no windows on the first floor. Two garage bays seem to front the street, and one now holds the Toreador's red convertible, with its pinging engine and tattered roof. The equipment and tools are long gone, though. The interior seems to be half-way through a slow avalanche of transformation.

Someone has stained the concrete floor to conceal the oil stains, repainted perhaps half the visible interior. The second garage bay is a living space - with the eclectic look of an artist's loft, were said loft invaded by both a clothes horse and a used bookstore. The concrete there has been warmed up by a fine, if worn, oriental rug spread over it, and an elegant tufted red velvet couch bisects one corner. Bookshelves fill the space, rising to the ceiling, half-filled. There are clothes scattered about, some glittering, some dull, and a half-dozen pairs of shows in confectionary styles and colors left to lay amidst the piles of books.

A stack of artworks since against one wall, no rhyme or reason to the collection. Nothing has been mounted yet. There are stairs rising to darkness, and what seems to be a small office/kitchenette tucked in behind the living/storage space. It is mostly clean, but dusty with disuse. The fridge is running, though, and when Tara opens it to stow away her groceries, she finds a near-empty jar of pickles, an antique squeeze bottle of mustard, two boxes of cigars and a bottle of champagne, nothing more.

By the time she emerges from the kitchen, Luce has kicked off her heels and changed clothes. She's wearing an old pair of cut-off jeans and a t-shirt that shows a heraldic shield, cookie monster rampant on a field of gold. Her face is scrubbed clean, and she is all long limbs, loose joints. In those clothes, without make-up, she looks achingly young, girl-not-monster, except for her eyes.

"Come here," the monster-girl says, barefooted on her worn silk carpet, when Tara emerges from the kitchenette, crumbling up the plastic bags from the grocery store, looking, perhaps, for the trash can.

Tara

For a second, she feels bad for her. It lasts for a second, though. Just a second, it prattles on in her head and eats at her sense of compassion. They all had lives once. Maybe they asked for this, maybe they didn't. Maybe they all wanted this life-unlife-whatever that they had right now. Maybe they didn't miss food. Luce didn't seem to mind, but then again she didn't feel like a corpse. She didn't seem to be starving, either.

Tara actually comes back with food. Real, honest-to-God food, too. Enogh to last three days. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Cheap stuff, too. She even coms back and gives Luce change. It's hamburger helper with turkey instead of beef. Doesn't ever explain to the lady why she picked out what she did- or maybe she does. What does Luce care? It's food she won't be able to eat. Frenchbread. Cheese. Vegetables.

Nothing canned.

The engine ticks. "You ever gonna let me fix that?" she asks. It's a nicety she never thought of. Mechanics work a nine to five. Shame to see a piece of art go to waste like that.

----

They drive.

Tara only gets a vague sense of where they are going. THey must be driving in circles, but she has to ake Luce on her word- the woman who let her choose. The woman who gave her a choice, even though she chose poorly the last time. This tme, this time it's different. This time, she has a feeling of what she was getting into. She doesn't think about Eleanor, about the pseudo-loss, about the betrayal. For once, Tom doesn't creep into her head, except at a hard left when she starts to think about what is going on with him. Where he is now. What he's doing... she thinks of how vulnerable they must be in the sunlight. she thinks about the stakes she usually keeps in her purse. She makes the conscious decision to leave her purse in the car. They aren't in there, at least not tonight. No reason for it to be there, all the same.

Tara gets right to putting hte groceries away. She puts the bags on the ground, starts to unload what will and will not perish.

"Thought y'all didn't eat food," she calls back.Tara leaves the grocery bags tied into little angels on the counter. The jacket is discarded.She's still lovely, but... Tara could stand to put on a little weight again. Edging towards feral.

Luce

"We don't." The creature returns, from a distance, padding barefoot over the silk carpet and the cold concrete to lean against the door frame. To watch these domestic motions in the sterile little kitchen. Her voice is rich and low, musical. She offers Tara the edge of a small smile. "But when someone opens the fridge, they expect to see something in there. I don't invite strangers in, as a rule, it's true. Though what if one came? Someone told me once that even women who live on diet pills and cigarettes have something in the cabinets.

"So I do, too."

She effects an offhand shrug, the movement supple beneath the cotton t-shirt into which she has changed.

Luce is searching Tara's features as the young woman finishes unloading the groceries, eyeing the lean cast to her figure with a critical eye. Or rather, with a close eye that does not feel entirely intrusive. "You need to eat more." But loose instead, loose and familiar as the sweep of a painter's brush across a primed canvas. "What did Eleanor do to you?"

Her arms are crossed, but loose. She has an easiness to her in this private space that does not perhaps match Tara's memories of the social predator who took Tara home in order to drink her blood. Who played those games of memory and desire.

"What you feel for Eleanor isn't natural, you know that. Don't you? That it comes from her blood; the addiction, and that stange sense of loyalty, the obsession. That increases each time you drink. After the third night, a bond is created that cannot be easily broken. No matter how many bottles of spiked wine someone feeds you." Her features are hauntingly still, her eyes intent on Tara's face.

Tara

"Makes sense. Pickles are a comfort food, mustard goes on everything and y'didn't pick anything that'd expire quicckly. It's stuff you forget about bein' in your fridge. Makes ya seem like you live on take out; it's glamorous. Goes with the loft thing, you got this to an art," she is a little more observant than she seems. She might not be smart, but she seems to understand something about perception.

This isn't the same woman she'd seen at the party. The one that was full of words and stories and has seen places Tara hasn't ever even thought about. It's a comfort of being at home. Tara seems more like a guest. Unsure of where to put her shoes, but she does crouch and start to unlace her boots. They're loose enough.

"Me 'n Tom figured that one out. Y'all are addictive, kinda like any drug. Gives you your highs when it's good, but once things start to work out of your system, it's bad. Y'ain't yourself. You guys are undead coke," She says. She says his name fondly, but... not quite. Aware, more guilty. Fondly and with guilt. She needs to eat more, she asks what Eleanor did.

"Nothin'... gonna guess Gwen's like 'yall too, eh? She was real shady 'bout that wine."

Luce

"She is. Another bloodline, but still Kindred. We don't use the term vampire for ourselves. We prefer to mask the truth, just as we mask our existence." The creature returns, the corner of her shapely mouth creeping wider. "The first rule of fight club, you remember?

"And," straightening, pushing away from the frame of the door, "we do have rules."

She circles from the kitchenette, pads out of the kitchen into the garage itself, circling past the quiet car to the half situated like a living room or study, largely clean but haphazardly kept. No particular order has yet been achieved. There are stacked boxes in the corner, and colonies of open boxes in the shadows, books and newspapers left on the bookshelves, or stacked on the floor, or scattered under the couch and on and on. There's a stereo, somewhere. A box full of vinyl records. CDs. But notably, no television. Not anywhere close.

And folds her long, lean body into one familiar corner of the antique couch in a way that makes her look almost alien - like an insect for a moment, poised there, all jointed limbs - before she relaxes bonelessly into the space.

"You should make yourself at home while you're here. But for now, come sit with me."

Tara

She looks at her, waits for the other shoe to drop, "she was like you, then. Didn't look dead, didn't feel dead, but.. yeah."

She starts over and the approach is cautious. She is expecting the other sheo to drop, it's like leaving milk for a feral cat. Which really does beg the question what the Hell was her introduction to kindred society prior to this? Or, rather, what kind of socialization has she had before. It doesn't seem too bad, thoguh. She's still pretty. A little underfed, but it doesn't cause irreparable damage. She really should eat more. It's off to the living room none the less. The biker jacket that's too big for her is discarded on the floor by the sofa, along with her shoes. Tara lowers herself down on the couch, gets herself comfortable, and as close as she can comfortably be without being entirely out of reach.

She suspects that something about this will end poorly. that what will end with her getting that pretty, pretty neck of hers snapped and will end with her lying in some awkward angles in the bathtub, waiting to be dismembered and systematically stuffed down the garbage disposal.

"I figured y'all were different... Broderick didn't seem th' same as Eleanor... partially because I can't picture her throwing people into walls with her brain."

She exhales.

"So, after the third time I drink, whatever's there's solid and... and that's that. I'm your pet-" because she's heard the word, because it's accurate "-and that's that?"

Luce

Luce makes a noise in the back of her throat; a rush of air through her nostrils. Pale eyes half lid as she cuts a glance toward Tara. The word pet stills her for a long, quiet moment where she does not breathe, does not blink, does not move, as if she were caught, briefly, between moments. Then she lifts her head aslant, looks away, at that stack of art collected against the wall with this sharp gesture feels restrained at the end of it, as if she were pulling back on an internal leash. Sublimating some visceral reaction. Some kitsch, some brilliant. Some brilliant kitsch.

"Not my pet." Firm and quiet, a hint of steel showing through the low velvet of her voice. "You will - " a pause, a narrow one, her shapely little mouth pressing together around the thought even as she turns her pale, saturated gaze back onto Tara. "feel intense loyalty. I won't deny that. And I will make requests of you from time to time. I will expect you to keep your eyes and ears open, too; to let me know of - " here a narrow shrug, " - unusual things that you might discover.

"But I am not a puppeteer, Tara. And you are not a marionnette. I will also expect you to figure out a way to live that has some meaning for you beyond - " a sharp, lingering pause. " - beyond what this does to you. Perhaps you should think of me as a patron, rather than a pet-owner.

"I will not ask you to abase yourself. To abuse yourself. To surrender yourself, body and mind, to me. I may be Kindred, Tara," she glances back now, her eyes keen her shoulders forward, narrow body full of a kind of physical conviction. " - but I have no use for broken things."

Tara

"Why do I get the feelin' that you're the exception and not the norm?"

Luce

"The world is run by brutal men, Tara. And the surest proof is their armies." There's a cadence to the reply, low and sure, that suggests the worlds are remembered, not her own. The sort of answer that resonates against your bones, and is therefore remembered.

"If your customers in that strip club could bind others to them forever with their blood, few enough would resist it. We are not kind, and I'm not good." She is quiet, pale eyes unblinking, her features sharp in the light, her skin flawless, nearly pore less. "But I don't believe in slavery."

Tara

"I guess that's the best I can ask for," she says. She watches. Luce is a beautiful creature. Her skin is flawless, her words are remembered and have artistry. She has class. of course Luce would have class; she's had years to perfect the art. But kindred-that's what she calls herself- are not kind. And Luce is not good.

It's the best she can hope for; Tara can not count herself among the ranks of those blessed few "good people". She let a man take a beating, damned him to an eternity of unlife. Watched him starve and didn't flinch. Didn't offer help aside from a few cold pints of blood bought with... favors. She counts the moment as lucky. She doesn't have to count her days until Luce loses interest.

