Jack
May 21st, Molly calls Jack and misses him.
That was a busy night and in spite of the excited tension of her voice he doesn't have a chance or choose to call her back.
May 22nd, Jack calls Molly.
He asks her to meet him at a doughnut shop. The one with the good coffee open 24-7. They've been there at least once before though it's more likely Jack just continues to occasionally bring her coffee from the place. The coffee's always good. The coffee isn't always something to transfigure one into craving, into devotion, into betrayal-be-gone. Isn't always good enough to tie knots in somebody's fate. But it's still pretty fucking good. Pavilion on the side of the road in a fairy tale come in it's fine there are no witches here. There really aren't: witches.
There's an older man who spends a lot of time watching a game or messing around on a laptop in the kitchens, between baking, or he shoots the breeze with the policemen (crooked, mostly) who come in, the young mother with the two kids expecting a treat, the occasionally tattooed unsavory.
The world is dark; there are no easy borders between 'good' and 'bad.' Only grays, grays, grays, most of them fading toward the deeper spectrum.
Maybe Molly's got work until late tonight, but Jacky (for obvious reasons) sounds excited and doubtful and cautious over the phone, and he wants to meet as soon as possible, so maybe they meet up at the doughnut shop after Molly's work or maybe they meet up earlier on the 23rd. The doughnut shop is pretty empty except for the baker and for Jack who is Harald who isn't Harald let's say Harald who is Jack.
The ugly young man with the thick, bushy werewolf-snarled eyebrows and the pigeon chest, the thinning shoulders and the weakened chin, the hair slicked back and curling like a lamb's curls under his ears, big eyes and one of those eyes damaged (glaucoma [clouded]), has his hands clasped. He's not sitting by the window because the window catches his reflection. He's sitting in the furthest back booth, which affords some privacy, keeping an eye on the door.
[Obfuscate 3. Moon Prism Transformation Activation: Make me look like Harald! Manipulation + Performance.]
Roll: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )
Molly Toombs
When Jack had called, the conversation had to be brief. Molly was at work, couldn't speak for long. She was able to remain on the phone long enough to agree to meet at that one place with the really good coffee whose cafe was open all through the night and day. He sounded excited and apprehensive both, and Molly sounded calm but a little stressed-- probably due to the fact that she worked the trauma wing of the emergency room. Stressed was basically Molly's entire career.
She was dressed in her navy blue scrubs when she walked in the door of the coffee shop. She spied her homely friend in a booth in the corner quickly enough. Molly had first looked toward the corner anyways, having figured he'd distance himself from the big glass windows that were the front of the shop; he wouldn't want to call attention to himself.
Molly didn't walk over immediately, but instead smiled and waved a small little wave, then gestured to the counter to indicate she was getting a drink first.
When she came to join him at the table, it was with a cup of coffee and two fresh donuts in hand. One of the pastries was deposited in front of Jack, and Molly slid to sit in the booth across from him. Her hair was in a straightforward ponytail and her cheeks were pink, flushed from the brisk walk.
"Hi, Jacky."
Jack
The baker rings Molly up with a sizable discount, so a purchase which wouldn't have been much to begin with is even less. "I'll be brewing up a fresh pot soon," he says, with a glance at his other patron, the ugly guy (kid [no]) in the corner, a just for yous guyses general knowledge what you do with that is outta my hands sort of tone.
There is more than just a half-full cup of coffee in front of Jack tonight. There is a laptop, something that is not Mac, thank you very much, and looks second or thirdhand, compact and portable and black. He closes it when she first enters, but nods a response to the smile and wave and looks back at the door until she sits.
He handles the pastry carefully, sticky-sugar getting over his fingers and thumb, then fastidiously wipes his fingers off when he places the pastry off to the side. The doughnuts or muffins or rolls are really really very good. Gregory's a good baker.
"Hi, Molly," he says. "So what..." He runs his hands through his hair, pushing the weak curls back and then releasing them (they sproing up around his ears more than sproingily at the ends and straggly through the rest than ever). "What happened?"
He always forgets things like how are you and you look good and other such frivolous pleasantries (in this Mask, this Face) when there's something Arcane and Occult to discuss. This is different because she called him to say his reflection contacted her; she called to say there's something he oughta know.
