Zazh

Luce

Per + Empathy

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (4, 4, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Zazh

The Sedan is a sleek black. An older model, known more for it's convenience than it's fashion or flare. The back seat is a spacious thing, not up to the standards of a limo but the leg room is enough for a hooker (or a politician) on their knees.

The windows are heavily tinted, enough to block out any view of the interior or the Driver. When she appears (because this sort of thing is a When and never an if for him) the passenger door slips open to reveal the internal command of plush leather, a small mini-bar tucked into a cavity in the back of the front full seat and the man himself.

He is dressed in the familiar charcoal suit, black under colour and red tie that he had been before. His hair is still slicked back with some ungent or gel that carries little to no scent while the vague aroma of Cognac wafts out of the doorway.

He watches her approach with appreciation, though the vague sense of expectation breeds entiltement in his demeanour.

It's as Luce approaches, her senses suddenly expanding, that the flesh of the matter is striped away and the appearance shifts from the sleeze to the...unknown.

He is not human. The plethora of vibrating colours emanating from him in soft ripples and undulating waves is unmistakable. The undercurrent of Light Blue is thickest amid the menagerie, with special care paid to a rich band of Deep Red and Violet.

He doesn't smile. Or even seem to shift features. Simply watches and waits.

Luce

"That always works for you, doesn't it?" Her voice is cool, her eyes pale and sharp, belying the suggestion of half-drugged decadence, of debauch, given by the dark sweep of lashes, the smear of liner and shadow around them. Even in the sallow brilliance of the streetlamps her skin is pale as bone, white as the face of a full moon in a dark sky, as if she did not even dream of the sun.

A certain porcelain fineness that seems graven rather than lived-in. Then she smiles, half-smiles, a flush of humor that remains constrained and private giving light to her shadowed eyes as she ducks down and takes the seat beside him, long fingers opening up, the pads smooth over the leather as she glances about the interior. Takes note less of the trappings of wealth than of the potential threats; a flicker of her pale gaze over her reflection in the tinted window, the barrier between front and back before she draws her long legs neatly, precisely in after her.

The scent of tobacco lingers in her hair. Tobacco and Chanel No. 5 and a nice, peaty undertone of Scotch. There's something continental about her. The face and the figure, to be sure. Nothing plastic about her. Seated, she crosses one long leg over the other - her body language loose and comfortable and a hint remote - as she favors him the the sparked edge of wry expression that does not quite curve its way into a smile. "I'm afraid I don't even know your name."

Zazh

"Zazh."

He offers it without restraint. He is either indifferent to her as a threat or seemingly enjoying the catch of a stranger, taken the bait. The aural perception fades steadily until he is once more a man in a suit, one ankle crossed at the knee.

A rather small but oblong glass of Cognac is plucked up from the inlet table in the seat infront of them, the small cabinet bar below it housing three bottles. One is the same notable cognac golden brown as what is in Zazh's glass. The other two are a darker cast, almost rich red and a brilliant yellow, suggestive of sunlight.

"...And yes. It always works for me." Matter-of-fact assurance, followed by a grin that is used to being manic and wide. One might consider him more for the role of Mad Villain intent on dominant desires, than a suitor or a shark. Certainty is there, though. Certainty and inspection. His eyes roam freely as she pulls entirely into the car, the door sliding shut behind her.

He leans forward, tapping gently on the glass and the car is humming into motion before he's settled back into his plush seat, eyes never leaving her. Though they narrow. Slightly.

"Last I checked there weren't any Modeling agencies currently doing jobs here in the cityscape but...I've not kept up with that lifestyle lately. So I could be wrong...?"

And he said it all with a smile.

Luce

That matter of fact response earns him the spark of a sharper grin in return, the edge gleaming, the spine of it enshadowed. She lifts the edge of her tapered little chin in his direction, then glances back out the tinted window as the city begins to move beside them, lights running liquid over the sidewalks, filtered through the smoked glass. A rhythm to that movement, as to all things, which reminds her of the clatter of train cars over rails, or the beating of the human heart.

Her hair is pulled back, twisted into a loose pony tail, revealing the elegant symmetry of her profile from this angle. The architecture of it - the hollow at the jointure of jaw and throat, the supple downslope of her trapezius from its attachment at the base of her skull disappears beneath her t-shirt and the fine leather of her coat half-way to the soft, round curve of her shoulder.

"I'm sure there's always someone posing in the camera's eye, a city like this," she returns, her voice in her throat, a certain glazed, amber amusement lightening her gaze as she turns away from the cityscape to glance back at him. " - walking some third-rate catwalk, or the like, though I wouldn't know about it eight, Zazh. I'm not a model. Nor a singer. Nor a model/singer/actress, or any other permutation of the three."

Then she shifts her hips on the seat and turns her pale head to meet his gaze, fully. Extends her right hand to his, a platinum band gleaming at the base of her thumb. "Pleasure to meet you, Zazh. Most people call me Luce. Though you haven't told me what it is you do."

Her long frame fits bonelessly into the seat, the back of her pale head pivots lazily on the headrest, as if she were making herself perfectly at home. As if she could make herself perfectly at home, anywhere. Another flash of a smile then, wider than any he has seen - brilliant and sharp as a surgical incision, the flash of white teeth behind her glossed lips. "Or where it is we're going, have you?"

Zazh

He watches her. Actively. That look is a scalpel, searching for the excess to cut away and, as with many before him no doubt, Luce's framework is difficult to truly peel away. He finds his hovering perceptual surgery lacking in material to work with. The man behind that gaze suddenly sharpens in his posture and regard. Not so much a stiffening as it is a relaxation. As if he suddenly found tonight's 'actual' entertainment in the casual settling of Luce's frame, behaviour, self.

"Nor have you. Simply what you aren't." He sips at the Cognac. Sips like he is used to it's flavour and bite, though he doesn't swirl it's contents around. The gaze has yet to leave Luce, jaw shifting off to one side absently.

