Bonding.

Luce

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tara

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

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

Nothing canned.

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

----

They drive.

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

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

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

Luce

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

"So I do, too."

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

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

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

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

Tara

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

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

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

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

Luce

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

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

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

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

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

Tara

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

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

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

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

She exhales.

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

Luce

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

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

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

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

Tara

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

Luce

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

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

Tara

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

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

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

Luce

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

"Not yet."

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

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

--

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

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

Which feels - familiar, somehow.

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

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

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

Clockwork

Tick Tock

A chill was in the air, the kine were huddled in there layers hastily walking home from work, a quiet drink with a friend or that affair that has been going on for six months with little too no guilt. As night descended humanity moved towards the parts of San Francisco that held the lights and the masses, seeking the knowledge they were more protected as part of the pack.

Most business close before night truly takes hold leaving Luce with very few option regarding her book lore. Sure major chains stay open much later than night fall, but much like cheap retail stores that fill their racks with clothes from sweat shops over in Asia [the only art found in such stores would be the depression and desperation that is locked in each thread sprinkled with a Childs tear]. But the good places, the old places were hard to find and even harder to keep open.

Luce has been in San Francisco for perhaps a month and she would have to wait another until this store opened late enough for her to visit. Simply called "Hidden Gems" the book store does not have a very long history. Founded in 1950 the establishment has been trading in books and other tit bits for over 60 years. A Family business never leaving the hands of a blood relative it was currently run by a man called Simon Wallace. The great grandson of the founder George Wallace. Once a month on a Tuesday they stayed open till 9pm. It was a tradition set down by his father, the sailors of the time that would visit San Francisco ports usually left on a Wednesday morning so Tuesday was there last night to make arrangements on land. There were two types of Sailors, fuckers and readers. On the last night he tailored to the latter, though a few streets down did the former. The building is a simple two storey Victorian number, snuck away down an Alleyway that has seen better days, the only way Luce would know it was there by the aged worn and very worn Pub like sign that is placed at the end of the alleyway. In very faded writing it says "Hi d n Ge " The letters were missing though it was easy to fill in the gaps.

The alley way looked quite bright considering some she has passed, a few pipes further down hummed with steam and other such products creating a foggy atmosphere, very Victorian London.

Luce

The crisp change in the air, and dark-drenched streets, the damp fog. There are few enough leaves swirling about San Francico's streets, but the lengthening night is all she requires of the change of seasons. She will be grateful when daylight savings time ends, bringing her schedule one hour closer to Business Hours of the world at large.

It is somewhere north of 8, perhaps closer to 9 by the time she has crossed the bridge, parked the convertible she is slowly ruining for want of training in how to drive a proper standard shift, and hiked several blocks upward, through the old Victorian village of Lower Pacific Heights, past closed boutiques and dead-eyed antique shops. Past bars and pubs to serve the enclave caught open by the recession somewhere between run down and hip, pausing at the alley's mouth, pale blue eyes flickering over the sign before she starts down the alley.

The Toreador is dressed quietly for the evening. Jeans and buckled leather boots, a t-shirt from the 2001 Take Back the Night march in Tulsa, Oklahoma beneath a gray hoodie and old peacoat, a dusty olive, replete with two marching rows of brass buttons and epaulets that could have come straight from Napolean's uniform. As if she'd ever been in an army. As if such a fair thing could know anything of war.

She is breathing, necessary to the Masquerade, if not to the ordinary function of her body. And she is smoking, exhaling a cloud of dry gray smoke to merge with the London-like fog roiling down the street, which halos the brighter lights with oily rainbows and plays odd tricks on the ear. The cigarette goes sailing end over end to gutter in a convenient puddle. The creature adjusts the messenger bag slung over her narrow frame and heads down the alley, intent on the front door of the Hidden Gem.

The Hi d n Ge. This amuses her. The curve of a small entirely private smile ghosts across her mouth as she pushes open the door.

Tick Tock

The front door was authentic, it was old it was worn and carried with it the look of aged wood, Luce would feel that if she ran her fingers over it, worn smooth from the elements and a constant use up until a few years ago. An old brass door handle greeted her and when she entered an old brass bell rings from over head. The air was dusty, rusty and a little musty, something were just so old they were fading away. The place seems to have no order, books are scattered over desks, bookshelves. Nothing looks new in here. Hung on the end of the bookshelves are other things. Some old World War II medals hang from some string a poor memory to whoever earned them and moved on. An old photograph showing the Golden Gate Bridge hangs up in black and White, the corners coloured brown from poor care, it's aging paper being kept from the suns light it would lose its darkness and be but a white piece.

It seems more like a market than a book store though old worn books were certainly the majority here. Behind the counter is an aging man. Perhaps mid to late forties, the gods had already made him silvered haired though had the good graces to ensure he was balding yet. He had a fleece on that looked worn with age the elbows rubbed down to the fabric with use. Luce could only imagine the ancient trousers he must be wearing behind that counter, or even how cheap his foot wear must be...oh the pure horror. [If she cares for such things, being of the scholarly type she might have hidden appreciation for such geek bookworm].

He looks up, a giant steel ring of keys in his hand. A pair of glasses hang around his neck. "Evening, I was just about to close..." He coughs faintly "I guess I can stay open for ten more minutes, looking for anything in particular." He had grown beyond the age where he looked at women like her like that. Perhaps he was married, perhaps he was gay. Luce was a stunning woman but he doesn't seem to notice.

Tick Tock

[wasn't balding]

Luce

Not every man does look at her like that. Luce's attraction is more sculptural than it is sexual. It lives in the symmetry of her features, the sharp cut of her cheekbones, the high, clear breadth of her brow. And so on. Her tall, narrow figure, which is more attractive to fashion designers than it is to redblooded men. The sort who love the pneumatic attractions of plasticized californians. The sort who want meat on their lover's bones.

Tonight she means to blend, as much as she ever can. She wears no make-up, the hood covers the crown of her head and casts a long shadow over her features. She tosses it back when the shopkeeper addresses her, flashes him the edge of an engaging little grin.

"Surely not so soon? I was sure you were open to nine, tonight." Beneath the layers of clothing, her narrow shoulders shrug upward, expressive of something on the spectrum from surrender to helplessness. Her voice is low, with an accent that sounds faintly, non-specifically foreign to American ears.

"I'm mostly the browsing, know-it-when I see it sort?" Pale eyes cut away from the older man, drifting over the oddlots and assortments of knicknacks and other goods, lingering on the spines of the old books. "Do you have any special collections? San Francisco poets from the 50s and 60s, maybe? The contemporaries of Ginsburg and Ferlingetti who never made it past chapbooks? Or history, if you've a strong collection. Right now I'm particularly interested in the Cathar heresy of the early middle ages and Mazdak the Younger, if you've any studies of the Persian Empire."

