“You want this. You have this. I can tell.”
Antoine Savoy

Sunday night, 13 March 2016, AM

GM: The nightjar soars trough the Big Easy’s skies. Jade looked up how fast they travel once. 19.26 mph, on average. But never dealing with traffic or parking counts for something. The Evergreen Plantation soon approaches. Its rooftop garden sits empty to Jade’s sight.

Below, she sees what’s hopefully only the first wave of guests leaving.

Celia: She’s often thought about dropping onto the roof. How her grandsire would react to find her up there waiting for him. Maybe naked in the hot tub, maybe perched in a tree, maybe just curled up on his usual chair. It’s tempting. Always tempting. Especially tonight, when she’s riding a high from arguably the best sex she’s ever had (Pietro picking her up at the bar being a close second, though she’d been mortal then so she’s not sure if it counts).

In the end, though, she decides against it like she always does, and she drifts lower as she approaches, scanning the faces of those leaving.

Just to make sure it’s no one she needed to see. Otherwise she’ll find a place to land.

GM: Veronica is one of them, trailed after by Clementine. Justine Chaudrier and Arthur Duchamps make up two more faces.

Micheal opens the car door for Veronica and Shep. He’s dressed in normal clothes, but his walk is slow and stiff.

Celia: Jade knows better than to chase after Veronica once she’s done with a party. She lets the harpy go.

GM: Micheal opens the trunk, gets in, and closes it after himself. The harpy sneers from the front seat as Shep starts the engine. Their ghouls ride in the back.

Celia: She still can’t think of anyone who deserves to be treated like that.

The whole thing is impossibly cruel.

GM: She was volunteering to give him a vagina not too long ago.

Celia: To prevent the pain of having his dick ripped off every night.

Maybe literally emasculating him will make Ronnie give it a rest.

And maybe now she feels bad.

Dating his brother and all.

Trying to be a better person.

Something like that.

She ceases her musing and finds a place to change back into herself again, strolling toward the door.

GM: Fabian greets her cordially. Inside, the theme this week seems like it was undersea. Huge fish tanks filled with coral, seaweed, and colorful fish take up the walls. Blue lights pulsate over the dimly-lit floor in shifting patterns. The party feels like it’s progressed to an afterparty. Ghouls are shutting off the industrial bubble machines, and licks are changing out of maritime-themed costumes as they oggle one another’s nudity. Reynaldo Gui cuts a dashing figure in a blue-coated 18th century naval officer’s uniform as he supervises the clean-up.

A few naked or fish-costumed vessels writhe and moan underneath nets as still-hungry Kindred drink their fill.

Celia: Had someone told her there was a theme? She can’t recall. Pity, too, as she’d have given herself gills or a tail and swam through the tank all night. Or a seashell bra and red hair. Maybe some tentacles. She wonders if she can make tentacles; she’s never given it much thought before, but apparently there’s a big following for that…

She spares a nod and a smile for Fabian, already eying the available vessels, and asks if any of the side rooms are still free.

GM: “I believe so, madam. Their occupancy has gone down,” the smiling ghoul answers.

Pete is not present in the common area. Laura Melton, dressed as a mermaid, is toying with some ‘fish’ next to Emerson Newhouse Hearst. He’s shirtless and wearing a wide feathered hat that would’ve looked at home on Jean Lafitte.

Celia: “You’re a gem, Fabian.”

And there she is, the lick of the hour. Laura Melton. She’ll track down Pete later. And even Gui, delicious though he looks tonight, can be a phone call tomorrow night. Or a pitstop between Melton and Savoy. Finish what they started last night. She makes sure to wink at him when she catches his eyes drifting toward her.

Even without an appropriate costume Jade walks as if she owns the place, winding her way across the floor to join Melton and the biker.

Celia: “How’s your catch?”

GM: “Salty,” smiles the blonde, blood dribbling down her chin as she looks up from the now-weakly breathing vessel. She’s lost her bra and is clothed only in a scale-patterned skirt that clings tightly to her hips and flares out at the bottom.

Emerson, meanwhile, is lanky at a glance, but more toned close up. He doesn’t look like he worked on his body as religiously as Roderick did, during his last nights alive, but there’s gristle and muscle on top of his lean frame. His short brown hair looks eternally and artfully messy underneath his pirate hat.

“I think they fed them fish or something. You could taste it.”

“Mm, yeah,” says Melton. “Wanna fuck?”

Celia: Jade doesn’t know which of them she’s speaking to, but she’s not one to turn down an offer like that, and Emerson can always join them. She might as well go all the way if she’s going in at all.

She leans in without a further word, licking the blood from the blonde’s chest and chin.

GM: Laura pierces the skin along her neck, waits, and laps up the flowing blood. Emerson joins in from behind, peeling off Jade’s dress and sinking his fangs into the back on her neck. The pair might not be pleasuring her on both levels, like Josua did, but there are twice as many of them. The biker’s tongue, too, soon laps up the flowing blood.

But just like that, it all comes crashing down.

Celia: It’s the taste of the blood that does it. Hot on her tongue. Salty, like Melton said. Her Beast roars its approval. But it doesn’t want the blonde in front of her; it doesn’t want to fight for its meal. Night like this? No. It wants the easy thing, that already pliable, primed and ready vessel on the ground, and Jade lets it go. The only warning is a low growl in the back of her throat that builds into a snarl when she rips herself away from the two licks who want to share her, dropping heavily onto the fish-dressed girl to sink in and feast.

GM: Jade throws herself from the two licks and over the motionless vessel as the red haze descends. When it clears, a mangled corpse stares up at her. African-American girl, maybe mid-20s, her once-sleepy eyes livid with terror. Her throat is almost completely torn out, and hot blood freely runs across her and Jade’s chests.

“Impolite,” says Melton, licking her lips.

Celia: Covered in blood, none of it her own, Jade looks up from the carnage she’s wrought. A pang of guilt shoots through her at the needless death, though whether it’s for the girl or her grandsire’s cleanup crew is debatable. The practical part of her mind tucks it away, more spa materials, more ways to show off to the Ventrue Mafia man, more building blocks for Josua.

She rises, dripping blood, hands and face and chest covered in red. Her eyes find Melton, then sweep down her own body in a come and get it motion.

GM: Emerson, she notes, is no longer present. The Gangrel pounces on her and starts rapturously running her tongue and mouth along Jade’s breasts.

Celia: Whoops. She’d scared off the little Caitiff. That’s okay; this is the one she wants anyway. Jade sinks back down once Laura launches herself forward, back arching into the feel of tongue on her skin. She sinks her fangs into the Gangrel’s neck, lapping at the blood once it has had time to cool. Bloody hands hungrily roam her body.

GM: Laura’s hands roam hers equally hungrily as she tackles Jade to the floor, hungrily lapping at the red between her tits. She rolls to the side with Jade, putting the Toreador under her, then over her, then under her again, letting the blood spill over her body and then back over Jade’s.

“Little Caitiff didn’t like killing…” she growls between licks, half-smirking.

Celia: She’s had enough being on bottom tonight. She gives as good as she gets, biting and sucking and smearing the blood across the floor and their bodies and her mouth. Especially her mouth. She rolls with Laura until they’re in a secluded corner, each of them taking a turn on top, each of them pinned at some point.

“His loss,” she purrs back, “I’m not into virgins anyway.”

GM: “He wishes he was a virgin.”

The Gangrel bites deep along her upper breast, releasing another flow of blood. She doesn’t wait for it to cool, though, just laps up more of the girl’s blood from the base of Celia’s neck.

Celia: “Born agains,” she hisses between her teeth, caught by the ecstasy of the kiss. “Even worse.” Her fingers curl through Laura’s hair, holding her close while she laps at the blood on her neck. Jade slices her fangs against the girl’s cheek, drawing forth a thin trail of red.

“You’re who I wanted anyway; he’d have just been a bonus.”

GM: The Gangrel gives a wordless snarl of arousal. Claws extend from her fingertips as she slices open Jade’s belly. A few torturous seconds for her later, seconds that Jade spends at her cheeks, her tongue burrows laps over the bleeding wounds.

Celia: Another snarl rips from her throat when Melton’s claws sink into the soft skin of her belly. She yowls, head thrown back, and only quiets again when her tongue soothes the burning ache.

But she has claws too. They slide from the tips of her fingers when she flips the Gangrel onto her stomach, straddling her hips. Jade rakes them down her exposed back, following the lines her nails have left with her mouth.

GM: Melton growls in turn as the blood flows and Jade’s tongue waits those several torturous seconds to lap it up. She lies there for a moment, content to allow the Toreador to clean her wounds, then turns around and shoves Jade off and onto her back. She buries her face against the other lick’s inner thigh, ripping and tugging at the skin like a fat drumstick. Pain burns in the half-puncture, half-tear wounds, but soothes as the Gangrel’s tongue licks them clean and partly seals the injuries.

Celia: It’s a mess of blood after that. Growling, snapping, snarling while the two licks play on the floor, ripping and rending and puncturing with their teeth and claws. Each of them takes a turn on top before being dethroned by the waiting usurper. They cover each other in blood and scratches and half-healed bites, leaving shredded skin and tattered clothing behind. Somewhere in the distance she’s vaguely aware of a certain Ventrue cowboy claiming her discarded bra. Melton’s skirt comes off when Jade buries her face between the Gangrel’s thighs, inhaling the scent of her while she waits those long seconds for blood to cool. It’s a delicious and intoxicating heady onslaught of painful pleasure, so different from the gentle waves that Josua had put her through that crested again and again until she was spent. Different from the feather-light touch of Pietro, the red-hot burn of Veronica, the rapturous embrace of Roderick. Different, but thrilling; Jade and Laura, tonight at least, are evenly matched.

When she’s spent, when her Beast has been sated by the blood of the mortal and the Gangrel, when it purrs and curls at last in her chest, the pair of them end up sprawled across fallen netting on a stretch of warm sand. Heated floor? Lamps? Magic? She doesn’t know how Savoy does it, but he pulls out all the stops. It’s like lying on a beach. Fish swim nearby in one of the tanks. Jade curls against her equally spent lover, tongue still lapping lazily at the hole she’d torn near one nipple.

“You,” she purrs to the Gangrel, lifting her arms above her head in a languid stretch once she finally pulls her mouth away with a final lick, “are exquisite.”

Celia: “And filthy,” she adds as an afterthought, though the word is softened by the clearly satisfied way it drips from her tongue. Both Kindred are covered in sanguine sand, the granules adhered to the sticky substance that coats their body. Jade remembers now why she never liked the beach. What had that animated azure djinn said? Sand: it’s everywhere.

“Come on, I’ll sneak us into a room with a shower and give you the real underwater experience.”

She’s already imagining pinning the Gangrel against the tile wall beneath the spray of the shower. Warm water, warm blood, two beautiful ladies… Emerson really missed out.

GM: He’s less a cowboy tonight than a naval officer, but Jade doesn’t doubt the bloody bra winds up in someone’s appreciative hands.

“Mmm,” says Melton contently as she rises from the sand, casually licking off some of the red-smeared stuff from her arm. “Let’s go. I need to grab some clothes, too.”

There are semi-public showers upstairs, for Kindred to clean up after their revels. Savoy is even thoughtful enough to leave free clothes.

Many of them get taken off the Evergreen’s corpses, so he’s not even paying for them.

Celia: Jade found the cutest boots in one of those free closets once. She’d been happy to appropriate them for her own use.

She follows the Gangrel to her feet and plucks her dress (not shredded, Emerson was good for one thing at least) off the floor on her way to the stairs with Melton.

“I was going to ask if I missed anything exciting, but I can’t imagine much that would top this.”

GM: Melton picks up her mermaid skirt.

“There were some good runner-ups,” the Gangrel smirks, lazily hitting the elevator instead. “There isn’t much I’d miss a Saturday at the Evergreen for.”

Celia: Jade flicks her eyes down her companion’s body. “I got what I wanted,” she says with an appreciative grin.

GM: Her companion eyes her.

“I bet you did.”

Celia: “My cousin taught me to find the most valuable thing in the room.”

“He’d steal it, but, well… the sentiment stands. I suppose I could throw you over my shoulder if you want the full experience.”

GM: “Try me. I’m pretty light.”

Celia: Someone had told her once to lift with her knees, not her back. She supposes if she got Diana and that punk down the stairs—dead weight, the both of them—Laura might be an easier time. She steps forward, arms going around the Gangrel’s thighs, and rises, slinging her over her shoulder.

GM: True to Laura’s words, she is pretty light. She’s only dead weight in the literal sense, too. She wiggles her hips and gives Jade’s rear a good squeeze.

Celia: Jade giggles at the touch, pleased that she didn’t embarrass herself by sending them both sprawling to the ground.

“Cut everything out with those claws of yours?”

GM: The Gangrel continues to knead her rear.

“Only sexy things. Like your juice.”

A buzz goes up from one of the phones in Jade’s purse.

Celia: “I’ve heard there’s a trick where you can stuff things inside of you. Like a prison pocket. Imagine all sorts of fun things come out then.”

Awkward timing for the phone. Her hands are busy with the Gangrel. The door opens, though, and she lets Laura down so they can move through the hall to find the showers. She peeks into her purse at the caller ID.

GM: “I know someone with that trick. It’s pretty handy.”

It’s a text from Emily.

Celia: “Oooh. I’d love to learn.”

She’ll check the text in a minute.

GM: “I could get you started when we’re done here,” says Laura as she opens the door to the semi-public showers. There’s multiple rows of them. There’s usually quite a few Kindred who need to wash off after Savoy’s revels. Laura hangs her mermaid skirt on a clothing rack and turns on a faucet.

Celia: “I’d like that.”

Jade follows her in, eyes scanning the stalls to see if anyone else is present. She takes a moment to check the text from Emily while she hangs her dress and sets her purse down.

GM: They look empty. The text reads,

Ugh fell asleep studying and woke up… my schedule’s gonna be fucked

Celia: Is it late enough to safely ignore the text? Maybe. Emily knows she’s a night owl, though.

Nah girl you got this. Crack a soda and stay up all night & then tmr if you want to fix tho.

She puts her phone away to join her new friend in the shower.

GM: The Gangrel squirts some soap over her hands, then lathers it over Jade’s breasts.

Celia: Oh, it’s gonna be like that? Jade can play this game. She leans back against the tile wall, a lazy smile curling the corners of her lips upward at the attention to her breasts. It’s the third time Laura has gone right for them.

They must be nice.

Real nice.

GM: She did make them that way.

Celia: She’s very proud of them.

They’re perfect.

Like the rest of her.

GM: Laura’s hands squeeze the soft but perky flesh as she gets soap all over them, then topples over with a wet thud against the tile floor. A wooden stake protrudes from her back.

Celia: Playing her role, Jade shrieks and stumbles backwards.

The wet tile steals her footing from her. She goes down hard, scrambling away from… whatever it is that’s staking naked vampires in the shower. It’s like a slasher flick with sorority girls, only she and Laura are the sorority girls.