"I am in acquisitions." A heartbeat, hand and eyes making a 'sort of' gesture and glance "And a little bit of protection, really." A grin. Suggestive, yet again. "But mostly acquisitions. I like collecting things. Many things. The more intriguing the better."

He glances out the window she had glanced out, leaning far over and into her personal space to peer through the smoked glass at the passing city. The smell of him carries no cologne or perfumed products. Simply a vague hint of sweat and dry cleaned clothing.

"As far as I can tell, we're going home." And he leans back again, eyes on her legs and the endless quality they seem to possess. "The long way of course."

Luce

The beating of a human heart.

The beating of any human heart.

Simply what you aren't. earns him the pointed lift of both of her fine, pale brows over her fine, pale blue eyes. "You haven't asked." Faint reproof in her tone, undergirded by a raw sort of serenity that suggests she cares fuck-all if he does or not. "Don't worry. I don't hold it against you."

He leans across her narrow frame, filling her personal space and her frame of vision long enough for her to inhale - sharply - the scent of dried sweat and dry cleaning chemicals, the suggestion of Cognac on his breath. The remnants of the bar's coarser scents - antiseptic and sawdust beneath the sticky residue of cheap beer. Inhale she does, her dark-ringed eyes hooded as her gaze focuses on his neck, then darts up to his face.

Before he sits back down, she unearths a long arm, snakes it through the close confines, make closer by proximity, to brush a thumb across his shoulder and pluck some invisible thread from his perfectly pressed black suit. Each movement is a deliberate choice.

"Hmmmph - " that noise is low in her throat; there's laughter in the frame of it. The amusement is still private, caged, though the wry twist of her mouth, and the flash of eye contact with which she favors him when he has at last settled back beside her makes of that amusement a sort of arch conspiracy. "You do know - Zazh - that I am not collectible. Don't you?"

Inviting his agreement with the upward lilt of her little chin as her pale eyes slide from his, to their reflection in the smoked glass separating them from the driver.

Zazh

"I've often found, my increasingly charming Luce-"

And Zazh's attention catches each of her movements. The pluck of a 'thread'. The subtle inhale (that subsequently leaves him bent forward toward her a half second longer than is perhaps necessary) and the resultant slow reel back into his own chair, that brings that aired flash of eye contact. His smile has yet to diminish. If anything, the enjoyment of the moment has increased considerably.

"-it's that those things worth collecting are hardly aware of that status. Nor should they ever be made aware, if the collector hopes to maintain their Rarity and..." A pause, lips pursing, sucking on his teeth with the effort "...Purity."

He catches her gaze on the mirrored tint infront of them and casts an eye in that direction as well. The smile continues unabated, leaning back into the plush leather of the seat to watch her in the dark glass. The Driver remains obscured, but Zazh raises a hand to motion almost dismissively at the opaque place where the chauffeur sits.

"No need to worry about her at all, by the way. An able bodyguard and a wondrously and blissfully quiet one at that. One of the best." And then back to her reflection again.

"So not a Model. Or an actress. Or a Singer." A heartbeat. That grin. "A dancer then,perhaps? Svelte. Graceful. Demanding of attention. It would not be difficult to see..."

Luce

"We're different then." Her body language remains comfortable, languid. If anyting she has sunk another half-inch into her seat, exaggerating the already long line of her legs, smashing the mass of her golden hair against the dark leather seats in gleaming, liquid contrast to the fine matte leather.

And her eyes remain on their reflections in the dark glass. Her own is startlingly pale surrounded by smoke shadows, the contrast bracingly sharp, no half-lit edges. He isn't so pale as she, and his reflection is less remarkably sharp. Still, there is that contrast that reminds of of the violent outbursts of light and depths of shadow in Caravaggio's best works.

All that is missing is the scrawl of blood.

"I like common things, you see, quite as much as the rare. The more adulterated - " now she glaces back to him, fine mouth crawling in a wide, close-lipped smile, pale eyes gleaming with a feline sort of pleasure. " - the better."

With that, she drops the long curve of her arm to frame the long curve of her body. Favors him with the slant of her pale gaze and the sharp definition of her profile, against the sweeping shadow of the silent city outside his dark sedan.

"No and no and no again." She lifts her chin, then, shoulders braced against the back of the seat as she shifts minutely closer to him, leans her pale head sidelong, gleaming eyes confidentially direct.

"I was in love with a dancer, once." Musing, soft and dark and distant. As if she were telling him someone else's story. As if every story was someone else's story. And her own, too, always. She leans closer, until her fine little mouth and pearly white teeth and shining eyes are a scant inch or two from his ear. Each word low, precise, the sound of her voice vibrant from the back of her throat. "He ended badly, I'm afraid."

Zazh

There is no shiver of expectation. Nor delicate weave of hypnotized intent. Zazh weathers the expanse of Luce's seductive movements, subtle and step by step constructive (like she were building some mosaic, crafted of the right tones, sensations and headlights of lust and suggestion)....

...Like a man entitled.

She leans close and he leans close, offering an ear (and that vaguely corded neck) in an only slightly exaggerated acquiescence of her conspiracy, husky and warm. His grin broadens (as if there was more cheek hiding more smile) and he turns to meet her eyes with the manic sort of flash that comes with the enticed.

"Truly. Common things and Dancers." He glances down the front of her presented attire, catching what cleavage may accompany those legs before meeting her eyes again. Unapologetic.

"You admit to an appreciation of the sullied" Gaze narrowing 'Like the half-heartedly attractive when viewed through a few pints of good lager. Or the distinction of a poorly detailed art piece, in wonderful lighting." He leans back again, slowly, as if offering her the chance to...whatever brings her close in the first place, one would suppose. His hands remain folded, one atop the other, of a knee.

"I've found dancers to be brittle. Unhinged. Narcissistic and challenged. Lovely movements however. As much as they are good for and obvious about it at least. No, you're not a Dancer...." A heartbeat's pause. Scrutiny. Enjoying, it would seem, the Riddle of Luce.

