Wednesday, February 10, 2016

The Hotel [The Jack Saga]

Nobody
Blood in a cup, and it is not enough; rich it is and the Beast is put to slumber, somewhat - she'd hardly feel it except that it is new.

The cab driver is an African American woman with a nose-ring, a certain ashy quality to her skin which might indicate too much time spent driving cabs around Denver and the outlying Denver areas at night, or it might indicate that she is a vampire. There is no way to tell; her skin has a healthsome glow otherwise.

"Watch now," Jack tells Molly. "You'll need to learn this."

He puts on a Mask; he becomes one of his Masks. 

This Mask has blood spent for it; this Mask is carefully, willfully crafted; this Mask is very different from Jack, himself, Jack on any day. This Jack is dark-haired, chisel-jawed; this Jack has piercing blue eyes, and a thin mouth. This Jack is handsome, but in a razor-will-cut-you way; this Jack is lean-hipped and short. His suit is an impeccable suit: it is of some dark blue that the sea's shadows dream of being. This Mask has a narrow, contemptuous nose; an aesthetic brow; a long throat. This Jack is in perfect proportion, and looks Roman or Greek. This Mask is a consummate performer's opening act. 

His voice even sounds different; it still has that honeyed knapp to it, a smoothness when he talks - it's not Jacky's voice and it's not Jack's voice. It's an interesting voice he's heard before; some people might think it enchanting, because why not fake it until you can make it. He heard this voice from some long dead person, once upon a time; now he's using it.

--

And when they're at the Brown Palace Hotel, Jack doesn't seem like he's going to stir from the cab. He says, "I'll be right behind you."


And waits for Molly to make the first move.

Molly
Once in the cab Molly sat with her shoulder pressed in the corner between bench seat and car door, as though she could meld into the vehicle enough to go without the cab driver paying any attention to her.

But the cabbie was ashy-skinned and unconcerned with what was going on in the back seat.  She was likely in the know, somehow.  Otherwise Jacky probably wouldn't have called for her service in particular.

It's with keen interest that Molly watches the crafting and donning of the mask.  He said she'd need to learn, so she watched in that sharp way she's always had, the manner that suggested nothing was escaping her attention and everything was going to be remembered and studied carefully later.  As the ugliness was shrouded and replaced, how the handsome new Mediterranean face turned into a entirely new identity all the way to his toes and the threads of his clothes as well.

"That's the trick I'd like to learn," she said softly.  These were words that no doubt every Nosferatue childe has uttered in wonderment to their sire, and Molly was no different in that regard.

----

At the hotel Molly hesitated in the back seat of the cab, looking up at the building.  Jack didn't move, didn't reach for a car door to let himself out, but instead watched her and waited for her to take lead.  He'd be right behind her.  With a small nod and after making sure her hood was pulled securely over her balding head and changing face, Molly stepped out of the cab and walked forward without a backward glance to see how or where Jack was following.  If he was publicly behind her she'd probably hear his feet and spy his hand reaching for the lobby door.  Otherwise, she'd just need to trust that he was keeping his word from whatever station he'd staked for himself with his charming-faced new disguise.

Up to the front desk, as she'd remembered clear as though the instructions were carved right into her.


"Hello.  I am Molly Yellow, and I have a reservation."

Nobody
There is no Jack. No Handsome Jack. No Jack at all. Molly seems to go into the Brown Palace Hotel lobby on her own. Molly has been on the other side of the Masquerade, but now she is part of it. Now she has to wear a mask, even if she can't Mask herself yet. Now she has to pretend. New-risen, and already pretending - but already a leg-up, too, knowing what she knows. Can everybody tell? What do they think about her, dressed as she is? How would they taste?

There is a couple, clearly on their honey-moon, in the lobby - the man reading something on his phone, the woman playing with her ring and saying something about no not that place, in thrilling tones. The bar has an amber ambient glow to it, a dull murmur. The bell-hop, the door-man, they're warm and they're food and they're just waiting to be murdered and something in Molly is waiting to murder them (but that something is leashed; it is just so new, too - ).