GM: Another stake pierces Jade’s chest. She goes down, stiff as a board.

Celia: There’s nothing to do but lay there, staring helplessly at the ceiling while the water pours down over her naked body.

GM: Water pools over her face and eyes. She can’t blink or even move her eyes. Laura’s staked body turns over in her peripheral vision. Blood slowly washes down the drain.

After a little while, a blindfold wraps around her eyes, and then she can’t see anything.

Celia: Rude.

There’s nothing for it, though. She can’t move, can’t speak, can’t blink, can’t use any of her powers. Her claws lie useless beneath her nail beds.

She listens. That’s all she has left.

GM: She hears water running, then stopping. She hears the door open and close.

Moments pass. Then the blindfold comes off and the stake comes out of her chest.

Celia: Jade sits up, moving across the floor until her back is at a wall. She rises slowly.

GM: She has the otherwise empty shower stalls to herself.

Celia: Does she, though? Or is the shadow dancer watching from across the way, staring at the naked lick?

GM: That’s always the question, isn’t it?

Melton’s mermaid skirt is still there on the clothes rack.

Celia: “Send for me when they’re ready,” Jade says to the empty air.

And then, just in case the ghoul is still watching, Jade gives him (her? it?) a show.

As a “thanks for playing” sort of thing.

And because she’s a completely vain creature who deserves to be admired.

But who’s counting?

It’s not that she’s aroused by danger, but… well, for a moment there she thought maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t her friend in the shadows, and with how easily he’d (she?) had dispatched two licks, one of whom she thinks is a great deal older than her…

Maybe she is aroused by danger.

She’s never even seen the shadow friend before, has never learned which of the ghouls it is, but she’s always appreciated their work, and they’re all alone here in the shower.

It’s easy to play vixen in a place like this. The water pours down on her from above. It beads on her skin, the little droplets trailing downward, drawing the eye toward the stiffened peaks of her breasts. Laura had been touching them, but her invisible friend can take over if they like. The soap is right there, ready to be lathered and spread. Jade spreads the suds across her fingers. Slick and slippery, they slide down her body, across her chest, thumbs flicking across the tips. Her hands slide lower, across her flat stomach, halting only at the tops of her thighs. A wistful sigh leaves her lips, barely audible above the sound of the water, and a single finger traces her lower lips. She’s alone, after all, or maybe her friend is there, and if they are… it’s an open invitation, should they choose to accept.

GM: Celia abruptly feels something phallic ram up her ass, furiously pumping back and forth. A hand-like sensation clamps over her throat, choking her, nails digging into flesh. More pressure pinches over her left nipple, squeezing and tugging like they’re trying to rip it off.

Celia: She’d giggle, but her air is decidedly cut off. Not that she needs it, beautiful corpse that she is. She doesn’t resist when her partner claims her. The shadow uses her body how it wants, and her only contribution once it has her in its grip is to slide a hand between her legs to find that sweet spot so she can get herself off while it hammers her from behind.

GM: The shadow slams her face-first into the tile and chokes her tighter, jackhammering her ass like a drill. Its other hand makes a clenched fist inside her cunt. It doesn’t enter slowly. It just punches right into her, shoving itself as far up as it can, as fast as it can. Her inner walls strain under the sudden pressure.

Celia: At least her nose doesn’t break, right? She’s got that going for her, that her nose doesn’t splatter and ruin her pretty face. Her cheek presses into the tile beneath the spray of water from overhead, head turned to the side to protect the delicate orbital and nasal bones. Each subsequent thrust pushes her further against the wall, an endless battering ram that lays her out and pins her helplessly before the shadow’s lust. She snarls despite the hand crushing her windpipe, though the sound that comes out isn’t nearly as forceful as normal. Like a kitten compared to a tiger. The fist in her cunt makes her whole body jerk, her free hand slamming into the wall at the unpleasant stretching. Claws sprout from her nails, sliding harmlessly off the slick tile. She hisses. That, too, is choked. But the fingers between her legs keep moving and her head drops back, lips parting silently while the onslaught continues.

GM: The fist in her cunt retracts. Something sharp stabs into her throat and rips across, cutting it open. Blood leaks down her chest as fingers penetrate the slit flesh, squeezing and tearing and digging. She hits the floor side ways with a hard, wet smack. Water trickles through the fingers. The pounding in her ass doesn’t slow.

Her Beast threatens to burst its chains at the apparent attack, to turn fang and claw on its invisible adversary, but Celia keeps it down. Some of the fingers withdraw from her throat. The remaining ones plunge deeper. Red, wet slashes suddenly appear over her belly and under her breasts. More fingers dig greedily into the cuts as a palm rubs against her nipple.

Celia: It’s not the sexual encounter she expected. Not from a ghoul. Unless it’s not a ghoul but a lick instead, someone like her who gets off on causing pain, which doesn’t explain the cock buried deep in her ass. Her snarl comes out as a wet gurgle, blood dripping freely down her body from the holes the shadow rips into her throat. Then more from her belly, threatening to stain her body and the floor both before the water washes it down drain. Her claws rake at the hands holding her to yank away their painful touch inside her abdominal cavity, clit forgotten in her quest for blood.

GM: The shadow seems only further aroused by her struggles. By her pain. It reminds her of someone Celia used to know. The fingers plunge deeper into her throat, gorily twisting and pushing upwards into her mouth, liker her head is a sock puppet. Another stabbing pain shoots up her cunt. Blood flows like the mother of all periods.

Celia: It reminds her of being fucked by Jamal. Only Jamal hadn’t tried to rip her apart with his hands, and he certainly hadn’t fisted her while he’d fucked her—though she vaguely recalls broken ribs after coming to, pinned beneath him with her knees near her ears and the monster buried deep inside of her.

It’s like that, almost. But with a smaller dick. There’s less chance of it tearing through her abdomen on its own, so the claws (are they claws or just nails? She can’t tell) do that part for it.

She bleeds. And she screams. And, again, it comes out as a wet, ragged rasp. Air hisses from her lungs and onto the shadow’s hand and fingers where it has torn her open, like a lifelong smoker who finally had an artificial larynx put in after theirs rotted out of their throats.

It’s not sexy. But this isn’t sex anymore. It’s a power struggle, and she’s losing. Losing because she keeps a firm handle on the thing inside of her that wants to tear the shadow’s throat out. Do shadows have throats? Beneath the shade he’s a man, certainly, or it’s a rather effective strapon.

She wheezes. It might be a laugh.

Her body can take the damage, though. His can’t. Her claws disappear, fingers moving back between her legs. She’ll get herself off since he won’t.

GM: Oscar Wilde said everything was about sex, except sex, which was about power.

She’s wrong about that firm handle, though. The monster bursts from her chest in an explosion of pure rage and hurt. Everything goes red. When she comes to, she’s coated in still more red that doesn’t smell like her own. The pouring shower head swiftly washes it away.

Celia: Whoops.

She looks for a body.

GM: She does not see one.

Celia: She flips off the water, feeling around the floor for a body. She follows the scent of the blood if she can. She’d thought that maybe the stealth fades if they die, but what does she know.

GM: She does not feel a body. The lingering coppery odor leads out of the room.

Celia: She sniffs, too, for the tangy, musky odor of human jizz.

GM: She does not smell any.

Celia: Shame. Her poor shadow friend didn’t even get off.

GM: They can’t all be Jamal.

Celia: She should call him. See what he’s up to these nights. Maybe he’ll give her the fuck she needs after… whatever this was.

Someone has blue balls.

Her body repairs itself, Beast so amused by the fact that it got to come out to play twice this evening that it doesn’t even fight her for the blood. It gives instead, sharing its resources with the girl that takes such good care of it. Her earlier transgressions must be forgiven, she thinks, and she stretches contentedly as muscles and skin and sinew wind back together. She clears her throat as her esophagus heals, pleased that everything is in working order, and finishes her shower.

She doesn’t show off this time.

Sunday night, 13 March 2016, AM

GM: Ughh I usually fall asleep midway through the day if I do that, reads Emily’s answering text after Celia exits the shower.

Tomorrow’s Sunday so no school to keep me up

Celia: Still early enough to go to bed and wake up at normal time. Not a big deal. Take a sleep aid & call it a night.

GM: Eh true I’ll try not to wake Mom getting bills… see you tmrow

Celia: Who said having a sister had to be difficult?

GM: Jade has a moderate amount of time until her scheduled meeting with her grandsire.

Celia: She passes it at the Evergreen. There’s no reason to leave when she has to come back anyway, and there might be a handful of people hanging around. The cowboy, the warlock, or the Gangrel once she’s done being questioned. Friends wait for each other, right? It won’t look weird if Jade dresses, then helps herself to a seat downstairs, eyes peeled for any of the three aforementioned friends.

Otherwise, she spends some time on her phone looking into this Vinny fellow. If she’s whoring herself out to get what she wants anyway she might as well go all the way. She looks for a public social media page, pulls the best-looking photo from among the lot posted, and does a reverse search for it to see if she can find him on a dating site. Middle-aged, lonely cop? Probably on a dating site.

Where else would he meet someone? Taking a statement at a hospital?

Oh, wait.

GM: Gui is present, still directing the cleanup. Jade does not see the other two.

The Evergreen slowly returns to normal as Jade pulls up Vinny’s profile on Facebook. He looks younger than middle-aged, though he’s definitely on his way there. Older millennial. He has olive skin and spade-black hair. Slim like the toothpick between his teeth, but toned and taut as a racetrack greyhound. His facial hair looks somewhere in between stubble and a beard. His face might be called ruggedly handsome, if not for its diminutiveness and half-dozen moles. He wears a dark-ribboned trilby in all of his pictures, but his hair looks a little thin around the edges, as though he’s going prematurely bald.


The page has a moderate amount of activity. There are no post or pictures that identify him as a police officer, and his work and education history is unlisted.

Jade does not find Vinny on any dating sites, though multiple pictures show him at the Fair Grounds Race Course, often known as New Orleans Fair Grounds, a thoroughbred racetrack and racino in Mid-City.

Celia: Jade waves at her favorite Ventrue as she takes a seat in clear view of both the elevator and the door, intending to catch Melton on her way out. If she leaves. What if she doesn’t leave? Uh oh. What if Jade had been about to make a friend and messed it up by opening her mouth?

Well, what else is new. She’s sure she’s done that sort of thing before. Spilling things she shouldn’t have. Whoops. But it’s for the safety of her grandsire, right? Making sure there’s not a spy hanging out in their midst.

Even if it means she won’t be able to learn that trick. And even if she doesn’t really think Melton was a spy, just someone who doesn’t want their real identity known.

She huffs, keeping an eye on the elevator while she scrolls through Vinny’s page. Maybe Gui could even introduce her. Though not if he hangs out at the tracks…

What sort of face would a guy like this be into? Someone attractive enough to be appealing, but not so attractive that he thinks it’s a trap. She can find a balance, she’s sure.

She pulls up the hours and the website for the track. Maybe there’s an upcoming event.

GM: It’s open from 9 AM to midnight every weekday, 10 AM to midnight on Sunday, and closed on Saturday. There’s also an on-site casino and dining options. Doesn’t seem like a bad place to take a date.

There’s a “3x multiplier madness” savings event on Tuesday. The horse races, though, all seem to be during the day.

Celia: She already has plans out the wazoo tomorrow night. Sometime this week, though, she’ll get that ball rolling. She doesn’t imagine it’ll be the sort of meet-cute that happens in rom-coms where she only has to run into him once. More of a slow burn.

Ah, inconvenient hours for racing. She navigates back to his page to see if his photos were mostly taken during the day or at night, or if he’s posted at all about horses or is more of a general gambler.

GM: Both, from the looks of things. Most photos are during the day, and show him in the stands for the races, but he seems to have come by the casino during some evenings too.

Celia: Perfect. She’ll go on Tuesday for the multiplier madness. If he’s a gambling addict—is he a gambling addict?—then he’ll probably be there. She’ll run into him, start up some small talk… She’s got plenty of cute outfits to choose from… And it beats asking Pete or Gui to introduce her, though she supposes those can be her plan B and C. Maybe C and B. Somehow her vision of “policeman’s ball” ends up with her sire and sister-in-blood also present, and she’d rather not have to deal with either one of them.

Is a policeman’s ball even a thing? Where had she gotten that idea?

Probably a movie.

Plan made, she pays less attention to her phone than she does her surroundings, though she keeps it out to look busy.

GM: Melton does not reemerge, though licks continue to come and go from the Evergreen, including Rosa Bale (who rarely attends the parties). The common lounge area is eventually restored to its former state.

“I think this is yours,” remarks Gui as he sits down next to her, holding up a bloody bra.

Celia: Jade finally slides the phone back into her purse, turning to face the smirking cowboy. Pirate? Naval officer? He’s something alright.

“Like a trail of breadcrumbs, it led you right to me.”

GM: He wraps an arm around her shoulder. “You’re too sexy to sit here with just a phone for company.”

Celia: “I was waiting for someone.” His hand finds no bra straps when it slides across her shoulders. She hadn’t lifted one from the free closets, though her chest doesn’t look any worse for wear at the lack of support. She tucks the bloodied garment into her purse.

GM: “Usually more effort than it’s worth to get dried blood out of clothes, but it can be a look.”

Celia: “Next week’s theme is ‘vampire.’”

GM: “Someone can tell the thin-bloods they still aren’t invited, then. One tried to get in.”

Celia: “Oh? How’d that go for them?”

GM: “Well, Veronica and Shep discovered they still leave behind ash.”

Celia: Good to know.

“What a waste of blood.”

GM: “Discovered for some guests here, at least. I don’t doubt they already knew that.”

Celia: “Wonder where they all keep coming from. They’re like an infestation.”

GM: “You and every elder in the Camarilla, lush. Even those pogroms in the ‘90s weren’t able to get rid of them.”

Celia: “I just ran into one in the square, actually. It tried to shake me down for money.”

GM: “Jackson Square’s a bad place at this hour. How’d that go for it?”

Celia: “How do you think it went?” She flashes a smile.

GM: Gui smirks and makes light banter with her until Fabian approaches and smiles to Jade that “Lord Savoy will see you now, madam.”

Celia: Ah. Well. She supposes she’ll talk to him about that bit of muscle sculpting business later then. And Harrah’s. And the Blackmatch. Better to do it privately, anyway, and he’d looked too cute in his little outfit for her to take him seriously. Plus she’d been busy pretending she’s a thin-blood killer, as if it’s something to be proud of to slaughter such helpless little things.

Christ, she really fucking hopes it wasn’t Dani. But she hadn’t told Dani about the Evergreen, so really there’s no reason for it to be…

She leaves Gui with a last lingering look—she’d ended up perched on his lap somehow, though their banter hadn’t led to anything beyond harmless flirting—and an invitation to give her a call in the next few nights if he thinks he has any use for… well, she holds up her hands and lifts a brow and expects him to know what she means. A final scrape of fang against his cheek sees her on her way, a spring in her step as she goes to greet her grandsire.