Tick Tock

[Lets see if Luce is lucky shall we]

Dice: 1 d10 TN9 (8) ( fail )

Tick Tock

The man looks to the young woman when she comments on the time. She could see the answer on his fact without it being mentioned in words. No one comes here anymore. Then Luce shows she is not just a pretty face, quotes to very different fields of study in but a few breaths. He was intrigued.

The man reaches down and puts on his glasses "It has been a day an age since someone came in that knew a thing or too..." He steps from behind his desk, Luce would note the man has a walking stick and a prosthetic leg as he approaches the woman. His trousers are a dark brown and he has no shoes just a pair of worn [but comfortable slippers]" I believe I might have a copy of the Dabest n-e Maz heb, English-language edition by David Shea and Anthony Troyer. I will tell you that the piece received very little praises as it was considered a flawed piece as the translators were not well versed. The original copy it was translated from..." He holds his walking stick in front of him and taps it on the floor twice as if to restart his cognitive functions. "It escapes me...my father was into theological studies...it may take me some time to dig it out if you were interested?"

Luce

There are three pins straight down the strap of the messenger bag. The topmost says This guitar kills fascists. -- Woody Guthrie. The middle pin is obscured by the curl of her hand over the strap. The bottommost says Dumbledore's Army in Gryffindor colors. Her pale gaze flickers down as he emerges from behind the counter, taking in both the wooden leg and the walking stick silently, then returns to his face.

Another flash of a grin, quick and genuine enough to spark a warmer light in her gaze. She shifts minutely aside to give him room to lead forward. "I would be. I can't claim that I'm an expert, or even an educated amateur. But I'd love to pick it up. Flawed translation or no, you have to start somewhere. Mind if I browse while you search it out? I don't suppose you have any first editions, here, have you? I'm too hard on books, but my grandfather's a collector. If something's in my budget I'll pick him up a surprise from time to time."

Luce

Perception + Alertness

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Tick Tock

"Go ahead, have a look around, I am sure there a first of something in here..." He says with a light hearted chuckle as he moves down the book shelves that formed isles his walking stick making an echo as it hits the wooden floor beneath them as if trying to place where it might be. He disappears from view thought she can still hear him.

Meanwhile in a shop with over a hundred things around her. Luce finds her attentions wandering towards a shelf, high off the floor. It is covered with old clothes, some kind of flag and an old marching drum, leftovers of an era gone by [and it smells like it] but she sees something glint. Whatever was under there was small but it seemed to play with the light as if it was calling out for someone to save it from a dreary existence. At this angle she cannot make it out, was it a ring, a coin?

Luce

"Brilliant," the creature returns, watching his multipartite shadow move against the worn wooden floor, the dusty old counters, the overstuffed shelves. She pauses as he disappears from view, breathing in the familiar scent of dust and paper, leather and slowly disintegrating glue. Cuts a glance back toward the murky little display window, opacified by the glare of the interior lights. There is just her reflection, pale against the darker background of books sinking to an impressionistic obscurity around her.

Shifting the messenger bag from the front of her body to rest against her back hip, she follows a meandering trail through the shop. Haphazard, browsing as she said she would, long fingers running over the dusty spines, the faded gold lettering when that glint of something on the top shelf catches her eye.

She is such a fine thing, there is something bird-like, animal about the intensity of her sudden interest. She trusts her eye, that native instinct, and crosses the store, a cool, thoughtful frown turning the corners of her shapely mouth just downward. That frown lingers in her brow as she reaches upward, peeling away the layers of flag and drum, old uniforms, a sailor's hat if she can reach them, tall and long-limbed as she is. If not, she searches out a stepladder for the same purpose, burrowing through the dross to find the glint of gold.

Tick Tock

She may have to go on her toes but she can reach it, before she can see it and her hands touch it she knows she has found something special. When she brings it out she finds a Clockwork cog. No bigger than a nickel. It fits perfectly in her hand and feels slightly warm to the touch. Her eyes might open and sparkle as she runs a finger over it and Luce can almost hear the pendulum swinging, the gears shifting the chimes of some magnificent master piece of a clock design, made by hand not some production knock off.

The gear looked simple to the eye but her touch showed it's true layers. Thin lines wove around the inside forming into a pattern that eyes couldn't see. It shone, a timeless object in a place out of time. Her other hand may come over it so she can feel it from both sides, the pattern mimicked on the other. Something you need to be told are art and yet something are just art. It might bring a tear to her eye to think what this must have come from, how beautiful it must of be. The chimes, the moon dials, the pendulum swinging. Clocks have been status symbols for years, a grandfather clock was seen as the centre of a house and coming from Europe Luce would know the pain and time that went into making a clock. Years thrown away in the pursuit of tracking the single second of a single day. The artists that made them sometimes went mad from the smallest flaw in their design sent insane from the failure going into oblivion with the sound of the ticking clock they could not finish. She can feel those years now held between her palms, just one very small piece of a much larger design. It must have been beautiful, her mind's eye racing to picture it, to put the gear in place and build the structure around it to imagine it in place.

She wants it, she wants it so very bad

Luce

Tip-toes, then, her feet arching high in the leather boots, stretching to nip the little cog from its nest of dusty detritus. She is considerate enough of store owners - of bookstore owners, at the least - that she intends to push the drum and uniform, the waterfall of an old cotton skirt, all the rest of the hoard back into whatever order they had been in before she disturbed them.

Except that her attention is snagged by the warm feel of the cog in her hand, snared enough that she forgets the almost unconscious rhythm of breathing to which she has trained her dead body, the discipline a predator requires for concealment in plain sight. See: breathless and still, she runs the pad of her thumb over the planes of the pieces, the marks left by the maker, the handwork, the old oily sheen that catches the light in a rainbow patina when she turns it just so. No tears, not precisely, but the mesmerized fascination of a hooded cobra charmed by a song.

If she had a heart to beat, it would be hammering against the cage of her chest. Instead, she is suffused with desire so immediate and unrelenting that she can taste warm blood in the back of her mouth. Unseeing, thoughtless, she turns the piece over in her hand and wanders back toward the front counter, plucking a few volumes at random to add to whatever the shopkeeper finds for her in the back. To justify his once-monthly night hours with a solid sale.

The four or five books are piled on the counter. Impulsive in her distraction, she adds the old drum she pulled down to find the cog. She means to slip the piece back onto the counter with the rest of the things she has selected, but cannot quite put it down. The impulse to trace its history is far too strong.

Luce

Self-control!

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Tick Tock

[Per & Alertness, whats that in your hand]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 8, 8) ( fail )

Tick Tock

She was made breathless, the way she was now. Unmoving save for her fingers over that precious piece. Her hands may wander, like a teenager that wants to buy a pornography magazine she picks up lots of other tit bits and things as if what she really wanted was a sin that she would be looked down on. Or perhaps she would steal it, take it from this place, liberate it surely it wants to be free. She cannot put it down, she wants its secrets.