"Maybe a Poet, though starving but not stunted or suffering enough. A playwright? Hardly tortured though- Ah!" He snaps his fingers. A sudden motion that steps outside of their moment of 'Serene ardency'.

"An Observer. Fond of dissection. Creatively perceptual. Chooser of details and how they fold together." And he leans forward almost excitedly. "That is it, isn't it? You like to watch." The grin returns. Like he were a thousand different people, each as intense in their own few seconds, worn on his same features.

Luce

He offers an ear (and that vaguely corded neck, and that moving pulse, the jugular vein, the carotid artery). And when he finds her pale gaze again, there's the flash of something animal-livid there, the beast, strained and restrained. He drops his eyes to peruse her body, she breathes out in a long, controlled exhalation and confines the beast back into the depths of her body. The stark edge of hunger brighter in the back of her throat, then, some illusory sharpening of her senses.




"You have it wrong," she tells him, "the adulterated, not the sullied. Not half-assed work in fine lighting; not some drug-induced illusion of brilliance. I just want it dirty. I want to see it breathe. I want to see it bleed. Everything human is imperfect. Brilliance comes through in the cracks. In the flaws, the broken places. I'd rather wallow in broken brilliance than breathe the rarified air in the vaccuum space where the pure live on nothing but light and inspiration until I become sterile with it. Antiseptic. Fucking dead."



And then he hits on it. Just precisely, see. Nail on head. Coffin on the nail, he's bright - mobile with the discovery, leaning forward intent on her frame. There's a moment there - somewhere between Observer and fond of dissection where the liquid creature goes entirely still, prickles with the discomfort of recognition and forgets to breathe. I'm purely decorative, darling, she is like to tell her kind when the time comes to hunt - whatever it is they are meant to hunt these nights. Deflecting expectations easily, thoughtless. not at all functional.




But that is only because most people who look at her cannot really see.



You like to watch - he says at last; and that sparks something sharper and bright in her eyes.



"Technically, I work as a translator, Zazh." She rises from her languid sprawl, holding his eyes, the still alertness gone, mouth crawling wider.



"And I like to do more than watch."

Zazh

"Of course you are. Of course you do."

Nodding slowly. An agreement with her statements, though distracted. It isn't that Zazh is terribly observant, he doesn't pay attention when Luce stills (that moment when you've woken up early enough to catch the sunset over the lake and sudden notice the wind is going but there aren't any ripples) but he is manic. One might even say obsessive. A personality of addictions. One can almost see the cocaine, alcohol and women in his shadow that have come and gone like clockwork. Like an occupation.

"That sounds decidedly primal actually." His head tilts. Curiosity. The level of fear one associates with humanity (and their reaction to the beast) can usually be measured at this point. Either in the want that threatens the forbidden or the panic that overrides survival.

"I know a few places you might enjoy, actually." He doesn't rise. Not fully. Not yet, when she does. He watches her languid repose become an active display. A tongue works itself out across the corners of his mouth, but there is no avid hunger haunting his eyes to suggest it's anything more than an unconscious gesture. His mouth closes a moment later and his head tilts again.

"A few people as well." The pause is long. Gauging.

"So what sort of Translations are you fond of? Do you like reducing people? Things? You strike me as the sort. A Reductionist. Or maybe a constructor of ends? See the Dystopian and learn to like it?"

Luce

"That's how I strike you?" a short pause, her voice low, cautious, perhaps cautioning, and she's edge of the seat now, her hair a tangle at the back of her neck, fine threads pulling against dark leather, the deliberately dissolute architecture of the style utterly crushed, now.

Her mouth curls wider. From this position, her eyes are strangely dark. Light streams in from behind her, filtered by the tint smoking the windows. She braces one hand against the back seat, curls one knee beneath her, dark denim tight over the long muscles of her thigh.

"Mmm." The thoughtful noise again, though this time it seems more internal. "I'd have thought the opposite. Expansionary rather than reductionist. I like to let meaning proliferate, within the confines of language and without. And I hate being defined.

"Though I did mean translation literally. Just now I'm working on fragmentary ecstatic poem supposed to be the work of Diego of Lauver, one of the Cathar heretics, if you're familiar with the movement. I'm rather sure that the original is a hoax, but it's a clever one.

"They didn't need anyone to construct an end, you know. They already believed we were living in hell. What about you, though. What do you do with the things that you collect? Put them on a shelf, underglass. Keep the dust away?

"Or do you take them down, sometimes. Turn them over in your hands. Say to yourself - ahhh. Mine."

Zazh

"I'm not familiar." with any of it really. Zazh seems unashamed of that fact really. Poets and prose. What came before and who said it. In what ways and what manners. If the look on his face is any indication, the fascination of Luce's decree and obvious knowledge remains a level part of the whole package. Something he might pluck and pick at, after the sun has come up and the sheets are in need of washing. Until then, it's a filed tidbit that doesn't get much more attention than the above phrase.

"Definition is the meat and source of power. To be undefined breeds this aimlessness and a willingness to remain inactive. I would almost think, being as you are more than a watcher. Like more than simply watching, that is, that you would embrace a role." A pause. Eyes narrowing. "Perhaps not permanently..."

He waves a hand, casual. Dismissive.

"Hell is another word for guilt. Shame. Sufferance. Who has time for those things when there's so much meaning to be had in exploration." The grin returns. "Which, I suppose, answers your question. What I collect, I use. Observation of what I own-" And that word, contains a heaviness in Zazh's tone that few of his prior words have. Like it was a secret. What he owned. (Mine).

"-is like masturbation. Satisfies for a moment or more, but why settle for that when there's a whole world to experience? Every collectible is an obvious statement. A great pair of legs-" He glances "-a captivating gaze-" Another glance "-even the suggestion of cleavage-" A lingering stare "-is merely what's offered to partake of. Anything can do that. It's the uses, the hidden ones, that it can provide that are the meat. The taste. It's why you crack the bone for the marrow. Why you marinade the meat. Pique the flavour so it isn't just a cow." And he leans forward, clapping a hand on the leather between them (what little space seems to remain now).