Celia can’t help but wonder if Fabian was her faceless attacker as she follows after him. He’s always smiling. It’s people like that you have to watch out for; they’ve usually got some sort of screw loose upstairs. All that smiling rots their brain. Pretending to be happy all the time. Yeah, she bets he wants to rip into a stray vampire if he gets a chance. She sniffs (discretely) at him as they get into the elevator.

GM: Gui says he expects he well may, and gives her bottom a pinch as she rises.

Jade smells no blood on Fabian.

But it’s possible the cheerful-faced ghoul is a very thorough cleaner.

Celia: He really is her favorite. Pity Roderick has that “no sharing with members of the Mafia” rule. She imagines they’d be fun together.

Bit awkward to ask, isn’t it? “Hey did we bang earlier? Sort of?”

“Sorry for losing my cool, I was kind of into it until you ripped my abdomen open. Wanna try again sometime?”

GM: Fabian takes her up to fourth floor, or technically, the third floor’s roof. Savoy and Preston are seated at their usual spots around the table. There’s also a ghoul cleaning up an ugly black substance off the ground, but the two make no comment of it as Savoy rises to kiss her hand.

“It feels like it’s been much too long, my dear, but a long absence only makes reunion all the sweeter.”

Celia: Jade eyes the black substance as she steps around it, though as soon as her grandsire rises to greet her he has her full attention. She dips into a curtsy, an easy smile finding its home on her lips at the words.

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, grandsire. Mine is fit to burst.” Her eyes move to Preston and she dips again, paying the steward her due respect. “Good evening, Madam Preston.”

GM: “Good evening, Miss Kalani,” the Malkavian returns.

Fabian pulls out Jade’s seat for her as Savoy resumes his own, then smiles at her. “My agents tell me you did masterfully in helping to apprehend Miss ‘Melton.’ She was eating out of the palm of your hand, by all accounts! Very well done, my dear.”

Celia: “Thank you,” Jade says to the ghoul. She crosses one ankle over the other beneath her chair. “And thank you, Lord Savoy. She was rather eager to make friends, it would seem.” Make friends. Fuck. Same difference. “Have you spoken to her yet?”

GM: “Not as of yet. It’s been a busy night.” He chuckles. “But she’s been gracious enough to wait.”

“She has little choice but to wait, sir,” states Preston.

Celia: “I was about to say the same, Madam Preston.” Jade smiles at the Malkavian.

GM: Preston doesn’t smile back, although Jade doesn’t think she’s ever seen Preston smile.

She wonders how many times men have told her she’d look nicer if she did.

Or let down her hair and removed her glasses. The esthetician can’t help but note the potential makeover.

Savoy chuckles again. “That’s true enough, you two. But I prefer to assume graciousness from others until they show us otherwise.”

Celia: Probably not many make that mistake twice regarding Preston and smiles.

“If it’s no trouble, will you let me know what you find? Only… we rather hit it off, and I was hoping to salvage that relationship if possible, as I think if she’s in the right camp she and I have a lot to offer each other.”

GM: “Of course, my dear. We could interrogate her here, if you care to change your face.”

Celia: Jade nods. “I’d be happy to.”

GM: “Very good. Have someone bring her up once we’re through other business, Nat.”

“Of course, sir.”

Savoy smiles at Jade. “Mr. Gui tells me Celia Flores picked up Miss Garrison from his club! I hope she’s proven an asset thus far?”

Celia: “Ah. I wasn’t aware that Mr. Gui knew who Celia was.” The lift of her brows suggests the question. She certainly hadn’t told Gui about her mortal identity.

GM: “Oh, I think quite a few people know who the famous Celia Flores is,” Savoy grins. “Certainly anyone with an eye for personal beauty.”

Celia: Jade smiles prettily for him at the compliment. She has Kindred followers? How amusing.

“But not her relation to me?”

GM: “I haven’t told him as much, my dear. I’d be surprised if he did.”

Celia: She nods.

“Thank you for clarifying. I was concerned that I had gotten sloppy with my mask. The recent incident with the hunters has set me on edge, I admit. Yes, I picked up Dani. Miss Garrison. I didn’t know if Mr. Gui was in on everything, and I didn’t want to take the chance that he discover her if not. We had been… well, he received a call while we were together that suggested trouble, and I thought it might have been her…” She trails off, wringing her hands.

“She was aware of what she had become, though none of the specifics. I gave her a bit of an overview so that she doesn’t wander into places less welcoming to those like her.”

There’s a brief pause. Her eyes widen slightly, gaze becoming more earnest.

“I hope that’s okay. I didn’t mean to step on your toes. I was just concerned for her safety, knowing the piece on the board she could offer you.”

GM: “The thin-blood was in his territory. There were few better agents to monitor her,” states Preston.

Savoy smiles in understanding. “I trust your judgment with Miss Garrison and her brother, my dear. I’m glad you did what you felt was best.”

The elder Toreador doesn’t repeat his earlier question, but they have clearly come back to it.

Celia: “My mistake for not asking about his hand in this. I apologize. She is being looked after and has been advised to stay within the Quarter.”

The words are stiff. Perhaps, she wants to say, if they had told her that Gui knew about it then she wouldn’t have been so pressed to move Dani to a safer location. She really had been concerned for the girl’s safety. But she should have assumed that Gui knew; Dani had been there for almost a week at that point. It would be a sloppy landlord indeed who didn’t pick up a thin-blood in his own territory.

GM: “The thin-blood’s fate is irrelevant save as leverage over her brother,” Preston replies, seemingly unconcerned.

She should have known Gui would know.

Stupid, whispers Maxen.

Celia: A Dani under her control is a Dani that makes Roderick play right into her hands.

Maybe that voice should check itself.

“Mr. Durant has been apprised of the situation regarding his sister. He chafes at the idea of keeping her here and seeks a way to liberate her to a more thin-blood friendly city. He thinks Houston will treat her better. I have disabused him of this notion. He has asked to be able to see her to hear her wishes on the subject before he agrees to anything permanent, but submits himself to a boon should you be amenable to allowing his reunion with her.”

She pauses to collect her thoughts.

“I have given Miss Garrison an unfavorable view of life outside the city as well as an idea of what to expect should she try to make a home for herself outside the confines of your territory. She is not interested in leaving. The thing about Mr. Durant…” She takes a breath, then lets it out slowly. “He will try to play hero. He will try to move her, possibly against her wishes, but he has no one to assist with getting her out of the city. He mentioned an attempt to retrieve her from the Quarter during the day with an independent shadow dancer.”

GM: “Oh? That’s curious he’d promise me a boon for a reunion with Miss Garrison,” muses Savoy. “From Mr. Durant’s perspective, that offer would likely make me very curious who this thin-blood is to him.”

Celia: Of course that’s what he’d focus on. Not any of the rest of it. Not any of the careful maneuvering she has done since she realized she botched the situation.

She could lie. She should lie, rather than admit that she fucked up. Rather than admit that she opened her mouth. Rather than add insult to injury by not only moving the thin-blood but spilling the beans as well.

She starts to. To say that that “perhaps he just meant move through your territory for an evening,” but even to her the reasoning is thin.

What happens next? He never trusts her again? Never asks her to do anything for him again? Strips her of her domain, rescinds his offer of support and guidance, tells her that he should have let her burn in the Gulf?

She falters. Her eyes find the floor for a long moment.

“I thought,” she says at length, “that in the interest of long term manipulation he would be more susceptible to the idea of someone in his corner, and thus become more pliable. I had wanted to convert him fully rather than ask him to play double agent to a sire to whom is he twice-bonded, as I doubt the integrity of such reports.”

GM: She feels a hand against her shoulder.

“It’s hard, isn’t it, given the history?” Savoy asks.

Celia: Her lip wants to tremble. She presses her teeth together rather than let it, nodding her head in answer to his question.

GM: The hand gives her shoulder a squeeze.

“Maybe this wasn’t fair of me to ask of you, my dear. I know how much you want to do well and impress. Maybe I should have asked someone else to bring over Roderick to my side, and then your two’s relationship could have rekindled under better terms, without any lies between you.”

Celia: “N-no,” she says, shaking her head, “I can do it. I shouldn’t have let our history get in the way. It was…” stupid “…it was wrong of me, and it would have been easier if I just… didn’t.”

Why are his gentle words so much worse than if he’d simply berated her?

“I can do it. I will do it. It’s just taking longer because I… thought that I had a better way.”

Thought she knew better than an elder who has been around for centuries, someone who could lie circles around her.

Maxen’s voice is back. She recognizes it this time. Two syllables.

GM: Stupid.

“You’re easily the stupidest of my children. I don’t have to do this with your sister. What’s wrong with you, Celia? Why have you turned out so intellectually stunted?”

“I don’t know, Daddy. I’m sorry. I’m trying.”

“You’re failing. You’re not trying hard enough. You aren’t just stupid, you’re lazy too.”

Stupid.

Stupid.

Stupid.

Celia: Yeah, that’s the one.

Maybe the floor will just… swallow her.

“I have this,” she says, pulling the paper from her pocket to thrust into his hands. As if that makes it better.

GM: Savoy tilts her chin up to meet his gaze.

“Shhh.”

“C’est bon. It’s all right.”

“You want this. You have this. I can tell.”

He takes the paper, skims it, and smiles at her.

“You’ve brought me this. You’ve turned Miss Garrison against Houston. You’ve brought me Mr. Durant’s plan to get her out.”

“I don’t need to have faith in you, my dear. I have evidence. You do want this.”

“It’s not too late for us to fix this. You’ve got both Garrisons right where you want them, it sounds.”

Celia: Her eyes don’t leave his. Maybe he can see the emotion swimming behind them, the nerves and apprehension and half-shuttered expression that readies herself for a verbal backhand.

But it never comes.

He is not her sire. He is not her father. He is disappointed, surely, but he offers understanding and encouragement rather than beratement.

She does. She does want this. More than anything, she wants to impress him, to flip Roderick, to do something right for him. To make him proud of her. She will do it. She will.

She swallows, nodding her head at his last statement.

“He… he wants me to move in with him. In Mid-City. He spent this evening looking for a place for us. I thought… worst case scenario, you know, I could just borrow the notes when he’s not there. But that doesn’t… I mean, I’m sure you want to be able to ask him questions about what happens, so that’s not ideal, but it was my backup plan. There’s also…”

She steadies herself.

“There’s more. I have more.”

GM: “I do want to talk to him myself,” Savoy nods. “I’d suspect he’s going to be more careful with those if you’re living together.”

“If his sire finds out, she could arrange for the notes Miss Kalani finds to contain false information,” states Preston, looking up from her tablet. The Malkavian’s face is otherwise neutral.

“That’s possible too, Nat. But tell me what else you have, my dear,” Savoy says, turning back to Jade.

“In fact, I wanted to ask you some more about Mr. Durant too, now that you’ve spent some time together. What would you say he wants most? Regrets most? What would he change about his Requiem if he could, in your estimation?”

Celia: “He wants democracy. He’s an idealist. He wants Mid-City to be its own little city within a city. He wants to clean the city of the Mafia. He keeps saying that he wants to take them down but then he just ‘forgot’ because there’s more pressing matters to see to, and maybe that’s true but sometimes I think his sire just kept him busy so he couldn’t, and there’s that rumor that she sired Mr. Carolla, so I was going to meet up with him to find out, but… maybe that doesn’t matter, I was just thinking of ways to snap his collar to her.” She takes a breath. Collects herself.

“He’s twice-collared to her. He wants to believe that she’s good, but he knows that she was behind that massacre in 2011, that she sold them out to the prince, and she’s ‘just as ruthless as any other elder when it comes down to it.’ He implied that she was collared by him. The prince, I mean. That she made a mistake and she’s stuck now.”

“He wants to believe that Kindred can be good. He talks about Carthage a lot. He doesn’t think violence is a good answer to problems. He’s… loyal, once you get him on your side, but he… well, to be honest, he doesn’t like you because of your ties with the mob. He doesn’t trust you.” She looks down. “Sorry,” she murmurs, as if that makes it better.

“He regrets faking his death. He’s upset about his dad no longer having children. The Garrison line died with Dani. He wishes he’d stuck around for his dad. He’s concerned about me, to some extent, and my safety. He… um, his haven was attacked recently while I was there, and he lost control and killed them because he thought they might hurt me, and he’s never actually killed before that. He’s upset about it.”

Once she starts talking about him it gets easier. She tells her grandsire everything she thinks will help regarding his question about Roderick.

GM: “Very informative, my dear,” Savoy says thoughtfully, drumming his fingers. “I think there’s a few things we can use here. But you said you had something else?”

Celia: “A few more things. Unrelated, and related.”

“Has Warden Lebeaux spoken to you regarding the information I shared with him earlier this week? I don’t want to repeat anything you already know.”

GM: “He has, but why don’t you bring it up so we’re on the same page?”

Celia: “The prince has sired a childe.”

GM: “Ah, yes,” Savoy smiles. “It sounds as if she was quite taken by you.”

Celia: That, at least, earns a self-satisfied smirk.

“I believe so.”

GM: “Very good. You should continue seeing each other.”

Celia: “I had thought the same. My concern is that she knows me as Celia, and I don’t wish to connect Celia to Jade with more people than I need to. There’s also the possibility that she discovers the truth of my lineage, which… well, that could spell trouble.”

GM: “The secret of Celia’s identity is already out to her,” states Preston with a verbal shrug.

Celia: “That wasn’t my concern, Madam Preston.”

GM: “There are methods by which to mask the taste of one’s blood. It is not improbable she has tasted the sheriff’s already.”

Celia: “She and I have also already shared blood. That is the issue.”

GM: “You spoke ‘discovers’ in future tense, Miss Kalani. Save memory alteration or killing her, there is little to be done for the past.”

“Her relationship with your sire, however, is poor. All the more so now that both wish to be named the prince’s heir.”

Celia: There’s nothing to do about it except hope that Caroline keeps her mouth shut in the meantime. She doubts the girl has any reason to, given the situation, especially if what Preston says is accurate. And why wouldn’t it be?

Celia can simply die, she supposes. It’ll hurt her mother, but without proof… enough people can connect her to Jade though, which is a risk, but she can disappear for a bit. She plans to leave the city for a while anyway.

It’s not really her neck on the line if Donovan is caught with an illegal childe, is it? She’s not an abandoned fledgling. Not that it would stop them from taking away one of her grandsire’s pawns if they could, coming for her anyway. And Veronica for claiming her. And everyone else who helped cover it up. Guilty by association and all that.

She flattens her lips into a thin line.

Maybe they should just lock her in a basement somewhere to keep her from fucking things up.

“Mr. Durant mentioned that some of the primogen on the Calbido would appreciate your presence there as well,” Jade finally says to her grandsire. “You can see the vote, split as it is. I wasn’t sure if it was something you wanted, or if you’d prefer to just know what they were up to without the seat, and I discovered something that could tip the balance in your favor.”

“That being said… I think there is a greater use for it than a seat on the Calbido.”