She doesn't even notice him until he is back in front of her and puts down a worn blue book and his cane is placed at the side of the desk with a 'knock' "Second edition am afraid." He looks to the books she has piled up. His eyes glancing to the spine and none of them in relation to the subject matters she brought up. Still a sale is a sale.

He stands before the un breathing woman that looked like she had passed into another world. He starts inputting prices into the old register, the group of books in front of her don't go over $50 dollars, the Second edition Dabest gets run through at $40, the drum $40 also...

What will he charge for her main piece, $100, $1000, $10,000 right now she pay it or steal it perhaps flee with her supernatural speed, or take him here and now overload him with her presence or just drink him dry. She waits motionless, all organs dead her eyes in wonderment and horror. What if it wasn't for sale, what if it was a prized family piece.

"$130 bucks miss, but I don't have a bag big enough for the drum."

He starts to bag up the bags, he hasn't noticed it, he hasn't stopped her.

Luce

Conscience

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6) ( fail )

Luce

There is a moment where she's poised, alert, watching him as he opens the books, cracks the stiff spines, searches out the prices and writes them up on a bill of sale, or pecks them out on an old-fashioned cash register. Breathless, and still as a wood in cool hour of darkest night when the nightthings have slunk back into their burrows, and even the robins are not yet awaken, to herald the first hint of dawn in the sky.

The moment passes. With a supple twinge that does not quite darken her heart so much as it challenges her, as she palms the unnoticed cog, sliding her pale hands down to shift the bag foward. "Brought my own bag," lifting the bulk of the bag slung across her body with a knee by way of gesture. Reaching down to unlatch the clasps and pull it open. She fishes a smaller clutch from inside, dropping the cog quietly into the bottom of the bag when her hand is conveniently out of sight, fishing out that clutch. Then snaps open the clutch to count out the money, cash, onto the counter.

"Though I suppose - " she concedes, more engaging somehow now that the cog is surely hers. Remembering the subtle piece sof the masquerade. A quick, ironic twist of her mouth. What the hell was she thinking when she picked up the drum? She doesn't run an ironically nostalgic chain restaurant, nor a marching band. "It's a bit too small for the drum. No worries, I'm not parked far. Thanks - " the last as he finishes bagging the books, and she reaches to take the handles, settling the quarter, the quintet of books into the messenger bag.

Then, impulsive, she pulls out a small business card, pushes it toward him over the counter along with the cash. It says, simply, in clear letters,

L. Stillwell.

510-555-8712

"I travel a good bit, so I may not be back to browse for a while, but if you get something interesting in, give me a call?"

Tick Tock

The drum was a bit too much. Desire and want will do that to someone. Even now as she smiles and pulls it all together she feels she has dishonoured the piece by leaving it in the bottom of her bag, it should be on display, no.... it should be turned into a necklace and worn for all to see, for what better to mark the ageless, the timeless than a beautiful bit of mortal time itself. The irony would be most amusing...

She pays him and he stops loading the books into a plastic bag as he takes each one out and places them in her bag. He looks to the drum then back to her. Who knows why she needs the drum there are some crazy kids out there nowadays. She pulls out a business card and he slides up his glasses to look at it as he takes the money and places it in the register. His head tilts to the side "I'll keep an eye out for you, but first editions are hard to find and expensive if I find any I'll be sure to need a deposit first. You understand Miss Stillwell."

He picks back up the walking stick and then takes old of that large ring of keys as he moves to escort the lady from the premises and can finally lock up with a profit for once.

Luce

"I do, of course. And some of them will be beyond my modest means, I've no doubt. Do keep in touch, though? I was lucky to catch you tonight." While he comes around the counter, she closes the old messenger bag, truly heavy with the weight of the books. Heavy enough that the strap digs firmly into her shoulders, cuts across her narrow torso, distorting the logo of that Take Back the Night march t-shirt until it is unreadable, a Rorschach test, purple ink on white cotton, no more.

Her things all packed up, she hefts the drum, mind running quietly on two levels. The pleasantries to be exchanged with the aging shopkeeper, the glowing warmth of the piece at the bottom of her bag. On some level, her obsession with the workings of it clicks against the back of her mind, not a warning but a curiosity. Who was the maker? The Van Gogh of clockwork? Were she still human she would feel her excitement in the physicality of her body. Instead, she just has the racing movement of a nimble mind in the dead and lovely shell.

Ahh, she flashes him a quick, winsome smile, catches sight of their reflections in the dark windows leading to the alley as she shadows him toward the door, remembering the jingle of keys, the quiet music of his feet shuffling across the warm floorboards, making conversation as he lets her out and closes down. "There aren't many real bookstores left. I'll grant you we're lucky to have City Lights in town, but even they have the feel of a Barnes and Nobles, sometimes. Expansive, expensive. Easy to get lost in?

"But sterile, somehow. Curated rather than accumulated, if you know what I mean? Or rather, not even curated. Created by a statistical algorithm in some marketing executive laptop." He lets her out, and she steps out into the dark alley, swinging the awkward frame of the drum through the doorway, tucking it against her narrow hip as she jogs down the front stairs to the pavement. "So keep me in mind, yeah? And thanks for staying open. Ten more minutes."

Tick Tock

He leads her to the door, his steps slower than hers even with that addition weight she is carrying, the bag over her shoulders the drum held in her arms fingers gripped lightly around it. This talks of more elegant times, or a simpler time. He listens to her words he takes his glasses off as an aging hand runs through his silver hair. He could join in this conversation, express what he was told it was like in the roaring 30's, through to the 50's [A time she may have lived anyway?]. But too many words can muddle the meaning, can spoil the impact that a few offer.

"Time is the fire in which we burn.... Good night miss, safe journey." He closes the door behind the nimble woman and she can hear those keys turning the lock pin, once. Then another, and one more. The sign is left out, chained from this angle as it was.

So Luce found herself, with four books she didn't need, a drum set that would most likely break upon any impact that she had no real purpose for unless she wished to join a band. She had one book that was relevant to her and her field of study but all that paled to what was in her bag. It was the piece of a far greater puzzle, such a beautiful taunt to her rose sensibilities.

Luce

Per + Empathy

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 1 )

Tick Tock

[Was it a hidden meaning, or was he just trying to end the conversation to get her out of the shop....coincidence verses cause. In this case Luce would have to state coincidence]

Luce

The books she does not mind. What does not interest her tonight could well interest next year, or ten years on. The drum, though. That earns a another grimace as soon as she's embraced by the alley's shadows. "That's an - " a sharper flicker of her pale gaze across the old man's tired features, like trying to read a primer in a new alphabet in a foreign tongue. Her sharpened attention lingers a half-minute longer than is strictly necessary for the dance of human conversation, for the comfort of human sensbilities, then sheers away. Coincidence. "interesting way of putting it."