"So, y'all are kindred. Garlic, mirrors, running water, inviting you in is all bullshit. Sunlight's a big deal, and that stake through the heart thing is Hell on Earth... and never bring any of that shit up. Right?"

Luce

"Right." The edge of her smile ghosts across her shapely mouth. Her eyes reflect the light like a cloud. "At least," all quite, low. Vibrant again. " - not now." There's a hint of humor in her eyes. She inhales again, finds that breathing rhythm that belongs to humans, that Tara lives inside without considering, without remembering.

"Not yet."

And then she unfolds from her perch on the sofa, rising with an oddly native grace, always finding her feet, extending a cool hand to Tara. Just so. Open.

"It grows late. I can feel dawn somewhere lurking at the horizon. Come."

--

The apartment upstairs is just was warren-like as the garage downstairs. The windows are bricked over, long since sealed. There is still that sense of formlessness to the space; someone slowly unfolding into it. It will takes months - longer - and by then she may be ready to move on again.

Somewhere up there, in a dark corridor, Luce pulls Tara close. Slides her arms around the girl's waist and shoulders. Touches, gently, the girl's hips, her shoulders. Her mouth, with a cool, still thumb, then nudges her chin upward, exposing the long line of her neck. Finds her pulse with her soft, cool mouth, and then bites deeply. And drinks, deeply, listening to the echo of Tara's heart in her own mouth, in the cage of her body. If she is dying, at least she will die like this - transported by pleasure so intense it borders on excrutiating. The best sex of her life while on the best drugs of her life.

Which feels - familiar, somehow.

When it is over, Tara is still standing. Still breathing, coming down from the spiraled heights of that ecstatic sensation to a hammering heart and a spinning world. Unaccountably tired, too, from the blood she's lost. Perhaps she cries out. Perhaps she's crying, somehow, halfway to mourning her own death. Perhaps she is quiet, sagging against the wall, the scent of Chanel sharper in her nostrils now, and blood so close.

"Shhh," murmurs Luce, low. " - tais-toi, quiet. Shhh." Soothing. There is this confusing mixture of sensations, and then Luce's wrist is at Tara's mouth, a long cut oozing blood into her mouth, undisguised by wine, just the drug her body craves. The first night, Luce gives her a mouthful, too. Not enough to wake her, to undo the lethargy that the bloodloss wraps her in, just enough to begin the bond. She first cinch in the knot she means to tie between them.

Still murmuring quiet, nothing phrases, the creature shifts Tara's weight, slides a long arms are beneath Tara's, supporting her as she stumbles toward the bedroom. They will share a bed, Luce with her arms curled around Tara, cradling the girl as she drifts to the sort of bonedeep sleep inside which the body begins to repair itself, cool and still as a fevered dream.

Tara

Tara Holly

Tara came to pick up her last paycheck for the Ecstasy Ranch. She wasn't having much in the way of luck with that, the club was open but she wasn't really having much luck getting ahold of the owner. She runs a hand through her hair, shaking blonde locks out and her hands are in the pockets of that very particular jacket she wears. Tara lingers by the bar for a second, but catches a look at the owner from across the room.

They make eye contact. He flees. Her eyes narrow.

Tara isn't a particularly assertive creature. Not exactly, but her patience it seems has run thin. She makes her way through the crowd, a few of the lonely men at the tables whisper under their breath. Doesn't she work here. One of her regulars sighs a contented sigh when he sees her, and the blonde girl in the short shorts with the long legs and the cowboy boots. We open out scene under the strobe lights dim flashing while a stripper (former stripper? What does she do for that money now?) tries to get her last paycheck.

Eddie Vakoj

"Dickhead."

Cold, even statement of fact. Eddie's deep voice follows the owner like a lash as the door to the back room slams shut behind him. For once, Eddie- that cop that sometimes works nights- actually speaks without grunts. The gaunt, forbidding detective's angular frame twists around to watch the bastard's departure... after a long enough time that it becomes clear he won't be returning from the back, Eddie swings back around- his eyes falling on Tara.

Tara Holly

"What, did Tony not pay you either, huh?" She looks at Eddie. Heel, face, turn and looks at him. The boss is stalking off to the back, presumably to not get Tara's money. Tara, for her part, is a little more sharp than she had been before. A little leaner, a little more toned and a bit on the underfed side.

She shoves her hands in her pockets.

Eddie Vakoj

A small chuckle- even white teeth flash briefly in a faintly olive complexion. Eddie takes a step or two toward Tara as he speaks, apparently amused by the idea of Tony not forking over his pay.

Or his bribe. THAT would be really funny.

"Nnnnno, babe. He's not a stupid bastard, just an ordinary one." He pauses, watching the once beautiful woman, transformed into something a bit more feral. Drugs, his cop- eye says.

"Here to pick up your last?"

Tara Holly

And let's not mince words, what makes Tara beautiful hasn't changed. She's still symmetrical, still lovely, still attainable. She's just... she's just... dirtier. She's the sort of pretty that you don't tell your parents about. That you stash underneath a mattress. Drugs do that, make a pretty girl lose some weight, lose some sleep, makes her look a little closer to strung out. She knows where her next fix is coming from [just have to time it right to not lose herself. Can't afford that yet.]

"Yeah, assuming that asshole doesn't say I owe him for renting the pole, he owes me close to five hundred bucks," she sighs, "I've got half a mind to go slash his tires if he doesn't pay me."

Eddie Vakoj

Eddie cocks his head for a second or two, considering the woman with pursed lips.. and yes- at least in part- he looks at her like his mattress might have a bit of room to spare. In a few seconds the thirty something detective seems to come to a decision, his gaze having traced a path toward a now invisible tattoo and remembering something.

His attention returns to her face- and there's no hint at all of embarassment should she happened to have caught him eyeballing her. Apparently Eddie isn't the guy to be self- conscious.

"Tell ya what... I'll get you the money you're owed tonight- right now. But you owe me a favor, huh?"

Tara Holly

"Depends on the favor. I don't do windows," she caught the look. He can tell that she caught the look, but this is five hundred dollars they're talking about. Tara folds her arms across her chest and cants her head to the side.

Eddie Vakoj

He nods once. Manner growing intense- a little pointed. Pale green eyes narrowing in on her face and widening, as though drinking in every nuance he can catch. The effect is somewhat avian. Like a raven waiting to pluck at a pair of eyeballs.

"Your tat. Are you still Affiliated?" Affiliated. With the capital A. Biker quickspeak for someone either owned by or a part of the club. He's leaning over her. Rather excited.

Tara Holly

"I still got friends," she says, "not like I used to, but it shouldn't be too hard to get an in again."

Pays to be someone's old lady. Better an old lady than a mama, that's for damn sure. She plays it off like she's calm and collected and like this ain't a thing. Maybe it's not, but her eyes are on his He's taking her in and she notices. Her weight is evenly planted, and her eyes flicker to the door. Back to Eddie. She's not clawing her arms off yet, or dealing with a persistent runny nose. Good times.

"You been good to me," she says. You're alright, is the implication clear in her drawl.

Eddie Vakoj

"Fine." The word is clipped. Fast. He doesn't move otherwise, though he looks as tightly strung as a bow string waiting to be released.

"You gonna be good to me on that score then?" He doesn't look at the bartender behind the counter, but does take a step closer to it.

Tara Holly

"Can I crash at your place for a little while?"

No harm in trying, right?

Eddie Vakoj

Blink. Blink blink.

Yeah, that's it. Just blinking. Well, that and his mouth drifting open a little. Just surprise. Then vague unease sharpening fully into real unease. A moment ago he'd been interested. Intense. Looked like a hound about to snap at the next thing she said- like her agreement would be a catalyst for... something.

Then she asks if she can crash at his place and Eddie's slow drift toward the bar comes to a halt. She'd thrown a wrench into a carefully orchestrated thing he was going to do. A bit of cool- something to prop up the already potent reputation Detective Vakoj has... then she had to go and get all personal.

"Y.. yuh.. uh... "

He swallows. Scowls. Then his brows lift.

"Sure. Yeah. I guess. You gonna feed me some info from time to time then?"

Tara Holly

"Yeah," she says, Tara even nods when she does it, "yeah, I'm good for it. Jus' don't let this go sour on me, okay? I ain't been around much since my old man went in, an' sometimes I don't wonder if some folks like that better."

She looks half relieved. Three quarters relieved, but the night is starting to drone on, and she doesn't have to look at a clock to know that... well... Tara has things she needs to get done and she needs to start moving pretty damned quickly. "Don't freak, I'm good at discreet... just... Tony? My money?"

Pascal

The only thing that would be likely to stop Tara's heart faster than the appearance of the acquaintance of her disappeared domitor and a tall, leggy, lovely creature who belongs to his ilk would be one of them draining her of blood and leaving her on the sidewalk to fend for herself.

It's a Friday night, and maybe in this very very low light, in this very very unsavory location, the gorgeous blonde and the wild-haired man with her would look as though they had any business being seen in public together. They're both young, eternally so, but while the blonde has life in her skin, in her eyes, her companion could be a corpse. There are more than a few folks in this building who have been in the presence of a dead body before, cold and stiff and yet not entirely outside the realm of possibility for reanimating.

That's really where the fear in being around a dead body comes from. Death is the last great unknown, and to sit beside something that used to be a someone causes the average person's skin to crawl. Being around Pascal is worse because death grabs his audience by the back of the neck and forces their face into the uncanny valley, forces them to look at this upright, talking creature and try to sort out on their own why it is he looks dead but isn't.

It doesn't help that he looks young, that he looks somewhat pitiable with his boyish features and his dark eyes. Even the naive know better when they look at him.

Tara had better start moving pretty damned quickly. He sees her immediately, and nudges his companion when he does.

Eddie Vakoj

"Right- JOE." He says it as he swings his head at the bartender. One long, skinny finger prods through the air at the door into the back room.

"Door!"

He's moving as he speaks. Its a stroll. That cop swagger one first adopts, then becomes. Eddie can be a dangerous, prowling creature when he choses, for all of his slightly too skinny angularity. Tall, olive skinned and beak- nosed, he still looks to have been hammered into his current shaped rather than pampered there at all.

The club is crowded. There are too many people and too many bodies for the tall detective to have noticed anyone in particular right off the bat, and in any case he's only a few yards away from the door to the hallway that will eventually bring him to the office and Tara's last wad of cash from the club.

Its still going to take a while to get there.