"It's a fucking meal." He laughs. Not loudly, but fully, head tilting back. Neck exposed. Adam's apple bobbing without restraint. It lasts a few moment and spends him enough to throw him back into his seat. The Cognac is supped again. Then, as if as an after-thought, drained and the glass put away inside it's alcove.

"Experience what you possess. Otherwise, it isn't a collection. It's just the shit you spent too much time and money on." A pause.

"...And you say you're uncollectible, correct?" It's as if the edge in her tone has increased the enticement. He seems to respond, though without fear. Excitement, really. Addicton feeding.

Luce

"I did." She told a loose, aimless boy shot through with the pleasure of his first war, once, that all he needed to do to survive in their world, intact, somehow, was to hold on to his ability to make a fucking choice. It was a warm night, the air saturated with the scent of smoke and ash, shouts echoing across the flat, weedy tarmac. She was hungry, and the sky was open wide. " - say that. And I am."

She was boneless before, and she is straight-spined now. Her loveliness is sharp rather than soft, but it does not matter where he stares - at the long line of her legs, the sharp glint of her stiletto heels, maybe. The faint shadow of her small breasts beneath the white Team Jacob cotton tee as she breathes in and out, a faint illusion, all for him - no matter where he stares, she does not shy from his gaze. Or blush. Or flush. Or demure. "Uncollectible.

"Though you wouldn't be the first to try."

Zazh

"I'll take that as invitation and challenge."

He leans forward then, removing his eyes from her only a moment, before tapping on the window infront of them. Their reflections are cut in half as the window peels down to reveal the flaxen haired (dyed) presence of a young(ish) woman, driving them slowly and comfortably down the street. The radio is humming something distant and warped. A collection of electronic terror, wrapped up in a nifty beat. She tilts her head, ever so slightly to indicate she's listening.

"Take us 'round to the Garters. I'm in the mood for a little Cabaret." And he leans back, without need for acknowledgement, the window rolling back up slowly and the car taking the next left at a slightly more direct speed.

"Despair breeds a powerful sort of attraction. Painted darks and supple movements in low light. It makes for interesting suggestions. The material is secondary of course. The girls are...fond of seeking out their inner..." He pauses. Considering with a vague frown.

"....Beasts." A smile. "The best word for it. Dancers, most of them but with a hint of something special. Like a frail wine." He turns to her. "You'll love it. I promise."

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."

Breaking and entering.

Luce

The letter is waiting for Alice when she arises one September night. The air bright and cool, crickets singing in the background, their autumn song, though seasons mean less here than most places she has lived. The moon is low in the east, half a white disc gleaming through the evening's rolling fog.

There is a smudge of motor oil on the right-ward corner, and a particular sigil stamped into the smear of red wax that seals the envelope. A familiar sigil.

Inside:

Alice -

Have arrived in SF. Learning the neighborhoods. Do not feel like playing the pretty pretty princess with the high-brows. Would love to get re-acquainted with you first.

Fancy a spot of breaking and entering?

10:30ish, 734 Thornton Street, Rear. Tenderloin.

- Luce

Alice

There is a letter waiting for Alice when she arises one September night. Her mouth curves faintly when she has read it. Her smile is not a cool thing, understand, though her skin is cool. Her smile is a secret thing, girlish, wondering, and it suits the shape of her face: the broad brow, the pointed chin, the large eyes and eyebrows like the outline of bird's wings against a sunset, the mouth that some have thought is just a little too large. She summons her ghoul who is a man with a keen mind and a keener thirst (for strength, for borrowed immortality, for addiction; addictive substances - he is not mad; not yet; no more than any ambitious creature is) and has him take the letter and gives him a direction. Go by Pascal's house. See if he is home, but do not engage. Leave me a voicemail.

10:30ish, 734 Thornton Street, Rear. Tenderloin.

Alice knows San Francisco well. She would. She has spent a number of years in the city ruled by the mad (intolerably [someone will need to do something, and as everybody else is foolish or whipped]) Toreador, and she knows the way the sidewalks buckle from earthquake and erosion, she knows the way the buildings fit together, the way the streets fit against the hills and knot around each other, so it does not take her a long time to find the place.

Alice: she does not wear her own face, but it is a face that Luce may yet recognize. The suggestion of sunburn - the freckles; the Spanish-golden hair, the thick, caterpillar furry eyebrows; the sullen ripe-Pomegranate mouth; the height! The slightly stooped shoulders! The gangling legs! Alice doesn't look like Alice at all, and she certainly doesn't look like a vampire, but she slinks out've the dark behind the -

?

- and carefully avoids the cracks.

Luce

The ? is an old building, brick and mortar and stone, with flourishes that tell Alice it was built in the early days of the previous century, when masons still carved columns out of marble and windows were framed in solemn gray stone. Somewhere high an inscription says: CARNEGIE and beneath it a beaten quote about the life of the mind, unreadable in the gloom, except for the odd, angular shapes of the letters stamped into the solid fieldstone.

The majestic old windows have sprouted contemporary appendages. Fans, air conditioning units. Wires snaking outward, inexpertly stapled to the stone. Some are covered over with brown butcher's paper and others are covered over with plywood. The stately stone steps have a make-shift wooden ramp snaking up them for handicapped accessibility. It is dark with age, a temporary solution made permanent.

A small sign in the front names the place CHAVEZ BRANCH SAN FRANCISCO LIBRARY. It has been covered in obscene graffiti no one has bothered to scrub clean.

The alley is even more graffiti-covered, dark and still tonight, with a single long puddle snaking down the center of the broken asphalt.

Alice-who-is-not-Alice finds Luce leaning against the back of the library, dressed all in dark clothes. Black jeans and a black jacket, black boots with no more than the necessary heel, practical things. A gray knot hoodie beneath the black jacket, dark too, the hood pulled up to cover her blond hair. For she has only her own face to wear; no other.