“It is no longer a matter of if our prince will abdicate his throne. It is a matter of when. While the issue of his childe causes some concern, I believe that her history these past months has worked against her. She has made enemies of most she should have been able to call friend, and while her blood is potent, while she is physically strong, I do not believe that she would be anything more than a puppet to the seneschal, Cabildo, or anyone else that she allies herself with were she to claim power. The city needs a stronger prince, and I have little doubt that the city’s elders would be leery at best to throwing in for someone so young.”

It’s a rather polite way of saying that Caroline has absolutely no social skills.

“The fledgling aside, the others who stand in your way, with the exception of my sire, are all Invictus: Primogen Poincaré, Prince Guilbeau, and Lord Councilor McGinn. As discussed prior, we have begun the process of pulling Mr. Guilbeau to our side with the takeover of Harrah’s, and progress has begun on that front.” She’s already fucked one of the two people she needs to fuck, she means, and will be meeting with Marcel shortly now that she has his attention.

“I will be honest that I don’t know Regent McGinn as well as you or Madam Preston probably do, so perhaps my calculations are off base… but we have seen his climb to power these past few years, and we all know of the way he wishes to grind his ‘rival,’ Primogen Poincaré, into the dust. Not getting a seat on the Calbido surely rankled him. While it is not the title of prince, perhaps he would content himself with that were we to open the door for him.”

Finally, Celia allows herself a small smile.

“I have discovered interesting information about the current Ventrue primogen that would possibly vex the prince to the point of dismissing him from his position. Were that information to make it into the right ears, well, perhaps it would be enough to make Regent McGinn thankful enough to throw his weight behind you when the time comes.”

“There remains the issue of Primogen Poincaré. Some say that he has turned his sire into no more than a puppet, but I think, perhaps, the opposite may be true. I have no wish to speak ill of them, but… they stand in your way.”

They stand in his way, and she will remove them for him if he needs her to.

“Perhaps you have use for them. If not, I… may have further information that could be essential in dismantling their power base.”

“The first is what you’ve already read on the transcript. Primogen Chastain suggests to throw childer to the Inquisition. Just… like we’re nothing.” Celia finally looks back at him now, hands twisting in her lap. “I… I get it, I guess, get rid of the new to save the old, let at least some of them survive, make them think that they got all the Kindred in the city. You can always create new childer, right? What does it matter if a seven-year-old neonate dies compared to the loss of an elder? All that history. All that power. Life, even unlife, is cheap.”

Would he do that to her? Throw her to the hunters to kill like she’s nothing? She doesn’t want to think that he has it in him, she wants to think that he cares more for her than some random off the street, but what is she to him? His grandchilde. Not even of his blood, just his estranged childe’s blood, and no matter how useful she tries to make herself she doesn’t think she will ever be able to atone for spilling their plans to Donovan shortly after her Embrace or messing up with Roderick. If her own grandmother would have seen her aborted for the good of her child, what’s her life worth against the rest of her kind?

She swallows the thought.

“I don’t think that any of the young ones would agree. And maybe they’re not heavy hitters, but they are numerous. If we could get that word out, tell people how callously she views them all… perhaps it would turn public opinion. Which, admittedly, might not sway who takes the throne. As you pointed out to me before, this is not a democracy. But if the favored childer or pets of elders start disappearing… it might be enough to turn the tide against her, and her childe. For example… Mr. Durant was attacked in his haven by three hunters. He’d be ash, possibly worse, if I hadn’t been there to wake him. If his sire were to think that it was another primogen who sent them after him as the first sacrifice…”

Maybe Coco’s loyalty isn’t something that he needs.

“I mentioned before that she’s stuck. Collared. Not fully, maybe, but he said after the accident of Mr. Kelley she became stuck, and if she had to drink from him to avoid further punishment, and if she had to do it when she arrived because of their clan enmity…”

Celia shrugs. Maybe Coco is a non-factor here, but from what Roderick said Savoy has been courting her for some time to sway her to his side, and she had seen as much last night.

“She might throw in for Malveaux-Devillers regardless, depending on the bond or her desire to assert more independence to Mid-City. Mr. Durant has implied belief that the next prince will not be as strong or heavy-handed and will be unable to crack down on the Anarchs as much as our current prince does, which I believe is also a factor in her holdout.”

Finally, she shakes her head.

“I’ve gotten off topic. There is further yet to be used against Primogen Poincaré and the prince both.”

Celia sits back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other. She doesn’t otherwise fidget, though the words stick in her throat. After a moment she finds her voice.

“I have reason to believe that the prince is feeding on neonates. Specifically the Storyvilles. It was something that came up before Rox—Miss Gerlette died. I think that her lover, Evan, was killed for it. Drained by the prince, perhaps, and his childe covered it up by blaming the scourge. She’s an easy person to lay blame on, and I had thought to do the same with Miss Gerlette’s disappearance. Perhaps Evan was an accident, but when the Storyvilles started looking into it they started vanishing, and the coincidence of Malveaux-Devillers joining up with them and pointing fingers at others is… well, it’s a bad cover up, really, and it’s rather telling that the only one of them still alive is her lover, Miss Jocelyn Baker. I would not be surprised if the story she concocted about Meadows coming after Suarez was but another cover. She’s fast, certainly, and maybe she brought an army of ghouls like the Anarchs claim, but then why hasn’t retribution been taken against her? Why is Meadows content to leave her alone if she thrashed her so thoroughly? I think Malveaux-Devillers sought to curry favor with her sire and has been feeding him, made up the story about taking on Meadows because she was tired of looking like a bottom-feeder, and used it as a convenient excuse for his behavior.”

“Which brings us to Primogen Poincaré.”

“I have Evan’s former ghoul. I questioned her thoroughly about the situation, and she let slip that the Storyvilles were meeting covertly with the prince. She was mind-twisted into forgetting it, but I was able to get through that. It sounded like there was some sharing of blood, at the least.”

“She mentioned that shortly before his disappearance Evan was on edge. Scared, nervous, anxious. And that he met with Primogen Poincaré about it. Felt better when he came back. I think… I think he might have told Primogen Poincaré. I’m supposed to meet with him after Elysium next week to speak about it. I don’t expect he’ll sell out his prince regardless of my relationship to him. But if he did know, and if he didn’t do anything, and if he sat idly by when the prince excused that behavior from Mr. Matheson…”

What’s that saying? Guilty by association? Accessory after the fact? It’s circumstantial, but then when have Kindred politics ever played fair?

It’s enough, she thinks, to sink both of their reputations.

GM: “The Cabildo have wanted Lord Savoy to sit on their body for some time, as well as the Baron,” states Preston. “This is unlikely to come to pass even if they achieve a majority vote. The prince will simply overrule them.”

“But it is telling that it’s come up again, Nat,” Savoy replies consideringly. “So is the size of the vote, for that matter.”

Savoy smiles at Celia’s words concerning Vidal’s childe.

“Oh, she’s definitely something special, my dear. I should like to see what she’ll make of herself in a century or two! But no, she’ll never be prince this early in her Requiem. She’ll either be a figurehead for Maldonato or a bride for Donovan.”

“I find the latter unlikely, sir,” states Preston. “Anarchs might mistake her for the sheriff’s pet, but their poor relationship is not news to us.”

“She has made many enemies and few inroads, as Miss Kalani observes.”

Savoy just grins. “You should know better than anyone else not to underestimate her, Nat. We both know how fatal a mistake that can be.”

“I see very few of those enemies as lasting ones, given the names in her lineage. Except perhaps for Donovan. If she’s Maldonato’s figurehead, after all, he won’t be prince.” He winks at Jade. “Your sire’s the one I’d watch closest, my dear, out of all the claimants.”

“Potential inducements for Regent McgGinn have been considered,” states Preston. “Primogen would likely be an appealing position for him in the new order. What information have you discovered concerning Primogen Hurst, Miss Kalani?”

Savoy smiles at Celia’s talk concerning the primogen. “The last time elders threw their childer to the Inquisition’s pyres, my dear, the results nearly destroyed all of our kind. Feeding a fire only makes it burn larger and hotter.”

“But we are going to keep this to ourselves, concerning what the primogen have been saying. Right now it’d largely amount to rumors and hearsay, even if we came out publicly. That would just make us enemies among the Cabildo and alert them as to Mr. Durant’s leak.” Savoy chuckles. “Before we’ve even managed to make him a ‘real’ leak, at that!”

“Don’t ever forget, the Invictus, Tremere, and Anarchs aren’t the Sanctified. Their leaders only support our prince as long as they consider him the winning horse.”

“Feeding on neonates like Mr. Matheson could certainly well change that.” Savoy smiles. “That would rather neatly explain what become of the Storyvilles. How can we assist you in your meeting with the primogen, my dear?”

“He’s hardly going to blab ‘I know the truth’ to Miss Kalani, sir,” says Preston. “If he knows anything, he’ll just lie and send her on her way. Then send someone to silence her if he thinks she suspects.”

“Don’t underestimate this neonate either, Nat,” winks the French Quarter lord.

Celia: Celia waits while the two discuss her report amongst themselves, quietly absorbing their words. They make solid points considering many things she brought up that she hadn’t considered; she’s glad she waited to speak with them before acting.

Perhaps they should take this item by item.

Unfair, isn’t it, that Caroline can blunder her way through her Requiem and all is forgiven when she is announced as Vidal’s childe, while if Celia were to come forward as Donovan’s they would wonder what such a monster saw in her and ask themselves how thoroughly she takes after her sire. It is all well and good for the sheriff to have the personality of concrete, but his neonate childe is nothing but a chink in that armor and an extension of his severity. Her existence serves only to punish him should that truth get out. Already she can picture the responses of those close to her: immoral, cold-blooded, inflexible. Ruthless.

Isn’t she, though? Isn’t that why she thinks he turned her? Not because she has mastered his level of austerity, but because she will stop at nothing to achieve her goals. She is not some unstoppable force, no, not some battering ram that hits again and again and again and hopes this time her opposition shatters; she is not ice, unyielding with her jagged edges. She is liquid. She overcomes obstacles by rising above or swirling around them. She gives when someone puts their hand inside of her, nestles into the little nooks and crannies of the world around her, carves her niche out over time like the great rivers of the past. She can be as gentle as a trickle or as forceful as a tsunami. Even her form is malleable: she takes the shape of whatever container they put her in, hardens when the atmosphere calls for it, or floats on by as little vapors in the air, unseen.

The waves do not care if you cannot swim when they come for you.

“Fatal?” she asks after their words about Caroline. She looks between the pair, because the idea of a well-connected, powerful, beautiful blonde Ventrue coming after her is some cause for concern. Why wouldn’t she take out her rival’s childe?

GM: “From what Warden Lebeaux has informed us, Miss Kalani,” Preston answers, “had Miss Malveaux wished you ash, she had more convenient opportunity to render you such while you were in the Garden District. Slaying you gains her nothing, in any case. It is more probable, if she ascertains the blood relation between you and the sheriff, that she will seek to use your existence as leverage over him.”

“I can’t see him taking that well,” chuckles Savoy. “He’d then most likely attempt to kill her himself. Discretely.”

“A Prince Maldonato with Miss Malveaux as his figurehead is a greater threat to us than Prince Donovan. If the sheriff succeeded in killing her, so much the better for us!” smiles the French Quarter lord.

“Better still if the prince discovers his deed, too,” states Preston. “It will drive Prince Vidal to a fury like little else, and the seneschal will have no figurehead. The succession would become a truly open question.”

“Hmm,” muses Savoy. “I think there’s much that Miss Malveaux and I have in common, and many things we might do for one another. You know I hate to throw away any potential asset, Nat.”

“But she might not be salvageable, either. It has been some time since she last gave us a call.” The French Quarter lord gives a self-deprecating chuckle. “So we’ll go into this with open eyes, but we’ll give diplomacy a last go. Jade can see Miss Malveaux again to discuss the benefits of a continued association.”

He looks at Celia. “I think she already suspects that I know her real sire. You can play apparently straight with her, my dear, and confirm that I do—I don’t imagine she’s about to report your conversation to the prince. You can tell her that I’d like to discuss the things we can do for one another. Things ranging from her personal future to Richard Gettis to the future of the Sanctified. I’d like you to arrange a direct communications channel between us. Perhaps a meeting with Melissaire at the LaLaurie House or Giani Building—I can speak through her, and I imagine Miss Malveaux will feel safe at either of those locations.”

“And if she doesn’t seem interested in talking, well, I suppose we’ll have to kill her. There’s several ways we might orchestrate that.” Savoy sounds for all the world like he’s discussing the weather.

Celia: Jade nods her head at the plan. Part of her fears are put to rest. She switches gears to the other thing weighing on her mind while they are on the topic of the Ventrue.

“If Miss Malveaux has already disseminated the fact that I am an illegal Embrace… I’m no longer an unreleased fledgling, so the prince’s rule concerning their treatment doesn’t quite apply to me. But I wouldn’t put it past someone to use it as an excuse to take away one of your subjects.”

Is there such a thing as statute of limitations in Kindred society? For all the friends that she has made, she can’t quite imagine any of them jumping in front of that blade for her.

GM: “There is not,” Preston answers. The punishment of such crimes depends entirely upon the inclinations of the prince and the clout of the illegal childe and their political allies.

Celia: Well.

That answers that question.

She supposes she’ll have to cross that bridge if it’s ever built.

She moves on. Or rather, moves back to a prior topic.

“Primogen Hurst has taken a thin-blood lover that resides within the Quarter.”

Saying it aloud now, she doesn’t know if it will be enough to displace him from his seat. It would be one thing for him to take one of those from Mid-City; his dalliance with someone from her grandsire’s camp, she imagines, is even less favorable.

GM: Preston makes no effort to hide her look of disgust.

“Rather damning,” chuckles Savoy. “Well done, my dear. Tell us more.”

Celia: She gives him the details of the thin-blood: Patricia Strickland, former adjunct professor at Tulane (she taught something with gender studies, Jade had found in her digging, and she relays this as well; she thinks that maybe Strickland and Preston would have gotten along if the former wasn’t a thin-blood).

“She has been around since at least 2011. She lived in Mid-City prior to her relocation to the Quarter. There was a…” Jade pauses, considering her words. “An extermination of the thin-blooded populace in December that year, set up by the two regents of the parish. They ducked out to hide their hand in it and save face.” As they’ve been told to again, according to that transcript.

“Strickland was one of the most vocal of the thin-blooded to attend. She pushed for equal rights. When the group came to kill them, she was one of two survivors. She has since been in the Quarter and has assisted with the transition of many from Mid-City to your territory, citing that Mid-City is unsafe and that you are a better, um, overlord is the word I’ve heard used.”

Jade pulls out her phone, showing them the former professor’s photo on a defunct Tulane faculty page.

“I had hoped we could use it to oust him from his seat.”

“Truthfully I’m not sure why she’d have taken up with him in the first place. Though he was a perfect gentleman to her while I was there.”

GM: Preston gives Jade an extremely flat look.