She finishes lightly. "Night, and thanks again." Just before the door shuts behind him.

while the heavy brass locks click home in the antique wooden door, she turns and walks back down the alleyway, her gait distorted by the odd burden of the drum, the bag heavy with books against her thigh, thudding with each long stride. The fog around her muffles the sound of her footsteps on pavement, but there's nothing stealthy about her. Just before she reaches the street proper, she stops, pauses, balancing books and drum to search through the depths of the bag and find the cog again. Palming it, she slides her only free hand into the pocket of her coat. Thumb moving meditatively over the piece as she walks the last few blocks to her car, a singular figure, silent except for her footsteps, striding swift down the shadowed street.

Tara

Tara Holly

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

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

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

Eddie Vakoj

"Dickhead."

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

Tara Holly

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

She shoves her hands in her pockets.

Eddie Vakoj

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

Or his bribe. THAT would be really funny.

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

"Here to pick up your last?"

Tara Holly

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

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

Eddie Vakoj

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

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

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

Tara Holly

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

Eddie Vakoj

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

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

Tara Holly

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

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

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

Eddie Vakoj

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

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

Tara Holly

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

No harm in trying, right?

Eddie Vakoj

Blink. Blink blink.

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

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

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

He swallows. Scowls. Then his brows lift.

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

Tara Holly

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

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

Pascal

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

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

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

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

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

Eddie Vakoj

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

"Door!"

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

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

Its still going to take a while to get there.

Luce

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

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

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

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

Tara Holly

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

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

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

Eddie Vakoj

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

Pascal

"Oh, my," Pascal says to Luce.

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

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

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

Eddie Vakoj

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

Luce

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

Luce

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

Luce

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

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

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

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

All luminous concern.

Eddie Vakoj

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

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

Luce

Presence 1: Awe!

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

Eddie Vakoj

((erm, Ignore my last post.))

Pascal

[Sweet Jesus have mercy.]

Eddie Vakoj

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tara Holly

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

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

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

Pascal

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

Luce

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

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

Tara Holly

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

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

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

Pascal

Tom was right.

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

Luce

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

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

Luce

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

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

Pascal

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

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

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

Right?

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

Tara Holly

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

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

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

Luce

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

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

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

Tara Holly

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

Luce

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

Pascal

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

Now he could be anywhere.

[Thanks for the scene, ladies!]

Tara Holly

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

Luce

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

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

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

Blind - Lurkery

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

Luce

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

Blind - Lurkery

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

Luce

hopefully soon! thanks for understanding. :)

Tara Holly

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

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

Eddie [unfinished]

Lucy Stillwell

The call comes late. Maybe he's at a bar, mouth full of Scotch. Maybe he's regretting last night's indulgence and is home, responsibly early, mouth full of toothpaste. So - late, well past business hours, well past sunset, the evening news scrolls by, muted, as someone flashes a white-toothed smile - "Eddie?" His Captain, annoyed by the fuckery of someone interrupting his own evening. Which, the background noise suggests, is taking place in a blues and jazz venue, probably someplace thoughtlessly trendy. San Fran-fucking-cisco.

"Got a hit on one of your guys. Piotrowski. Give this sad fuck a call." Or not, his tone implies. No skin off the Captain's ass.

Now, Piotrowski isn't just a person of interest. He's not just a special target. He's Eddie's newest CI, maybe. They are still mid-courtship, far as Eddie can tell. But behind that flat façade of Slavic imperviousness Piotrowski showed the world beat the heart of a green-gilled coward, and all Eddie needed to do to start turning him from shithead into shithead informant was make him fear the cops and the prison system more than he feared his compatriots. He was promising, a dark, narrow little window into the hidden guts of his organization - Italian, mostly, for all that he himself was a Pole.

Promising, and now past tense.

The 'sad fuck,' you see, is a homicide detective with the Oakland PD, which may well be the second-worst job in the greater SF metropolitan area. And he has the corpse of Eddie's 'person of interest,' his brand spanking new CI "strung up," he says, then goes quiet. "Well, you have to see it." Interdepartmental consult. Metro Crime Task Force. They've already got approval for the overtime if Eddie wants to buy in, bring his knowledge of the deceased to the table.

He's given an address in industrial, sad-sack Oakland. Crime scene processing's just started. "The more the merrier," says dry-voiced Detective Omar Washington. "Got to see this to believe it. But word to the wise. No fucking press."

Eddie Vakoj

Its that hour of the day- wait... night. Its night... (a glance out the window confirms this) when pieces of the lean detective began to feel disjointed. His mouth would go numb. Fingers dance across the bar- through a ring of moisture there perhaps- or his legs to a tune he can't hear. He purses tingling lips, scowling slightly as he listens to the gravel and whisky voice of the man on the other end of the phone.

"Yeah. Sure thing- thanks for the head's up." beep.

Work. Thank god. The endocrine song courses through his veins. Waking him up and lifting the corners of his mouth. These days it seems the only thing that ever really perks him up. Well... that waitress he'd slowly been trying for- Lucy? Suzy? Something with a 'y'. SHE would have perked him up. An hour into the attempt he'd found himself convinced she was a lesbian and gave up.

Funny how they're all lesbians these days.

He chuckles to himself, a dark mutter of humor as he stands on the bar rail and whistles at the bartender.

"Barry! Yeah. What? WHAT?" He rolls his eyes. "YEAH yeah.. you're not a dog. So quit being a bitch and lemme at your phone already. Yeah its local."

Barry's a bit irritated. Not much. Just enough that Eddie makes sure he sees the ten slide into the tip jar. A sullen glare at the man as Barry brings the bar phone over. Ed's hands are fast. Clever. They're through dialing the number before he thinks to recheck it.

Nevermind. Some people just got it. Ring Ring.

"Pick up you shitbag..."

Lucy Stillwell

"Washington." The other end of the line. The man's voice is crisp and dark and dry. Behind him, the suggestion of motion. Other voices, the usual movements of a crime scene. "Oakland homicide."

Definitely the second-worst job in the greater SF metro area. No one's sure, yet, what the worst might be.

Eddie Vakoj

"Vakoj. Captain Erickson says you've got a dumb Pol-lack joke you want to talk about. You want the file or a face to face?"

Months of work. That's what he's thinking about. Months of stroking that fucker's ego then bursting it again. Over and over and over.. even the threats had gotten tired and finally, finally he was getting somewhere. Nailing Piotrowski down. Guy wasn't all bad. Just kinda hollow. No guts. Just right for Eddie's purposes, as it happens. And now he's dead.

