Not Vampires

Elijah
Grace may be shocked to find out that the tiny apartment Elijah inhabited with his spoken-of-but-rarely-seen room mate is not a complete crap shoot. No, it's actually a pretty nifty little place were it not for the fact that the entire apartment feels like it's been hit by a hurricane, like it's the base of a revolution ready to start. It's upheaval, dissatisfaction and pushing for something more than what it was. The time he didn't spend at the warehouse was spent in a place that he was very surely making his.

The apartment was on top of a florist shop called Floral and Hardy- they had a decent amount of foot traffic and while one could call the building charming it had seem better days. It had definitely seen better days and while someone once loved this place, that time has long since passed. The door that would have let someone come upstairs to the apartments above was solid and wooden. Painted blue, chipped and fading. Kicked at the bottom a few times, signs of attempts at break ins hinted at the door frame but the door was still there. Still solid.

When his guests arrived, Elijah actually tidied up a little more. Picked up the notes that were scattered all over the place. Half-legible thoughts are scrawled in French on brick in chalk- diagrams drawn and wiped out and drawn again (and redrawn by Jenn with very explicit instructions as to how something was supposed to look because she had an eye for space and depth when he had the concept of what was there, yammered on about why something had to be a certain color or a certain size the same way he talked about an offset press or handmade paper) There was chalk dust on the floor, and he'd done a good job of cleaning it up but the apartment, with its rather colorful and movement-driven artwork on the walls, is a place where Elijah Works.

There have been entire novels and arias to the angels scrawled and scrubbed off  the hardwood floors.

The couch is a comfortable little number from IKEA while, on the other wall away from the art, there's a perfectly nice but piercing little loveseat in beige. The coffee table is antique and Elijah, realizing that this was important, has resisted the urge to sit in the floor and fiddle with the rug that was no doubt hiding some big breakthrough waiting to happen. He's perched himself, instead, in a queen Anne chair Jenn picked up at a yard sale. Good form but an ugly color. He'd already offered people whatever they wanted to drink, knows how to be a hospitable host.

"So," he started with, a little unstead with the prospect, "it's... not... vampires?"

Grace
Grace has never been to Elijah's apartment. But it might seem, to Michael, as though she has spent a great deal of time here, by how comfortable she is about being here. How she just seems like she owns the place. She wanders into the kitchen without prompting, and it's only when Elijah offers to get her a drink that she realizes she should let him. Coffee, for her, because the time he spent with Kalen had to have rubbed off a little, right?

The scribbling on the walls and floors says as much. She recognizes some of those, smiles at them, even though she cannot fathom how they Work.

She takes the loveseat along with her coffee, and just turns a stare at Michael when Elijah asks his question. Right. Explain that.

Michael
Having had dinner with him the night before Grace now knows a bit more about the Euthanatos in terms of his history and personality. He's in his early thirties and has a job as a day trader out in Los Angeles. It enables him to engage in wealth redistribution and suss out individuals who might have better luck if their next life started sooner rather than later and take a day or a week or a month off without having to explain himself because he doesn't have an office and he doesn't punch a time clock.

Really what he wanted to talk about is travel. Travel and books. Somehow he got wind of the fact that Grace was a writer. Thanks a lot Pan.

And now they're at Elijah's. Michael introduces himself with a handshake and a smile. Gives off the appearance of a precise and careful man though his resonance seems to suggest otherwise. He feels like the damage done after a steady storm. That moment of clarity after a long period of tugging at a problem. His power surpasses Grace. It's no wonder she rankled at the first sight of him.

If Grace is making coffee then sure Michael would love a cup. He sits on the IKEA number so he can see both of them while they're talking. Leans back and keeps his hands knit between his knees when he isn't manipulating a coffee cup.

"Vampires?" he says. Seems bemused but not confounded. Grace had used that word yesterday but he hadn't grilled her on why she would have thought this was the case. "Gosh, no." Far worse, he doesn't say. "Grace and I didn't have much of a chance to discuss the, ah... chimera you encountered in Washington Park the night of... August twentieth, was it?"

Elijah
There have been a series of terrifying, overwhelming people who have sat on that couch. This is not the first adept to sit on Elijah's couch and, he hopes, that he will 1: live long enough to see that capacity in himself and 2: will have the good sense to buy a different sofa before then. He suspects that this is important, gets the feeling that he probably should have worn a tie instead of a tee shirt and jeans. Half a dozen bracelets on one hand, a necklace that he still can't take off because Jenn tied the knot too tight.