“Do you think we are idiots and do not know who Strickland is, Miss Kalani? Or what occurred at Cypress Grove Cemetery in 2011?”

Celia: “I… was just being thorough.”

GM: “Vidal is the city’s current prince. Lord Savoy rules the French Quarter. The Camarilla is an organization of vampires, who call themselves Kindred. Vampires drink blood and burn in sunlight. Is that also sufficiently thorough?”

Savoy raises a hand. “Now, now, Nat. There’s nothing to lose and everything to gain in thoroughness. Better we review some details we may already know than risk overlooking even one we may not.”

Jade’s phone silently vibrates in her purse.

Celia: “I don’t have anything further to add about Strickland.” She doesn’t know what else they’re looking for.

She ignores the phone; she’ll get back to them later.

GM: “Where and how did you discover this information, Miss Kalani?” Preston asks.

Celia: Oh. That. Why hadn’t they just asked to begin with?

She tells them: at his haven using an alternate identity that can pass as mortal.

GM: “Do you have photographs, audio recordings, or other inculpatory evidence, Miss Kalani?” Preston asks.

Celia: “Yes, Madam Preston.”

The phone makes another appearance. She pulls up the relevant files.

GM: Savoy smiles. “Cleverly done, my dear. The two of you can schedule an audience with Regent McGinn to discuss how best to release these pictures. We’ll do so publicly once he understands he owes his Cabildo seat to our support.”

“If he doesn’t find that arrangement palatable, there are other interested parties who likely will.”

Celia: Jade gives another nod and says she will make herself available as needed. She asks Preston if, considering their shared Invictus ties and her greater standing in general, she would prefer to be the one to reach out, or if Jade should take care of it.

GM: The Malkavian answers that she will do so, so as to secure a sooner audience.

Celia: That settled, Jade moves on to their final “targets,” Primogen Poincaré and his sire.

“I believe Madam Preston’s earlier assessment is correct in regards to how he would handle the situation. The meeting is already scheduled, but if you would prefer that I not make contact about it there are other avenues to pursue. We could handle them another way.”

GM: “How would you play things, my dear?” Savoy asks.

Celia: “I don’t know,” Jade admits at length. “I don’t think they should be allowed to freely stand in your way, but I agree that leaking the transcript with Primogen Chastain will lose us more than it gains. I haven’t had much contact with her. With him… he still has concern for his childe, estranged though she may be, and thinks well enough of me to send the archon my way for assistance with a surgical matter. Perhaps there is a way to use her for an in? His feud with Regent McGinn could be utilized, but if we’re promising him a seat on the Cabildo…” Play them both? She’s not sure that she has anything her pretend grandsire wants. Just the thing with Cloe, but even that she can’t do on her own. His hands, maybe. She’s long thought about fixing his hands. But she’s not a bone surgeon, she doesn’t know that she can right it. Unless he lets her remove everything, pull the phalanges from a cadaver. Then it’s not bone work itself, but flesh work around the bone, and that might work if he’s amenable to not having his own fingers…

Would he trade favors for the use of his hands again? She would.

Cartilage, maybe. Harden it. Use it as a stand-in.

Meet with him anyway and suss out the truth of the matter with the Storyvilles, find out if he knew. What’s the worst that happens, he gets suspicious and rips his way into her mind and she ends up lobotomized?

GM: “Use of his hands is a small thing to trade for information that could remove Prince Vidal’s legitimacy,” Savoy muses. “If this information is true, I suspect Poincaré is already considering how to use it to advance his position.”

Celia: That definitely answers that question.

GM: He chuckles. “I don’t see our prince responding especially well to direct threats.”

“However, whether it’s true or not matters less than whether there’s proof.”

“Talking to the primogen, by itself, wouldn’t get us that. We’d be no worse off than if we just started a rumor, without Jade ever talking to him.”

“We might even be better off, since her doing so is a potential danger.”

“Merely starting a rumor accomplishes little by itself, sir,” states Preston. “It must have apparent basis in fact for it to spread and take hold in minds.”

“You’re not wrong, Nat.” He looks back to Jade. “I’d continue to look into what’s become of the Storyvilles. The prince feeding on them would be a delicious scandal after Mr. Matheson. But I don’t know how fruitful an avenue the primogen is likely to be.”

Celia: She has further avenues to explore. The Baron’s girl. The fortune teller. It doesn’t solve the problem of the primogen standing in his way, but she’s not sure there’s anything she can do about that right now. She’ll keep looking into both.

She says as much.

It feels like less of an overall victory; she had hoped to take out all three of them for him.

GM: Savoy expresses his approval and says she has but to ask if there are any resources she desires to aid in her search.

“You originally scheduled this meeting, sir, to discuss Mr. Durant,” Preston states.

“Ah yes, so we did,” Savoy smiles. “Where did we leave off?”

Celia: “His plans to move his sister.” She shares her final thoughts on that, but that’s the last she has on Roderick directly after spilling her guts about him earlier. She had told him everything she could think of.

“The idea of serving you doesn’t appeal to him. His sire and the rest of the Cabildo has poisoned his mind against it. I thought maybe I could pull him away from his sire, but he’s twice-bonded. Short of overriding that with my own—” which has all sorts of potential complications but is something she’ll do if she needs to “—I had some thoughts on other ways to sever it. Tying his sire to the Mafia somehow, though that would need to happen independently of our relationship as I don’t think he’d trust that if it came from me or anyone on your side. He was pretty angry when we discussed that rumor about her also siring Mr. Carolla.” She’ll find out the truth of that when they get together, but if it is just a rumor then she needs a backup plan. Maybe one of them has an idea.

“He doesn’t want to betray her. She has been a good sire to him. But if he thought that she betrayed him first, or even if her entire purpose in Embracing him had been a ruse…” Jade trails off, leaving it open for discussion.

It feels too much like asking for help when she’d been the one to knock the plan astray. So much for riding the high over the Hurst thing; she’d imagined this meeting going very differently. Shame, hot and heavy, makes her drop her gaze.

“There’s also the matter of Miss Garrison herself,” she tells the table. “She doesn’t recall who Embraced her. Perhaps if we could offer Mr. Durant a name it might give him somewhere to focus his aggression regarding her state, and he might be grateful to us for turning them over to him.” Not that she expects a real name, just a likely patsy. She thinks both Savoy and Preston realize the implication, though. And if they did happen to have a hand in Dani’s Embrace she doesn’t want to know.

There’s more, but she waits a beat.

GM: “That’s a promising idea with his sire, my dear,” Savoy smiles. “Very promising. Wouldn’t you agree, Nat?”

“As long as he’s as loyal to his sire as Miss Kalani describes, sir, any intelligence from him is suspect,” Preston replies.

“That’s very true. All right, Jade. I want you to arrange a meeting between Mr. Durant and me,” says Savoy.

“Tell him that’s how he’s repaying his boon to me. He’s coming here to the Evergreen so the four of us can talk in privacy.”

“If he wants to enter in disguise, that’s fine with me. He doesn’t have to tell the world that he’s stopping by. I doubt he particularly does. So long as he’s sitting next to where you are now, I’ll consider the boon fulfilled.”

Preston looks through her tablet. “You have a Wednesday opening at 3 AM, sir, to meet with Mr. Durant.”

“Hmm,” answers Savoy. “When are you going to reunite him with his sister, my dear?” he asks Jade.

Celia: “I had planned on tomorrow evening.” She tells them briefly of her dinner plans. Her mother lives further into the Quarter than she thinks he will risk attempting a breakout from, and she doesn’t think that he’ll endanger the Masquerade to force Dani out in front of her mother or sister. She had also planned on applying some “special effects makeup” (they both know what she means, but Roderick doesn’t) to disguise him. At this point, Dani doesn’t know that her brother is still around.

“I’d thought that if she did she would demand to see him immediately, and I wanted to make sure I had her loyalty first. If any of what I’ve just said is unacceptable to you I will cancel tomorrow. Mr. Durant is unaware of the plans; I didn’t want to give him enough time to make his own.”

GM: “Prudent,” says Preston.

Celia: “I suspect he’ll want to speak with her privately as well. I had planned to use my public haven. Or the krewe’s.” Both are situated well into the Quarter, and Dani is staying at neither.

GM: “The location is immaterial,” says Preston.

“It’s best if we see Mr. Durant soon after he sees his father,” says Savoy. “When are the next openings in my schedule, Nat?”

“Monday at 11 PM is the soonest, sir,” answers the Malkavian.

Celia: “I can reschedule the dinner to Monday, if you’d prefer.”

GM: “Sunday still works splendidly, my dear. Just introduce him to his sister too before he stops by the Evergreen.”

“There is also the matter of Mr. Durant’s plan to abscond with the thin-blood, sir,” says Preston.

Celia: She had planned to introduce them after the dinner, when they’d have a moment to actually speak to each other privately. She could put it off until Monday, and Dani shouldn’t know it’s him if things go to plan. Which she can’t count on. And he’ll want to know why he can’t talk to her immediately. Then exchange numbers, she’ll want to know why she can’t go with him immediately or stay with them. Track her phone. Steal the phone? Guards. All she has to do is keep Dani safe until Monday evening, which is tomorrow and Monday during the day. Rotating guards. Maybe see if she can borrow Tantal, cash in the favor if Lebeaux doesn’t need him. The shadow dancer?

No, maybe not.

Tell Dani to call off school and work for the day to keep her out of Riverbend and Mid-City.

Stake her in a basement somewhere, no one will find her then.

Stake him in a basement somewhere.

He’ll know she spilled the plan. So much for trust.

Then again, if they just can’t find Dani, that doesn’t really come back on Jade.

GM: “So there is. What advantages do you see to introducing them on either day?” Savoy asks Jade.

Celia: “Sunday: he’ll expect it after dinner since one of them flows well into the other, he’ll trust me or at least that I’m doing right by his sister, she will likely be less angry at me when she discovers that I’ve kept her from her brother. It’s essentially just their opinion on me, sir. He’ll see me as on his side. Better for the longer game.”

Is Coco telling him the same thing, to get in good with Jade so he can manipulate her, too?

“Monday will cause tension, but gives him less opportunity to sway her to his side. It will allow me to warn her he’s around. Meeting her will be fresh in his mind when he meets you. I can show her what unlife is like for thin-bloods in other cities or even other parts of the city. And him. Show him the Square once the tourists are gone, maybe, or the rest of the unappealing parts of the Quarter. More time to get things in order, less chance he makes contact to abduct her. Better for the short game. Unless he sees me not letting him meet her privately as a, um, breach of trust and then doubles down on his plan without telling me about it.”

Then there’s no game.

“My concern in letting them meet on Sunday is that he’ll have more time to get to her and pull her away. She’s rather taken with me, but he’s family.” Sunday makes more sense from a flow perspective, but Monday is objectively better otherwise.

She’s also concerned about him putting his fists through her face again, then dragging her to Coco to wake up, and that’s… a problem.

Celia: Speaking of Coco…

“There’s also one other thing that occurrs to me regarding Mr. Durant and his sire. He mentioned that they have gotten into it a few times. Most recently he screamed at her following last night’s Elysium, but he has mentioned it happening a few times.” She can’t imagine screaming at her grandsire regardless of how vastly their opinions differ. “I don’t know if he’s the type to be able to quietly continue serving her if he thinks she violated his principles. Which makes him less useful to you if he’s on the outs with her and no longer the scribe.”

Which undoubtedly already occurred to both of them.

GM: “Tell you what, my dear. I trust your judgment. Introduce brother and sister to each other on whichever day you see fit,” smiles Savoy. “Just let us know where Dani is staying, so we can have someone keep an eye on her during the day.”

“If you can find out the shadow dancer’s name, all the better. Pass it along to Fabian and we’ll take care of them.”

Celia: “Yes, sir. I’ll find out.”

She passes along the address where Dani is staying and says she’ll let them know if it changes.

GM: “Very good,” says Savoy. “We’re going to acquire a vitae sample from Mr. Carolla for Warden Lebeaux. That’ll be someone else’s mission than yours. If you can acquire a vitae sample from Mr. Durant, that’ll let us find out whether there’s any truth to the rumor of them being broodmates. We’ll proceed based on what we find.”

Celia: Does that mean she doesn’t need to go on a date with him?

“Yes, sir. I’ll get one. I have one from his sister. If you want it to find out who did this to her.” If they don’t already know.

GM: “Her sire is irrelevant for our purposes,” states Preston.

“Doesn’t hurt us to have, though,” answers Savoy. “You can turn both of those over to Mélissaire or Fabian once you have them. Before our Monday meeting would be best.”

Celia: “Yes, Madam Preston. I assumed as much. I just wanted to cover my bases. It will be done as you say, sir.”

There’s a brief pause.

“Her usefulness to us is only as leverage over her brother. She’s pretty adamant about finishing school. She goes to Tulane and clerks in Mid-City. If she’s picked up in either area we lose our leverage. I thought that if I could secure her safe passage into Riverbend her brother would have less to complain about. Or rather, it would put him further into our pocket. I don’t think she should be allowed into Mid-City at all. Chance of being picked up is too high if they’re looking for her there.”

Another pause. Nothing to lose in asking, even if she doesn’t think he’ll go out of his way for a thin-blood.

“I was wondering if there was any way to put her in at the Supreme Court instead. I was planning on marking her to make her smell human, so no one would know. The shadow dancing trick.”

GM: “The thin-blood’s job occupation is hardly meaningful to us. Have her give haircuts at your salon if you wish her to be gainfully employed,” Preston answers disdainfully.

Celia: Right.

“Okay.”

“Except that every trip outside the Quarter is going to be a risk she’s picked up by someone else. So while she doesn’t matter, if we don’t have her then we don’t have him.”

GM: “We can also secure her employment as a waitress. Or perhaps a strip club,” the Malkavian continues, faintly sneering. “Or a janitor, if she would prefer slower-paced work. That seems like a good idea, Miss Kalani. She might as well earn her keep if she’s staying with you.”

Celia: Jade purses her lips.

“I’m aware that you look down on her kind. Until her brother is securely in our pocket I had wanted to at least pretend to care. I already can’t adequately explain why everyone hates her, or why she can’t come to the cool kids parties, or why she’s suddenly a second class citizen. She’s a female version of her brother; she hardly sits idly by while something she perceives as injustice is thrown in her face. It would be the same if you were barred from something on account of formerly being female.”

“I’m not asking to parade her around as a pet. I’m asking to give her a reason to not run into his arms the moment he shows.”

“And I’m not interested in stepping on your toes to do so,” she says to Savoy. “So if it’s no then it’s no.”

GM: Savoy chuckles. “I’m inclined to agree with you, my dear. That sort of work is only likely to make Mr. Garrison and his sister both resentful.”

“There’s an immigration court here in the Quarter. We’ll get her a place there.”

Celia: “Thank you.”

GM: “Courts conduct their business during the day, sir. The entire point may be moot,” says Preston.

Celia: “She doesn’t burn.”

GM: “Abominations,” says Preston, shaking her head.

Savoy smiles vaguely. “I suppose that addresses that.”