The drive helps to cool his frustration a bit. He'd scuffed his knuckles a few minutes into the drive to Oakland- taking the privacy afforded by the drive to engage in some childish behavior and punching his dashboard. After that brief impact, he'd spent most of the rest of the time talking to Susan. It was a habit that had come out of the shreds of a twelve year marriage, and it was hard to break. Her ghost was every bit the wise ass the reality of the woman was.

No press- just like Washington had said. One dark blue Lexus with the trimmings and nothing else.

Lucy Stillwell

Face to face.

Face to face to face. That's what Washington wants. You gotta see this guy. He says. Tell me you can give me something.

The neighborhood's one of the rundown industrial districts of West Oakland, near the foot of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, in the broad flatlands. The buildings here are early to mid-century, the last century. There have been a half-dozen attempts to revive the old war-time industrial core that sent Oakland's minority population skyrocketing. Mostly, they've failed. Urban renewel is some kinda sick joke, on streets like these. So these are dark, dim roads fronted by red-brick factories and warehouses, the odd commerical building, the occasional attempt at gentrification, or public housing, or what the hell, in varying stages of repair, punctuated by the odd half-finished, mostly forgotten mural.

He has to park a couple blocks away from the address itself, only because uniforms have the streets approaching the crime scene blocked off. Locals - and gods only know where they came from - linger at the yellow sawhorses, testing the boundaries. Nevermind the hour, some are kids no older than ten or twelve. Some are twenty-year old mothers, heads full of curlers, going on forty-three. Something about curlers and house shoes and house coats gives them a timelessness, caught forever in a once and future middle-age.

The uniforms are still establishing that perimeter, sharing out gossip, chasing down the kids who try to get closer, but they let him through, easy. when he gets close, he can see why they're keeping the public away.

Czeslaw ("Chess") Piotrowski is upside down, naked, lashed to a makeshift upside down cross by means of a heavy duty outdoor extension cord - bright orange - wrapped around his feet and ankles. Darker lashings at waist, neck and wrist are similar - dark green, though. Made to disappear against the landscape. The cord at the right wrist has come loose, and his right arm flops sideways, waving in blank surrender.

He has been hung out of the second or third story of an old warehouse. Various official looking figures are clustered around the shattered window casing through which the whole ugly tableau was suspended (by a heavy duty chain). Others mill about below, boots crunching on glittering shards of shattered glass. No blood. No guts, just glass glinting like fractured diamonds underfoot.

--

As soon as Eddie identifies himself, he's directed to Det. Omar Washington. Inside, upstairs.

Eddie Vakoj

He follows all the normal steps. Flash badge here. Get directed there. Bright eyed. Alert. Giving the trip from car to scene the same tireless pace he always has. Grim. Earnest. The ground eating pace of a coyote hound that just knows his prey won't get away as long as he covers ground without wearing himself out.

Its when he's given that last direction. Up the stairs, inside... that he begins to deviate from protocols. The idea is this: One gets directions, says something trite in reference to the body, follows directions. In that order. Generally, with that sort of brevity.

This though. This is goddamn wild. The tall, angular detective nods absently to the officer that directs him, and stares up at the lifeless husk of his CI. Slowly his head tilts to the side. A dog puzzling at something. Then his eyes travel with fevered zeal between the body and the ground. He stares into the thousand reflections of the crucified Pole mirrored in tiny bits on the ground.

Green, the arm wrappings. They fit into the background... maybe more cable. Maybe coincidence.

His boots make clipped, morbidly eager sounds on the stairs as he travels up.

"Washington? Vakoj." A handshake, and two names a world apart from each other.

Eddie Vakoj

He has to clench his hands hard to keep from rushing straight to the windowsill. Did the chain scrape? Does the sill show signs of weight dragging against it? His palms want to taste that ground, he wants to study every bit of grit and industrial absenteeism the scene has to offer. He wants to know about the cross and the green arm ties and he wants to start and WIN-

Instead he's smirking and greeting. Giving introductions. Acting like the other people present aren't just sorta in his way, really.

It will be entire minutes before he begins to sweat. Before the eager, hunting creature that lives between cynicism and a forgotten race in the back of his head starts to rear its head.

Lucy Stillwell

Inside: that's where the crime scene is. One tech is struggling to get floodlights working, another is cataloging blood spatter, while a third works fingerprints. And holy hell, there is a lot of blood. Black pools like oil slicks gleaming from depressions in the worn concrete floor. A long, narrow trickle circling off toward a central drain. Spattered stains on a pair of big plastic paint buckets.

Detective Washington is a big, bluff African-American with a eyes like a mournful puppydog, chewing a mouthful of Nicorette as he circles the interior with a camera, taking careful pictures of the words scrawled around the room, in the victim's blood, again and again and again and again.

Pater noster,

qui es in inferno,

sanctificetur manu tua.

Sanctificetur manu tua.

Sanctificetur manu tua.

"Sick shit, isn't it?" says Washington. He has a pen in his mouth, in addition to all that gum, and he treats it like a cigarette when he finishes photographing the blood-writing, handing off the camera back to the tech tracking down every stray drop of blood. Reaching to shake Eddie's hand. "Your guy must've had some enemies."

Except he didn't. None that Eddie knew. Or rather, he had enemies. He had cap in the back of the head, beat-down, knife in the back enemies. He had enemies willing to murder him, enemies willing to put him on display, even. They all do, even Eddie.

But he did not have enemies willing to commit such goddamned blasphemy, upside down crosses and blood-writing and - sick shit as Detective Washington put it so eloquently. Even the Mexican cartels, the Russians, they murder on Saturday, go to church on Sunday.

Eddie Vakoj

Eddie's eyes barely stop skittering like hungry spiders across the scene. A glance to Washington. An itch between his fingers where a long, thin cigar should go.

-Then back to the scene. Wanting and relentless. Long fingers- powerful from hours and hours and hours at the gun range and supple from the sort of sleazy affectations the low- brow interpret as 'style' writhe against each other as people move about and do their jobs. They could step on something. They could move something that inch that means everything. He always gets that feeling. Breathes a certain way to overcome it.

Eddie's lips part slightly as he begins to speak, then pats his phone into his hand to take pictures of his own. Then-

"Well yeah, sure... but they're the sorta enemies that get teary eyed at their daughter's confirmation, you know? This is...."

Then he's distracted. Wait, no. Not distracted. Focused. Really, he's a bit eerie. Eddie's fame is widespread, if local. A laundry list of offences that may or may not be true... and a very, very high number of solved cases. For a few moments, its almost as though Washington were not there.

(Per+Intuition, Per spec: small details+ wp. wp justification- interfering with something he wanted.)