It is scrubbed clean, though. Free of make-up. Pale brows and pale lashes framing gimlet eyes, fixed on Alice the moment the changed-monster enters the alleyway.

Gods love her, but she's smoking. Something fine, tonight, and the smoke tinged with spice and faintly sweet, superior to many of her choices. She throws it away as Alice comes close. The cherry hisses as it hits the long serpentine puddle bisecting the alley.

"Good to see you. Even if I don't get to [i]see[/i] you yet." She lifts her chin toward the back of the building. One of the windows set 8 or 9 feet off the ground is just cracked open. The lights are off.

"Budget cuts. Closes at 5 p.m. in summer. 4 p.m. in winter. Can you believe it? The things a girl has to do to borrow a book."

Alice

The sad nonfiction truth is that libraries aren't all that valuable in a capitalist society that is winding down (tick, tick, tick). There are alarmists who're saying that the end's come. There are alarmists who're saying that the end's already here. These alarmists don't care very much about the libraries, either. There will probably not be alarms. There will probably not be cameras turned on. They won't want to squander power, when they've so little. And inside the library, it'll probably be dark as the devil's asscrack. The window that's just cracked open looks that dark. Alice smiles at Luce and though it isn't her face, it's a mobile face, expressive. Her teeth are no sharper than they should be, and no whiter. The two front teeth overlap, just slightly crooked, like the smile (rebel girl [mafia courtesan]).

But her voice is her own - low, contralto, compelling; the sort of voice that interacts with the subconscious. A hook, an instrument, a lovely turn of phrase.

"Ha. They always begin with the books," Alice says, by way of answer: "They begin with the books -- then they move on to harder spines, and more vital: snap, snap, snap! It's really nice to see you, Luce. Look. Before I ally-oop you, do you have a pen?" Alice sounds pleased when she says she is pleased (or whatever) and Alice sounds somewhat weary and mildly annoyed when she speaks about books and considering when she asks for a pen.

Her eyes gaze -- after briefly settling on the Toreador's face -- has lifted to the window; to all of the windows, shuttered and locked and barred; and she folds her arms over her chest.

"Who wrote the book?"

Luce

There is no concealing the voice, and the Toreador is the softest of skins; easily hooked. A beat falls in between them where she simply - closes her eyes - and listens, look. The voice against the traffic, framed by the sudden alert of a siren sharpening through the gloom.

A-ooo-woo. A-ooo-woo.

Someone's dying in the distance, but here there's just quiet. The odd echo bouncing back to them, words muffled to indistinction. The humn of the electrical boxes and, oddly clear, the threaded sounds of the local Spanish-language radio station, advertising Italian Whoopers are your local Burger King.

"Like a Girl Guide," says the blond, "I come prepared." Lifting her right arm as she tugs at the flat, dark canvas band bisecting her torso, she pulls around the flat shape of a gray patterned messenger bag blooming black fractal flowers across its surface. Pulls it around to rest it on the angular plane of a narrow him and finds two things: pen and a cheap gas station notebound, spiral-bound at the top, no more than one inch by three. She tosses both to Alice - they are clipped together, pen nestled into the deformed metal spiral - as she turns to settle the bag from hip to back.

Then glances up at the building, too.

"Is that a thing?" - curious, after, clear gaze sweeping back down to the familiar mask Alice has chosen for the evening. "A thing-you-know? Girl Guides?" But the curiousity passes and Luce shakes her head inside the shroud of her gray hood. Her blond hair is slicked back from her face, leaving her high brow clear. "The book - is supposed to be a faithful transcription of the lost letters of Pierre de Castelnau.

"But maps, - ahh. They have a map room here. And I have wall space."

Alice

They should be wearing leather pants and uncomfortable boots and corset tops. At least: this is the new truth given to humanity by countless vampire-cum-werewolf-cum-fairy-cum-witch books about sassy supernaturals and their sinfully delicious escapades, naturally told with wry self-awareness and too-busy-for-this-shit flair. They aren't because they're not fictional. Luce is in all black. Alice is grunge. A grunge pair of jeans, a grunge shirt, grunge arm-warmers, a pin through one of her ears, the lie that is the gold hair slicked back so it's a razor's edge dream, a hint of buried treasure.

Luce throws the notebook and Alice pulls her gaze away from the library. She catches it and convinces the pen to come out've its metal cage, uncapping it with her molars (careless). The notebook gets tucked under her arm, and Alice squats down, scraping the pen's nib against pavement. It's not really the kind of pen for writing on things that aren't paper, so she sketches a couple of quick lines (careful) to test it until something shows in the dark. Her eyes gleam when she looks back up at Luce, using the pen to put her hair up in a cat burglar approved bun.

This is an alley, and, as with all alleys, there are (no alley cats, but plenty of rats. There's a Chinese restaurant or an Italian deli nearby, something with meat and) boxes slumping against the adjacent building, leaning against a wall. The snake of water comes from them: slithers out've the crevices, like a flood-story dragged out've the mountains into the lonely valley. There's also a three-legged chair; it looks as if it was struck by lightning or stabbed.

"Girl Guides? Doesn't ring a bell," she says, moving (quietly) to stand just beneath the window-that-is-ajar. She lifts her eyebrows (rakish [arch]), and weaves her fingers together in a cradle. She is not as tall as she seems right now. Luce knows that. Still: she is stronger -- strong when the blood makes her so -- than one would think, no matter her mask. Strong enough to launch a little thing like Luce an extra foot or so if she can't actually reach. "Let me guess. They do good and guide the elderly. Perhaps they crochet and bake cookies and treat poison oak and bandage injured paws."

Alice

ooc: FF.

Alice

ooc: ack, wait, never mind. it got it all. hee.

Luce

"I think you have the gist of it. They would also build fires in the wilderness and eat tinned soup. Collect metal for the war effort. Wear sashes and salute the flag in parades when the parades were short of soldiers because they were all dying somewhere else."