Celia: “I don’t understand,” Jade finally says. “What’s the prophecy about them? Why are they supposed to doom us all?”

GM: “Oh, that’s really just old superstitions,” answers Savoy. “But they do provide some extra oomph to the secular reasons, don’t they, Nat?”

“Yes, sir. Thin-bloods reproduce at an extraordinary rate. Almost every one of them is a violation of the Third and Fourth Traditions, and many of them wind up violating the First and Second, down the line. They represent a breakdown in the Camarilla’s civil order. A mass breakdown.”

Celia: She’s curious about that, whether they reproduce so much because no one bothered to explain the rules to them or if it’s something worse. Like a contagion. Maybe they can’t help it, it just spreads. And Dani can’t even use powers half the time, not unless she has vitae in her system it seems like.

“Primogen Chastain seems convinced they’re going to be the cause of our destruction. Even Mr. Durant’s sire wouldn’t tell him about it.”

Must be bad, secular reasons aside.

GM: Preston shrugs. “The chances of Mr. Garrison’s sister being apprehended in Riverbend during the day are minimal. But the risk is not nonexistent, and there is no gain to us in a thin-blood’s continued school attendance.”

Celia: Jade lets the topic drop. If they don’t think it’s a concern then she won’t let it bother her.

“I had planned to mark her. With the shadow dancing mark, to hide what she is.”

GM: “Then the risk is close to nonexistent, but there is still no gain,” states the Malkavian.

Celia: “It just comes back to us presenting a friendly front to both of them until we get what we want. And if it looks like I pulled strings there then he’ll feel indebted to me.”

Durant, she means.

GM: “I’m inclined to agree,” says Savoy. “Mr. Durant would understand the reasons for his sister not to attend law school, but I doubt he’d be happy, and his sister even less. That just makes us the villains to tell them ‘no.’ I think the risk posed by Miss Garrison’s continued attendance is acceptably low, especially if Jade marks her.”

“A thin-blood with a law degree. What a milestone for Kindred civil rights,” Preston sneers. “Perhaps they will hand them out to monkeys next.”

Celia: “Did they say similar to you when you went to school? The first of many who were born female to take that path. Why is this any different?”

GM: “How forward-thinking of you, Miss Kalani,” replies Preston, her lip curling.

Celia: “She’ll be an expendable pawn. A law degree only makes her more useful before she’s inevitably destroyed.”

GM: “Respected professions have standards to maintain, Miss Kalani, even if your own profession lacks both qualities.”

It’s there on her face. The same look as when Roderick asked if she wanted to paint the scourge’s nails.

Celia: “I have a medical degree,” Jade snaps at her. “Just because I let my clan think I paint faces all day doesn’t mean I don’t have any skills. It’s an easy, passive source of income while I pursue other interests.”

GM: “An online degree if I am not mistaken, Miss Kalani?”

“Enough, Nat,” says Savoy.

The Malkavian says nothing further.

Jade’s grandsire degree smiles at her. “I lack any degree, my dear. So does the prince. It’s easy enough for younger Kindred to get attached to credentials and lose sight of the bigger picture.”

Celia: There’s no other option than an online degree when you’re murdered at 19.

She doesn’t bother thinking it, even knowing that they’re in her head. She just nods her head at her grandsire’s words. No one calls him stupid, she bets.

GM: “If Miss Garrison wants to earn a degree, there’s little harm in it. If she wants to work a legal job without one, credentials are easy enough to forge.” The French Quarter lord chuckles. “What are scraps of paper to one with power to defy life and death? We can take pride in our achievements among kine society if we choose to. But we must never forget that such achievements are as water in a world ruled by blood.”

“‘We are given dominion over the line of Seth, third son of Adam, as he is our youngest brother. We will watch over his children as if they were our own, we will show them the right way, and in return, they will serve us all of their days.’”

Celia: “Yes, grandsire.” Jade bows her head in deference. “As you say.”

GM: “We’ll re-acquaint you with Miss Melton after you’ve brought Mr. Durant to the Evergreen. Would you say that seems fair, for us to make new friends at the same time as one another?” Savoy smiles.

Celia: It feels like punishment.

Deserved, maybe, but punishment all the same.

“Yes, sir.”

GM: Savoy rests a hand on her shoulder.

“I have every confidence in you, my dear. I’ll wish you good luck over these next few nights, but we’ll see how much you even need it!”

Celia: As long as she keeps her mouth shut everything should go fine.

“Thank you.” Her eyes find the table for a moment before she rises, dipping into a curtsy. She doesn’t want to know what happened when they’d put her under earlier. What sort of disparaging remarks had been made about her, how disappointed he had been. There will be no lap for her this evening.

“While I’m here, I found something else that might be of passing interest to you concerning your rival’s mayoral candidate. Drouillard gave the order for Gettis to be put down following the shooting rather than subject his victims to a public trial. It might throw a wrench into his plans if it gets out.”

“The shooter, Jeremy May, has been holed up with the Devillers in the Garden District as private security since his dismissal from the force.”

GM: “Oh, now that’s rather useful for us to know,” smiles Savoy.

He pats his lap.

Celia: She shouldn’t want it as much as she does. But the offer means she did something right, doesn’t it? Even if it’s trivial. Even if it doesn’t mean anything to him, even if it’s a silly gesture. It moves her. She takes a step forward, then another, and soon she’s sliding onto his lap as if it’s the most perfect place in the world. Like this is exactly where she belongs. He’s not large, but she can make herself even smaller; she tucks and curls and fits herself snugly against him, her face hidden in the hollow of his neck. How easy it would be to just… bite. To forcibly take another collar, and then a third, and then there’s no more fuckups, no more questions of loyalty, no more risk that someone else will try to force it on her.

The thought is fleeting.

“Grandsire?” She turns the word into a question, her breath a whisper on his skin.

“I… I wanted to say that I’m sorry for deviating from your plan. I thought there was a flaw in it that I could fix, but that was arrogant of me. Of course there wasn’t. You’ve had centuries to learn and I…” She swallows. “Regardless of my history with him I should have trusted that you had accounted for it. I’m sorry I made it messy and risked everything.”

“It won’t happen again, sir.”

GM: Savoy rubs his hand up and down Jade’s backside. He isn’t a large man. But she can make herself smaller, and his lap is very comfortable. He smells very nice (he’d asked Jade for cologne recommendations, once, as “the beauty professional in our midst”), and his touch is soft and lingering. A hug with one hand.

“I know it won’t, my dear. I can tell how much you want our mission to succeed. So I’m trusting it to you. It’ll be quite a win for us both, if we can get Mr. Durant to come over.”

“But I want you to look for flaws in my plans, too. I want you to tell me every possible flaw you see. I want to hear your ideas. Two minds are smarter than one.”

“It’s very common for the other clans to think our heads are empty because our faces are comely. Sometimes, we hear it often enough that we start to believe it.”

Celia: She blinks back something that might be emotion, snuffing it out like a candle before the wick can do so much as catch. She just wants to prove that she’s not broken, that Paul wasn’t right, that the Nosferatu aren’t right, that she has more value than what she can do on her knees or her back. Even Roderick had—

Celia—not Jade, not right now—closes her eyes against the thoughts because she doesn’t want to think them and she certainly doesn’t want him to hear them. She’ll do better.

She has to.

Previous, by Narrative: Story Twelve, Ayame III
Next, by Narrative: Story Twelve, Celia XXV, Emmett XVI

Previous, by Character: Story Twelve, Celia XXIV
Next, by Character: Story Twelve, Celia XXV, Emmett XVI

“I’ll figure something out.”
Roderick Durant

Thursday night, 10 March 2016, AM

GM: Ayame’s phone gives a ring. The caller ID is Roderick.

Ayame: She answers on the fourth ring.

“Hello, Roderick.”

GM: “Hi, Ayame. I was calling to ask about your friends. Some things have come up on my end.”

Ayame: “Oh?”

GM: “Sooner would be better than later now, if they can swing it.”

Ayame: “I see. Is everything okay?”

GM: “For now, yes. But you know how these things can get.”

He clearly doesn’t want to go into specifics over the phone.

“If extra payment can move up their schedules, that can be arranged.”

Ayame: “I will reach out. If you are free this evening I can make time to meet with you to discuss.”

GM: “All right. What time?”

Ayame: Ayame glances at the time on her phone.

“An hour?”

GM: “Okay. Same place as last time?”

Ayame: “That will suffice.”

GM: “All right. See you then.”

Ayame: “See you then.”

Ayame hangs up.

Thursday night, 10 March 2016, AM

Ayame: An hour later Ayame arrives at Cypress Grove.

She hates this place. She reminds herself how much she hates it as she strolls through the gates in black combat boots, their waterproofed leather exterior keeping the worst of the mud at bay from the dark jeans tucked inside. Gravel crunches beneath her feet with every step that she takes through the grounds, otherwise silent save for the footfalls that herald her approach.

She hates this place. She reminds herself how much she hates it when she shoves her gloved fingers into the pockets of her over-sized black hoodie, its cowl drawn up to turn her into just another shadow-clad wraith in the night.

She hates this place. He could have chosen any other, but he chose here. He’d done it last time as well. Hundreds of other places to meet in the city, but he chose here. A message? A game? To remind her? To prove what’s at stake?

As if she does not know.

Every time they have a rant here she wants to ask why they can’t find another place. Why they have to be here, where everyone died, and she wonders if she’s the only one who still gives a fuck. And with just the two of them they don’t need nearly this much space. They can talk anywhere. She can only assume he doesn’t trust her enough to take her somewhere more personal. Or that he has eyes in the fog, watching to make sure she… what? Doesn’t betray him? As if she’d want to take on a Brujah.

She searches for him among the headstones.

GM: It’s Ayame’s guess why they still do. There were a few other calls not to meet here anymore, from similarly uncomfortable licks, but not much seemed to come of them. Rants have remained a regular thing as Cypress Grove for years.

In the end, most Anarchs just tried to forget.

She finds Roderick there, dressed in an overcoat and carrying an umbrella against the steadily falling rain. It’s cold and wet, but that doesn’t matter to either of them.

“Thanks for making it on short notice.”

Ayame: Hadn’t he said the last time? It seems to be a recurring theme.

Ayame inclines her head.

“Your call implied it was urgent.”

She had said that last time, too.

GM: “I think the duskborn I want to get out has been found out.”

“So, it’s that simple. If you can arrange passage out of the city by tomorrow night, I’ll owe you a boon for the rush order.”

Ayame: A grimace passes over her face at the news that his duskborn friend has been found out. There’s pity in her eyes, followed by something a little more… devastated at his request. She glances away.

“Houston has not come to fruition.”

Ayame: “The situation there is…” she trails off, her eyes finding his once again. “It is not good, Roderick. The few I know who could take your friend will not. They do not want more mouths to feed and do not have the blood to spare for half-breeds.” Bitterness colors her voice; she sounds as if she is quoting someone directly.

“Are you positive that your duskborn has been found out?”

GM: Roderick receives that news with a stony expression from under his umbrella.

“Upwards of 90%.”

“Houston is huge! They can’t be out of juice to go around.”

“You’d be hearing about Masquerade breaches and territorial fights between licks if that was the real problem.”

Ayame: “No, I would assume not. But their attitudes there are no less than ours here.”

GM: “I guess some Anarchs will always be more equal than other Anarchs.”

Ayame: “I am sorry.” Ayame bows her head. “I am sorry that I could not come through for you.”

GM: “Maybe you still can. Can you arrange simple passage to the city?”

Ayame: “Drop a duskborn in their midst without anyone to watch their back?” Skepticism colors her voice.

GM: “I’d still be going with you. I’ll do that at first.”

“I might have to stay in the city a little longer, but, fine, it’s that or someone’s life.”

“Half-life. Whatever it is with them.”

Ayame: Ayame shakes her head. Her hair spills in front of her face, hiding her shame that she cannot even do that much. Without a contact in Houston to meet them… they’ll be targeted by anyone watching the border, staked or slain before they ever set foot in the city proper.

GM: “Can’t, or won’t?” Roderick asks. He sounds like he’s trying to keep the sharpness out of his voice.

Ayame: Her head lifts, eyes flashing.

“Do not,” she snaps at him, “insinuate that I would willingly keep someone here who wishes to flee. If it were as simple as that it would be done. There are countless factors at play that—”

She cuts herself off.

She sees why they call him elder’s pet now, if this is how he acts upon hearing bad news.

GM: His grip tightens around his umbrella. “Excuse me for making sure. If it was won’t, then—”

“Never mind. It’s can’t.”

Ayame: Ayame is silent for a long moment.

“I know that it is not what you want to hear,” she finally says. “And I am sorry that I could not provide for you. But there is… for licks in Houston, it can seem nice. For someone like you or me. But those who are less-than are treated as less-than.”

She looks down at her hands, covered by their leather gloves.

“It can be a nightmare to be a less-than.” Her fingers curl into fists. A spasm of something like pain crosses her face. “I was a renfield for some time there. The duskborn are considered less than even them. It is not an experience I would wish on anyone.”

She holds up a hand to him to forestall a response.

Her gaze lowers to her gloved hands. It is no easy thing for her to do, and she takes a moment to steady herself before she pulls at the wrap around her wrist that holds them in place. Another grimace of pain crosses her features, though whether it’s physical pain, shame, or the sight of what greets her is anyone’s guess. She pulls her glove off.

Ayame offers her hand for his perusal.

It is a nightmare. A field of angry red scars have cut deep into her flesh. One part looks as if it goes beyond all the layers of her skin. Scar tissue has built into waves of uneven lines across her palm, fingers, and the back of her hands. Her movements, without the gloves to conceal them, are stiff. The burns and scars go all the way to her wrist, with swollen knuckles and loose, ragged edges that constantly catches on any surface that isn’t 100% smooth. It is easy to imagine her tearing skin off again and again as the nights pass, leaving her wounds open. They look waxen, half melted, shiny in their hairlessness.

“This,” she says quietly, “is what happens in Houston when you are less-than.”

GM: Roderick stares at the hand. His eyes don’t widen so much as flare. There’s surprise, yes, and horror, but there’s anger too.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters.

He looks back up at Ayame after a moment.

“There are night doctors,” he says. “I know one. Being an Anarch has some privileges. They could fix your hand.”

Ayame: She doesn’t quite flush—she’s dead, her body doesn’t do that—but something in her eyes shutters at his reaction. It flattens a moment later, face once more becoming nothing more than the austere marble it so often resembles.

“Who?” she asks, as if to distract him from the way she fumbles with the leather to tuck her hand back away.

GM: “Dr. E,” he says. Many night doctors, Ayame knows, adopt pseudonyms and only sell their services while masked.

Ayame: The “name” means little to her.

GM: “I don’t know if they’re a man or a woman, but they do good work.”

Ayame: “Where would I find them?” At last the glove goes back on. She yanks it into place; a piece of skin flakes off at the rough treatment, aging years in the blink of an eye as it falls to the ground. She keeps her eyes on her hands as she re-wraps the strap around her wrist to avoid whatever expression crosses his face. Only when she has secured the glove once more does she look up.