Settles so he's leaning closer to her, or maybe she sat on his side of the table, and he still settles so he's leaning closer to her. "Did you really see it?"
Molly Toombs
Across the table, Molly sat leaned forward. Initially this was to serve the purpose of biting into her pastry without sprinkling sugar everywhere. She took another quick bite-- she hadn't eaten in several hours and her stomach was rumbling, you see-- before dusting her fingers off on her napkin.
Molly also dusted sugar from the corners of her mouth before taking up her cup of coffee. Jack was stretching his lanky body forward for conspiratorial conversation. Molly was leaned forward as well, but not drastically over the tabletop to meet him in the middle. She held her coffee cup with both hands as she shared the story.
Apparently lack of pleasantries didn't bother her in this scenario.
"I saw it." Molly spoke evenly, containing the excitement that had been there on her voicemail. "Yesterday afternoon I was out on my balcony and Florence started barking at the doorway. When I walked through it I saw something move, something.... You know, not just everyday.
"It passed over screens and windows. I followed it into my bathroom and saw your reflection in my mirror instead of my own."
She paused for a moment, and when she spoke again her tone was grim. "It was...." Molly swallowed and tried again. "It was distorted, Jacky. I don't know what happened to it, or how to fix it, but it's all wrong."
Jack
He is thinking. This isn't an unfamiliar expression to Molly, Jack's (This Face's) thinking expression. He doesn't look off to the side or look up at the heavens or anything like that. He just gets a little still and maybe he taps his fingers three times or five times or seven times. The lighting isn't dim but it is that kind of brittle lighting common in shops that are open late late at night like the lighting is a fire to keep the unsafe things that team in the cities away, like a lamp can keep away monsters. Of course light can't do that. Light can do nothing. The sun bids vampires sleep and would burn them if it could, turn their bodies to ash. That's the price you pay when you're taken up by the Courts of Blood in the Dark Kingdom, that's the price they make you pay, put a coin under your tongue like Charon and say swallow it and you do and the sun will burn you if it can but it makes you sleep so that it can't.
He's thinking, a note of wistfulness scudding across his eyes (which meet hers) like clouds across a sky blown before a bluster of wind.
"Distorted as if by a rock thrown in a pool; or -- twisted? Did it speak?" He can't help (or he could, but he doesn't) the creeping of keen interest. What could a reflection do on its own? (Something bad [Doppelgangar]. Be wary).
Molly Toombs
Molly had taken a drink of her coffee and another bite of her donut while Jack processed what she had to say. The memory of the reflection had tried to manifest before her eyes, but her appetite refused to be spoiled. She had warded the image away, instead focused on the sparkle of sugar dust she was leaving on the tabletop while she ate. Molly focused instead on cleaning her mouth and fingers, on washing the bite down with some more coffee.
Then, when the questions were posed, she focused on answering them.
"It didn't speak. Never tried to. Jacky, to describe it is... "
Molly stopped and her brow furrowed. She set her coffee down on the table and folded her hands together to set them down with the coffee as well. She had stared thoughtfully at the tabletop for a moment, and then looked up to meet Jacky's eye again. The eyes that were the giveaway, the tell-tale part of the reflection that remained thoroughly Harald, the Jack that she knew. The flex of her brow switched to something slightly pained. Molly pressed on.
"It looks very different from how you do now. I think that the thing that stole it may have.... tampered with it. Changed it for some reason? She made it a monster, Jacky."
Jack
Jack is silent as he listens to her. He doesn't rush in when she stops or pauses and the words trickle away because she might still find them again and that's what she does. Jack is silent as he listens to her and reads the pain in her brow, tries to read her reaction to what it is she saw in the lie of her bones. Kali's ghoul saw his true face and she went running straight for the bar. Jack remembers what shape the Curse has given him. He can see what it has done to the rest of his body. He can feel it with his fingers if he is so inclined. He doesn't know. The Curse in his blood is not a stationary thing, and the transformation never really ceases although it slows so that unless one were immortal one might not notice until decades or centuries went by and there is a point about the curse and Jack and Jack's reflection and personal horror and horror. There is also a point about monsters. Who they are. What they look like. What makes a monster a monster. The Hag made his reflection a monster and the truth of this is something that glides under the surface of who and what he is -- her existence unfurls itself like a manta ray and glides beneath the currents of what he is and how he is driven it is a root cause. The Hag and the She they're talking about aren't the same thing. But they are, they are, they always are and will be to Jack who is mad. There is a point to all this.
