Phone Call #1

Lux. Amber. Molly. They each receive a message sent to their phones and each message contains the same picture of Nathan Marszalek.

The reporter looks tired. His expression is a mix of confusion (a frown), terror (wide eyes), and haggard (hair and clothing disheveled). His stance looks off balance. The setting is a plain living room with a couch and a recliner, like something out of a black-and-white sitcom set.

The message reads: "Look who tried to follow me home."

Only the message relayed to Lux has an addendum: "He doesn't have a collar. Does that mean I can keep him?"

Lux

Flood sends a picture and a message. Lux's response does not come immediately, though there is an immediacy when it does come - what, ten minutes after, at most? And it does not come in the shape of a careless (or all-caps) text, but an actual call to make it a meeting of two voices if not two hearts. A ring, ring, ring.

Flood

Flood's phone has already rung (at least) once since he walked away from that apartment at the Florentine Gardens senior living community. This is the call he is waiting for it's the only one he answers. Once the line opens - the ringing stops and one just knows by that white noise on the other end - he speaks into the phone.

"This conversation starts one way or it doesn't start at all, Viol, and that's with you telling me who this Nathan fellow is to you," his voice even and expressing a sort of on-the-cusp-frustration that threatens to explode into something else.

She doesn't know if he's still with Nathan or if Nathan is still alive. She doesn't know if he has a knife to his throat or a gun to his head, though she can probably assume that Flood would be using a knife if he had a choice; if he's not going to use his bare hands. The only thing promising was that he'd been alive in the picture and his choice of words when he'd asked, Can I keep him?

[ Manipulation + Subterfuge ]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Lux

A beat.

The ambient noise on Lux's end indicates that she is outside. There is no breath to tattle tales on her; what the Hell is Nathan Marszalek to Lux? Something she never wanted anybody to know, that's for fucking sure. No. She's outside somewhere; walking. The connection holds; dull ebb of traffic. Distant jazzy wail of a siren.

"Why, if you want to know I'll tell you; but why the Hell start that conversation over the phone? So easy to listen in. Why don't we meet up? I'm at your complete disposal."

[Lux would like to not sound furious & stressed & at totally at Flood's mercy in this. Does she manage? Find out! Manipulation + Subterfuge.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Flood

[ Perception + Subterfuge ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Lux

Lux's voice is even, but full of shadow; nuance that Flood, well, Flood can hear it all: undirected fury (or no, not entirely undirected; but it seems at a loose end), tension hard below the silk-smoke cadence of her voice. She says she's at his complete disposal, and there's a ring of truth there. She is at his complete disposal (mercy) in this.

Flood

"I'm not the one who needs to worry about people listening in," and his end of the conversation is still quiet. He seems to be within doors.

"If you're at my disposal, darling, please answer the fucking question," hand gripping around the phone, but she wouldn't be able to hear that, nor the straining of plastic in the palm of his hand. Instead what she picks up on is a delicate balance of emotions there: The pet name he gives her sounds genuine in its affection; the frustration at her not yielding to the one caveat he'd put on them discussing this.

That she thought it was an option only deepens his anger.

Flood obviously doesn't like having to talk to her in this manner.

Lux

Silence, again, or not silence precisely; there's still that ambient noise. The ambient noise suddenly slopes off, as if she's in a tunnel, and isn't there something about phonelines? About this kind've silence? It's like looking into the dark when there's absolutely no light; it closes in.

An exhale, a word that never got to become a word. Lux hasn't even told Johnny her grandson's name. Only that he disappoints her. And who does she trust more than Johnny?

Hard on the heels of that exhale: "Blood of my fucking blood, Daniel, or no, not quite. Clay of my clay."

Flood

"Who seems to want my blood, Viol," and he doesn't exhale. It's a wordless beat without a breath as the void of his lungs refill with the same air necessary to speak again simply because of physics, not physical need.

"Went about asking after me, came looking for me, and found me. Close enough to home I should put his head on a pike," and another beat of a pause.

"And I quote, I would kill you if I could, end quote," gravel on the back of his tongue because the high clans don't growl. Their threats are clear and unmistakable things and they don't stem from fear. They also don't call themselves the high clans anymore, at least not aloud, but even that's less ingrained than the poise Flood carries himself or speaks with.

"He thinks if I kill him, you could find it in your heart to forgive me, Viol," and a final pause before he finishes: "That may be the most moronic thing he's said or done all night, if I'm hearing correctly, but the night's so young and his stupidity seems so boundless."

Lux

Flood cannot see Viol's reactions. Still no breath. That scrape of an exhale - it truly was just an aborted word. A forced detour. The Toreador doesn't swallow but there's a whisper, as if something silking against her phone. A rustle, wings in the eaves. Those seraphim in the rafters who'd do anything to hear Flood try karaoke. Who'd Fall, for that. Otherwise, it's stillness and silence. This time there's no long pause between what Flood said and the Toreador's response.

"Do you know, I wish I could disagree with you," (about Nathan's boundless stupidity) and her tone is pitched low, confiding if far from conspiratorial. A lover's voice, but without pleasure; just intimacy. "Are you wondering whether I would?" lightly.

Prelude to: "Daniel," and the light leaves. "I am truly sorry. Thought I'd nipped his, shall we call it fascination, with you in the bud, but I suppose sharper scissors and a more vigorous hand are in order."

Flood

She may be asking if she'd disagree about Nathan's stupidity, but he uses it as another question, interpreting it as the Devil might scripture to his own ends.

"If you would forgive me?" Making very sure she won't misunderstand what he is talking about. "I don't wonder at hypotheticals that won't come to pass," and it's then she hears the turning of a key in an ignition, an engine turning over in its sleep before coming to life, and the beeping of electronics within the cabin of a cavernous vehicle.

"You can call him for the rest of the story," his voice more than a touch less furious.

And then in remembrance and afterthought he says, "Clay of your clay? Mold him before it sets. Good night, Viol."

Lux

"What a guy you are," she says. "And with a face I still long to see, some soon time, huh? Good night, Daniel."

And she'll hang up after he has done so.

[a last Manip + Subt for the road]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Flood

[ Perception + Subterfuge ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Lux

Lux does want to see Flood's face some soon time - and not even so she can cut it off and make his fangs into a bracelet. She was trying again not to sound like he just stoked her fury at the poor kid; hid it, but the silk's too thin - can't Flood hear/see all the shapes behind it? Trying to play it cool, but there was something too sharp in her voice, huh?