This is perhaps too specific to be speculative. It is all offered as Luce scrapes the sole of her boot off on the edge of the library's back door's back stoop, careful, before stepping into the cat's cradle Alice has made of her hands.

Before Alice boosts her all the way up, Luce reaches back and pulls out a thin-hafted flashlight, metallic blue and holds it in her mouth - between her teeth. Right now, they are too dull for mortal fantasies of night-stalkers.

"Merci " - she mouths around the flashlight, with the practiced skill of a cigar smoker, before she is lifted up up and away. And Luce is slight: taller than the [i]actual[/i] Alice by very nearly a foot, but so thin she must have been living on lemon water, and cigarettes and sunlight and blood and no more than that in the months before her death and rebirth. See? paper thin; up over the threshold. The sash sticks a moment before she pushes it yawning open, then grabs, firmly, the metal frame and half-lifts, half-centipedes herself inside.

There is a quiet crash from the interior as she blunders into something solid. And then, the faint glow from the beam of her flashlight darting over the dark surface of the window like some faerie-thing skimming the surface of a solemn forest pond.

"I'll get the door - !"

Her voice is compounded, echoing off utilitarian tile. A bathroom, them. Moment's later, a solid thud is followed by a fusillade of cursing. En Français. But dead tissue cannot bruise, the wounds from her blunder into the dark line of urinals are minimal, and within five minutes, the back door is sweeping open, Luce leaning out, long arm along the metal bar.

Her hood has fallen down; her blond hair gleams in the available light.

Alice

Alice sharpens her hearing until it's like a knife across a whettstone and it'll cut (and some sounds'll cut, too, but she is used to that sort of pain, she is well able to unbraid it from useful sounds - a footstep that shouldn't be accompanied by a lack of breath; the breathing of a human nightstalker; the click of a weapon being readied), so her voice is as soft as a dandelion's ghost-halo: "No problem."

Her voice is flattened to something generic and American which conceals her roots. Maybe she's just lived long enough hearing the sound of the Colonials and speaking their language that it's easy to let their accent become hers, to adapt.

The back door's hinges squeak; Alice turns from her intense and unblinking consideration of the building's sides, and drops her arms down to her sides. There is no need for impatience -- no need for patience; Alice does not linger in the alley, but joins Luce inside the library's backroom. Her pupils dilate, adjusting to the new texture of dark.

There is a smell in libraries. Alice inhales it, then she licks the tip of her index finger and holds it up as though testing the wind.

"Let's see. If I know libraries - if I know this library - the map room will be somewhere out-of-the-way, inconvenient to copiers and careless of archives."

There is a moment's adjustment and then Alice's finger drops to one side, pointing like a compass: directing them out've the little caged area full of books and broken furniture that hasn't quite managed to make it out to the alleyway yet and to the left.

There is a trail of something sticky, some plastic trashcans that some librarian or volunteer will wheel out when they feel like it and don't have too much else to do. A rank smell, sewage. The library opens up as if it has wings: might as well assume it does - and only one way looks dingy enough (smells mouldy enough) to house archives and maps. There's a door, too, and it may well be locked to keep the public out. There are chips on its wooden frame, someone's carved their name into the bottom.

To get to the door that separates the serious people's rooms, a mini-maze of shorter shelves, of desks with thick and already very near to obsolete computers chained to the ground just in case anybody gets ideas.

There is a light in the front foyer: pale, watery - it almost hurts the eyes; bulks up the shadows.

"Hell," she says. "Would you run away from this place if you were a book?"

Alice

ooc: ARGH, FORMATTING.

Luce

"In a heartbeat."




So returns Luce, in the same space her heartbeat would have occupied, once-upon-a-time, when the muscle was still necessary and functional. "If books had hearts; and legs to run away to go with their solid spines."



The look she flashes is solid, then. It connects, first with the opening wings of the library as they emerge from the rank miasma suffusing the back room into the public collection space proper; then with Alice's profile. Her chosen profile, new and different. Not her own.



By now the Toreador has pulled her hood back up over the gleaming crown of her head, settling dark shadows over the sharp cast of her features. The gray is softer than the crowding darkness that lurks in the stacks, full of aging soft and moldering pages, that dry-paper-smell of old books, old glue, old leather softening together, beginning its slow, storied collapse in upon itself. She walks with her hands in the pockets of her jacket, her well-turned mouth stretched into a line of flat distaste.



"Books require wooden shelves. Rolling ladders attached to frames on the walls, deeply set leather furniture and wide, solid desks. Those brass lamps with green glass hoods, and a pair of wide windows near the front - oh, look! a card catalogue. - " she offers the aside in passing, running her thumb along top of the rusting green metal frame, " - incising the afternoon sun in distinct wedges along the deep pile carpet, down the gleaming wooden floors.



"So that the dust dances in the sun."




The map room is locked and secured; the handle gives a distinctive click-click-click as she reaches out to test it. There is a dusty window they could break, but instead Luce pulls a set of keys with a splintered wooden key fob that says MAP ROOM from her left pocket.



She flashes a brief and brilliant smile; it scribes a certain brilliance across the stark lines of her heart-shaped face. And too: it shows her teeth. Alas, voyeurs, these are still dull and human. Just white enough to gleam.



"I'm looking for the historical ones. Neighborhoods. Detailed as they come. Maybe every fifteen years. Or Twenty-five? Enough to see the city, and see how it changed. There's an All Night Prime Copy Plus that does blueprints three blocks away."

Alice

Alice regards the dark and hushed library, her head tilted just so. She is listening, you see. She is listening to the skitter of rat-nails against pipes, she is listening to what the pipes are saying, she is listening to the fzz, fzz of a fraying electrical wire, and she tilts her head back so she can regard the eaves, a sleeping pigeon which has got in somehow or the other, feathers rustling, hushing, and then she turns her head sharply to the other side, staring hard toward the backdoor, attention fixed and unmoving. After a moment: she turns on her heel, rejoins the Toreador in time to be witness to the revelation of the key (a philosophical treatise by Mme -- ).