She made it a monster, Jacky. That's the point. This is the point. His eyes do not strike an anguished chord. A sorrowful one, perhaps, Hallelujah, fourth, fifth, minor fall, major lift. He runs his hand over his face, cups his chin and gives a little crack of his neck, before settling. The Jack that Molly knows is not to be daunted. The Jack at the heart of all Jacks is not to be daunted. Sometimes the masks attendant to his Faces are perfectly contoured, aren't they?
"I wonder if by changing the surface I have been changed inside." His hand finds his chest and rests (restive, restless, dark hairs stark on the knuckles) over where his heart should beat. "What effect it might have? What haven't I noticed?"
His voice gains strength after an initial faintness -- investigation time! "There must still be a connection between myself and my refle -- " He glances at the (ghoul) man behind the counter and, although needless, lowers his voice to something more hushed. " -- my reflection if, ah, it knew to come to you and let you see it. But is it a connection we can trust? You don't think you might have touched on anything while trying to," a pause, and his surprised flinch of a smile which always looks surprised because that's the shape This Face makes, "ah, look into it? If, ah, if you did look into it yourself, I should say..."
"You said the afternoon? What time? I wonder if there's a significance..." He's intense and he realizes it and swallows adam's apple bobbing awkwardly and though he doesn't look sheepish he does look self aware for a moment. "This is exciting," he says, explains, all wonder.
Molly Toombs
"It's possible...."
Molly started in a tone of musing. Jack had presented her with a string of questions, some of them musing and wondering themselves. She wasn't overwhelmed by the lot of them. This was an exchange that she was accustomed to now, and Molly was a good listener anyways-- she's said it before, this is how she's survived so far. She knew what he had asked, let him talk himself out, and presented her answers in her own stream of consciousness. The effect of this was slow, quiet words. Sentences would be periodically broken apart by a sip of coffee here or there.
"It's possible that the change of your reflection would affect you in some... mirroring way, for lack of less-cornball words. It's equally possible that when it was ripped away from you the connection was ripped away as well." Blue eyes flashed up an met his, and Molly's eyebrows raised thoughtfully. "Perhaps it's been watching you, too? And that's how it knows me? Maybe, for some reason, it thought it would have more success reaching out to me first?"
She shrugged her shoulders against the loose and boxy cut of her scrub shirt. "It was around two in the afternoon or so, I think. I wasn't really watching the clock, I'd been out on the balcony reading. I don't really think that there's much significance with the time-- I'd say maybe, if it were the Witching Hour?" But this sparked a thought-- something occurred to her, and this lit up almost like excitement in her eyes. It was the excitement of revelation, of making connections and figuring out new things. The excitement that she and Jack shared as a similar trait between them.
"Or maybe it can only come out in the day? Because the thing that took it and changed it summons it back at night, and puts it to service-- to whatever service she changed it for?" It's a stretch in the dark, but not an impossible conclusion to reach in a world as dark as this one.
Molly'd move on with a shake of her head, remembering another question that he'd asked, remembering that she'd yet to answer it.
"I didn't actually touch it, no. It didn't speak. I-- ah, I think I may have hurt it or scared it away, though. I looked into it. It seemed...." Her nose wrinkled with conflict and memory, and her brow flexed down to complete the expression. "It felt like it would be cruel to avert my eyes, you know? I didn't want to be cruel. But I said something stupid-- asked what happened to it, and it took off."
Molly Toombs
"It's possible...."
Molly started in a tone of musing. Jack had presented her with a string of questions, some of them musing and wondering themselves. She wasn't overwhelmed by the lot of them. This was an exchange that she was accustomed to now, and Molly was a good listener anyways-- she's said it before, this is how she's survived so far. She knew what he had asked, let him talk himself out, and presented her answers in her own stream of consciousness. The effect of this was slow, quiet words. Sentences would be periodically broken apart by a sip of coffee here or there.