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Lucy Stillwell

They're waiting for some sort of crane to get the body down, without further disturbance, but Eddie can get a look at him, from the window frame, or through available binoculars.

There's evidence of superficial torture. Fingernails pulled from their beds. Branded skin, crushed fingers, all survivable. Cause of death: exsanguination. Someone cut both femoral arteries, at the groin, let Piotrowski bleed out like a stuck pig. Collected the blood in a few plastic buckets as if they were milking a damned cow, then started finger painting on the wall.

Blood's everywhere and the place stinks of it. Blood and piss and shit. The ME can tell them just where the poor bastard died, as that's where he soiled himself. And so on.

There are no witnesses beyond the poor, freaked bastard who found the body, the locals who came out before the cops showed. No obvious suspects, despite Piotrowski's ties to organized crime. At least the techs are having a field day, turning up a good half-dozen partial fingerprints, one of which is bound to be solid enough for analysis.

Everybody assumes there's some psychokiller at work here. The (anti-)religious imagery. The blood on the walls. Someone mentions those infants who were exsanguinated, tossed into a Cathedral in SF last week.

But what Eddie notices, more than most, is how methodical the scene seems, beneath the grotesque trappings. Maybe the killer showed some exuberance in the torture, but the letters - Italian, Latin, something - on the wall are painted, repeated, clearly and broadly, in a shallow, practiced hand everyone can read.

Eddie Vakoj

"...organized."

Yes. Organized. Religious and nuts goes together like the vodka and tonic he'd been staring into after the sixth or seventh time Suzy or Lucy or whoever had rebuffed him- but Religious and organized? That's not so common a trait among the 'paint the walls in blood' crowd.

For now though, Eddie knows the crucial part is staying out of the way- for all that his gut reaction is possessiveness. Its MY crime scene, and so on. Those minor details everyone else is collecting will be critical. So- while he remains out of their way for the most part, he can't leave- can't leave, without knowing what the green ties on the stiff's arms are, and whether the windowsill shows any signs of stress or pressure. If he had been dropped from the window, someone might have heard something.

Lucy Stillwell

The killer was rather more organized than the Oakland PD. Even with the overtime endorsement, it takes the ME and Company a solid hour to finally appropriate - not a crane, in the end, but one of those pneumatic scaffolds that window washers and contractors use, for detailed work at heights.

There's not much for Eddie to do in the interim, except stand around and glower at the techs contaminating the scene even as they work it, while Washington's lieutenant just wants to talk shop. Somewhere in the middle of the blood and guts, the talk turns to budget cuts. Pension woes. Shrinking salaries. Last year's unpaid furloughs, and the looming threat of more of the same, this year.

In the interim, Eddie gets a good look at the window sill. The shattered frame, gouges on the inside where the murder tried to pry the casing away from the worn brick. Crumbled mortar on the ground, too, and a few scintillating shards of glass on the ground - one or two of which seem to have some blood trace on them. There's stress on the frame from the dropped body; wounds, close up, Eddie sees, when they finally get the poor bastard down, that look like the killer tried to nail him to the frame of the cross three or four brutal, pointless times, before settling for extension cords and -

- the green around wrists and neck, the split remnants of an old, ragged hose, bound by florists' paper-covered wire.

Eddie Vakoj

Shop talk. There's a dude-

-and Eddie's eyes swing to the crucified man, then back to the lieutenant-

right out there hanging from a fuck me cross, and High Latin writing- in the man's blood- all over the walls... and this boring grunt wants to talk about his pension. His budget cuts.

Eddie gets tired of it after a few seconds. Truth be told, he never even offered a pretense of being involved in the conversation in the first place. Some folks are just that boring. Cut some of the gleam from some new puzzle- from the pursuit of some faceless new thing dressed like a human, and paste a bit of the ordinary in order to fill the gaps. To look at a problem and see some piece they recognize.

He spends an hour squatting on his heels. Long hands dangling. Eyes shining. Taken, completely, with this.

He gives a fuck about his pension. He pads his retirement fund with bribes.

L. Stillwell

Last post:

Shop talk. There's a dude-

-and Eddie's eyes swing to the crucified man, then back to the lieutenant-

right out there hanging from a fuck me cross, and High Latin writing- in the man's blood- all over the walls... and this boring grunt wants to talk about his pension. His budget cuts.

Eddie gets tired of it after a few seconds. Truth be told, he never even offered a pretense of being involved in the conversation in the first place. Some folks are just that boring. Cut some of the gleam from some new puzzle- from the pursuit of some faceless new thing dressed like a human, and paste a bit of the ordinary in order to fill the gaps. To look at a problem and see some piece they recognize.

He spends an hour squatting on his heels. Long hands dangling. Eyes shining. Taken, completely, with this.

He gives a fuck about his pension. He pads his retirement fund with bribes.

L. Stillwell

This is an Oakland case, said Washington's lieutenant. This big, florid man interested in funding and pensions and overtime. But we want you on it as secondary. Won't even have to do any work. Keep your reports reasonable and I'll sign any overtime slips you have.

Later, and privately, Washington offers Eddie an oblique apology. An explanation: the boss wants Eddie on board so they can leverage federal metro task-force monies to cover overtime the city won't pay any more. I don't intend, Washington assures him before the night is over, to cut you out. We get the results from the labs and the coroner, I'll give you a shout.

It takes them a couple of hours to get the corpse lowered, photographed, and tucked neatly into the body bag, black to hide the blood. Still, no one has managed to translate the blood-written saying on the goddamned walls as much more than a "fucked up Our Father shit." (Our Father, who Farts in Heaven someone guffaws underneath his breath.)

They'll keep that quiet, though. No need to panic the community. No need to get the media on their collective asses. And anyway, they'll need some way to rule out the crackpots who will inevitably crawl out of the woodwork and claim this as their handicut. What the fuck did you write on the walls? seems as good as any other, and better than most.

The techs have collected fingerprints, blood evidence. Trace. It's time to let the system work.

---

So later: dark, the still hours after midnight now and the uniforms are still blocking off the approaches to the crime scene, leaning against their cruisers, manning the near-pointless barricades. The gawkers left are mostly the homeless who usually crash on this block, who were rousted from their nests of crumbled newspapers and filthy blankets, from their evening libations of alcoholic mouthwash, a dollar a bottle at the seedy dollar store whose half-lit neon sign Vakoj can see from a block away.

He turns the sharp corner on the quiet street, heads down the last half-block to the place he was forced to park the Lexus. The dull glimmer of the uniforms' cruiser lights wash bright off the dull brick buildings opposite him, but there's no clear line of sight from there to here.

The street is deserted.

And except for the rangy adolescent boy - hoodie up to conceal face and hair, forearms braced on his thighs, shoulders slumped forward,in that boneless insoucience kids have - except for that kid sitting on the hood, his Lexus is unmolested.