"Yeah," he said, "I was meeting with my dealer Samir-" doesn't shy away from this, because he figures at this point Grace has to be incredibly aware of the fact that Samir is Elijah's dealer and there is a Euthanatos on his couch. They have bigger things to worry about than young men with substance issues "-and we're just hanging out, yeah? Going through the whole motions of we're totally not engaging in illegal activities because there's a protocol for this."

He says it with certainty. In case Mike or Grace were not aware and did not buy drugs regularly- there's etiquette.

"So, something moves in the bushes and it- I dunno... I guess, she? They?" like that makes him uncomfortable, because he knows that was a person, that what he and Samir killed had been a human being and he doesn't know what word to use. "Stands up and-" A beat, ping pong ball attention. Stream of consciousness; Elijah's nervous. Looks at his phone for a second and retrieves a gallery. Hands Mike the phone; there's paintings. Or, rather, painting, singular, of the chimera in question. A couple sketches that relay what movement and muscle structure would have looked like, but the painting is really what is note worthy.

Back on track.

"Anyway, yeah, it tried to eat Sam- it scratched me, we got really lucky. We handled it, but Sam bolted and I called a friend to help me clean shit up because there is no way in Hell that I could have left charred... whatever ashes in the middle of the park. Sam ended up in Quiet and when I went back later and looked back at it, it... like... it eviscerated a homeless guy. We were really fucking lucky."

Grace
Ohh, Elijah. Grace did not know that. So far, neither of the two neer-do-wells has made it a priority to let her know. To that new information, she just rolls her eyes. So that's how they know each other.

Also, there has been no attempt on Grace's part to look appropriate for a meeting with a Euthanatos Adept. She's always wearing jeans and t-shirts, and that isn't going to stop just because some people might consider that a signal that it's okay to disrespect her. Michael hasn't. In fact, he doesn't seem capable of it.

She sips her coffee, all pensive. The more she hears about that night, the less she wants to.

"I went to the park with him later, once we'd found Samir and things had more-or-less calmed down. Did some genetic analysis on... what was left of the remains. It was enough to figure out that the monster was a chimera of two women, but I couldn't get a clear picture of the kind of magic that went into that -- other than it was utterly disgusting."

Michael
"Yes. What you were feeling is called Qlippothic magick."

As much as he knows about the supernatural in general and the potential for the Awakened mind to become warped in particular Michael does not settle in to lecture either of them about it. He seems as if he is capable of speaking at great length about topics in which he is well versed. Most Adepts are. But he also looks as if he respects their time and doesn't believe himself to have much of it either.

Compared to yesterday Michael looks tired. Granted he is always pale. He is pale in the way that people of Anglo-Saxon stock tend to stay pale as if he lives in the frigid wastelands of the north and not Los Angeles but not the sort of pale that speaks of Jhor. This tiredness exacerbates the pallor. Gives him the impression of having bruises underneath his eyes. If he is tired it has not affected his demeanor. He's still cheerful.

"The Nephandi work towards a state of oblivion called Descension, and the way they view the world is so warped that they can't call on the nine Spheres. They have to think of things as falling apart rather than fitting together." A thoughtful brow furrow. "You mentioned a fire."

Elijah
"So it really is, like, an entire inversion of what most people do," like this was an aside, something that could either be confirmed or denied and tossed aside. He's keyed in at that point, unsettled but viewing it as a learning experience because, for as much as Henry has prepared him for the world, he and Henry have not talked much about Nephandi. It had been part of the conversation he got that involved don't consort with demons, which is a nonnegotiable point. Don't sell your soul.

It would be an inopportune time to think of having a screaming match with a wall at Pan's place almost a year back. The things we buy, the things we sell, a change in cadence and here was this man talking about something that is corruption incarnate and there had to be some way to learn more without getting in over your head.

Seems like a slippery slope. For once, he has the good sense not to follow the train of thought.

"Washington Park's had a lot of, like vampiric issues. It's been a thing, and when Sam came back around and we went to investigate it was, like, every point we looked back it was all after dark, to the point that it was freaking ridiculous. We had these sunlight-phobic beings causing problems and they abducted these two girls from a high school. I mean, I figured, there was no way in Hell this could be another mage, I saw what this person could do- in public. Closed this girl's mouth, like, wiped it off her fucking face- how did reality not even protest? I thought that kind of thing would write you out of existence."

This is the part that he's having trouble with. Vampires he could understand. Vampires he could rationalize having powers and not having to deal with paradox, but... he can't make sense of the idea that a mage could actually be that powerful. There's irony in a Hermetic apprentice not being able to fathom mages as god-beings.