"It's possible that the change of your reflection would affect you in some... mirroring way, for lack of less-cornball words. It's equally possible that when it was ripped away from you the connection was ripped away as well." Blue eyes flashed up an met his, and Molly's eyebrows raised thoughtfully. "Perhaps it's been watching you, too? And that's how it knows me? Maybe, for some reason, it thought it would have more success reaching out to me first?"
She shrugged her shoulders against the loose and boxy cut of her scrub shirt. "It was around two in the afternoon or so, I think. I wasn't really watching the clock, I'd been out on the balcony reading. I don't really think that there's much significance with the time-- I'd say maybe, if it were the Witching Hour?" But this sparked a thought-- something occurred to her, and this lit up almost like excitement in her eyes. It was the excitement of revelation, of making connections and figuring out new things. The excitement that she and Jack shared as a similar trait between them.
"Or maybe it can only come out in the day? Because the thing that took it and changed it summons it back at night, and puts it to service-- to whatever service she changed it for?" It's a stretch in the dark, but not an impossible conclusion to reach in a world as dark as this one.
Molly'd move on with a shake of her head, remembering another question that he'd asked, remembering that she'd yet to answer it.
"I didn't actually touch it, no. It didn't speak. I-- ah, I think I may have hurt it or scared it away, though. I looked into it. It seemed...." Her nose wrinkled with conflict and memory, and her brow flexed down to complete the expression. "It felt like it would be cruel to avert my eyes, you know? I didn't want to be cruel. But I said something stupid-- asked what happened to it, and it took off."
Jack
"I wonder." Molly has heard Harald (lucky [fortunate] nobody special that he is) sound pensive before. But tonight there is an added dimension and it makes the timbre of his voice (honeyed, so easy to swallow, those cadences he uses, those words he pulls regardless of This Face or That Face, words are always honeyed, busy little bees) register as deeper.
He isn't going to come out of this fugue of thoughtfulness tonight. But the suppressed excitement (not very suppressed, after all, Molly understands) still informs his actions. "No, that wasn't a stupid question to ask. Ah, if it has anything of me still in it, then it would want to answer you."
"Florence noticed it first, you say? I wonder." He scratches the underside of his jaw. "And I can't say I feel easy at the, ah, idea that it waits just beyond the edge of reflective surfaces, watching what I do but untouched by it."
"Though I am glad -- " He hesitates. "I had worried that perhaps the creature who took it had given it over to the Abyss, you see, that perhaps it had been paid as some sort of tiend. Have you read much on tiends, tithes, or creatures who pay their prices to the dark? I, ah, don't mean 'evil,' just darkness."
Quizzical; it's almost a tangent. He rubs a hand across his eyes.
Molly Toombs
[Intelligence 3 + Occult 3: I don't know, how much do I know on that subject?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )
Molly Toombs
"Not much," Molly confessed. Earlier she had broken her eyes away from Jack's to look back down at the half-doughnut she still had left to eat. While he spoke and pondered aloud, Molly finished the rest of her pastry. She was dusting the sugar onto a napkin when she'd answered him.
She opted to nurse her cup of coffee when she spoke next.
"But clearly it wasn't given over as payment for anything. Or if it was it's somehow found its way back. I don't know how to communicate with it, though. I can't be sure if it... wants to come back to you? Or if it's trying to warn you about something?" Her brow creased. She looked very serious about the last thought. It occurred to her that whatever stole Harald's reflection may have plans to come back for the rest of him, and she didn't care for that idea one bit.
"Maybe I can look into my books. See if I can find anything about summoning. See if I can ask it."
Jack
"Don't do anything without calling me first, if you find a way to summon it; perhaps my presence will be, ah, will act as a galvanizer." His tone is encouraging, though reserved; he wants her to see what she can find in her books. He just wants to be around if she does find anything worth trying.
He seems to take her suggestion -- if the way his too-thick werewolf's brow lowers, shadows, skin creasing -- that it might want to warn him seriously. But he always seems to take her thoughts on matters strange and occult seriously, doesn't he?
"If it's trying to warn me about something, then perhaps it wishes to warn you as well. Or perhaps it learned something in the dark beyond dark."
He pauses. Here's a ghost of his usual sweet surprised smile. He always looks surprised when he smiles even when he isn't surprised, like he can't quite believe he's smiling, like he's so used to being studious it comes as a shock.
It's just a ghost of that smile, however. Clearly, he's too lost in thought.