And the concierge is a Latino man, an older gentleman with silver in his neatly trimmed beard. Raoul is the name on his pin. Molly Yellow, she says. And do his eyes go blank, or dream-like? He is brisk when he says: "Yes, follow me Miss Yellow. I will see that everything for you is just as it should be. Do you want to check your coat?" He has come around, and reaches for it.

Whether or not she gives up her coat, he doesn't push it, but gives her a keen look and then takes her to the elevator. 


Up they go. Molly, alone with a human for the first time since she became a vampire. Surely, this close he'll be able to tell?

Molly
Unsurprised that she was making this initial walk alone, Molly made her way through the revolving door and pushed with her shoulder, so that way her hands could stay in the pockets of the big dark sweatshirt she was hiding within.  Her skirt dragged on the hard floor and her feet padded silently along it as well, making her feel like something of a spectre in a way.

Molly wasn't unfamiliar with biting her tongue and holding back less-than-nice urges.  She did it all the time at work, with patients and other nurses.  She had to apply this to vampires too, holding the sharpness of her tongue to keep her pulse just one more night among a dwindling few.  It was strange and new and uncomfortable, unpleasant, to now have to hold back on an urge to pounce and pin down and practice strength and predatory prowess upon people-- people, let alone animals in the trees.  That was the worst part of it.

When Raoul's eyes seem to shift out of focus, Molly nodded for his indication to follow her, but she did not accept his offer to take her sweater.  She shrugged away sharply from him, tucking her elbow from his touch.  "No, thank you."  And instead followed him to the elevator a good three steps behind.


Once enclosed in the metal box-and-pulley, Molly stood tucked into the corner with her hands still in her pockets and her head down so the hood did a fine job of shadowing her features well.  She could worry if he would notice that she didn't breathe with a normal rhythm.  She also figured that he was under some kind of enchantment and wouldn't remember much of this encounter later.  All the same, it was safest to keep to herself and follow him to whatever room he was supposed to be taking her to without causing any further complications in the process.  In-and-out would be best, she didn't want to deal with Sophie and Morris's judgment for long.

Nobody
The elevator chimes softly when it lets Molly out into a hall. Mellow honey walls. The concierge walks her to the private elevator and does not come with her into the elevator, but unlocks it and presses the right code and the private elevator brings her to the foyer. The foyer she remembers: opulent and tasteful and Classic and Classic Aristocratic American. Classic Aristocratic Americana is the living area, couches and walnut tables, touches of timeless elegance: see? Everything here is tasteful wealth, suggestions of Art Nouveau grandeur because the Brown Palace Hotel is Art Nouveau Grandeur, but elegance is sometimes elegant because it knows how to make an understatement. Quality. 

The fireplace is cold tonight just as it was cold the other night. There is a crystal decanter again with dark liquid within set on the coffee table although it has lost most of its notebooks and holds only one book. The decanter on the has its crystal lid on: it winks, refracting cold white light. This time Molly might be more interested in the refreshment (will blood taste terrible to her now? Molly doesn't know. Not really. The only blood she's had since dying is vitae and vitae is different. Vitae is addictive, vitae is life.)

And there is Sophie, radiant in her forever-blooming youthfulness skin just now a bloodless ivory a snow white flawlessness. Her sweet curved cheeks. Her sturdy determined jaw. Her luminous prettiness. Last time Molly saw her Sophie's hair was chestnut steraked blonde, cut professionally just at her shoulders with a stylish layered curl. Tonight sees this hair more elegantly coiffed in a simple French twist and a pair of tasteful pearl earrings at her lobes. The Young Woman (But Old, Old Vampire) is must have turned to the elevator when it chimed because she is seated in one of the claw-footed chairs by the fireplace and her body is cheated toward her companion, who she was just speaking to.


Quincey Morris. The vampire stands when the elevator opens. His height is still great and his countenance is placid even now. Unrippled and undisturbed, dirty honey-is-brown hair combed neat and almost shellacked a gleam on it from the low light. His broad lips are parted in what could be mild curiosity or nothing of the sort. There is a sense to Morris, as there ever is, that he is actively present at the same time he is removed, that he is cold but a thaw might come at any moment. His brown eyes are alert but difficult to read.