"Hmm." Noncommittal, this sound. Lovely, of course - but noncommittal. "It's difficult to trust maps; they've been drawn by somebody thinking about something. Especially the older ones. There is a house that isn't on any map because the man -- I forget his name. His wife left him for the man who lived in that house." Alice smiles, and the sun-burned, gold-and-freckled Spaniard's (half-blood's) face echoes it: a pouty sort've smile that isn't hers.

Then she sets to work with a will, walking her fingers across drawers until she finds what she thinks she wants. Alice is finicky, counting carefully before she drags out some maps, arraying them on a desk the maproom is thoughtfully provided with.

"Tell me, why San Francisco - now? Is it in the maps?"

Luce

"No," that's easy, turning back, glancing up. Inside the library, she transferred the flashlight from mouth to pocket and they have been followed by a moon - a yellow one - gliding over the dropped ceiling in the ugly little warren of backrooms, gleaming high in the stacks when they reached the main floor. Now she has shifted it back to her mouth, and speaks around it again, teeth closed over the metal.

There is enough light from the foyer - that bleary gleam of yellow light - filtering through the dusty stacks and the dustier window to illuminate the map room, but sometimes one needs precision. [i]This[/i] year and not the next. " - it's not the maps. I'd want these anyplace I planned to stay for more than a couple months. Sometimes I'm looking for the absences, sometimes, as much as the presences?

"Sometimes it's clusters. Clusters of crimes or clusters of names or - well. Or what's been where. How it's changed." She murmurs this as she, too, works. Identifying dates, checking them off against some list in her head. Pulling out precise, dusty streetmaps that have not been touched in years, adding these to the nest slowly forming on the pair of metal desks in the center of the room.

And then stops. Turns, briefly, the arc of her flashlight crawling over the wall above Alice's head, then dropping as she pulls it out of her mouth.

"Why San Francisco? Believe it or not, - and just between us - a dead fleshcrafter and a 1963 estate auction bring me here. Just now." And she laughs, low, not so musical as Alice's dulcet tones.

"What brought you back?"

She was in Paris, once.

The City of Lights, bright enough, sometimes, that you could pretend to forget you had lost the sun.

Alice

Alice pauses when the flashlight touches the wall above her head. Tinkerbell, the original, looking as if she needs to be clapped back to life. Or something for young boy's to giggle over in the dark. Hey, hey. What does that look like to you? YOU know. So say it. No, you say it. He he he.

The flashlight touches the wall above her head; Alice pauses. The light is Tinkerbell, the original, but in dire need of some clapping back to life. The light is a mildly titillating shape for boys to giggle over in the dark. What does it look like. He He He. You say it. No, you. Her eyes close, briefly, and she casually reaches back to grasp her ankle, a living gesture, to pull on it, stretch her hamstrings, whatever. The pen is doing its job, holding her hair out of her face, and she has acquired a marker from the top of one of the filing cabinets in the MAP ROOM, taps ita gainst her thigh. Her eyes are bright with interest when Luce gives her reason for San Francisco, San Francisco Now. "Things belonging to the fleshcrafter or one of its minions, once? Or things said creature was interested in?"

Her expression is thoughtful and still. Her true face is still hidden, but Luce might perhaps imagine it so: cameo-still, etched stark against the dark of the map room -- the dingy walls and dented metal cabinets. The heavy age-blackened chairs. "I always grow sick of the Old World; it began to curdle my blood - " Alice says, offhand. There is a needle hidden in her voice -- something carelessly let fall. There is a grin in her voice, too: something that straddles the boundary between simmeringly bright and dark with vibrance. Her questions never sound as if they're rhetorical. " - and where is the world newer than California? This mad nation. God help me, I find it interesting to see. Is this the land Caine walked out've first or the place he visits last?"

"And Pascal likes this city;" she can't quite - or doesn't feel like it's necessary to - quell a frown; a crease of forehead. "Or did. I should tell you the climate has shifted again."

Alice

The flashlight touches the wall above her head; Alice pauses. The light is Tinkerbell, the original, but in dire need of some clapping back to life. The light is a mildly titillating shape for boys to giggle over in the dark. What does it look like. He He He. You say it. No, you. Her eyes close, briefly, and she casually reaches back to grasp her ankle, a living gesture, to pull on it, stretch her hamstrings, whatever. The pen is doing its job, holding her hair out of her face, and she has acquired a marker from the top of one of the filing cabinets in the MAP ROOM, taps ita gainst her thigh. Her eyes are bright with interest when Luce gives her reason for San Francisco, San Francisco Now. "Things belonging to the fleshcrafter or one of its minions, once? Or things said creature was interested in?"

Her expression is thoughtful and still. Her true face is still hidden, but Luce might perhaps imagine it so: cameo-still, etched stark against the dark of the map room -- the dingy walls and dented metal cabinets. The heavy age-blackened chairs. "I always grow sick of the Old World; it began to curdle my blood - " Alice says, offhand. There is a needle hidden in her voice -- something carelessly let fall. There is a grin in her voice, too: something that straddles the boundary between simmeringly bright and dark with vibrance. " - and where is the world newer than California? This mad nation. God help me, I find it interesting to see. Is this the land Caine walked out've first or the place he visits last?"

Alice

ooc: 0_0

Alice

The flashlight touches the wall above her head; Alice pauses. The light is Tinkerbell, the original, but in dire need of some clapping back to life. The light is a mildly titillating shape for boys to giggle over in the dark. What does it look like. He He He. You say it. No, you. Her eyes close, briefly, and she casually reaches back to grasp her ankle, a living gesture, to pull on it, stretch her hamstrings, whatever. The pen is doing its job, holding her hair out of her face, and she has acquired a marker from the top of one of the filing cabinets in the MAP ROOM, taps ita gainst her thigh. Her eyes are bright with interest when Luce gives her reason for San Francisco, San Francisco Now. "Things belonging to the fleshcrafter or one of its minions, once? Or things said creature was interested in?"