"Speaking," he clears his throat, "ahem, ah, (cough), speaking of strange unusual things, have you been hearing rumors of things moving underground?" He is earnest. "I have." And excited. He's going to go crawling around in the tunnels, don't watch out.
Molly Toombs
Molly nodded her head, offering acquiescence to Jacky's request. "I will." Call him, that is. She'd keep him in the loop on this, of course. It was his Quest, his Adventure. She was just helping him along the way, along for the ride and gathering up what bits of knowledge-- practical and theological-- she could along the way.
But then, they're on to something new. The expression of intrigue that rode Molly's round, freckled face answered Jack's question before she could speak the words.
"No, I haven't heard... What's been going on?"
Jack
"Something moving beneath," he says. "I heard," he glances toward the (ghoul) man behind the donut shop's counter, although of course that man is no longer there. He's moved into the kitchen. Fresh pot of coffee has not yet materialized, but the sound of some machine humming, singing a happy coffee song, can be heard. "I heard it's the cause of these tremors we keep having; that it's able to drink a man's vitality through the ground. That it's settling in. Nesting."
Molly Toombs
Though she was still holding her coffee cup in both hands, Molly didn't take one sip while Jacky spoke of the thing that was moving around beneath the ground. Her face went grave, and her freckles stood out more as they always did when the canvas they were splashed upon turned a shade more pale.
"Jesus, Jacky, that's horrifying." She didn't sound hysterical with fear, though. Her tone of voice was still level, as it often was. She was Molly the Cool of Head, after all.
"Is... ah, anybody doing anything about it? I mean, can't it be gotten rid of?"
Jack
His gaze begins to shade to something dreamier. Molly doesn't know the true color of his eyes, and truth to tell, he too has forgotten them. If he tried to look as he did once upon a time, when the Day still had him in its thrall, before he fell through the cracks and was transformed, he might not be able to manage it. (This is a lie. He could manage it. But he wouldn't get the shade of his eyes quite right. He didn't gaze into them often, after all.)
"No," grim. "As far as I know, nobody is doing anything about it, because they're ... too concerned with what it might be a portent of. Something which moves underneath the ground, which causes tremors and drinks the lives of living people through stone without surfacing. Something which may live in roots, or be rooted. Would anybody who didn't know what to look for even recognize it?"
He frowns. "Unusual flora and unusual behavior from fauna. Those must be signs." He pauses. "I'm trying to find out what it is, where it is, and what it wants. Old forces always want something."
Molly Toombs
"I'm barely comfortable with the fact that other things walk around that prey on men and women to live. The things that I know of that do that? At least they were men once themselves." Her nose wrinkled, and she paused to take a drink of her coffee. Though her words professed a willingness to trust the Undead that they both knew to be real, the face she made when she said them suggested that a part of her gut and heart still twisted and warned her against it all the same.
"This thing... I don't know of men that were men any time recently who move underground and... did you say nest? Do you think it's going to be reproducing?"
Her expression said that she hoped to hell not.
Jack
"Is being once a man such a safe-vouch?" Jack says, somewhat wistfully. But even through that wistfulness, he seems interested in hearing what Molly has to say; as if even this deviation to the philosophical, what some might call the realm of ideas, means as much to him (her thoughts do) as something more solid. A hand held. A kiss. "Men have done terrible things."
He's also giving himself time to think of a response. Evidence here, when he repeats slowly: "Reproducing? No, ah, that thought hadn't exactly occured to me. I don't believe it is going to be making more of itself, but perhaps, hmm, perhaps by being active it will -- like the Godzilla movies, yes? The smaller monsters will flee. I think it must be roused for a purpose. I want to find what that purpose is. Mitigate what harm might come. Keep it from hands that might ..."
He pauses. "Molly, what would you do if you had all the power to do whatever it is you would do?"
Molly Toombs
"Men aren't excellent by default, you're right. But at least I know them and understand them. It's a good base for me to have to go off of-- better, anyways, than something bubbled up from the deep. I don't know if you can speak with or appeal to something like that."
Another sip of coffee, and she set the cup down on the table and twisted to glance back. The coffee machine was bubbling and hissing its final notes, and Molly had considered a second cup. Not because she wanted to stay awake much later than what she already knew she would be, but simply because the coffee was tasty and her cup was beginning to go cool and there was something just comforting about a warm drink while spinning thought-threads and weaving what-ifs with her companion.