Molly
The elevator and foyer were familiar to Molly-- she'd been there only a few days prior, though it felt like several years ago for how much she's gone through since then.  She felt like she was walking bent, and maybe she was just a little bit under that big sweater, but the blood in her fueled her forward and the tired was a different sort-- not the biological need to rest any longer as much as a mental and emotional exhaustion.  She just wanted to be still and cope and hide and adjust and recover.

But instead she walked into the sitting room where Sophie sat with Morris and they both were looking keenly at her-- Sophie sitting, elegant and beautiful, Morris standing watchful and predatory.  Molly's brow furrowed and she was silent for a moment, then sighed and took her hands from her pockets and reached for her hood.  It would be easier to show first and then tell in this instance.

When Molly lowered her hood, she'd show that her red hair was thinning, but not drastically just yet-- that would take place over the course of the next week or so.  Her skin was pale like death, her freckles standing out bold and bright on it.  Her nose was shorter, closer to her face somehow, and her otherwise round face seemed more hollow, her chin pointier than before.  Her ears were starting to come to a point and poked through her thinned hair.  The rest of her was covered in the baggy clothes she'd chosen back down at Jacky's hole in the ground of a nest-- the sweater and skirt did a sufficient job of hiding however else this curse was planning to warp her body.  She looked tired, tense, unamused and anxious.  Pushed limp hair back behind those pointing ears with fingers that were just a little longer than what seemed quite right.

"Well," she said in a voice that was the same as they'd remember.  "I found him."

Nobody
They react.

There is a joy some Nosferatu begin to take in the reactions of the other clans when confronted by their true faces. The joy is vicious or the joy is bitter but it is joy nonetheless. Molly Toombs has become a goblin: skin sloughing into a nightmare's shape -- a young hag, exhaustion-riddled. Morris's dusty brown lashes flicker. Half-blink. He angles his head just so: inquisitive, perhaps, or surprised -- and he turns his eyes to his friend's. He says nothing, but implaccable Morris (still unruffled, but for that half-blink, that angle-of-his head, a faint straightening of his spine) is not prone to verbage.

The Ventrue is quite shocked. The shock dwells in the flex of her pupils. The slow, dismayed, "No." Her voice is an angel's voice: how lovely it is, how many sirens must have been in her family tree to give her that kind of magnetic pull even in a simple denial. Say it again, Sophie. No. No. But her eyes are clouded, and she looks ready to stand poised to stand alertness in her body and she gives Morris a look. Even surprised, even as blunt as she is (and Sophie is blunt: she has a reputation for being a hammer, sometimes even in a glass house), she is adroit enough to hide the rest of her reaction: it must be pity.


"He has done more than agree to be your sponsor," Sophie says. "This is not something I looked for; why did it happen?"

Molly
There was no joy that Molly took in showing what unlife was doing to her.  She was fresh to the concept of no longer having her glowing health, vibrant hair and vivacious curves to greet her in the mirror and help her through social navigation.  She'd never thought herself as gorgeous, but she's also never had to be ugly before.  She watched Morris's face first, for it was always the hardest to read, then looked to Sophie at the chiming-bell pity and sorrow in the word 'no'.

Molly closed her eyes for a moment, against the unwelcome surge of grief that the sound summoned.  That was how she felt in her heart, and it was something she would probably be chanting and crying to herself in some corner of her mind for a while now.  She hadn't had a time to cry and gnash her teeth yet, and she didn't want that moment to happen here and now.  So she swallowed hard, no longer a necessary or natural thing for her throat to do, and opened her eyes again.  Still blue, still sharp, still smart.

He has done more than agree to be your sponsor.

Molly scoffed a little, chuckled bitterly as well, and thinning lips curved into a self-deprecating smirk.

"I'll say."

Why did it happen, though?  It wasn't something she wanted to see happen.  Molly shook her head-- it certainly wasn't anything she'd wanted to see happen either.  But she knew already that it was a better idea to watch the amount of sass she was giving this woman, and instead cut to explaining.