GM: “Graffiti. Paint your tag somewhere public with two snakes twisting around it, like the Caduceus symbol. They’ll come by your territory once they see.”

Ayame: Ayame gives that a nod and tucks it away for the future. She would like to have her hands back.

“I see someone for it now, but… the going is slow. We had to rebuild much of the nerve endings. I could not feel before. When it happened…” Her mouth turns down at the corners. “The nerves died. Prolonged exposure. You know what it is like to receive a burn and then you get it warm on accident? Like in the shower, with hot water? It was all I felt. All over my hands.”

Agony. Every time she touched something it was hell all over again, like she’d just stuck her hand back into that fire.

GM: “That’s horrific. I can understand why you choose not to take ghouls.”

“I don’t need to say that it’s an incredibly easy relationship to abuse.”

“I hope your domitor faced some measure of justice.”

Ayame: “For this?” She can’t help but laugh. It’s a cold sound, though its mockery is not directed at him; rather just the idea that a lick would be punished for how they treat their ghouls.

GM: Roderick doesn’t look surprised. Though he does look faintly angry.

“I tried to get that to extend here, you know. Before you came to the city. I tried to pass a law that would’ve made abuse of ghouls in Mid-City a punishable crime, and required they be surrendered to new domitors.”

“Obviously imperfect, but still better than the total lack of protection they have now.”

Ayame: “Noble, though I can see why they would not. No doubt they think it better to put them down than hand them off and let someone else ransack their minds for information.”

GM: “That was one of the arguments. I argued those fears were overblown. There are plenty Anarchs who don’t know how to do that, and the lesser forms of mind-reading can only find out so much.”

“The law actually got some supporters. Just not enough.”

Ayame: “Perhaps, in time, you pitch it again.”

GM: “Maybe you’d be interested in pitching it with me. It’s a different Anarch population now than it was in 2010.”

Ayame: “I would stand beside you in that, though given my lack of slaves some might say I have nothing to lose to add my voice.”

GM: “They’d also be right, but that’s immaterial next to the experiences you could tell them about.”

“I think your voice would add a lot to the debate.”

Ayame: “Consider it done.”

GM: “I’ll be in touch.” He gives a wan smile.

Ayame: “What are you going to do? With your duskborn?”

GM: Roderick’s face has as much cheer as the rain-spattered tombstones.

“I’ll figure something out.”

Ayame: Ayame nods her head at his statement and wishes him luck, a final apology for her inability to assist the last sentiment she utters before turning to leave. The night swallows her as the rain pours from above; the heavens convey her distress this evening. She has nothing else to offer him.

Previous, by Narrative: Story Twelve, Celia XXIII
Next, by Narrative: Story Twelve, Celia XXIV

Previous, by Character: Story Twelve, Ayame II
Next, by Character: Story Thirteen, Ayame I

“You are a woman."
Josua Cambridge

Saturday night, 12 March 2016, PM

Celia: Jackson Square covers a decent amount of land. Jade has been here before many times, both with her Jade face and her Celia face, and with other faces besides. Ordinarily she’s content to people watch, to listen in on snippets of conversation and enjoy a leisurely stroll through the square.

Tonight, though, tonight she hunts. Not for blood. No, not that. Not for her next meal. But for information. For the Ravnos fortune teller that haunts these parts, another piece of the puzzle that she gets to put together.

She keeps her gait slow, just another tourist on a stroll, her eyes peeled for the lick known as Yellow Sidra.

GM: Jackson Square is relatively safe until 10 or 11 PM (or at least, the police presence tries to make it feel safe), and it’s past that hour now. The ghost tours are over and even the crowds of visitors that gather around the back fence of St. Anthony’s Garden to take pictures of the giant shadow cast by the “Touchdown Jesus” statue are all gone. The square’s iron gate is closed and locked so that homeless people don’t sleep inside. Instead they sleep outside, with all of their dogs. Or they don’t sleep. They piss, shit, vomit, fuck, and shoot up. Jade is immediately accosted by several disheveled and foul-smelling men who get extremely close to her face as they scream for money. A few others just lick their lips, eyeing her like she’s a piece of meat as their fellows surround her. One wrinkled-faced man pulls down his pants and starts furiously masturbating in front of her.

Celia: Charming.

This is why she pays the boys, though, for nights like tonight when she has to put in an appearance in an otherwise unsavory part of the Quarter. They’ll need to have a chat about meeting her at her car rather than in the middle of… this. Screaming, dirty, masturbatory kine. The kind of juice bags she’d maybe feed on as a last resort. And this is what Dani has to look forward to if Roderick succeeds in sending her to Houston, without even the gifts of a clan to back her up.

Or a renfield. Two of them, actually, just beyond the men that gather around the not-so-helpless not-woman in their midst. What a sight for sore eyes.

She can help, at least. Can call on her deity-of-choice-given abilities to pull her out of this before things get ugly. Uglier, anyway. She’s pretty sure that guy in front of her won’t win any pageants anytime soon. She sends it out from her in a cresting wave, the impression that she isn’t some doe-eyed bambi that needs rescued. Celia, maybe. But Jade? Oh no. Jade is the heinous bitch with claws and fangs and a smile that’ll persist while she shreds right through a body with a quick swipe of those nails.

GM: The brothers yell and shove and get aggressive, like primates in a dominance contest. Somehow that feels like all this amounts to. The panhandlers grouse and spit obscenities, decreasing in volume as Jade’s presence washes over them, as they back off.

“Fucking homeless…” swears Randy.

Celia: It’s a contest they win, though, and handily.

That’s why she pays them the big bucks.

Well, one of many reasons.

She’s happy to see them in any case, despite the fact that they made her wait longer than normal, and she moves into the circle of their protection quickly enough. And isn’t that a thought, a vampire being protected by a pair of ghouls. Maybe if somebody stopped throwing her around to fuck and focused on the fighting she wouldn’t get jumpy about being surrounded by a bunch of kine. What had he said to her? “You’re a badass vampire now.”

Right.

She’s got a pair of badasses with her now, anyway.

GM: A thin, dirty figure makes their way up to Jade, or at least as close as the brothers let them. They’re small and slight, dressed in an oversized dirty hoodie with a raggedy-edged blanket wrapped around their frail shoulders. Their facial structure looks male, but they have breasts and long hair, matted and unkempt. Their dark skin is worn and splotchy, dotted with acne scarring. Jade thinks they’re a ghoul at first, from the smell, but when they lick their lip Jade sees a chipped fang.

Just one fang.

“Hey, hey lady, lady lick, what you doin’ here…?”

Celia: She’s glad Dani avoided that fate, at least. One fang. How to they manage? She imagines it’s like drinking through a pinched straw. Or maybe they bite twice.

Curiosity overpowers her disgust. She doesn’t recognize this one. She puts a hand on Randy’s arm to prevent him from doing anything like shoving it away, letting the ragged half-breed through. Close enough to smell the stink of its body rather than its blood. Close enough to see that chipped fang. She smiles politely all the same, just like she would for a real vampire.

Maybe she’ll bring Roderick down here so he can get a glimpse of what fate awaits Dani if he sends her out of the city to a place where she doesn’t have friendly backers willing to share their very lush domain with the best feeding in the city.

“Evenin’,” Jade says back to it, gesturing it forward. Boy or girl? She can’t tell. Neither, technically. “I’m looking for someone who hangs out around here. Think you can point me in the right direction?”

GM: Randy and Reggie both regard the thin-blood warily. Or at least disgustedly. They remain protectively close to Jade. Close enough to block their arms between her and the sorry creature.

The thin-blood nods up and down.

“Oh, you bet, lady, they here, I know… who you lookin’ for?”

Celia: Lucky boys to get such a good-looking, true-blooded domitor, aren’t they?

“The fortune teller,” she tells the thin-blood.

GM: "There lotta fortune tellers, lady, lotta fortune tellers… " says the thin-blood. “But you mean that one… yeah… I know… I know… need some green, first… help me rem’ber…”

A thin, scabbed-over hand materializes from the hoodie.

Celia: Jade slides a bill into the outstretched hand. Where it came from is anyone’s guess; she’s not so silly as to carry a purse or wallet with her this late at night.

GM: Reggie removes the bill from Celia’s hand and drops it to the ground. The thin-blood bends to pick it up, seemingly unconcerned.

Celia: Rude.

GM: “Oh, that good… that good… yeah, my mem’ry’s comin’ back…” nods the thin-blood. The bill disappears into the hoodie. “She ain’ here, this hour… she leaves, when the tourists do… mmm… lil’ more green, maybe I rem’ber where she be…”

Celia: Jade pulls free another bill, giving Reggie a look.

GM: “Hey, you might catch something,” he says, moving to pluck the bill from her hands.

Celia: “You don’t need to be rude.”

GM: “Unless it’s from sticking my dick somewhere, I’m not going to catch something either.”

Celia: He better not catch something from that, either, or he won’t get to stick it in her ever again.

GM: He’ll be just like his brother then.

“Maybe just place it on a bench,” Randy offers helpfully.

Celia: She gives the hands another look, though, in case there’s something to be done about it. She hasn’t seen this many scabs since… the monkey’s master.

The ugly one.

Not that that narrows it down.

GM: The hands are small like a woman’s and look dirty and unwashed. Some of the partly-healed scabs are a yellowish brown.

“Hey, leave the money where you like, I don’ give a shit… s’long as I get it…” says the thin-blood.

Celia: Wherever Reggie ends up putting it, then.

She really should bring Roderick down here, show him how the thin-bloods exist. Easy to imagine Dani’s unwashed face and hands, cuts oozing from lack of treatment, being pushed around by ghouls and licks and kine, even.

“The location?” she prompts the thin-blood.

GM: Reggie drops it on the ground.

The half-vampire picks it up.

Celia: She’ll reprimand him later for it. Maybe with a paddle.

GM: “Okay… she be at… seein’ a customer, guy who wants his fortune… mm…. can’t rem’ber who, just yet….”

The hand stays outstretched.

Celia: Another two bills to speed the process along.

GM: Reggie’s fingers brush against his concealed carry, as if asking whether Jade is tired of throwing away money.

Celia: She gives a small shake of her head. She’s happy to pay for information so long as it pans out.

GM: Reggie drops those bills on the ground too.

They both disappear into the hoodie.

“Okay… okay… it comin’ back, now…”

Celia: Her smile tightens, but she waits, expectant.

GM: “Marigny… that be where…”

“I can’t rem’ber where in Marigny… maybe if…”

Celia: “Marigny is a large place.”

GM: “You already got two bills,” Reggie says flatly.

“Oh… guess I did… heh heh…”

Celia: She’s starting to doubt that the thin-blood even has the information.

She will be very unhappy if she has to come back.

GM: “The Midnight Bayou… that be where…”

“Hey… say… can I have some money, lady…?”

“You just got eighty fuckin’ dollars,” says Randy.

The thin-blood shrugs.

Celia: “If she’s where you say she is,” Jade tells it. She turns to go.

GM: “Always fun hitting up low-lifes,” Randy mutters as the trio leave.

Celia: “I should have expected it. No reason to peddle her trade once the gates close.” She’d spent more time with her family than she’d realized.

GM: “So that’s one of those other scary vampires,” says Reggie.

Celia: She glances at Reggie.

“No. That’s a half-breed. Diluted blood.”

GM: “Pretty sad,” answers Reggie.

Celia: “It is. They’re stuck between worlds.”

GM: “You guys all gonna turn into that someday?”

Celia: “No. It’s like breeding dogs, though. The problems get worse the further the line goes.”

GM: “Kinder just to put ’em down, maybe.”

Celia: “A lot of people agree with you.”

“The gifts that you have because of my blood? They don’t.”

GM: “So, what, they’re just… blood drinkers? Ordinary people with a special diet?”

Celia: “Sort of. They have some gifts, but they follow different rules. Sun doesn’t hurt them. No Beast.” Both of them have been warned about that, at least. “They can learn the tricks, but it’s different.”

“They’ll never be as strong. Their distance from the original prevents it.”

“If I were to turn you right now, as a day old, you’d be stronger than someone like that who has been around for years.”

GM: “So why make them?” asks Reggie.

“Why does anyone do dumb shit?” shrugs Randy.

Celia: Randy has a point.

“The man on the bottom will always look to put someone else beneath him.”

“Control. Power. Loneliness. Accident.”

GM: “I just wonder who the fuck took a look at that and decided, ‘Hey, let’s make a discount vampire,’” says Reggie.

“Maybe an accident,” says Randy.

Celia: “They only recently started popping up,” Jade tells him. “Most of the powers-that-be exterminate them when they’re found. Not a lot is known about them.”

GM: “Seems like the right idea,” says Reggie.

Celia: “There are some benefits,” Jade says with a shrug. “The sun and Beast thing. They can eat. Fuck.”

“Nothing worth the drawbacks, though.”

GM: Sucks to be Dani.

Celia: It really does.

Saturday night, 12 March 2016, PM

GM: Clubbers shoot jealous looks as bouncers usher Jade into the Midnight Bayou ahead of the line. The club is much the same as Beach on Bourbon was: a dimly-lit space where dozens of tightly-packed sweating bodies writhe and undulate to ear-rupturingly loud music. Flickering red lights bathe the shouting, dancing, crowd in a blood-like sheen. There’s barely enough room to move one’s arms at times. The admixed smells of sweat, cigarette smoke, alcohol, perfumes, and cologne clings to everything. The music is omnipresent, thumping and pounding in one’s ears louder than any beating heart. It’s enough to make the dead feel alive, if ever so briefly. Jade doesn’t hear any Love & Liars in the DJs’ mix, this time, but the lyrics are much the same, and speak to the same disaffected youth. They scream what shit the world is and the pointlessness of living by the book.

Jade spots a number of Kindred eyeing or dancing alongside the club-goers, then luring them off to private bathroom trysts. It’s not unlike lions watching herd animals at the watering hole, then going after ones foolish enough to separate themselves from safety in numbers.

The Toreador is swiftly shown upstairs past sliding glass doors to the VIP lounge. It’s a more subdued than downstairs, though it’s done in the same dark color scheme. Better-dressed patrons lounge about on comfortable leather chairs and sofas, quietly conversing and sipping expensive drinks. A large glass window stares down on the club’s first floor, so that patrons might watch the revelry from a quiet distance and perhaps even decide which revelers catch their fancy. Revealingly-clad smiling waitresses glide across the floor, relaying orders between customers and the bartender expertly mixing drinks in the back.

Celia: She still doesn’t know how Sundown does it: how he determines who is who and tells his bouncers to let them in accordingly. She can’t imagine that it’s something as mundane as making them memorize photos. Still, it’s the sort of treatment she has come to expect from the clubs in Marigny, and the jealous looks and whispers from the line of juicebags only makes her smile.