Her expression is thoughtful and still. Her true face is still hidden, but Luce might perhaps imagine it so: cameo-still, etched stark against the dark of the map room -- the dingy walls and dented metal cabinets. The heavy age-blackened chairs. "I always grow sick of the Old World; it began to curdle my blood - " Alice says, offhand. There is a needle hidden in her voice -- something carelessly let fall. There is a grin in her voice, too: something that straddles the boundary between simmeringly bright and dark with vibrance. " - and where is the world newer than California? This mad nation. God help me, I find it interesting to see. Is this the land Caine walked out've first or the place he visits last?"

"And Pascal likes this city;" she can't quite - or doesn't feel like it's necessary to - quell a frown; a crease of forehead. "Or did. I should tell you the climate has shifted again."

Luce

"Things it found interesting," returns Luce, pupils huge in the darkness, devouring the clear light of her eyes, where the ambient glow catches across the vitreous humor, makes them shine. "It made laborious notes, counting lot numbers, volumes, sales prices. Combing probate records and newspaper clippings for this: Five lots. Fifty books, missing Out of ten thousand sold in a long-forgotten auction of someone's life's collection. Either he was an heir cheated out of an extra thousand dollars, or - "

but the or is left with an unfinished shrug. Or this. Or: a vampire travels across the vastness of the country, lodges herself in all these make-shift cities with strange names, ringed by the same mad sprawl, populated by the same sad nightcreatures, wormed through with the same sad enemies, drives long down the arterial highways, hides the day sleeping in the truck of her car, the carefully shuttered, locked, barred and battened bathroom of a cheap hotel, all these indignities for this.

" - there's something there. I'll find out which."

Then, then she makes a noise, something like recognition. The [i]Old World[/i] and curdling blood. As a girl she'd dreamed of Paris. London, even during the worst days of the blitz, even with the Nazis marching down the Champs-Elysées. When de Sausanne suggested she return to the land of her birth, though, she was ready to go.

And she would share that, see - lift her voice, twine recognition around Alice's offhand responses, eyes and ears sharp, listening for the groove into which the needle that spikes through her liquid voice falls.

Except - [i]the climate has shited again[/i] - Luce stills, lifts her head, chin first, dilated eyes flashing back to touch Alice's face. Her eyes. "What do you mean?"

See: she is quiet. Expectant. Serious - what strange war has she walked into? - eyes open.

Alice

This will likely not be the last time Alice inquires into the lot numbers, volume, sales prices, the sale of something potentially interesting, something potentially false lead down a dark road where a trap is waiting to close, something potentially illuminating, a curiousity. Alice claims that she finds the New World interesting, and is not the New World a place where the Curiousity Show, the travelling Carnival of Curiousities, found itself a strong, thick root and branched out through the public psyche? Isn't this the birthplace of the X-Files, of a curiousity that thrives of improbability? But for now, the Malkavian does not pursue. She makes a thoughtful sound in the back of her throat and lets it lie.

This is a thing. That people communicate with noises that don't quite shape themselves into words sometimes. This is something the writer's forget, the artists can never quite capture. The language of posture, the language of noise that is not language.

Alice doesn't answer immediately. The girl -- she looks like a girl now; she always looks like a girl, like someone who'd be carded by some bartenders, just because she could pass for a highschooler depending on the makeup, regardless of how old she was when she, regardless of how old she is now that she -- gazes off into the distance. Easily distracted, or just - listening again: listening for the sound of a heartbeat. Listening for the telltale echo of a palm against floor. Listening for a stirring, for a movement, for the skitter of a rat too nearby, beady eyes spying, chewed-up ears listening, listening. Alice's sire is paranoid. Alice is not paranoid. Alice is cautious: but how often does it look like the same thing?

She inhales, because she has let that become habitual. Easy to pretend to bad habits when those habits are actually yours. And then she says, "Well." A pause. Alice can be brutally frank. "To be brutally frank," and her mouth smirks, but her eyes do not bother to echo the pretty curve:

"I mean that things are not well here. You have heard, I think, of the starry lady's obsession with the lupines; a war, some years back, which drove them up and out? That constellation set; others rose. But now that first: it is rising again -- you see?"

Less prettily -- and lowly: "There was an emergency meeting called in Elysium; blood was spilled. Don't count that building safe when you visit; the foundation is a rotten; step lightly."

Luce

"Rumors." She admits to: of the starry lady's obsession with the changing-wolves. "Threads of rumors. They seemed like tall tales, something out of the Old West. The Magnificent Ambersons. True Grit, see? How the West was Won." Unwise to discount them, says her mouth, silently, pulling thinly across her teeth, distorting the perfect little curve of it, the supple twist at the corners.

"I am disappointed to find that too little was made of them, rather than too much." Luce breathes too; this habit of being in the same space of their prey. The wolf sliding among the sheep, see, wearing every inch of their skin. Dropping its muzzle to the grass now and then. And this is why she smokes: to remember the rhythm of it, breathing. "Though perhaps not surprised. Thank you." And that last, see, listen: it is heartfelt. It lingers in her throat.

"I wrote before I arrived. Sent one of the letters de Sausanne gave me. The Madame letter rather than the Monsieur, you see. She told me that the train would be safe as houses, if I needed transportation. So perhaps it should be considered safe as Elysium. An institution with the same foundation."

And then: a lilt of her pale head, a sweep of her pale hands. The maps piled in the center of the metal desks. "But I think we have a start, here. If you come with me to the copy place, I can drop you someplace, after. The car I have now - " here she pauses, inhales a cloud of dust, " - it's a convertible. No roof; open to the night. Fucking brilliant ride."

A beat; a minute movement of her narrow shoulders.

"Except when it rains," and a noise like swallowed laughter in the back of her throat. " - the roof-thing that folds away does not fold back up."