Luce

The blonde looks like she belongs to the neighborhood. Like she was born out of the broken crack vials and weedy asphalt of the neighborhood's empty lots, see. She's dressed in worn jeans tonight and a classic Ramones t-shirt, beneath a sleek leather jacket. Her pale eyes are ringed with a heavy fringe of shadow and liner, mascara darkening the natively pale lashes. The halo of a hood is dark over the crown of her pale hair. Heavy black boots covered in buckles complete the ensemble.

The creature's pale eyes sharpen on Tara. Narrow, from this middle distance. She mutters a florid, foreign curse beneath her breath, one that only Pascal is like to hear. Glances up at him, a sharp, sweeping look, nostrils flaring with awareness. Some tendon works across her temple.

"Pardon me." The creature's voice is incisive, then. She slices between a knot of drunken dock workers flailing lewdly over the lap dance their boss bought for the new guy, headed straight for Tara and Eddie. Beeline. When she pushes free of the patrons, she picks up the pace, heels clipping crisply on the sagging floorboards.

"Tara!" Across the interval distance; a peripheral glance at Pascal. Her smile quickens, and her voice drops. "We've been so worried about you."

Tara Holly

"Shit," she hisses. Hypervigilance seems to suit Tara better than her shoes or that coat that isn't hers or the engine grease on her shirt. There is death, right there. Her attention hits a corpse and its company. She has a whole different load of problems to deal with at this moment. Where she's going to sleep, how much gas she has, and how she's going to make it through a sparse crowd [the place is busy, but doesn't matter how many people there are. There aren't enough to keep a wall of people between her and the walking dead] Eddie is getting her money, and Eddie, for what he is, should be good for it. Her attention flickers to the emergency exit, and Tara makes her exit there.

Or, well, attempts to make her exit there. That's the problem, see. She has a hard time moving the crowd without someone asking her if she's working tonight or why she hasn't been on stage and asking all sorts of questions about whether or not she's a good girl or not. It doesn't matter, though, because Tara isn't leaving. she's making an escape. "Shit, shit, shit."

It doesn't matter that she hears that someone's been worried about her. What she hears doesn't seem to compute. The female just tries to make a break for it. It is pretty loud, in here... maybe she just didn't hear them?

Eddie Vakoj

(Welcome! I've got AIM off for now so my connection won't just creep along. So feel free to message me here.)

Pascal

"Oh, my," Pascal says to Luce.

Though he looks as though he's either just stumbled out of bed or been up for several nights--or had done either of those things prior to meeting his untimely end and winding up amongst the annals of history, a footnote somewhere, an obituary that was never published--he's dressed about as well as one can expect out of him. He wears black trainers, black jeans, a plain, dark blue shirt and a black blazer. It's been getting cooler at night, meaning his flesh follows suit. He wears fingerless gloves.

It does very little, being as his own physiology is less than optimal, but it cuts down on contact between his flesh and his victims'. What mercies he doles out these nights are scant.

"You've got her in a right state, haven't you."

Eddie Vakoj

(Is it possible for Eddie to have heard either the 'Tara!' from Luce or the shitting and commotion from Tara? Or is he about to blithely wander off like the knight in tattered armor?*G*)

Luce

(that's up to you, methinks! anyone else?)

Luce

(By which I mean to say: I thought he was still around. I don't see why he wouldn't catch it?)

Luce

"I blame your dear friends, in polite society." Luce returns, low-voiced, tension bordering her spine, making her straight and sure. Pascal offers few mercies, and her own come back to haunt her.

Pale blue eyes narrow on the back of Tara's head, and she plunges into the crowd after the girl, offering weaving half-smiles and murmured noises of apology to the drunk minions pawing and panting after Tara as she flees for the emergency exit, the dim glow of the green sign electric in the gloom of a particularly filthy corner of this particularly filthy establishment. Lovely as Luce is, no one looks at her like they do Tara in a place like this. There's something difficult about her; the angular body, the narrow hips, the non-existent breasts. Nothing to catch the imagination of a drunk man used to seeing rather more pneumatic flesh on endless parade beneath the neon strobes that flank the stage.

"Pardon me," she says just once, pale eyes flashing winsome, hand staying on a stranger's chest as she pushes through a last knot to catch Tara as the stripper tries to pry a pushy drunk's hands off her chest. Sharp-voiced to the handsy drunk. "Get your hands off her," she works to fold in closer to the cursing, fleeing girl.

"Tara, darling. Are you all right? You haven't been using again, have you?"

All luminous concern.

Eddie Vakoj

Helpful Eddie- there he goes, vanishing through the door the bartender buzzes open for him. Its a short hall. The office is right there, at the end. Sometimes it feels good to help out- not that he'd ever admit it.

That girl out there, she's worth helping for several reasons. So, as Eddie makes his way down the ill-lit hallway he's all but licking his chops in the gloom.. eyes full of the wealth of information Tara could be able to bring him on the Angels.

Luce

Presence 1: Awe!

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 3, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Eddie Vakoj

((erm, Ignore my last post.))

Pascal

[Sweet Jesus have mercy.]

Eddie Vakoj

Something else occurs to the old-too-soon detective. He cranes his head around to shout something to Tara- which car to wait in, a warning about his errand taking a while, maybe to ask if she's hungry. Wants to stop or something. It had been a while since Eddie had shared space with anyone at all- maybe he remembers that there's nothing but coffee, beer, and amphetamines at home.

-Only Tara's not there. Pale green eyes linger on the area where the lovely ex- stripper had been standing and the rest of the angular cop comes to a halt a midst his confusion.

Eddie's attention swivels back and forth, meandering through the crowd until it lights on Tara again. She's damn close to the exit now- the emergency one, near the back.. and while there's nobody near her but a slight little female who seems all concern, something jangles in the back of Ed's head regarding Tara's body language.

Swirling colored light flickers against sharp, angular features as he narrows his eyes and watches.

(Per- details+Empathy: Tara's body language)

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Tara Holly

This takes some clear maneuvering, keeping Luce between her and Pascal. She elbowed some guy in the guy hard nough that he thought he heard something crack. Didn't remember the blonde being that strong, but then she's impeded by some guy getting handsy, which the Georgia peach treats as little more than a passing inconvenience. It's a strip club, getting felt up, she's gathered.

And it's the funniest thing, really, because she goes from anxious to frustrated to... Her shoulders round in, she stands a little hipshot and the blonde girl smiles. A big, bright, embarrassed smile. It tones down, and her thoughts wander. All sunshine, this one, all... something. Her attention is on lUce, and not on the walking shambling dead man there with her. She all but forgets about her paycheck, the reason she was here.

"Yeah, heh, Gwen's a bit of a pusher, ya know? Spike yer drink and it all goes downhill," but damn if it wasn't exactly what she'd wanted, "she don't know that I know, but... Fuck, for all I know she's just another dealer. But... yeah. I have. Kinda fell off the wagon."

Pascal

[Don't wait for me to post, Pascal's hanging back for now.]

Luce

"And your Eleanor fled the city." There note of quiet, insistent sympathy in the creature's voice. Some direct clarity of purpose vibrates the tone like a well tuned string. "I can only imagine what you've been going through, these last nights. Come. This isn't healthy for you." The whole of the pale-eyed woman's sympathy is fixed and unswerving on Tara.

"You look - hungry. I'm sure you've not been eating. You look like you've lost a stone or more - " and so on, the constant, soothing murmur of her voice shimmering with the radiance of the blood-discipline she used immediately, thoughtlessly. When Tara smiles, beams, Luce takes advantage of the moment to slip a cool arm around her shoulders, intimate as an old friend. " - you need to eat. I'll take you someplace safe, darling. How does that sound?"

Tara Holly

"Tom was right," about a lot of things, but at that moment her not-so rational brain is telling her that he couldn't have been right about all things. That Luce might be different because she just seems so nice and so caring and she sounds so sympathetic. And Eleanor fled the city. Tara laughs, and the sound is tinged with base at the ends. It's bitter, could dissolve organic material if it were stronger. She's no chemical, though. Just a woman.

"Explains why I couldn't fnd her... she didn't even care..."

She looks hungry. There;s an arm around her shoulders and a friendly, comfortable arm slips around Luce's waist in kind. With heels on, Luce is taller, it's only comfortable. "I'm fine, I've got somewhere I can stay... but lemme tell ya, Icould use a hotdog right now."

Pascal

Tom was right.

For some reason, this makes the corpse behind Luce laugh. It's a high-pitched, out-of-practice sound, and it's mercifully short-lived, and it's the only noise he makes.

Luce

"And your Eleanor fled the city." There note of quiet, insistent sympathy in the creature's voice. Some direct clarity of purpose vibrates the tone like a well tuned string. "I can only imagine what you've been going through, these last nights. Come. This isn't healthy for you." The whole of the pale-eyed woman's sympathy is fixed and unswerving on Tara.

"You look - hungry. I'm sure you've not been eating. You look like you've lost a stone or more - " and so on, the constant, soothing murmur of her voice shimmering with the radiance of the blood-discipline she used immediately, thoughtlessly. When Tara smiles, beams, Luce takes advantage of the moment to slip a cool arm around her shoulders, intimate as an old friend. " - you need to eat. I'll take you someplace safe, darling. How does that sound?"

Luce

"Then I wouldn't mourn her, were I you. Living well is the best revenge, and the city and you are well rid of her." Just once, the gleaming creature shoots a winging glance back at Pascal, when that high-pitched, dead-hyena noise vibrates from his throat and chest. Lingers there, a certain tension in her tall, thin frame. The heels on her boots are enough to boost her above the general level of the crowd. She scans it, sharp-eyed and watchful, her attention trailing through the shifting lights, over the heads of the drunk patrons.

"You'll have your hot dog. Or filet mignon if you want it. Once I've assured myself that you're well. Come." The implied intimacy of sisters in their closeness now. Luce, magnetic, murmurs into Tara's ear and begins steering the young woman back through the crowd, toward the front door. "Have you been working on your show? Found a venue, yet?"

Pascal

Luce shoots a glower back at the Malkavian, who oughtn't be able to hear the conversation underneath the din of the crowd, the blaring of the bass, the sisterly closeness of the two women's conversation. When she does, he stifles a smirk and widens his already doe-like eyes at her, as if to say Oops, then flicks his eyes back to Tara.

She has every right to be scared of him, to find his mere presence off-putting. She knows what he is, more than anyone else in this establishment does, and she knows what he's capable of.

In some way, she has to know that if she were to try to do as Tom taught her, it would end in her being broken, not Pascal. Pascal came to this life broken, very little good left in him. Right? He hadn't been anything like Tom, good on the inside and with a long way to fall before he ended up being utterly warped beyond recognition. This won't happen to the man who had tried to save Tara.

Right?