Grace
"The fire was my idea," she says, over her coffee. And then, she sets about explaining herself, with a sigh.

"So, Elijah did some looking back through time, to try to see what had happened that lead up to this. That's when he saw this beautiful guy and his buddy take the two young women away from a high school football field. Like he said, wiped their mouths off their faces.

"So, later, we went to the football field and he looked some more. Found a car the friend used to transport the girls. Samir traced its license. Hadn't been registered in like 30 or 40 years, something like that. We traced the car back to the house, where some surveillance on the place led to us finding out that four people lived there who spent the entire night skinning people alive.

"I figured vampires. Before we set the plan in motion, I tried to make sure by running a scan for life signs and Entropic signatures. There was nothing alive in that house except for rodents and roaches. They showed up as dead bodies with a shit-ton of some frozen Entropic signatures which I've seen before in vampires. That's why the fire."

Grace
[Argh. I looked back at the logs, it was Kalen who did the life/entropy scan. Sorry...]

Michael
"Though I can't say as I agree with the method," he says and even as he's chastising them he does so in a way that is almost gentle, "if this individual is using the same modus operandi as ze has since... well, I personally have been tracking zir for the last two years, but I have met this individual before, in past lives." A beat. "It stands to reason that the vehicle's registration is expired because this individual is unaging." Another beat. "I don't consider myself a gambler, but if I were to place a bet, here, it would be substantial, and I would bet that they read as dead bodies because they were reanimated corpses that this individual had enslaved, mentally. You may well have granted them a mercy."

Elijah
This... is so far out of Elijah's scope of comprehension that he can't help but look at the Euthanatos on his couch like he's trying to process calculus. The method of operating, the process of following this person, all of it just...

Elijah Poirot existed within a single lifetime. Had he been aware of the enormity of his own existence and truly grasped the eternal nature of their avatars he would have gone mad a long, long time ago. It's a courtesy, you see, that he doesn't know these things. The man on the couch lets him know that there were bad calls made, but not in such a fashion that he's likely going to be beating himself up over the next few weeks.

"... what do we do now?" because that was the problem now. Now, Elijah was aware of the fact that there was an Enormous Problem in their city and judging by his tone alone it seems to hit the initiate that he's aware of how precious little he is capable of doing to prevent whoever is out there from doing whatsoever ze chooses.

Doesn't like it. Doesn't like it a goddamned bit.

Grace
Hmm. Met this individual before, in past lives. Grace has met those who believe themselves to be reincarnated -- who remember who they were. It doesn't have any place in her own personal world-view, but she can't deny that these people believe what they say.

Michael doesn't agree with the method used, and Grace wonders what his preferred method would entail, but doesn't ask. As far as she's concerned, they did the best they could.

Elijah wants to know what's next. "We find out whether this Nephandus died in the fire, I'm guessing? Or do we know for sure that's not the case? Elijah, do you have that painting? The other one that Jenn did?"

Michael
Not until they start using the word 'we' does Michael seem as if he has a problem with this discussion. At the first utterance he is in the middle of sipping from his coffee mug. His frown is a quick thing and then he sets down the coffee mug and scoots to the edge of the couch where before he had been leaning back. Focused intensity in his gaze.

The pictures Elijah had shown him are caught in his mind. He had not had to take hold of the phone. Let Elijah swipe through them himself. That painting Jenn had done of the Nephandus in question was beautiful in a way that was difficult to wrap the mind around.

"I've seen the painting," he says. "Looking for an individual with the features Jenn captured isn't effective. Ze changes zir physical appearance too often." A beat. "What I'm about to tell you is strange, and I apologize for that. But I receive... telepathic messages from this individual, from time to time. I have been unable to discern a pattern, but I received the most recent message ten days ago. October second."

So their new friend couldn't have died in the fire.

"I doubt ze has stayed put this long, but I have been wrong before. This is a dangerous individual, and I'm glad you did not engage zir. My student is with me, and I don't require any further assistance."

There is no 'we', basically.

Elijah
"She put it in a gallery in Santa Fe, said Yvette just about shit herself when she saw it. I can ask her to take it out? They're asking, like, close to seven grand- nobody in Santa Fe is going to pay that, so I really doubt we're gonna have to worry about it selling," he tells Grace.

Like anyone would have the nerve to buy it. The painting Jenn had done was a masterpiece, pure and simple. There are a very select number of people who would try to buy a painting like that- they either had no idea what they were looking at, or they were so entitled that they believed they deserved a piece of art of that calibre in their home.