She didn't much like the idea of smaller monsters being flushed out of the underground and into the streets by this Bigger Badder Something, and that showed as a crease between her brows, but Jacky's question had her pondering other things instead.
"That's a very broad question. In the scope of just this-- this monster underground, though? I would find it, and go and speak with it to find what it wants. If its cause wasn't.... terrible, or outright destructive and End-Of-Timesy, then I would probably, I don't know, let it be? Negotiate something reasonable? Or I would hope to, anyways."
Molly didn't want to stamp out everything in the dark corners of the world, you see. She just wanted to understand and be safe from them.
Jack
"Hmm. You put a lot of faith in open, honest discussion, don't you?" Jack says. He waits a beat. "And understanding." Another beat, smaller. "I do, too."
"But it is easy to make the leap, when presented with old creatures moving under the earth, powerful creatures, to - ah - End-of-Timesy. Do you recall when we broke into that Scientology Church?" He waits just long enough for confirmation. Then he says: "What I was especially interested in was its connection to this cult which has apparently been around Denver for some time. The Church of the Transcendental Revelation of the Emissary." He speaks the name carefully, as if all the syllables needed to be pronounced right, or as if he might forget them otherwise. "They sound like they believe in the end of the world, don't they?"
"What else would they need to transcend?"
Molly Toombs
"I know my limitations." Molly's answer, her explanation behind why she puts so much stock in conversation, is laid out truthfully on the table. She swirled her coffee cup and glanced down to it. Took a sip, decided it was officially too cool for her to enjoy, and set it aside to wait for the reappearance of the ghoul'd man behind the counter. When he was back with fresh coffee she'd resolved to go and get more.
"I know that many of the people I talk to and things that I encounter would wreck me. I'm no... you know, gun-slinging badass. I don't like to fight anyways. All that I have is getting on their good sides, basically-- these monsters, that is. If they have no want to kill me, or if they have a reason to keep me around, then I don't have to worry about them bringing me harm, now do I?"
There we go, her logic and survival method all laid out. Alliances made for the sake of strategy and survival. The trick was differentiating between what was an alliance only and what was rooted deeper.
Jacky, though? He was outside of that. Clearly.
"They sound about two bad leaders away from drinking poisoned fruit punch." That to answer the turn of topic. "An End-Bringer would be more perfect, though. More real for them, I suppose. Do you think that they'll try to seek it out?"
Jack
"Perhaps," Jack says. "In my experience, there are two kinds of end-time cults. There is the kind which readies itself for a final battle, expecting everything it does that is not right or not in good spirit to be vindicated in the end when it is the only thing standing against annihilation. I don't mean to say this kind of cult expects to be successful; only that they, ah, expect to be able to stand against such an end, for whatever good that might do. Then there is the kind of end-time cult which waits. They know that the end is here and they welcome in because, ah, welcoming it is all they think can be done with grace. I think these two kinds of end-time cults have sub, ah, categories, hmm. Such as those who would try to hasten the battle or hasten the end. I think sometimes that they want the end so that they can see if there is a new beginning on the other side of it."
Molly Toombs
"That's what I'm worried about." Molly agreed with Jack. The same thought had occurred to her as well.
"Have you heard anything else about them...? I mean, I don't know if you have an ear to the ground over there still or what, but, maybe would you know if they've heard this thing underground too?"
Jack
"I don't know whether they have or not," he says, and he sounds troubled by what he doesn't know. He likes to know (quest). He's never shown himself to shrink from the dark of things. "I do know there is a cult which I -- which I imagine is quite interested in the thing, but that touches upon the -- ah -- you know, those of whom we've spoken." His forehead crinkles and the words sound portentous; even pretentious, and knowng that causes him to grin as if to relieve tension. Sweet. Jack is sweet, and lucky. Lucky Jack. The grin fades soon enough, closes right up.
Watch him become avid. "As interesting as the flood, showing up in every myth, don't you think? As interesting as that, ah, this kind of stirring, what it brings out of those who know just enough to feel they know a lot."