Eddie Vakoj

Eddie had gone through the motions. Plastered that fake-as-hell 'Yes I understand Lieutenant, You aren't a pasty douchebag Lieutenant, I really do wish I could be you, Lieutenant, Yes, you are just 'big boned', Lieutenant'- face on and waited for the department drone to buzz off. All the while holding Father Martin at St. Luke's Cathedral on hold- having paused in the middle of a question and answer session about this or that word on the wall. No intention at all of stepping like an elephant all over this case. None at all.

Fuck but he hates those... anyone who could stand in a room like this, teetering on the edge of sanity as it was, and be that bland surely came from the anus of Hell itself. Just to swallow some of Eddie's time.

Washington he gets a bit more sincere with. Not from trust. Trust isn't Eddie's way. Hasn't been in a long time. Its really just leverage. Washington is from another department. Street guy, like himself. He's not likely to have leverage.

He's tired. Retinas burning by the time the soles of his snakeskin boots click their way down the sidewalk to his car. He's alert, is Eddie. Always paying attention. After noticing the kid on his car he doesn't even slow down. No hitch in his step. No flicker of 'hey- that's mine!' he simply tools down the street.

Long, cable- strong fingers flicker in a cunning, often repeated dance: Cigarette-lighter-pack and lighter back in pocket as he takes the first drag- snap cig between two fingers- and the dance ends.

Only when he reaches the car- is close enough to get a better look at the kid. Note tell- tale weapon bulges- does he actually let on that its his car.

Tendrils of smoke leap from his lips as he whistles between his teeth and hooks a thumb over his shoulder. (off) The thumb says.

With his other hand he withdraws his keys.. but the motion is slightly slow. Taking advantage of the fact that his hand is closer to the baton at one hip the longer it takes for him to take the keys out. Eddie's getting older. That means slower. That means he thinks ahead to keep up with the young.

"Live around here?" Mild.

Eddie Vakoj

(Perception+alertness, perception spec: details)

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( fail )

L. Stillwell

He walks slowly down the street. Makes no moves to identify himself as the owner of the car, studies the slope-shouldered kid from a distance and sees nothing to suggest any weapons, no immediate, obvious threat.

It's quiet now. There's traffic in the middle distance, the sound of the officers at the barrier bantering back and forth, though that's slow now. Lazy, tired. Too late for this shit one of them tells the other, voice echoing softly against the bricks, mostly background noise here. He can hear the hum of the streetlamp on the opposite corner, the dull song of some crickets, all the sounds dampened by the cool fog rolling off the bay.

And as he walks up, the kid glances over, down the street. The hint of a pale profile, at once sharply defined and finely made, against the soft give of the gray knit hood. Just the sweep of a cheek, the gleam of an eye, the lift of a pale brow is enough to tell him both: not a boy and not a kid.

Live around here? he asks, mild, hand still close to his baton, reaching for his keys.

"Not far, actually." She gives him a rather more direct look then, she slips from the car's hood. She's so thin, so slight it barely moves, but she is as tall as he might've estimated from a distance - an inch or two or three shy of six feet. As her feet hit the sidewalk, she bends down to scoop up the strap of a messenger bag up from the ground, lifts it carelessly over her head, and settles it over her body so that the strap bisects her chest and the bag hits her at the narrow hip.

Her clothes are dark, but not unrelentingly black. A fitted olive jacket, unbuttoned, over a heathered gray hooded cardigan, half-fastened, over a t-shirt from some Take Back the Night march somewhere in the midwest. And jeans. And well-laced black leather boots. Ordinary.

Except: he'll notice the details. The gray hoodie is not cheap cotton jersey sweatshirt, but a fine gaunged silk-cashmere blend sweater. The boots are lambskin. "I have a studio a few blocks away. Do you have a minute - " a brief flicker of pale eyes to his hands, the baton. Something at his flank. Then back to his face. Her fine mouth quirks. " - or three, detective?"

She breathes out. Adds, as nearly an after thought, "I promise I'm not a reporter."

L. Stillwell

Per + Empathy

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Eddie Vakoj

"Not a reporter..." He purses his lips, pale eyes (startling in an olive complexion) sweep up and down the street- anything to avoid sweeping his own car for tags or stickers.. something to identify it as a cop's car. Fraternal Order sticker? No. In fact... no. He's certain. Damn sure. Some of the places he's got to park, some of the people he's got to meet.. he knows he doesn't have any such identifying marks on the vehicle.

...That's when his hand brushes against the gold badge at his hip. Sure, he was wearing a well worn leather jacket. It all happens in the space of that same glance down the street. Checking his six, as it were.

His eyes lock back on the girl. Wom... woman? Maybe.

"...you know the other option that leaves, right?" That dumb polack was a big guy.. two hundred pounds easy. This one won't get solved that easy.

Even so, faced with the impossibility of this slip of a creature overcoming the mobster Eddie had been courting, his eyes still flicker across her fingertips and the toes of her boots.. Then his deep voice prowls through the space between them again.

"Give ya a lift." He flicks a hand toward the passenger side door. The realistic second option was that she was a witness.

L. Stillwell

That amuses her; the hint of bemusement that slipped across her glossed mouth blossoms then, opens up and sparks something sharp, something living in her own eyes. Also pale, clear blue, though less startling against her porcelain skin.

"I'm not that, either," she returns, the skein of laughter subsumed in the texture of her voice. There's a hint of something foreign in the texture of her vowels, but it never fully surfaces. Just gleams below. " - but I wouldn't mind a lift."

There are three pins affixed to the canvas strap of the dull olive messenger's bag bisecting her torso. The topmost says: This guitar kills fascists. in clean, sensible font. The middle has Thy Fearful Symmetry written in classically Gothic lettering, silver on black. And the last proclaims: Dumbledore's Army in Gryffindor colors, red on yellow.

He indicates the passenger's door, and she circles the car to stand beside it. Waits for him to unlock the doors before she slips inside. There are two navy blue cigarette butts and the butt of a thinly wrapped cheroot on the ground by his front tire, and the scent of tobacco and cloves in her fine blond hair.

Eddie Vakoj

The doors beep in electronic welcome- and Eddie promptly fumbles his keys. Just long enough to get a slightly closer look at the fresh cigarette butts on the ground. His own smokes have a hint of clove to them- he knows the smell. Decides the cheroot is hers.. he doesn't pocket the butts, knowing the vast majority of that CSI shit doesn't really happen. But he's got good eyes. One butt could have been clamped with teeth, the other smeared with lipstick.. small differences... but the difference between three people hanging around his car and two carries more weight. So he checks. Long enough to pick up his keys and no more.

California is a place of nice driving late at night. Cool. Foggy. Accommodating. It gives him plenty of opportunity to watch his passenger a little more closely.