"When I found him he was withered away almost to ash-- he was completely dry-up.  I had to go and find his essence-- his 'spirit', if you will, and bind it back to his body.  So when he awoke he did with a single-minded need and it overtook him."  Her voice shrank a little as she continued to that point, and she shrugged weakly to conclude.  It was probably a scenario they've heard of more than once before.  It couldn't be too rare a thing for a vampire to frenzy upon the wrong person and turn them to stave off the untimely death.


"He wouldn't let me die, so here we are."

Nobody
Her control is something, and perhaps a premonition of Molly the Nosferatu in fifty years. How cold might she become, how modulated in her quest for survival?

Sophie listens, focused in a way that has the whole of her behind it. There are no extraneous glances cast toward Morris this time, although Sophie moves a hand toward him. Easy to imagine that graceful hand-motion is a bid for Morris to hold Sophie's hands, or an affectionate gesture, or a gesture borne out of long familiarty. Easy to imagine that. Easy to imagine a lot of humanity into Sophie, because after all: noblesse oblige.

Morris stays standing, another minute tilt of his head. His cheekbones could cut give his placid countenance sheet metal expressive something of intensity, but in his silence there seems to be Some Thing. He does cast an (Augury Drenched) glance around the room, once. But if Nobody is there, (Nobody is there) he doesn't see through the Don't Look Here.

"This is not good," Sophie says. "Where is he now, this Jack?"

Had Nobody a reflection he'd have been caught already. Messages sent to Sophie's phones and Morris's since Mister Quincey is within. They take security very much to heart. 

A consummate performer, Jack is suddenly there. Still that handsome, sharp, dark-haired and blue-eyed Mask he has decided to wear, and he might've always been there, but it wasn't until now that the room felt his presence -- that change of air-pressure which comes from another body. Except: the air doesn't change pressure, again. And it is a nightmare, this person was there all along, watching, watchful.

"I'm here," he says. "You've met my childe, Molly. We have much to discuss, Dame Cecil*, you and I, and I would do it in another room."

"Did you break any laws?"

"When the bus and torpor took away my Mask, but Molly preserved the Masquerade that night."

Sophie and Jack look at one another for a long moment. Sophie's mouth is set and, for such a soft thing, hard.

"Is it love?" Sophie says. 

Jack smiles, and it is a sharp Jack that smiles; a Jack with something kind about the eyes, where the eyes are mostly sharp. "There is information and there is information, Dame Cecil. I'd rather speak in the other room; I think," and he is enticing, our Jack, "you'd rather this as well."

Beat. "Morris?" 

Morris flicks his eyes toward Jack; there is a long pause, as the large man regards the Nosferatu-whose-face-is-hidden. His mood is occulted; it is serene. After a tick, he stirs to glance at Sophie. "I think it well."

"Very well; the other room."

"I will stay with Miss Molly, if that is allowed," Morris says, and Sophie waves a hand dismissively.

Molly
Asked where Jack was, Molly glanced around but didn't have an immediate answer to give.  She clearly didn't know for certain, but had her suspicions.  And, sure enough, as the pressure in the room shifted and another shape manifested in the corner of her eye, the answer was provided for her and her suspicions were proven correct.  Molly's mouth closed and she watched as Jack, handsome unfamiliar stranger Jack but with a voice much like Jack's own, began to speak up for her and take on Sophie's (Dame Cecil's?) questions instead.

As Jack explained that she had preserved the Masquerade when he was hit by the bus, Molly ducked her head into her shoulders and tugged her sweater hood back up over her head.  She envied Morris's ability to hide his thoughts from his face and sought to do the same best she could, substituting many years of experience for the shadows of her hood instead.

It was a good thing that blood didn't actively flow in her veins any longer either, because soon her desire to keep her thoughts off her face would have been foiled by blush.  Was it love?  Molly's cheeks stayed pale, blush-free, but her mouth twisted in a funny little way when she looked back to Jack to hear his response.

It would have to wait-- he had smiled all sharp-and-charming and insisted on continuing the conversation behind closed doors.  Sophie conceded, and Morris requested to stay back with Molly specifically (as opposed to accompanying his mistress into the room).  She didn't break her streak of silence, but Molly did look suspiciously at Morris when he made his request.  It could be noted that she didn't seek guidance or reassurance from Jack by seeking his eyes at this point.  Rather, her gaze stayed wary and watchful and tired (not too worried, though) upon big Quincy Morris.