The two of them begin to walk off, and Pascal stays where he is, hands in the pockets of his blazer, just watching them. He, apparently, means to stay.

Tara Holly

There's a burst of laughter, and she tenses up. Her fingers tighten. Tara doesn't actually move for a second. Pascal is right there, and Tara's not a bright girl but she knows what she's doing. She knows well enough to know when she is in over her head. That Pascal would leave her a little broken husk of a woman in an alleyway if she even thought about doing to him what she did to Tom.

Right now, she's the only one in this room who probably has any idea of what these people were. They walk off, on out of the club, "an' yeah, Gwen's been talkin' about gettin' me a place, but you know girls like that. All sortsa strings. An' I have been workin' on a show, spare time. Got an audition in LA for a real movie pretty soon, too, which'll be nice. Means I c'n quit shakin' it at these kinda places... where are we going? Is He coming?"

Because, in her voice, Pascal gets a capital letter.

Luce

"In this world, Tara, there's nothing but strings. Particularly when you're auditioning for a real movie and working on a show, and passing time with a woman who wants to get you a place, somewhere, when you've a perfectly adequate place of your own." Tara shoots Pascal the still look of a deer that has heard the wolf howl in the middle distance. Luce, luminous, delicate creature that she is, follows the path of the girl's gaze. Her own is distance and opaque. They are strangers. They are nothing close to friends.

"We're going to the drive-through at McDonald's for your hot dogs. Or any place else you prefer. And then we're going someplace safe for the rest of the night.

"You do remember the deal I made you, Tara. The choice I offered?"

Tara Holly

"Somewhere easy to keep track of me," maybe she's more clever than she lets on... "an' I do... I guess I didn't... uh... make good on that one since Eleanor skipped town."

Luce

"No," the creature returns, low and grave. "You didn't. Truth be told, I'm rather disappointed."

Pascal

Pascal stands and waits until the two are well out of earshot, until they aren't watching him anymore. The struggling ghoul may very well look back one more time, but when she does, the tall, wasted youth is not still standing there. That may possibly be more frightening than knowing exactly where he is.

Now he could be anywhere.

[Thanks for the scene, ladies!]

Tara Holly

"... you're going to take that third option, aren't ya? The one where you "fix" the problem and I go off to fuckin' Kansas? I ain't gonna bargain with you, Luce. And I ain't gonna make excuses, either."

Luce

"Good. I do not like excuses." There is no more discussion of the options, for now. Not in the strip club. Not until they are out in the rolling fog of the San Francisco night. Not until the night is opening up around them, the stars hidden somewhere above the gloom, the streetlights surrounded by rainbow rings, gleaming through the damp air, shortening the shadows, making them harried things, cramped and strange.

"You're dangerous to us, Tara. I told you that before. And you're dangerous to yourself. The authorities in this city could have my head for letting you run free. Did you know that? They've had other heads for less. They killed one of us because he did not know what his neighbors were.

"I'll give you the choice again, though less freedom in its execution. What do you say?"

Blind - Lurkery

((heya, would you guys object to an extra or no? and what's the setting ifyou wouldn't mind the extra. that is pressuming it's not gettingo n for vanishing time))

Luce

I wouldn't object to an extra, though it is getting to vanishing time for me. Heh. Am exhausted!

Blind - Lurkery

((as yer both close to vanishing I shall leave it this time, I hope to catch you some other time then, enjoy and take care. Thanks all the same.))

Luce

hopefully soon! thanks for understanding. :)

Tara Holly

Pascal is gone, and it doesn't do her anything to ease her discomfort. She swallows, and checks the corners of the strip club. When they're outside, she checks for people, places, anything that she could do to. There is no reigning in Hell, and there is no serving in Heaven. For her, it's just favors and bartering for things with a price. She has no bargaining chips, other than the fact that her meager bits of knowledge are dangerous to their continued existence.

"I'll take you over an unknown unknown. 'least you've been upfront with me," she says. It's resignation, but... not entirely unpleasant. Not entirely resentful, because this time? At least this time, twice now there's been a choice.

Encore.

Tara Holly

Maybe Tom was here, she thinks. Her partner in crime has been missing in action for over a week. She's looked in the alleyways and asked if anyone had seen a man who fit the given description. Of course, the reply she gets is that that particular nerd has been missing for a long time. Why you lookin', princess? Let the cops do that shit.

Tara was interrupted in her search by some man who was handing out flyers for a house party. Sick beats. The booze was free, and baby they needed all the fly honeys they could get. Skip forward, and this is where we actually open the scene. It's a house party. The music is loud and, true to form, the booze really is free and Tara is content to exploit this fact. She's got a little red plastic cup and she's chatting up some frat boy who is all but stumbling all over himself. He mentions some movie she made and her cheeks flush. Her eye makeup is a little heavier than probably necessary, but she'll have wiped half of it off by the end of the evening. Her shorts are short, but she's got one of those off-the-shoulder tee shirts on. Cute sandals and all. Fergie is bumping on the stereo. Tara can't get drunk enough to make that go away.

Luce

So: house party. God knows how she got here, but she looks like she belongs. Tall and thin, wearing black jeans fitted to her narrow frame and a loose, sleeveless tunic, glittering with golden thread. Two thin golden straps bisect the sharp architecture of her shoulders. Her hair is pulled back from her features, swept into a complex little knot that is now coming loose, sliding from its moorings to the nape of her neck.

The evening is cool outside, but the press of bodies and electronic equipment, the supple flush of free, cheap booze conspire to make the warren of dark rooms inside flusteringly hot. The frat boy chatting up Tara has already removed his t-shirt, leaving him in a slightly stained wife beater, dark with sweat beneath his arms, at the small of his back.

The stranger isn't sweating, though. Not as she bends down to him, smiling cresting on her precisely made mouth with a knife-blade ease and says something into his ear that first makes him stiffen and then makes him flush, a deeper, duskier hue than Tara.

And then has him shouldering past the young woman, disappearing into the crowd. "He wasn't worth it," the stranger tells her, stepping down the last step on the rickety staircase into the position the frat boy occupied. The illusion of impossible height disappears with that step. Now she is merely tall, the heels of her strappy red sandals are no more than a couple of inches. "If he fucks with you tonight, though, you let me know."

Tara Holly

The frat boy wanders off and Tara's blush is forgotten in favor of a wide smile and a flash of her teeth. Like the rest of her, it's well-proportioned. Not obscenely white, but that natural sort of white. She's the kind of pretty girl whose lifestyle might ensure that she doesn't stay really pretty for really long. Or, who knows, maybe she'll luck out and leave a pretty pretty corpse. The corners of her mouth stay perked when she drawls out, "dayum, sweetheart, what did you tell him?"

She looks up, and appraises what she sees, namely in the way any other woman looks at someone liek Luce at a party. They don't like to admit it, but the widening of her eyes, the way the corners of her mouth don't quite downturn in a frown but instead wear that vestigial smile. "'sides, they ain't ever worth it, I'm Tara," she offers Luce her hand. the drink is transferred to her free hand so she can shake with her right. Her eyes stay with the other female. The one with the golden curls and the phenomenal complexion. The only woman whose makeup hasn't started to sweat off from being so close to everyone else.

Luce

Luce is not proportioned like Tara. The frame the other woman surveys is nearly boyish, sharp and narrow, a thing of desire even these nights only to fashion designers. The cut of gleaming shift suggests - perhaps - some hint of cleavage. Nothing that would be celebrated in a men's magazine, in the era when every small breasted woman in California goes out for implants.

"I said," she begins, lifting her precise little chin in a sharp, confident gesture as she cuts forward a half step, then drops her mouth to Tara's ear. "Il faut être toujours ivre. Pour ne pas sentir ," and there's a rhythm to the words, more prominent since Tara does not understand them; has to struggle to mark where one word ends and another begins.

The language is lovely, though. Consonants catch in the back of her throat, then roll across her tongue. The vowels inflected high in her soft palette. " L'horrible fardeau du Temps - qui brise vos épaules - et vous penche vers la terre," but there is something alive about it. Something inexorable; one line has to follow from the next.

Tara can perhaps tell that it is a recitation; incantatory, a poem or a prayer. "- il faut vous enivrer sans trêve."

This close, Tara can see the translucent pallor of the strange woman's skin. There's some hint of warmth underlying it. The glimmering tank casts a thousand points of light back on her translucent skin. The creature's eyes are fast on Tara's face. Or, rather, on the precise point where her jaw meets her throat.

The stranger inhales - sharply, once, nostrils flaring this close to Tara's skin - before stepping back, returning Tara some measure of personal space. "I don't think he liked Baudelaire." And then she laughs, mouth curving with a humor that is both sharp and genuine as she extends a cool hand to Tara. "You can call me Luce. Charmed, I'm sure."

Tara Holly

Now, Luce, darling, you've been around long enough to know what happens when you speak French to people who don't speak French. They don't look confused, they don't look embarrassed or try to fumble something back, they just melt. This close, she can notice the important things. The pallor of the woman's skin, the underpining warmth that feels almost familiar [and it makes her want to drink, it makes her want to get shithoused so she can forget that physical longing, that pang of something. Coke was easier to ditch]. halfway through, there is that smile again. She's not tall enough to walk a runway, and she's a bit too fat for it.

Nevermind that she's proportioned like a sculpture. Nevermind that her body is a work of art. Forget all of that, she is a woman, and not some adolescent child, so the likelihood of her being on any major runway show is slim. But she can be a pinup, and there's more money to be made there. she's got a few more years until she's too old for that. She turns her head to the side and drains the rest of that red plastic cup of hers. Never leave your drink unattended, never drink anything you didn't mix yourself.

Charmed, I'm sure, she says.
"You'd be right," she says. She laughs, and wants to kick herself for whatever just came out her mouth. Funny how that can creep into laughter, "it's great t'meetcha Luce. Are you one of these guys' friends? Or did you get a street invite, too? I don' think the DJ is as good as they were saying he was, all I've heard is freakin' Daft Punk and Fergie."

Her pulse picks up. Tara looks for a place to- "do you want a drink?"

Luce

"The DJ's shit." Luce declares, the brightness of laughter still glittering in her eyes. Pale, those eyes, pale blue. Tonight they are absolutely framed by smokey shadow, smudged blacks and smoked purples, which give her a bruised, decadent edge. As she might eat anything the world threw at her, and then demand more just to piss someone off. Nevermind the fucking consequences. "So's the booze. I think they've given up putting the roofies in the drinks are are sticking them in the bottles, now. Blackout amnesia for everyone."