Fuck, for all Elijah knew people could buy things like that and burn them, wipe out the little traces of what came so achingly close to perfection outside of a vaccuum.

"I don't wanna sound like a dick," which is what one says right before they say things that make them sound like dicks, "I have zero interest in getting between you and whoever this person you are hunting is. I get that my presence within a five mile radius of this is probably a liability and I want this to work.

"My friend who painted that stuff is a sleeper. She gets that magic is a thing because we've talked about it, but that's it. I don't want her getting hurt, or getting anything remotely close to-like- yeah."

It gives and he isn't hiding it, he's concerned. He's concerned and he's scared and he has something and someone worth protecting, and Elijah is going through words and layers and he is building things up so it doesn't seem nearly as daunting, "I just... I would like to know your recommendation as to what I need to do to make sure my friend stays a singular entity."

Grace
Elijah says what he says, and Grace -- quick to put two and two together -- "Tell her she's got a buyer. I'll be there in 30 minutes."

Because no, like Hell that painting should be displayed. Anywhere. The sooner it can be taken down the better. She'll have to use Kalen's money to do it, but she sincerely doubts he'd have a problem with that.

Then, she turns her attentions on Michael, and... She's not gleeful. More survival-mode. Maybe it has more to do with Jenn being in danger than anything, but there's something else there too. "As you might be able to tell by now, you could certainly try to stop me from providing assistance, and hey -- that's your prerogative. You'd probably succeed. But I'm warning you, you'll have to actually try. If I have to, I'll funnel information to you through Pan.

"Because look, if you fail, I live here. I have to clean up after you."

So yeah. Do what you want, Michael. Grace is going to do what she wants.

She's already packing up to leave at that point, shuffles her coffee on the table, stands, gets her keys out. "I'll ask at the gallery if anyone's been asking questions about that painting. If they have, Jenn should probably hide. And I mean, she'll want wards."

Michael
Spoiler alert: Michael MacCarrick is not a gambler because he has a terrible poker face. He could not manipulate his way out of a paper bag. He's too damned nice. He has the ability to keep his thoughts off his face if he has the proper motivation and enough warning that he will need to do so. But he is not skilled in the art of time.

Hearing that the painting is in a gallery in Santa Fe causes him to have a visceral reaction. It is only obvious if either of them happen to be looking at him then. It isn't quite a wince because he knows that they may very well be looking at him but wincing is the gist of that reaction.

But he says nothing and the conversation continues on. Grace is going to be in Santa Fe in thirty minutes to buy the painting. Michael has seen the painting. Elijah doesn't wanna sound like a dick. And so on.

... if you fail, I live here. I have to clean up after you.

Michael doesn't like throwing his weight around. There isn't much of it. He's six feet tall and weighs maybe a buck sixty. When they both stand from their respective pieces of furniture he does not cut an intimidating figure and when he walks around the coffee table to stand in front of her he does not seem as if he is trying to block her path.

She does not get another word out. He holds out his right hand.

"Give me your hand," he says. Gentle still but firm. He's not fucking around.

Elijah
The Order of Hermes has taught Elijah Poirot a very valuable survival skill- when the grown ups are talking, you shut the fuck up and let them talk.

Well and so, he sits back a little more uncomfortably in his chair and looks at the two mages like he would really rather be in the other room. And not here. But he's here.

Fuck.

Grace
It's hard to believe that this is the nice guy with whom she ate goat stew not long ago, talking about books and not the work at hand. He was a better man then.

Part of her wants to reach for her phone, get the fuck out of here. But he'd probably just stop her.

"Why?"

Michael
Poor Elijah. If he didn't have the proper motivation to stay in the library and do his homework before he probably does now.

It's hard to believe that this is the intelligent woman who introduced him to Denver's only Nigerian restaurant. She was less infuriating then.

"Too many people have already died because of zir," he says. The way he says it though it sounds as if what he's really saying is because of me. Like he should have put this thing down already and it's a failing on his part that he hasn't. "If you're not going to leave it alone, I'd like to swear an oath to you, and accompany you to Santa Fe."

He looks down at his own hand before looking her in the eye. She doesn't have to take it. He's not going to make her do anything she doesn't want to do even if she did goad him. That just means he'd have to find another way to stop her.