She would wait for Jack and Sophie to find their place behind closed doors, then look around to take a seat for herself.  Hands would fold together, stretched fingers intertwined, and she'd look almost expectantly at Morris.


Okay, big guy, what is it you want.

Nobody
The Jack and the Pillar of the Tower go into the other room. Their voices can be heard, but no words distinguished; the conversation is intense, whatever it is. And when the door closes, at least to Molly's ear there is naught to be heard.

Morris's silence is maintained for a moment, and his eyes focused straight ahead while his ear is elsewhere. He shakes nothing off; that is not how Lunatic blood works.

As Molly sits, Morris does as well. Reserved, controlled, oh he is carefully modulated indeed; he looks Molly over with care, as if he saw every fold every ruined curve every new texture. Which strand of hair is already loosed from her scalp, and will come off with the hood.


And then, almost abruptly, "I find your curiosity very attractive, Miss Molly."

Molly
Molly listened to the voices for as long as she was able to hear them, but when the door closed the silence had to do instead.  Morris was holding his tongue as well as she was for the time being, and the newly-turned Vampiress found herself looking almost longingly at the fireplace, wishing that flames were there to crackle conversation filler into her ear.  For soon enough, Morris's eyes felt too invested, lingered too much on what could be made out under the skirts and sweater (not much, truthfully, but only several hours have passed and the curves she was blessed with in life still remained as outlines under the bulky fabric).

The hood stayed up as she sat in her seat, she figured she may as well get used to the sensation of hiding under so much fabric.

She was considering this when Morris's voice finally cut through the silence, and what he had to say seemed to surprise her some.  A light-coppery eyebrow quirked up within the shadows her hood cast, and then her mouth twisted into a self-depreciating smirk once again.

"Oh?  Well, it's a shame that came a little too late.  The exterior won't be nearly so attractive anymore."


There's a sarcastic note in her voice, so she probably wasn't sincerely mourning the timing of the advance.

Nobody
Another brief silence. He is familiar with time and its passage. "I would be a liar if I, how do you say, were to tell to you that I am never moved by an attractive exterior. Beauty is unnecessary, but it feels good to be beguiled by it. I think the beauty has more worth but I, eh. I do not know it. The Toreador know this, and they think the beguilement is the point of our lives. You were attractive, but it was not so much to move me."


"Your curiosity however is very attractive, especially the tracks it travels. Did you play the games, the light as a feather stiff as a board, the oujii and other spirit games when you were young?"

Molly
At least, it seemed, Morris could be relied upon to be blunt.  Great beauty was nice to be moved by, but what she had before this past night wasn't a great beauty.  It was nice, warm, pretty, but not the stuff of legends to be sure.  If Molly found herself a little burned or insulted by this statement it was hard to say.  She looked relatively unamused to begin with, but this curiosity that he was praising was a difficult thing to smother.  It would perhaps titillating for Morris to become aware of this fact, but he himself had been an object of her curiosity from the very beginning.  He was the one who managed to lure her back to this very same place days earlier, after all.

The questions had her sitting up straighter in her seat, and her fingers twisted together further.


"Perhaps, from time to time.  They're not exactly games anymore, though."

Nobody
"No, they are not." Morris hikes up his pants leg when he settles his ankle on his knee, leaning back. "Did you know that many of our kind think that they are, in spite of that they were once human and were made other at the time of their death?"

Molly
"That they're games?"

Molly's expression cast with doubt.  She had difficulty accepting that people who had become Other themselves didn't believe in the Other themselves.

She took time to think internally as opposed to aloud as she may have done with Jacky.  Keeping her musings to herself as she worked down a path and came to the question that was really worth pondering aloud.


"So, I suppose there aren't many who have crossed into the other Realm and back as I have."

Nobody
He actually laughs. Fleshy lips part, and his mask-smooth face stays mask-smooth, but there is a thaw in his eyes behind which is a true spark of warmth; couldn't he be a grave-god, and the laugh is short but it stays to burr in his voice through part of what he says next.