Look at this, concordance. Her smile sharpens. The traces of a glittering gloss linger at the edges of her smile, but otherwise her mouth is a nude pink. "I liked the energy upstairs." Expensive mascara darkens her pale eyelashes to a thick, sweeping black fringe. She sweeps a glance back up the stairs she descended. " - on the dance floor. For a little while. Then whatever kept them together fell apart and it all went to shit.

"Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy loosed upon the world, and all that rot." She has amused herself again, that much is clear from the low noise in her throat. Tara offers a drink; pulse picking up, looking around. Luce cannot take her eyes off Tara. It's gravitational. What the hell did Dostoevsky say? Oh, yeah. Beauty will save the world.

"What I could do with is a smoke. Care to join me?"

Luce

"The DJ's shit." Luce declares, the brightness of laughter still glittering in her eyes. Pale, those eyes, pale blue. Tonight they are absolutely framed by smokey shadow, smudged blacks and smoked purples, which give her a bruised, decadent edge. As she might eat anything the world threw at her, and then demand more just to piss someone off. Nevermind the fucking consequences. "So's the booze. I think they've given up putting the roofies in the drinks are are sticking them in the bottles, now. Blackout amnesia for everyone."

Look at this, concordance. Her smile sharpens. The traces of a glittering gloss linger at the edges of her smile, but otherwise her mouth is a nude pink. "I liked the energy upstairs." Expensive mascara darkens her pale eyelashes to a thick, sweeping black fringe. She sweeps a glance back up the stairs she descended. " - on the dance floor. For a little while. Then whatever kept them together fell apart and it all went to shit.

"Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy loosed upon the world, and all that rot." She has amused herself again, that much is clear from the low noise in her throat. Tara offers a drink; pulse picking up, looking around. Luce cannot take her eyes off Tara. It's gravitational. What the hell did Dostoevsky say? Oh, yeah. Beauty will save the world.

"What I could do with is a smoke. Care to join me?"

Luce
"The DJ's shit." Luce declares, the brightness of laughter still glittering in her eyes. Pale, those eyes, pale
blue. Tonight they are absolutely framed by smokey shadow, smudged blacks and smoked purples, which
give her a bruised, decadent edge. As she might eat anything the world threw at her, and then demand more
just to piss someone off. Nevermind the fucking consequences. "So's the booze. I think they've given up
putting the roofies in the drinks are are sticking them in the bottles, now. Blackout amnesia for everyone."
Look at this, concordance. Her smile sharpens. The traces of a glittering gloss linger at the edges of her
smile, but otherwise her mouth is a nude pink. "I liked the energy upstairs." Expensive mascara darkens her
pale eyelashes to a thick, sweeping black fringe. She sweeps a glance back up the stairs she descended. " -
on the dance floor. For a little while. Then whatever kept them together fell apart and it all went to shit.
"Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy loosed upon the world, and all that rot." She has
amused herself again, that much is clear from the low noise in her throat. Tara offers a drink; pulse picking
up, looking around. Luce cannot take her eyes off Tara. It's gravitational. What the hell did Dostoevsky say?
Oh, yeah. Beauty will save the world.
"What I could do with is a smoke. Care to join me?"
Tara
"The DJ really is shit," she has to laugh about it. Her eyes are a grayish greenish blue something tonight. She
had not originally anticipated it, "but I probably should head upstairs later if the place gets okay. I figure if I
can't dance, I might as well drink until the music is tolerable."
Does she want to go outside and grab a smoke?
Now, that's the question. Does hse want to go get a smoke. The blonde reaches up and wraps one lock of
blonde hair between her fingers and she half twirls. It's something that makes her look vapid, but she doesn't
quite notice. She finds her shoes damnably interesting for a second. Tara laughs. "I'd love t'go on outside
with ya. Sounds like a plan."
Luce
"Cool. C'mon." Look how easy it is. Luce shifts position, slings an arm around Tara's shoulder begins
walking with her through the shifting crowd of the house party, toward the front door. The gesture is loose
and companionable rather than possessive. The final shot of the heroines in a heist movie walking off into
some tropical, golden sunset - that sort of unfettered arrogance, all the world at their feet.
She dips her head to Tara's ear just once, as they breeze past the (forgotten?) frat brother who had been
chatting up Tara as Luce walked up. And murmurs, the edge of a grin slicings its way into the tenor of her
voice, more heard than seen. "Now he's sorry he ran away. Fucker." - in a tone of that is somehow
gleaming and bemused, a sunset glow.
They stop once, more. This time Luce untangled her long, pale arm from around Tara's shoulders and
hip/shoulders her way into the closed off mudroom that doubles as a coat closet. Two minutes later she's
back, now wearing this crisp black military style blazer with all manner of buttons, buckles, epalettes and
other insane little Napoleanic flourishes, over her loose golden tank. Winding a long, loose assemblage of
threads that vaguely resembles a deconstructed scarf around her neck to finish the look, she pauses long
enough to ascertain whether Tara brought with her anything beyond her assets and those short-shorts that
requires retrieving from the mudroom, then pushes the front doors open to the concrete covered
driveway/patio fronting the old duplex.
The party has already spilled out here. The herbaceous scent of marijuana and hashish lingers in the air,
and they have to walk around a puddle of vomit that someone has helpfully circled with empty beer bottles
like miniature road construction barrels.
The dull thump of the engineered drum beats backing Fergie's howler monkey voice is audible through the
bones of the building, but there's more, too. The ordinary night music, the street opening up around them.
The great open sky.
Luce snaps open her beaded black clutch and thrusts a small pack of cigarellos into Tara's hand as she dives
deeper into the bag, looking for a lighter. "Now, you get to tell me all about yourself. What the hell brought
you out here tonight? You come with somebody?"
Tara
She doesn't walk out with a purse or a coat. She's sans-accessories, but the sense of glamor comes from
that naturally beach-kissed hair, the flawless complection, and the way that everything seems so natural. It's
in her pulse, with the way it is steady and methodical and a little too hard in her throat. Sh eknows when to
laugh, and she knows when to nod. She dodges puddles of puke and finally, finally they're out where they
can get some air and a second hand high.
"All about me?" Tara replies. The cigarellos are in her hand and Tara looks them over. She looks at the
packaging, wonders if they're grape or wine or some other sweet and delightful flavor that lets you forget that
you're smoking tobacco. They load up nicely, too. Doesn't just have to be tobacco, though. She takes out
two. Offers the pack back, "Well, Luce, I ain't terribly interesting."
A moment passes.
"I take that back, I am pretty interestin'. I came out here 'cus I needed t'get my mind off some stuff. Job
problems. Man problems. Woman problems. I figured, Hell, isn't anything some good company and free
booze can't fix, right?"
She doesn't realize it, but there's longing in that statement. It pulls in the corners of her eyes, drips at the tips
of her words when she mentions woman problems. She can't come out and say it, because she can't come
out and explain it. There is that double-edged sword there. Her free hand digs a lighter out of her back
pocket- one thing she learned from her (soon to be) ex- always carry a lighter. She offers it up.
"And I'm from Georgia. Ah was thinkin' about opening a burlesque club out here? Or at least startin' a show.
We need something classy not trashy, and sexy not slutty," says the woman who has some questionable
content floating around online.
Luce
Perception + empathy
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Luce
Cherry, for god's sake. These things are cheap and they spiked with cherry flavor and stuffed with a mixture
of tobacco and marijuana. More tobacco than marijuana, but enough pot to get more than a contact high.
"Sorry," the other woman remarks, glancing up from the depths of her chick little clutch. There's a brief
impression of her spreading little grin - white teeth, gleaming, glossy lips. "Left the real Cubans are home."
That's when she locates her lighter, palms it and is about to toss it, easily, to Tara. This is not a Zippo, but a
flameless lighter with an electric element that sparks and flares hot enough to light the tobacco without an
open flame.
In lieu of tossing it, though, she flips the lighter up and clicks it on, holding it up to light Tara's cigarello with a
practiced illusion of gallantry.
"She's not worth it," Luce remarks, commenting on Tara's woman problems as she lights a cigarello of her
own. The crumpled remains of the pack and the light are relegated to the clutch, which she tucks familiarly
back under her right arm. " - whoever the fuck she was." The last comes out with a cloud of smoke, sweet
and fragrant.
"Dancer, eh? Can you can-can? Still working on that show, or just dreaming about it?"