Molly Toombs
"I don't know a lot." Molly smiled back, and the expression was sweet and full on her face. She cared for this homely ugly face of Jack's, for what lay beneath it. That caring was reinforced with blood-binding magic, but it was there all the same. Her sweetness was tinged sad and resigned, though. It often was in the subject they broached upon. "But I'm pretty sure I still know too much for my own good. My aim is to get myself around the bend, to a point where I know enough to regain my own good again."
"I, ah, don't suppose you'd tell me which cult specifically is interested? And why?"
She's bright with curiosity, very invested in what he has to say. The man behind the counter may have returned from the back room but she wouldn't have noticed. Her interest in the coffee refill was delayed for now. There were more pressing things holding her attention at this time.
Jack
The curse that kindles in his blood is a curse that can be used to effect. There are some - many - of his ilk who would, once they'd given her blood, use that to test her, break her will, see just how they could crack her open and make her reliant, watch how it worked. Jack is not that kind of creature. He tied the knot, lets it loosen and will re-tie it if it does, but he doesn't wish to tie it too tightly. He doesn't wish to rob her of her will or her chance to get out. He isn't cruel to her. He's kind; he will continue to be kind.
Or to be as kind as he knows how to be.
"The bend..." He muses. "The bend is -- what is you're on a track?" He sketches a circle in the air between them. Then, seriously, he says, "I think it is the, ah, the Cult of Priests, which we spoke of. They would be interested, from all I know of them."
He rubs his eyes again. "But perhaps this other cult is interested as well. Perhaps even Catholicism has a book on things which move underground and suck a man's vitality from him. You haven't had anyone come into the ER with unexplained... Ah..."
Pause. He's never sheepish, but he is self-aware. "I don't even know what it would look like. Would there be a wound? I think it would not leave one."
Molly Toombs
"I haven't noticed anything very fishy or out of the ordinary come through, no." Molly shook her head. Her voice was a little distracted. She was still, with one part of her mind, progressing down a track of thought and inquiry and discovery when it came to this Big Great Thing that was moving around underground. She thought to reach out to Finch at first, for he was loose of tongue and may know something as well. But he was young, she knew this. Not so experienced, perhaps not so in the loop. Flood, though, he was a well-informed man. He seemed well-connected, too. He has never before refused Molly information, she was sure that if she were to give him a call or arrange a meeting he would be willing to share with her what he knew. Perhaps why he and his were so interested in this thing underground and the end of days.
That thought process almost pulled her away from Jack's question about the thing itself. Molly wondered about wounds and shook her head. "No, no wounds, I don't imagine. If it's actually able to suck men dry through the ground then it's probably more of a magic than a physical theft. A... psychic vampirism, so to speak."
As she spoke she fussed about in her pocket and pulled her phone free. Found the time upon it and looked exhausted by it. "Look, we've talked the night away again. Would you want to walk a lady home, perhaps?"
Jack
"If you do, will you tell me?" Jack says, then: distracted himself has to physically pause. Molly can see it; how he pauses. Then circles back to the walk a lady home perhaps. He smiles, that surprised little smile of his, and nods. His adam's apple moves as he swallows, as he breathes. And he stands up, without much fanfare.
"Let me just get a bag for this." This being his pastry, which he hasn't so much as touched; but then, as soon as Molly sat down they began to discuss his reflection and how it may have been twisted into a monster.
"Are you working tomorrow night? Perhaps we can ... Ah... " He frowns, as if he doesn't know how to ask a girl out on a normal date, just because he wants to spend time in her company and not because he wants to chase down urban legends. "Do something." Yes. Enlightened choice of words (honeyed, always), Jacky.
Molly Toombs
Jack rose to his feet, and Molly followed suit to stand as well. She'd quite finished her doughnut, so she carried with her the coffee cup she was finished with and the napkins she'd dirtied as well. These were disposed of in a trash bin.
"Of course I'll tell you," she'd assured him. Because of course she would. They were in this together, after all.
She'd waited patiently for him to bag up the pastry that had gone untouched, and smiled at his surprised and awkward expression when he'd inquired after what she was up to tomorrow. "I do work, but it's an earlier shift. We could meet when I'm off? Maybe after I've had the chance to change out of my scrubs this time, though."
And so they would probably make plans and decide what to do as they left and made their way up the sidewalk, away from the donut joint.
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