"No, there are not. Other 'Realms,' as you say, we are of this Realm, and already not many continue to seek out the occult mysteries of this realm. They are dangerous and many of our kind are afraid of what they mind find if they dig too deep. The God who can make such as us can make any number of monsters, no? The older ones: it takes something to know in one's heart that one is damned, and to choose to continue."


"But I am intrigued by other Realms and the light which casts these shadows we move with. Even humans who know no better do not chase those shadows with as much diligence, or luck, as you do and have done, Miss Molly."

Molly
The laughter impressed Molly.  She thought of Morris almost as though he were made of stone and ice and iron borne of some far northern land.  That any warmth crackled to thaw beneath, she must have said something very right, or very wrong.

While he spoke, Molly considered what all she knew.  She knew of the Darkness, and that it felt ancient and consuming and damning.  She considered her own luck and diligence both, and pressed her lips into a thinner line than what they were already.  She thought carefully for a moment or two before answering.


"I've just learned much and known where to look.  When Sophie told me to execute on what I could find, well...."  She thought of the best way to put it, and bucked her own sense of modesty in a way that made her next summarizing statement come out flat.  "It was unleashing a bloodhound.  Anything can be found, if you know what path to follow."

Nobody
"Modesty," Morris says. "Why are you modest about your skills, or do you truly think you would not have been so fortunate in your quest had you not been dragging in the wake of the Ventrue's compulsion?"

Molly
"Oh, I'm sure I would have been just as fortunate."  She sounded casual about this, shrugging off his accusation of modesty with a cool regard that she fit into when it came to her work.  Specifically, it was the same tone she'd often used when assuring others within the emergency room (including med students there doing rounds to become doctors) that she was right and had no doubt in it and was about to back it up.

"I don't think I would have given up at any point with or without that compulsion.  Although I'm sure I wouldn't be here now without it," she added with a flick of eyes toward the doors behind which her sire and his mistress spoke in muted tones that her ears could not pick up.

"I probably would have been more hesitant and... careful, I suppose, about going in, though.  I would have taken more time."  Although, now that she thought about it, that may have been too much time for Jacky to hold on.

Oh look, a change of topic.

"How much trouble is he in?"


She meant Jack, of course.

Nobody
"I do not know," Morris says. "He seems capable of speaking for himself, but you may both be given the Sun. I do not think it likely. Sophie is not wasteful and the Prince is a friend to the Nosferatu, capable of great command and decisive thinking, so if you are an accidental Embrace but you are presented as useful, he will likely absolve Jack if there is no pressure brought to bear on his decision. Like most of her clan, Sophie is a soft touch if she believes you useful, which she did, or her sympathies are brought to bear on the humanity of the situation."

Molly
May both be given the Sun.

Molly's eyes widened to hear this, and she looked immediately imploring, even though she already knew Morris had no say in the matter and probably would keep whatever say he might have to himself anyways.  It was Sophie's game, and the ball was in her court to boot.

But he continued on, explaining what she was thinking to herself.  They could be useful, there had to be some kind of humanity in the situation, to understand how everything had happened and really wasn't it all just so reasonably resolved in the end?  The loose cannon Mortal that knew far too much had been brought into their fold, bound to a charming and (insofar, correct?) faithful Vampire with the poor misfortune of being cursed with the monstrous disfigurements of his Clan.  Thankfully he was very gifted, for that mask was so handsome and his charm was no doubt going to work so well.  It always did before.

"...So we'll see when they're finished then," she said, and looked back to the door once more.

After a few moments of silence she looked to Morris again.  Shifted a little uncomfortably and crossed her legs.  He was less creepy when he was distracted by explaining things.  So rather than go back to his curious interest and heavy observant gaze, she searched for things to fill the conversational void.


"So... what's a guy like yourself got at play here, being the muscle for Sophie.  She didn't... make you?"

Nobody
"No, she did not make me." He is occulted now: his light brown eyes, his inexpressive countenance. He could be stone and nobody's know the difference. Perhaps someone told him once, though he has a certain presence. Make it feel unwise, to call him stone. Enough mobility to his skin, the lines around his eyes, when he listens.