Tara
"I ain't ever smoked a Cuban. I had an Arturo Fuente Hemingway once. They aren't too bad- they smoke
nice. It's a smooth kinda taste," she leans in and lights up quite nicely. There's something classy about that.
She raises her brows, cocking her head to the side, wearing some flattered smile that curves up a little more
on the right than it does on the left.
And this is how it starts. She takes a drag and tips her head back. There is something to be said about the
way a woman looks when she's smoking. It passes past her lips and into the air. There's just enough
marijuana in those cigarellos that it gives those wants and needs and drives a little motivation to... stay where
they needed to be. Gone. Forgotten. Back in the past where they needed to be.
"... and I know. Jus' doesn't feel like it yet," she inhales, "and I am a dancer. I ain't half bad, but... you know...
right now I'm jus' workin' at a club until I can get some capital. I ain't much for grant writin' though, besides,
you think the government would pay for a club full of mostly topless women? I have some choreography
down, but music choices are a bitch."
Luce
"Woman after my own heart," Luce returns, standing close but casual, leaning back - just - against the rough,
crumbling brick of the house so that the finer threads of the art-project of a scarf catch and pull in the broken
facing of the brick. "Sometimes I'll pick up a pack of cloves. But mostly, I want to enjoy my tobacco.
Cubans, though. Nothing better. I get that Fuentes are made in the tradition, but there's something about the
damned air in Cuba. Maybe its the Copacabana. Maybe it's something else.
"I'll hook you up sometime." This with a quick, narrow shrug. Out here, faced with the glitter of the city
edging about the dark haze of the sky, the creature's pale blue eyes do stray from Tara. Linger at the horizon
as she inhales a mouth(lung)ful of smoke. And she smokes - speculatively, slowly, as if breathing were the
sort of novelty that offered her some remembered, sensual pleasure.
Where Tara is shaped just right - golden, curvaceous - Luce is a creature of angles. As if the gods owned
only a park of straight edges when they were making her. That is, until she leans back against the hard, flat
plane of the building behind them. Then she goes practically boneless, the sort of inverted, broken-down-doll
curve that fashion magazines favor, particularly in their heroin-chic issues.
She glances back then, down; like sparks across the surface of her pale eyes, framed by the artful smear of
dark liner, dark shadow, dark lashes.
"Saving up the capital to start a club is pretty daunting. In a city like this, especially. Real estate's worse than
it is in Paris. But if you had an act together - even a couple of numbers - it would just be a matter of finding a
few venues where they'd let you on the stage. That's just a matter of pounding on doors. Or pounding a few
heads.
"Not that I'd know. I've never been a performer."
Tara
"Well, it's not like I'd know, either, I've never been to Paris," she laughs and takes a long drag off of her
cigarello. There is something to be said about the way one's lungs work. The other woman is lovely.
Gorgeous. All angles and long limbs and artful makeup.
She's classy. And let's face it, she has an eternity to have pretty girls like Tara look at her like she's a
godsend. Like she's got something that Tara doesn't- a worldly knowingness. A lack of heartbeat. Something.
"But I think I could manage pounding some heads or some doors. She has a flush to her cheeks.
"We should trade numbers or something, if I get the show up and running, I wouldn't mind having a bit of a
familiar audience... so what brought you here?"
Luce
Now Luce shifts closer; does that arm-around-the-shoulders thing she did inside. If she were a man, the
presumption would be depthless. They have known each other a half-hour. Tara's not-quite-drunk and
not-quite-high but half-way between the too, with an engaging flush of blood beneath her cheeks. Capillaries
open so close to the skin that Luce can almost smell it on her. In her. Underneath the chemical co-mingling
of pot and cheap cherry tobacco.
So here: she doesn't pretend to stretch, just straightens a bit, reaches out a drapes a long arm around Tara's
shoulders. Tugs her closer, hugs her closer - not like a would-be lover, though there's a certain aching
intimacy to the gesture - but like a coach after a game, like a best friend, about to whisper a secret. Like their
bodies should be closer. Maybe she just wants to feel the warmth.
Cool fingers brace against Tara's upper arm.
"Paris is no different than San Francisco. Or Savannah. Or Boston," tipping her head sideways as she
watches the street through dark lashes. "Just older. And French, which means you get to see bare breasts
on broadcast television and marathons of awful Jerry Lewis movies." She slouches there, discoursing on
Jerry Lewis, head tipped sideways, the elaborate knot of her hair beginning to fall free, and turns her head,
thirty degrees maybe, the edge of another grin half visible in Tara's peripheral vision, nose a half-inch from
the shell of the Georgia girl's ear.
How the fuck many have there been?
"And me? I was just here to lose myself in the crowd and the music for a while. You find the right place, the
right crowd, the right band, the right DJ - there's something kinetic about it. Something physical, like you're
all moving to the same impulse. Like one great big heart pumps for the whole ugly organic mass.
"Didn't find that here tonight, but what the hell. I met you. So the night was hardly wasted."
Luce
Now Luce shifts closer; does that arm-around-the-shoulders thing she did inside. If she were a man, the
presumption would be depthless. They have known each other a half-hour. Tara's not-quite-drunk and
not-quite-high but half-way between the too, with an engaging flush of blood beneath her cheeks. Capillaries
open so close to the skin that Luce can almost smell it on her. In her. Underneath the chemical co-mingling
of pot and cheap cherry tobacco.
So here: she doesn't pretend to stretch, just straightens a bit, reaches out a drapes a long arm around Tara's
shoulders. Tugs her closer, hugs her closer - not like a would-be lover, though there's a certain aching
intimacy to the gesture - but like a coach after a game, like a best friend, about to whisper a secret. Like their
bodies should be closer. Maybe she just wants to feel the warmth.
Cool fingers brace against Tara's upper arm.
"Paris is no different than San Francisco. Or Savannah. Or Boston," tipping her head sideways as she
watches the street through dark lashes. "Just older. And French, which means you get to see bare breasts
on broadcast television and marathons of awful Jerry Lewis movies." She slouches there, discoursing on
Jerry Lewis, head tipped sideways, the elaborate knot of her hair beginning to fall free, and turns her head,
thirty degrees maybe, the edge of another grin half visible in Tara's peripheral vision, nose a half-inch from
the shell of the Georgia girl's ear.
How the fuck many have there been?
"And me? I was just here to lose myself in the crowd and the music for a while. You find the right place, the
right crowd, the right band, the right DJ - there's something kinetic about it. Something physical, like you're
all moving to the same impulse. Like one great big heart pumps for the whole ugly organic mass.
"Didn't find that here tonight, but what the hell. I met you. So the night was hardly wasted."
Tara
"Ah don' think that I could stomach that many Jerry Lewis movies for the fashion. It just... isn't... worth it,"
Luce shifts closer and Tara responds in kind. She scoots closer to that being close isn't that big of a stretch.
It's comfortable. It's relaxed. It's something that's been a long time coming.
She's sold intimacy before. She's stuffed money in her pockets and her G-strings and played other for all they
are worth. She's made money doing all sorts of things and this is preferable; it's close without having to be
close. It's comfortable without being too comfortable. Her skin is warm; she's even got the right texture on her
skin. Smooth.
How many have there been before?
"Well, Miss Luce, I am sorry to hear that the music disappoints.. that's the thing about music, though, it's...
like... it's like an easier time. A simpler time, somethin' base. We all know how to move. Can't really figure out
what it is, but... you know... I think dancin' like there shoulda been upstairs is probably a little closer to what
we are then, you know, a waltz."
Luce
"I don't know - " the other creature tosses back as she takes another lungful of smoke. "You ever waltzed? It
was perfect for its time. Scandalously close. But just far enough that you could feel that - " here she pauses.
Inhales sharply through her nose, close to the shell of Tara's ear. " - corona of heat from someone else's
body without being warmed by it. I suppose it was perfect for its time." She hmmms with the speculation,
voice going a bit thin with distance. Memory. Thought, maybe.
"You wanna get out of here? My car's a block away."
Tara
"Guess it's the difference between what's implied and what's said upfront," and there it is, the understated
awe. The understated all sorts of things. She can barely get out her words at that point, and there is that
warmth again. She inhales sharply, doesn't quite laugh it off at that moment. And maybe it's the cigarello or
the booze or whatever, nothing sounds better than heading out to the car, "let's ditch this place, maybe
sometime you can prove that waltz thing to me."