"So. What's up, kiddo?"

Kiddo. He's not that old. Even was probably handsome once. He's too tired, too intent, and too hard for that now. Aging badly.

L. Stillwell

The girl isn't wearing make-up, not tonight. The long sweep of lashes framing her eyes is - pale, blond. She's lovely, though not in a California way. There's nothing easy about it, and nothing artificial. She's had no work done. Her mouth is too fine, the bridge of her nose a hint too broad for a plastic surgeon to have had his hands on her. And breasts, well - she appears to have none to speak of.

In the passenger's seat, she settles her messenger bag in her lap. Just as he watches her, close and sharp, she glances around the interior of the car. Breathes in, deeply, as she settles into the seat. Doesn't bother with the seatbelts, though. She does not even think to reach for one.

"Kiddo?" - that sharpness enters her voice, brights her eyes as she glances up at his reflection in the rearview mirror. She breathes out a narrow band of air, sharp from the diaphragm, "You're not that old, Detective. And I'm not that young, either."

A moment's silence, all fog bound, interrupted by direction. ("I think it's a left up here.") So the neighborhood is not entirely native. Or maybe she's not used to traveling it as a passenger in a car. There are odd one-ways all through the warren of old warehouses and cheap squats, after all.

" - so, this is going to sound odd. Really odd." Casts a sidelong glance at him, expelling another breath for the masquerade of it, all at a go as if she were nervous. There are no other physical signs. She does not tap her fingers. Her pulse isn't racing. Her pale gaze remains steady in the rearview mirror, there looking back whenever he glances away from the fogbound street and up to meet it. "Do you like noir, Detective? Fiction. Carroll John Daly. Raymond Chandler. Mickey Spillane?"

Eddie Vakoj

Eddie doesn't drive like he shaves. That is to say, not sloppy. He drives like someone who repeats the department's aggressive driving course at least once a year, with lots of practice in between. Every motion is smooth and precise, wicked hands taking a sure and confident delight in the process of going from A to B. There have definitely been after market upgrades to the car other than the radio. Nothing flashy. Nothing that didn't serve a purpose. An additional obscure -ometer or two. Whatever they are.

Bursts of static mussed murmurs and mutters and the occasional curse word flicker and pass between their voices as the two speak and roll down the street. Eddie's attention does indeed pass across her hands. Check for shuffling of the feet- the ordinary signs of nerves. Every detail snapped up as though his eyes were mouths- though he makes no great show of such things.

"Ma'am it is..." He says it like its a concession. His rumbling voice somewhat dry. Frayed around the edges. He turns left.

"It does sound odd. Mickey Spillane? Ugh." Cream green eyes flicker at her face, then back to the road. Leaving a hint of white teeth in a smile that was certainly supposed to be comforting in their wake. Its a brief encouragement. Trained in. "I don't really read myself back into the job, truth be told. Though I do still have a soft spot for Mario Puzo. Why do you ask?"

Eddie Vakoj

(Remove "Why do you ask." Instead there's just an expectant silence.)

L. Stillwell

Ma'am it is - . She offers a choked laugh immediately after, halfway to a guffaw, though most of it is contained in her skin. Subsumed into the frame of her shoulders, the narrow line of her body - not boneless, not now. More precise. "I think I deserved that." Wry. But she doesn't correct him. And she doesn't offer her name, not yet.

She is aware of the space she takes up in the world. He glances at her hands; no fidgeting. Just the gleam of a silver band around her right thumb, and a thin, braided gold band around her left index finger. Her fingers are long and fine, still on the surface of the messenger bag in her lap. The nails are painted an electric, metallic blue, and the enamel on the left index and right middle finger has started to chip from wear.

"Mmm - " a meditative noise, her response to his opinion of Spillane. And another flash of a look for Puzo. The hint of a nod. She knows the name, if not the work. The silence after Mario Puzo is as much of an invitation as anything, so she flexes her fine fingers once, and launches into the story. Her voice is still wry, a self-deprecating half-smile curving her fine mouth.

The hint of it that he can see in profile, the way it deepens the curve of her pale cheek. "Well, see. I'm not a writer myself, but I do some freelance work. Editing, sometimes. Literary translations, mostly. I have an old friend who's three-quarters of the way through a rough draft of a novel. It's set in the near-future, a bit of a dystopian thing. Like Phillip K. Dick?

"It's sharp. It's smart. Has the potential to be something - meaningful. I could go on and on about it, but the thing is, a huge part of the plot follows this detective, this police investigation. Closely observed. This writer, he's an agoraphobic. Wouldn't leave the house if it was on fire, see? I've told him a hundred times that he needs to go to the local PD, see if he can interview a few cops. Shadow someone. Make sure he's writing from a real place rather than remaking Raymond Chandler. But he won't."

A narrow, helpless shrug of her shoulders. "So it's up to me. I have this police scanner in the studio. The neighborhood's shit." Her reference to the murder is so oblique it is virtually opaque. But it's there. "And I thought, I could find myself a detective. Maybe one who'd let me follow along. Like the way you wrote baseball box scores when you were a kid, you know? From the play by play on the radio."

Eddie Vakoj

He's silent for a time. His adherence to the study of her body language derailed by what is to him, a disappointing revelation. A tourist. Joy.

He shifts gears and makes a right turn.

"Okay... and you thought finding a detective right outside a crime scene was the best way to go about this? I mean, the department offers ride along programs, even riding with detectives could be arranged- and I think you'd find the people there a lot more receptive that guys just coming off a shift."

Its a white lie. This is overtime. Still, one stark black eyebrow climbs its way up Eddie's forhead as he looks back to the girl again.

L. Stillwell

She makes a soft noise, the girl. A quiet click - of negation, of disappointment - against the roof of her mouth and shakes her golden head just once. Her voice is soft, almost reproving.

"That's not what I'm looking for, Detective. Not a ride-along. Not a even a ride," is there a spark of humor, darker now, in the sweep of her profile in his direction. "Not whatever your bureaucrats might spit-polish and throw at me. I want a guy who's tired off his shift and works at three a.m., not three p.m. I don't - I'm not looking for that. I want the fucking human mess of it."

The creature turns, stretches to look back between the driver's and passenger's seats, through the rear window. The finely gauged hood catches on her hair as it slips down, pooling at the nape of her neck over the messy knot into which she has twisted her hair. "And this thing - " she continues, as she turns back. "Back there? I live here.

"Speaking of which, this corner's fine. Just think about it. Give me a call and I'll buy you coffee. Or don't. I'm okay with that, too."

She opens an inner pocket of the messenger bag, and flicks out a small white business card, by way of offering.

L. Stillwell

Presence 1: Charisma + Performance + WP. (Justification: wants to know what the cops know about the murder.)

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (4, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 6 ) [WP]