"Do you intend to pursue your interest in the occult now that you have become a, ah, a night terror?"

Molly
Molly considered the question and shrugged against the bulky black sweater she hid beneath.


"Perhaps.  I don't know what else I would be doing with my time anymore.  I would say that I'd learned my lesson after what all's just happened but..."  Again, the shrug, and with a dismissive tone she concluded:  "I've already died once in the name of an adventure and survived to tell the tale.  I'll see how many other tales I can gather before it kills me again."

Nobody
"Then I will make a request of your Sire, and if he is amenable you will spend some nights with me." This is a declarative sentence; but he doesn't say anything after it.


He might be watching her reaction. He is certainly watching her reaction; he just seems aloof from it, at a remove.

Molly
Her reaction wasn't one that she'd try to mask.  The suspicion she wore on her death-pale face was as clear as the freckles she wore upon it as well.  She untwisted her fingers and set her hands flat atop her knees instead.  Pushed up to stretch herself into as straight and cautious a sitting posture as possible.


"Doing what?"

Nobody
"I do not think I will satisfy your attractive curiosity so soon," Morris says. "In time, you will know, or you will not."


Her back creaks, a bone pops. Will it pop back? Of course it will. "They are nearly finished in there," Morris remarks next, innocuous. There is no easy way he could have heard, but then, vampires have many skills.

Molly
He wouldn't answer her question-- whatever plans he may have had for her interest in the occult were going to be kept for later, if ever.  She frowned a little, then looked to the doors when he mentioned that the other vampires were nearly finished.  She pricked at her tongue with her canines behind closed lips, testing the new sharpness.

"You can hear them?"  She inquired, and anxiously watched like she was anxiously waiting for a handle to turn or a voice to rise.


No further questions, though.  For now she would quietly wait.

Nobody
"In a fashion."

Molly's anxious watch is rewarded by an almost immediate shift of the handle. The very handsome, very sharp blue-eyed dark-haired Jack, the Jack with a Voice that isn't just honeyed, isn't just silver-tongued, isn't just words I say are so sweet you will swallow this medicine right now, but flirts with hook-you-down the way the Ventrue's does: he's the first one out. Does he look relieved? Hard to tell. He is holding the door, a Gentleman Jack, for Sophie, whose eyes alight on Molly first. Hooded goblin on her chair. 

Then she says, to Jack, "I think everything is in order. Do be in touch."


Morris stood again when Sophie and Jack came into the room. He clasps his hands loosely behind his back, and says nothing right now of anything he said to Molly.

Molly
It is with relief that she sees the doorknob shift and Jack's Mask come out first-- still worn precisely as he'd put it on back in the cab, undisturbed by magical or physical attack.

She couldn't quite tell if everything went alright or not, but given that he didn't look distressed and they were saying things like do be in touch, she could presume that they weren't about to be taken out into a clearing somewhere and chained down to wait for sunrise.  Morris rose as Sophie and Jack entered the room again, but Molly stayed seated in the chair.  Her hands folded together once more, and she watched the beautiful woman (a face she was born with) and beautiful  man (a face that was a lie, through and through) for the time being.


Just as Morris didn't speak any of the conversation he and she had about possible borrowed time and attractive curiosity, Molly kept mum just as well.  It would no doubt be a conversation to be had later, but for right now Molly was precisely as interested in keeping this affair as short as possible as she had been when she'd initially come in, her shadow (or lack thereof) ridden by an invisible Jacky.

Nobody
"A good evening to you," the Gentleman Jack says to the Lunatic who has taken and twisted the name of an American gunslinger from a Romantic Gothic about vampires and chosen to wear it. 

Morris inclines his head; it is perceptible. There is a flex of his mouth, but it is as removed or as internalized as anything about Morris is. Difficult to read a man like that.

"Come, Molly," and Jack holds his hand out for Molly.

They'll be at the elevator when Morris says: "You have no reflection. In this city, you must find that useful."

The Jack smiles; he smiles a conman's smile, a charming smile: "We find all manner of things in this city to be of use, my friend."


The elevator dings; through it they go, the two Nosferatu.

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