Tara
Luce
"I don't know - " the other creature tosses back as she takes another lungful of smoke. "You ever waltzed? It
was perfect for its time. Scandalously close. But just far enough that you could feel that - " here she pauses.
Inhales sharply through her nose, close to the shell of Tara's ear. " - corona of heat from someone else's
body without being warmed by it. I suppose it was perfect for its time." She hmmms with the speculation,
voice going a bit thin with distance. Memory. Thought, maybe.
"You wanna get out of here? My car's a block away."
Tara
"Guess it's the difference between what's implied and what's said upfront," and there it is, the understated
awe. The understated all sorts of things. She can barely get out her words at that point, and there is that
warmth again. She inhales sharply, doesn't quite laugh it off at that moment. And maybe it's the cigarello or
the booze or whatever, nothing sounds better than heading out to the car, "let's ditch this place, maybe
sometime you can prove that waltz thing to me."
Luce
"I never learned how to waltz." This is later. First, Luce loosens the noose of her arm from around Tara's
shoulders and slides her cool hand down the young woman's arm. Snags her hand and tugs her after, the
dead leading the blonde, you see. Luce's nails are clipped short, but polished a metallic sage green, which
sheens gold beneath the streetlights. Her fingers twine with Tara's briefly, then she lets go, leading without
pulling.
They have a block, a block and a half to walk down the dark street, and they can hear the pulse of the beats
from the house party all the way, fading in the distance. In the middle of the next block, Luce directs Tara to
her car (It's the red one. The convertible.) The car is an old Ford Falcon - not as iconic as the mustange, but
gorgeous all the same. The top is down, and there's a jumble of things in the narrow back seat. What looks
like a blue tarp crumpled on the floor, an old floral sheet, mismatched shoes, magazines, though perhaps not
the ones Tara might expect, books, maps. And for all that mess, not a single damn fast food wrapper. Luce
grabs a bundle of clothes and papers from the passenger's seat and tosses them into the back on top of the
mess, then opens the door for Tara. And shuts it after she's settled into the seat. Like a fucking gentleman.
So: later, as she eases the car away from the curb, as they drift into traffic, she says [i]I never learned to
waltz.[/i] "Had a boyfriend who was a dancer, once. Then something happened and he could get it back.
That spark you need, the one that makes it live inside you, what you're doing. So he hated it. I'd dream that
he might take me dancing. Or anywhere really.
"But he was a fucking bastard." Luce drives with one hand on the wheel, her left. Her other arm is flung out
along the seat, tucked around Tara, like they were starring in an inversion of a 50s movie.
The music on the stereo isn't 50s music, though it could've been made before Tara was born. Some old 90s
noise-core band, this dense wall of sound, guitars and feedback thick enough that it seems nearly physical,
topped by pair of dreamy female voices in a stoned sort of harmony, slipping in an out of the oddly lovely
melodies. The only way you could dance to it is to close your eyes and move.
"You live around here?" A side glance, then. Idling at a pointless traffic light on a dark street.
Tara
"That makes two of us," she says, she even grins when she says it and she saunters on down the way. She's
pleased beyond pleased. Her fingers twine with the other female's, but she continues onward. There is
silence. All that calm, demure whatever goes away when she sees the car.
Because, let's face it, Tara's not demure. She can pretend, but she's never been too demure. She gets
herself on over at the car; it's beautiful, iconic. She's tinkered under the engine of one of these, let grease get
under her nails and listened to it purr like some wanton slut. Tara knows how to satisfy a car. Tara knows her
way under the hood. Tara runs her fingers over the pretty paint. She eases her way on into the car. The
blonde woman crosses her legs, settles back like she belongsin the passenger seat.
"I do live 'round here. I've got an apartment that's actually... like... three blocks out of the way. It's not much,
but it's pretty nice all things considered. This place really ain't that bad."
Luce
If Tara knows how to satisfy a car, she knows, too, that gorgeous as it is, this particular car isn't satisfied.
The leather's nice and the paint is gorgeous, but there's a strange, cantankerous little whine in the engine
when it idles, a handful of other small things that any responsible owner would fix. Which Luce hasn't
touched.
Hell, the rag top doesn't work. It won't go up, it won't come down. It's permanently stuck in the frame.
Hence, the tarp bundled in the narrow back seat. Hence, that absurdly floral sheet. So the city's pigeon
population doesn't shit all over the seats.
Tara admits to living nearby. Luce gives her a sidelong look, and hits the turn signal. It ratchets back and
forth, waiting for the endless light to change.
"You gonna invite me over?"
Tara
"Well, that depends, darlin', you gonna let me fix your car, too?" she asks, and looks over at the female
driving the car behind her, "'cus I don't mind company, my place is probably closer than yours, but that
engine's got at least five thousand miles left before you gotta get 'er serviced and she breaks down and-"
She laughs, "Yeah, someone told me once that dancin' ain't always gonna pay the bills, so you gotta learn a
skill, you know?"
Her cheeks are pink, and she's finished off her cigarello at that. She licks her fingers and pinches the little bit
of glowing ember left on the smoke.
Luce
"Javier told me I treated this car like shit. Wasn't worthy of it, you know? Me, I figured he was talking to hear
himself speak." There's a certain wry quality to her voice as she glances back, takes in both Tara's pink
cheeks and the guttered smoke in her hand.
"Tell you what," inserts Luce, below the ambient sound of the street noise, her voice - insinuating itself
between them. In the vowels - voiced high in the palette, resonant in the back of her throat - and the
consonants, the suggestion of a half-hidden French accent gleams. " - ask me about the engine again in the
morning, would you? Now, right or left - "
And so on, light-handed and responsive as Tara reels off the directions to her place.
Luce
Auspex 2 Per + Empathy
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Tara
"Well Javier is a dumbass, and you're better off without him," matter of fact. This is how Thelma and Louise
starts, or ends. The female gestures off to the left, "I'll ask ya about the car in the morning. Turn that way."
Just a little pale, that aura. It's the only thing about her that isn't bright.
Luce
"Oh, no. He wasn't the boyfriend. Just a kid I met in Tulsa, who gave as good as he got." That is with a
brief, razor flash of a grin. It slices across her well-formed little mouth, exposes the perfect rows of her white
teeth. Brings a certain reflected light to her eyes as she glances at the golden little peach beside her.
Nothing remarkable. Except.
Maybe - maybe later - Tara will remember that moment of recognition. A certain stillness beside her as she
gazes off into the side mirror, the city lights bobbing in reflection like faerie fire. The evening is cool and
cloud, an orange glow above them now, nothing like the few pale stars bright enough to struggle through the
bastard glow of even the darker neighborhoods. Like this one, half the streetlights burned out, trash in the
gutters, the sagging faces of Edwardian and Victorian homes guttered in the darkness. The historic buildings
with peeling pain and graffiti scrawled in barely literate Spanish across the frontispieces.
That's it. Tara - loose, twitchy, giggly Tara - struggling with addiction, written over with loss, halfway drunk
and halfway stoned guides says - over there - and they pull into a likely illegal parking space in the shadow of
a building opposite Tara's own. The engine coughs a bit before it dies. Tara can read that cough as easily,
one imagines, as a doctor can a child's. Can tell the difference between the croup and a cold. To Luce, it is
just the noise the latest car makes when the key turns to kill the engine.
Here, for the first time, Luce allows Tara to take the lead. It's her place after all. Her stoop. Her stairs,
maybe. Her keys to be rattled out and fitted into locks. The sound of a shooting from the neighbors, but it's
electric, electronic, backed by a booming soundtrack. Just spillover from a late night movie through the
half-open windows. Here, Luce is quiet. That meditative state a brisk walk on a cool night brings out in a
drunk, maybe.
It could be awkward, but it isn't, somehow. Tara drifts down a familiar path, an erratic planet with an eccentric
orbit. And Luce follows behind, lean and watchful and hungry.
Some shadow darkening her pale, clear gaze says that she might just devour Tara as soon as the front door
closes behind them.
Tara
Gave as good as he got. It's rare, rare enough in fact that she raises her brows. Mirrors that razor grin before
she half melts. Perfect, perfect teeth and maybe she'd remember that look in the morning. Maybe she woiuld
remember that it's a familiarity in front of her that reminds her of someone she'd been trying to forget. Not the
pretty blonde woman, not the undead lady who literally kidnapped her.
[Tara doesn't know it, but the word was Stockholm syndrome. There was a big gap in her memory. She
knows that the mugging was a lie. She knows that none of that happened, but she still doesn't know how she
ended up in a van on her way to Eleanor's. She has no idea. And the longer that she spends away, the more
she seems to realize that maybe, maybe that wasn't right. Maybe that was infatuation with the idea that things
would change. That Tara finally had a damned outlet. Best case scenario occurred. She's been forgotten and
it isn't that bad.]
She shows up at the front door of the place and she unlocks the front door. It's up the stairs, past the place
where there is supposed to be a door man. The fucker's sleeping in the bathroom, or maybe he's fucking a
prostitute. Who knows. It doesn't matter, because her hips sway when she walks up the stairs, and she
doesn't have to actually go that far. Her door is solid wood and the floor should be, too... except that the
apartment building is old and decrepid. The floor was scuffed all to Hell. Apartment D7. When the door
swings open, the apartment smells a little like dust. Her mail has piled up and she doesn't seem to really
care. Tara crouches and tosses it on the counter towards an immaculate kitchen. The place could very well
be a nice apartment, but it's passed through so many hands that the finer points of its architecture have been
covered by years of white paint.
"I've been outta town."
The door shuts behind her.
Luce
"Nice place."
The door closes. Luce already has a hand on Tara's left arm, hand curved around her wrist, the delicate
points of two long fingers pressing into the radiocarpal space. Contact is lost, and as Tara scoops up the
accumulated mail and tosses it onto the counter, her guest has paused at the door. If there's a deadbolt, it's
been turned. If there's a chain lock, it has been set. As the mail lands in a soft pile on the bare countertop,
Luce snags Tara's wrist again, harder this time, and pulls the other girl firmly back into her orbit.
I've been outta town - and here her guest laughs; low, the sound formed deep in her throat. "Have you?"
because she does not - not for one minute - believe that story.
The apartment is dark, full of long shadows cut through by silvery boxes of light where the ambient glow of
the street shines in through the windows, through the sheered curtains or half-drawn shades. If Tara has
bothered with a light, she'll see how it gleams off the stranger's skin; as if she were made of fired china, the
faintest, translucent glow gleaming from within. And she'll see that for a half-second before Luce reaches out
in the same arc of motion to shut off whatever light Tara turned on.
Some things were meant to be done in the dark.
"Come here." No mistaking the note of direction in her voice.
Tara
If there is a deadbolt, it locks. If there is a chain lock, it is set. There is, and they are set. It's a common
sound, and somewhere in the back of her head she registers that it's happening and that she's not the one
who is locking the door. She smiles, and amidst the turning off of lights and keeping them on, she catches a
look at her skin. The way it's china smooth. Translucent.
Cold.
The light is off again. There is tension in her arm once Luce snags her wrist, harder, but not... too hard. She
is back into orbit and she tries not to giggle, "I have."
The floor creeks as she comes over. No stumbling. There's a persistent cricket outside. The nightbors above
Tara's apartment are either fighting or dancing or both. Come here, she says, and it's quite clear that Tara
might not be the one in charge here. Her mind wanders to the garage sale signs in her living room. She
thinks about whether or not she's goten all the blood up, and she thinks God, finally, something worth it. Even
though she doesn't know what it is. Her only thoughts are on satisfaction. We digress.
"Yeah?" close enough now that Tara's all but touching the other woman. there but not quite.
Luce
The eccentric little moon back in her immediate orbit. There Tara floats, thinking about blood and garage
sales and - and - first the left wrist is caught up, then the right. Then the stranger is pushing Tara firmly back
against the wall, lifting her hands to shoulder level or higher, pinning them against the whitewashed wall as
she steps into Tara's lush, warm little body.
There's strength in her arms, and a sort of fatalistic grace to her sinuous presence. She'll never fall off those
heels. The strength coiled in those matchstick arms and toothpick legs is unexpected but undeniable. She
steps in closer, left knee between Tara's thighs as her mouth finds - not Tara's mouth, but her cheek, then the
line of her jaw, just her lips at first, then her teeth, dull, human, scraping lighting over Tara's skin, snagging
the lush pout of her lower lip before her chin drops further.
The bridge of her nose rests against Tara's chin; she pushes, half-nuzzle, half-seeking, firmly upward to
expose the long line of Tara's throat to her plundering mouth. Breathes out a long sighing breath cool
enough to bring up goosebumps on the girl's warm flesh, never releasing her wrists, never shifting her knee
except to push in closer. To pin her more firmly against the wall.
"You know what I am." This close, Tara can feel the vibrations of the stranger's voice, throaty with want. The
French accent heavier for it. Luce snags some soft part of Tara's throat between her teeth, presses her
tongue against the pulse at the base of her throat. Twists her hands, both of them, more firmly around Tara's