Elijah
[Juuuuust a quick I think I read you right look, per+empathy for Mike?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Elijah
"Dude, Grace, please," he is pleading with her here. He doesn't have ground to stand on but god damn it this is his house, "we don't have time for the whole buddy cop trust building montage- just... have a working relationship or something. Just... trust him enough to know that this is, like, part of his tradition's karmic purpose in all this shit. It's not ego. If he's telling you I'm swearing an oath to you, that doesn't get done lightly."

A beat. He exhales hard and runs his hands through his hair. Hasn't gotten out of his chair. Hasn't invaded space, hasn't made motion that he's going to get in the middle of this mess.

"The guys not cutting you out of action, he's trying to make sure more people don't die, just... please, let the guy do his karmic duty."

Grace
[Haha. Let's try out this Per/Empathy thing too? Michael, are you blaming yourself for all this?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Grace
Well. Now it's starting to make a little more sense. Perhaps he's had help in the past, and they ended up flayed. She looks down at his hand like it's covered in poop.

She practically ignores Elijah, or at least seems to. She's listening, she's just not peeling her attention off of Michael.

"I don't know how many people I've ever had to tell to direct their anger in the right places to the right people, because I've lost count by now. Whoever helped you in the past? Whoever ended up dead due to this quest? They are not dead because of you. They are dead because someone else decided to kill them. I do hope you know that by now. If you don't, you've already lost. Give a person like that that much control over you, and they will break you."

Oh, she isn't done yet. Not even slightly.

"I once gave someone my hand, and she used the contact to infect me with a virus that made me live out my skin-dissolving death over and over again in hallucinatory hell. She ended up having so much guilt over what she'd done that she blew herself sky high in the attempt to wipe out her little group's work. I guess the moral of the story is -- I'm putting a lot of trust in you. Don't be a dick with it."

With that, she reaches out and grasps his hand.

Michael
Both the Euthanatos and the Mercurial Elite listen to Elijah without taking their eyes off the other one. The calmest standoff in recent history. Michael stands with his left arm down at his side and his right hand waiting for Grace to make a decision and even when she takes a shot at his wording or something she sees in his eyes he doesn't falter or put his hand back in his pocket.

After one lecture and one story he still hasn't put his hand away. She's putting a lot of trust in him.

He returns the grasp. His fingers and palm are cool and dry. His grip is firm but not painful. He does not smile when he says, "I look forward to discussing the difference between responsibility and guilt with you the next time we have dinner."

Closed eyes and a breath to center himself. Opens them again and lets the breath go.

[mind/prime 3, corr 2: idk what to call this rote. oath of protection or something. prob vulgar af but practiced/taking time/quint = diff 4 anyway. he might extend it bc time duration. it won't kick in until he actually swears the oath.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (3, 4, 4, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Elijah
Elijah sinks into the remarkably uncomfortable Queen Anne chair and takes a moment to reflect on how incredibly awkward this is for him to watch. So, taking this time to be a little paranoid about his best friend potentially becoming part of a larger whole in a way that he really, really, really wasn't comfortable with, he decided to text Jenn.

you should ditch class. For the foreseeable future.

Grace
"Yeah, I know. We're all responsible for our own actions, including myself," she says, and then takes a breath herself. She can feel the way the weft of the world is bending to him. Whatever he's doing, he shouldn't be distracted. Paradox is a bitch.

He wants to take on responsibility for the Nephandus he's failed to stop. They are going to disagree about the wisdom in that until the end, likely...

She looks down at their joined hands, wondering if that was a mistake. Well, too late now.

Michael
"Grace Evans," he says, "from this moment until the moment we have completed our task, your well-being is no less valuable and no less sacred than the well-being of my own soul, and will be guarded and protected and treated as an extension therein, regardless of physical distance or my own incapacitation."

Translation: Even if Grace runs off to attempt to take down a fleshcrafting Nephandus on her own they will have a telepathic link that enables him to cast effects that will assist her from a distance. Also if he even thinks about doing anything to harm her (like say he's under the mental control of said Nephandus or something) that will be considered botching this particular effect and not only will he be incapable of going through with it but he will also be in a world of hurt.

This is what she gets for trying to tell a Euthanatos leader that she does what she wants.

[extension: might as well make this shit permanent.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (1, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Grace
She'd dismiss the words as just talk, if she didn't feel them sinking into her. He's lacing them with power. Again, he's taking responsibility for someone he probably shouldn't. She's bound to him now. If she decides to do something stupid, it's endangering him too, which -- she wasn't going to do in the first place, but still. It's not like he knows that.

She nods at him, and hopes her expression of slightly-reduced alarm conveys something to him. "Thanks for not being a dick."

Then, his hand is released. "Come on. Let's get that painting off the wall."