wrists. "Little ghoul. And what I want to know is, what the fuck" The words are oddly gentle, but there's a
sudden, constricting flash of anger behind them. " - sort of game do you and your master think you're
playing? I want to know who the hell she is, and what the hell is going on here."
Her teeth, not yet sharp, close firmly over that leaping pulse. They do not break the skin.
"And I want to know. Now.
Tara
First the left, then the right, comfortable at first but her warning bells are going off. Quiet at first, annoying and
persistent until it gets louder. There's strength in Luce's arms, and Tara does push back- she's stronger than
she looks but her heart isn't in it. She shouldn't be that strong, but then gain she does have those
ever-so-perfect proportions. Of course it would cover muscle tone, right? And she's hopeful. That's what's
most palpable. She pushes back. Tara spreads her legs, and it doesn't quite register, any of it.
Her pulse is beating hard, but still steady. Not faster, not yet, just louder. The pace will eventually pick up,
and it does- poco a poco- and she pulls in. Her lips want to meet Luce's, but they don't each motion is
punctuated with a gasp, a push, some inhalation. It doesn't hit her until she pushes back, until her accent
becomes distinctly French. Tara's jaw tenses, her eyes narrow, and the lights stay dark. She does push now.
Her shoulders move, her lower half moves, but doesn't actually move. And Tara might be strong, unnaturally
so, but she is in a position that she didn't quite want to be in. She knows what places are vital, and she knows
what will kill her if she moves wrong. There's a word for what she is now. The word is ghoul, she assumes.
Maybe it's another word for pet. Realistically, it's a flesh-eating monster that preys on others. Luce can feel
her swallow.
"Ohshit," is all she can manage to get out amidst a futile struggle that inevitably stops for now. What game is
she playing? What are they doing, what does her master think she's doing-
"Eleanor doesn't even care," she replies, and it's spiteful and wounded and jilted, "she doesn't even know
where I am, she hasn't-oh god, you're going to kill me, aren't you?"
She looks at the garage sale signs again. Namely, the posts. Her heart is beating too fast. Her skin is
simultaneously to cold and too warm all at once.
Luce
Now Luce pushes blood into her body. Feeds her strength. Tara's warmth is an intoxicant, but more
immediate is the urge to survival, the surge of black, substrate rage at the thought of being bound, somehow,
to another again. If anything, her grip on Tara's wrists grows more firm as the southern girl struggles against
that burgeoning sense of unease rising through the haze of her buzz.
"Eleanor." Luce returns, this note of clear, righteous anger still blazing in her voice. "Eleanor Givens?
You're hers?" Because if nothing else, she has heard the names of her clan-mates in the city. Her mouth
moves from Tara's through, chin rising, the bridge of her nose against the girl's jaw pushing upward, exposing
as much of her soft white throat as can be exposed. Wariness edges through the anger. The sharp edge of
a question she does not yet know to ask. Her pale gaze narrows, the dark fringe of her sooty lashes framing
the blazing clarity of her eyes.
"I want you to listen very closely." Sinuous. "You're going to tell me everything. Absolutely everything. The
truth," the faint edge of a smile; teeth against her skin. And these, these are sharp as needles, inhuman, " -
and nothing but. Because I can see if you're lying, just as I could see exactly what you are, little ghoul.
"And if you lie to me. And if you tell me one false thing - "
Well, the vampire leaves the consequences to the young woman's imagination.
Luce
Presence 1 - Awe
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Tara
Consequences could be well and good and dire. She could die. She could live, and that could be worse. This
is how these things could get terrible quickly. She grits her teeth, tips her head up and looks at the ceiling.
This could be it. The point is clear and obvious.
Luce is not pleased with her. It makes her stomach turn. She's not sober enough for this, and here it is her
mind is racing and going in circles and she can't figure out how to push back and how to get out of this and
now? No. No, this is different. She wants to tell her everything. She wants to keep doing what Luce tells her,
and hangs on every word.
"I won't lie to you," she says. Doesn't even shake her head because too much of her throat is exposed and it
all feels so dangerously feral, "but I don't... I don't really... I don't know anything."
Luce
"But you do know something. You know about Eleanor. You know about me. You know exactly what I am."
Luce's voice is sweeter somehow. Not sweet, but gentler, right? Soft and inexorable, nearly coaxing. "You
know what the first rule of Fight Club is, don't you, Tara?"
And the stranger kisses her, softly, just under the chin.
Tara
"Don't talk about Fight Club," and there she gets that kiss. Just under the hin. She exhales a shuddering,
wanting sound. She doesn't relax and she doesn't melt. She just tilts her head up a bit more so that there is
easy access, "is this some kind of test? I don't know about you. I just met you."
Funny, because it sounds an awful lot like I am trying very, very hard to not acknowledge what you are. It
sounds an awful lot like you hav to be fucking with me, this is a trick. It sounds an awful lot like Please, don't
tell Eleanor [Tell her (she won't care)]. Benefit of being a little high, a little drunk, a little addicted and wanting.
She's easier to read than a fourteen year old's diary. It must be refreshing to be so simple.
Luce
"That's the first rule of being Kindred too, Tara. " Her voice is low, wrap-around the spine low. "The very first
rule they teach you when you wake up dead. The second rule is: nothing's fair. Anywhere, ever, but we'll
stick with the basics.
"How many times have you had Eleanor's blood? When was the last time you saw her?" There's a softness to
the questions, A certain piquant curiosity, that hardens as she reminds Tara, " - and don't lie to me." Here
she pushes Tara more firmly against the wall, draws her teeth across the other woman's vulnerable throat.
"I'll know if you lie to me."
Tara
And that's how it feels, too. Her fists clench and she lets her mind wander. The clock in the kitchen ont eh
refrigerator only brings a quiet blue glow to the already dark apartment. It's not enough that she can really
see any better, but it's just enough that she can tell by the changes in lighting when the minutes tick away.
that, because of the lack of light, it's no longer midnight. The night isn't so young anymore. How many times?
"Once," she said. It's quiet, "just once... I haven't seen her since August. Since the beginning of August. She
told me I couldn't leave, Broderick took Tom away, we explained some things and then I got to leave. I tried to
look for her- is she okay?"
Luce
"Christ - " Luce curses quietly, somehow disarmed by the last thing Tara says. [i]I tried to look for her. Is she
okay? [/i] Breathes out a ragged breath, cool against Tara's flesh.
And listen: she does breathe, in and out as if blood still moved through her lung, hungry for oxygen. As last
she frees Tara; lets her wrists go, drops a long-fingered hand to the girl's hair. Twines her thumb through the
loose, curls, the drying sweat. Brushes, almost tenderly, a few strays away from her temple, an absent
gesture.
Now it is the vampire's turn to close her eyes. She still stands close, feeling Tara's warmth. Listening to the
doubled beat of her heart, the harsh sound of breath in the girl's throat. The break of - worry, fear, want in
her voice.
" - for [i]fuck's[/i] sake."
Then draws in another breath. "I'm sorry Tara." - and kisses her again. Not wanton, now, almost chaste,
almost soothing. "You've gotten the worst deal. And it's going to get worse before it gets better, but I'm
going to do my damnedest to give you a choice.
"Right now, you're a danger. You're a danger to yourself, because you know both too little and too much.
And you're a danger to us, because you know just enough. So my options," a short, sharp pause. " - they're
limited. But I'm going to lay them out for you. And I know you're fucked up. And it aches. And it's late. And
you just wanted someone to drag you out of your skin tonight so you could forget just how much it aches right
now, and you got me instead.
"But you have to make a choice. Option A. I'll take you back to Eleanor, tonight. She'll bind you. And you
won't run away again. Or - " a hard swallow. Option B. You go under lock and key, a sort of witness
protection program until I find someone willing and able to erase your memory of us. Then you go back to
your normal life. Maybe you find a small town, waitress for a while before you remember your dream again.
Option C. I make you mine."
Luce
"Christ - " Luce curses quietly, somehow disarmed by the last thing Tara says. I tried to look for her. Is she
okay? Breathes out a ragged breath, cool against Tara's flesh.
And listen: she does breathe, in and out as if blood still moved through her lung, hungry for oxygen. As last
she frees Tara; lets her wrists go, drops a long-fingered hand to the girl's hair. Twines her thumb through the
loose, curls, the drying sweat. Brushes, almost tenderly, a few strays away from her temple, an absent
gesture.
Now it is the vampire's turn to close her eyes. She still stands close, feeling Tara's warmth. Listening to the
doubled beat of her heart, the harsh sound of breath in the girl's throat. The break of - worry, fear, want in
her voice.
" - for fuck's sake."
Then draws in another breath. "I'm sorry Tara." - and kisses her again. Not wanton, now, almost chaste,
almost soothing. "You've gotten the worst deal. And it's going to get worse before it gets better, but I'm
going to do my damnedest to give you a choice.
"Right now, you're a danger. You're a danger to yourself, because you know both too little and too much.
And you're a danger to us, because you know just enough. So my options," a short, sharp pause. " - they're
limited. But I'm going to lay them out for you. And I know you're fucked up. And it aches. And it's late. And
you just wanted someone to drag you out of your skin tonight so you could forget just how much it aches right
now, and you got me instead.
"But you have to make a choice. Option A. I'll take you back to Eleanor, tonight. She'll bind you. And you
won't run away again. Or - " a hard swallow. Option B. You go under lock and key, a sort of witness
protection program until I find someone willing and able to erase your memory of us. Then you go back to
your normal life. Maybe you find a small town, waitress for a while before you remember your dream again.
Option C. I make you mine."
Tara
[Insert witty comment about swallowing]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Tara
It's almost soothing, but it's not. It comes close, or close-ish, but it doesn't wipe the look she had off her face.
It would have been easier to be some grand, awkward plot. Some great act of treachery and backstabbing on
her part to gain her dormitor's favor- keep tabs on other Toreador. Keep her friends close, her rivals closer It
would be so, so much easier... but one can get the distinct impression that she is no mastermind. She is no
great technical mind, no creature of great and practiced guile.
Right now, she's just a girl in her entryway with soft lips and light hair who is handing on every word. She
holds her right elbow with her left hand. She's got the worst deal, it's gonna get worse. She inhales- and let's
make no mistake, she notices the breathing. She notices that inhale and exhale pattern because Tom didn't
breathe. But Luce doesn't look like a walking corpse. Luce isn't degrading. She's alive and well right here in
front of her. She swallows, "I don't want you to get hurt... and it's not fair to ask you to do that. I... I should
probably go back."
A moment passes, and it's but a brief and shining one, "what happens when she gets tired of me?"
Luce
Luce breathes out again; wry. Her mouth twisting into a faint smirk. "I can take care of myself," she says,
pulling away at last. Slipping her hands free of Tara's blond hair. Sobering as Tara asks what happens when
Eleanor gets tired of her.
The other creature just - shrugs. A narrow shrug, lined with tension. "I don't know what happens when she
gets tired of you. She could kill you. She could shut you in the basement and starve you to death. Or give
you a job as her maid and let it go at that. There are some rules that protect Kindred.
"None that protect ghouls."
Tara
[Pretend like that doesn't scare you to death! Courage!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (7, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Tara
"So what guarantee do I have that you won't get bored and kill me?"
Luce
"You haven't got a guarantee. I told you, Tara. You've been dealt the worse hand of cards anyone could be
dealt. I know that. I've been there. All you have are your instincts and your choices. You ability to make a
choice," quiet, not precisely tender anymore, but somehow heartfelt. "Once you're bound, some of that
disappears. You'll love me. Or Eleanor. In an unnatural way. If you know what it is, maybe you can manage
it. Find a way to live inside it without it eating you alive.
"The only difference between me and Eleanor - the only objective, measureable difference that you can know
and taste and see with your own eyes, the only difference you can trust is that I'm giving you a choice, and
she didn't. And I mean the choices. If you want to forget us, I'll do my damned to find someone who can
make it happen. You might have to spend a couple months holed up someplace, maybe more, but I'll do my
damnedest to let you make that choice."
Tara
"I don't want to forget about this, I... that's happened already. And there are gaps. And there'll be gaps, and
it's fine until someone tells ya to start looking for the holes. I can't do that," she insists. Her hands come up
and she wipes her eyes with the heel of her right hand, then with her wrist to get the other eye. "Second rule
of fight club... I need to go back. Things will be okay, because I'll make them okay."
And at that moment, the game changed, because the argument she had with Tom. The conversations they'd
had all become false. They hadn't asked for this, either of them. Neither party had a choice in what had
happened to the, until now and right now? Right now, at least she has a choice. She laughs, and the sound is
halfhearted, "sorry about ruining dinner."
Luce
"I'll get over it. I'm sorry we fucked up your life." There's a pause. "Tara. If you don't go back, I'll know. And
I can find you, anywhere in this city. If you can't bring yourself to go back, my number's on the card. I'm
going to let you see to your mail. Get yourself together.
"It really is the only way."