Music assaults her once she passes the threshold. It thrums through her body, urging her to dance. She wants to find a partner and let them twirl her around the floor. To lose herself among the press of bodies. For far too many years now she has had her weekend evenings taken up by Elysia; and whose idea was that to schedule it the same night the kine come out in droves? Easiest feeding of the week. Just grab a vessel, sink in, and pull.

Jade resists the temptation, sweet though it is.

She moves up the stairs to the VIP lounge, content to let her eyes sweep the space for a brief moment.

GM: Jade instinctively senses that a number of the patrons are like she is. She can make out Esther Sue Parker, Abraham Garcia, Camilla Doriocourt, Harlequin, Lidia Kendall, Joshua Pacuad, and Emerson Newhouse Hearst, as well as the club’s proprietor himself, who is currently engaged with Harlequin. The gathered Kindred converse among themselves, murmur sweet nothings to vessels in their arms, watch the dancing crowds below, or watch one another. Whatever cause and elder one may pledge support to, Marigny is neutral ground.

Celia: Neutral it may be, but she calls none of those assembled “friend.” Loose, occasional ally. Partner. Guildmate. But none of Savoy’s partisans. None of the friendly faces she knows from his court.

And not the lick she has come to see. Perhaps the thin-blood had lied to her. Perhaps it will learn what happens when her time is wasted.

Far be it from her to waste this opportunity to mingle. Pacuad, Hearst, and Garcia all catch a smile from the pretty Toreador in their midst, the latter a wink. She can’t help the way her attention strays to Doriocourt, though. Not an enemy. Not a friend. Just a contender for her sire’s attention.

GM: Most of Savoy’s people are likely there at the French Quarter lord’s court tonight.

But such is the balancing act which Marigny’s regent must maintain, to court all factions and show favor to none.

Pacuad doesn’t smile back, though Hearst and Garcia both do. Doriocourt, who’s speaking to Garcia, pays Jade barely more than a glance.

Their sire’s attention.

The pretty Toreador is swiftly approached by Sundown’s smiling herald Kaia, a beautiful and slim-figured Vietnamese-American ghoul with smooth pale skin, rich black hair, and beckoning dark eyes. She asks if there’s anything the regent might do tonight to make her stay more pleasant.


Celia: Her. Her sire. He’s hers.

Jade checks the time. She’s due at Savoy’s court soon enough herself, though she’s not late. She has time.

Perhaps everyone else just takes longer to make themselves half so pretty as Jade.

Jade shakes her head at Kaia’s approach, murmuring only that she was looking for someone who doesn’t appear to be here.

GM: “Perhaps they are, ma’am. We can’t always see everything in plain sight,” offers the ghoul.

Celia: Jade accepts the point with a dip of her head. As much as she’d like to stay and chat—really, she would—she does have other business in the city this evening.

So she asks, hoping the ghoul can point her toward the fortune teller.

GM: The ghoul replies that she and Josua finished upstairs just a little while ago, but are down hunting on the first floor. If they’ve snagged a vessel, Jade can probably find them in the bathrooms.

Celia: Cambridge?

Convenient.

She could stay. Mingle. Chat.

Maybe she should. Finish that conversation with Garcia. Speak with Hearst about transport to LA; she can’t imagine she’d be too put out on the back of his bike for an evening or two. Planes are faster, but what a rush that would be. Find out how Pacuad’s project is coming, charm him into giving her one of the smiles he flashes when he thinks she can’t see. Hasn’t been the same since the split, really. At least prior he’d tolerated her. Politics, ugh.

Maybe she would, if Doriocourt weren’t here. Sisters have never been anything but trouble for her. Even Emily is getting uppity, interfering in things that have nothing to do with her.

Ah, that’s unkind. Diana is her mom too.

Still, two licks at once is a better deal than she’d hoped for. And she doesn’t quite trust her mouth to not run away with her this evening. Not with everything she’s recently learned.

Jade thanks Kaia with a smile and a polite word, asking her to pass her greetings along to her domitor and citing an excuse about not wanting to interrupt the two regents. She’s sure she’ll be back with Andi soon, no doubt the rock star will be pleased to see the club’s proprietor again.

She casts a long, lingering look at Garcia as she goes. Flirting with trouble, as usual.

GM: There’s at least Dani, her should-have-been sister.

Then again, the thin-blood is her own brand of trouble too.

Celia: Doesn’t she know it.

Big fucking headache on that end, too.

Why can’t I come to the cool parties, Celia?

Well Dani, do you like being half-alive?

Even if she wanted to be friendly with Doriocourt she couldn’t. It would draw too much attention.

GM: Maybe not, when she really learns what that entails.

Garcia doesn’t look away from Camilla, but makes a suggestive gesture behind his back.

Kaia replies she’ll be more than happy to pass along Jade’s greetings.

“And can I say you look Flawless as always, ma’am,” the ghoul smiles.

Celia: The motion she makes following that gesture might even be a nod.

Jade beams at the ghoul.

“You are very sweet, thank you.”

Then it’s back down the stairs for her, through the crush of bodies, and into the bathroom.

GM: The bathrooms are spacious and relatively clean, at least by a nightclub’s usual filthy standards. Sounds of fornication go up from the stalls. Jade can’t tell at a glance which one might have two licks in it.

But the coppery smell emanating from one is unmistakable to the vampire’s so-sensitive nose.

Celia: Seems rude to interrupt a meal. Jade busies herself by fixing her makeup in the mirror. Not that there’s much to fix. Mostly she just admires her own reflection.

GM: There’s a lot to admire.

She abruptly feels something small, furry, and squirming press against her vagina and try to crawl inside.

Celia: How the fuck had it gotten inside her panties? What the fuck is crawling on her?

Jade doesn’t have a problem with things inside of her vagina. It’s when they’re small and furry and squirm that she takes umbrage.

She bolts into an open stall, slams the door, and gets it out.

GM: She spots a hairless tail wriggling back and forth out of her womanhood like a tampon string. Cat-quick, she plucks it out and produces a squeaking, flailing mouse.

Celia: Jade scowls down at the mouse clutched in her grip. She sniffs at it, looking for a trace of the blood.

GM: She smells none, but phlegmy laughter rings in her ears.

“What’s the matter, barbie, don’t like your new vibrator?” leers Gerald Abellard as he fades into view.

He’s still a walking, one-man freak show. His face is a blasted wasteland of every type of acne in Jade’s not-inconsiderable vocabulary. Every inch of the dark, leathery skin is ravaged by pustules, papules, whiteheads, blackheads, nodules, cysts, and residual scars. Some are big, some are little. Some are whole, some look freshly popped. Rancid-smelling white pus freely dribbles down flabby cheeks and a squashed nose like water from someone who’s just stepped out of the shower.

Celia: Disgusting.

“Easier ways to get in my panties, you know.”

GM: “Oh I don’t doubt, but I was all out of dollar bills.”

The mouse squeaks and struggles in Jade’s grip.

Celia: “For you, I’d have done it for a smile.”

Jade considers the mouse, then the rat to whom it belongs. She holds it out to him.

GM: The Nosferatu cackles, then holds out Jade’s panties for her to deposit the rodent in.

Celia: “Souvenir?” She puts the mouse into the scraps of cloth provided.

GM: The shrieking mouse finally calms as it leaves the vampire’s grip. Gerald stretches out the panties over his hands and lets the mouse crawl over them.

“Maybe nest material for this little guy. There’s probably enough diseases he’ll feel right at home.”

Celia: “Mmm,” Jade says absently, “would you believe me if I told you that I died a virgin and am sadly lacking in diseases?”

“But if you need more nesting material for him…” She trails off with a shrug.

“Happy to supply.”

GM: Gerald hacks with laughter at her question, making the pus from his face seem to ooze faster.

“No.”

Celia: She flashes him a smile.

“I didn’t think so.”

There’s a brief moment of hesitation before Jade reaches out, touching a hand to his cloth-covered arm. Her face softens, voice dropping to a low murmur.

“How’s Malo?”

GM: That cloth is better than touching the sewer rat’s greasy skin, but not by much. The long-sleeved t-shirt doesn’t look (or smell) like it’s been washed in years. Jade can’t even begin to guess where some of those stains might be from.

Gerald twirls the panties in his wart-dotted fingers as the mouse climbs across them.

“Oh he really misses you. Think he can get a blowjob, next time you meet?”

Celia: “Was hoping a handjob, actually.” Jade arches one brow at him.

GM: “It’s a date,” the sewer rat leers. “Expect him sometime soon, monkey dick primed and ready for your so-practiced hand.”

“He’s pretty greedy, though. He might make you give him a blowjob too.”

Celia: “Saving my lips for you, sweetheart.”

GM: “When it comes to your assorted holes, barbie, I think the thing you’re best at is ‘filling’ more than ‘saving,’” the sewer rat says with another leer.

“Well, this was fun. Mwah.”

He blows her a literally wet kiss, dripping with puss freshly wiped from his lips, then vanishes into the air with the mouse and panties. A squelching sound half like a huge fart, half like someone throwing up, heralds the Nosferatu’s departure. A stench not unlike ripe shit fills Jade’s nostrils.

Celia: “…oh, bye,” she says to the empty air.

She misses him already.

Saturday night, 12 March 2016, PM

Celia: She’s glad that she doesn’t need to breathe and takes a moment to wipe away anything that had gotten on her outfit or face. Should have expected a Nosferatu at Sundown’s place, really.

Now pantyless—the second time in two nights, what’re the odds?—Jade exits the stall, hoping that her mark is still around.

GM: The smell on Jade’s palms lingers and requires thorough washing. The coppery smell from the other stall has reduced, but hasn’t completely faded.

Two other women touching up their makeup remark to one another on a technique one of them picked up from Celia Flores’ MeVid channel.

Celia: Jade scrubs until the stink fades. She chimes in that Celia just released a new video and it’s ultra fab, have they seen it? Upload went live, like, two hours ago.

GM: “Oh no, I hadn’t!” says one of the girls, pulling out her phone. Celia’s tiny voice floats up from the device.

Celia: “Best one yet,” Jade tells the pair. She glances at the stall door. How long does feeding really take?

Maybe it had only seemed like ages she’d been wrapped up with Gerald because of the way he makes her heart go pitter-patter.

…nah.

GM: The pair nod and comment on the video, but it’s not overlong before the stall door opens and three people come out.

The first one draws immediate attention.

He’s beautiful. There aren’t many men who are beautiful, but he is, and handsome too. He has a boyishly winsome face, tousled ‘I woke up like this’ brown hair that has to be deliberate from how perfect it is. A bit of stubble gives his face some extra definition, but just light enough not to seem unkempt. Soulful green eyes frame his firm nose and invitingly kissable lips. He’s dressed in a white button-up with the top several buttons undone, giving a peek at his chest, a tan blazer, dark jeans, and brown leather dress shoes. His shirt and jeans are tight, amply showing off his smooth chest, trim but not too buff arms, and firm posterior. This Kindred’s body is a temple and it’s evident he worships it reverently. The other women in the bathroom immediately start staring and making comments, and he just flashes them a pearly white smile.


The female Kindred is dusky of skin and could be either Latina, Roma, or some typically New Orleans mix of races. She looks in her early or mid 20s and dressed in somewhat out of place fashions for a nightclub: purple gypsy skirt, a low-cut black and white-striped shirt, and a top hat threaded with red and purple scarves in place of a band. Gold glints from her ears and fingers. Her inky black hair is a wild and untamed forest that plays home to a ghouled monkey wearing a purple vest and miniature top hat of its own. The tiny animal scampers across her shoulders and uses her hoop earrings as swings while remarkably shuffling a tiny deck of tarot cards.

The women don’t spare her a glance. Or the droopy-eyed girl in club attire the two vampires are half-carrying between them.

The male newcomer spares the women a few laughing remarks, but he has eyes only for the fairest face among them.

“It’s Jade, isn’t it?”

He places his hands on her shoulders like they’ve known one another for years. His gaze drinks in the Toreador’s form like chocolate wine as he purrs softly,

“You are a woman.”

It sounds almost sacred how he pronounces the word.

Celia: Oh.

Oh my.

This is Josua. She has seen him before, she’s sure, around. But not this close. Not this in her space. Not this… this.

Her eyes drink him in. Some distant part of her mind registers the lick she’s been looking for came out of the stall with him, that she has business with her, but for the (un?)life of her she can’t remember why she’d want to talk to her when this is in front of her, looking at her, touching her. He’s the golden prize at the end of the quest. The reward for getting through the thin-blood, the VIP lounge, the rat and his mouse. Sidra who?

He knows her name.

It’s a giddy sort of lightness that bubbles from the center of her chest outward. He knows who she is. Her Beast brushes against the inside of her ribs, purring; even it wants a piece.

Is he prettier than her?

Her lips part just slightly, gazing up at him from beneath long lashes. Slowly, she blinks, and finally she gives a tiny nod. She is a woman. And never before has that sounded so sweet. She finds her voice.

“Josua.”

GM: She knows what it sounds like when it’s not. She remembers one time her parents were ‘fighting’ (insofar as there can be a fight with just one person dishing it out) when they thought she couldn’t overhear, because Maxen never swore around his children. “You stupid fucking woman,” he’d snarled at her mother, as though the last of those words was somehow the most insulting.

Celia: And the way their kind reacts, too, to the very idea that they had once been gendered beings.

GM: “Jade,” repeats Josua. His smile spreads across his face. “Our names even start with the same letter. That’s so pretty.”

His hands start to massage her shoulders, the motion at once intimate and reverent.

“I’d like to paint you,” he says. “Your beauty should be immortalized on a canvas. Your beauty should be copied and replicated in as many places as possible. The more places there are for people to admire your beauty, the better. The world will be a better place, if it has more Jade in it.”

Celia: It’s been years since someone has touched her like that. Since someone has offered her a massage and just gotten right to it, brushing the stresses of her Requiem away with the simple press of his fingers. She melts.

Paint her. He wants to paint her. She wants to be painted. She wants to be immortalized on canvas. She’ll hang it above her bed so it can be the first thing she sees in the evening when she wakes, the last thing she sees before daysleep claims her. Everyone should get a copy. The entire city. They should all see how beautiful she is, how hard she’s worked on her body, her face, sculpting it to be the epitome of perfection, the prettiest lick in the city—the world, even. To be flawless.

Her eyes shine at the words.

“Yes,” she agrees. She’d wanted photos from Garcia, but what are photos compared to an artist’s rendering? What is a headshot compared to her soul on canvas? She’ll sit for him, pose for him, model for him.

She deserves it.

The world deserves it.

“Paint me,” she says, with another nod of her head, hanging onto the images that he evokes with word and touch. She blinks again, trying to summon additional words to convey her sentiments. She’s normally so much more eloquent than this.

GM: Josua just nods, his eyes seemingly all-too understanding at her brevity. He takes her by the hand, and soon the two Toreador are leaving the club, Sidra quite forgotten. Josua hails a Ryde from his phone. His massages work their way up and down Jade’s shoulders as they wait. His touch isn’t a masseur’s, but what it lacks in training it makes up for in reverence and sheer ardor. Josua’s eyes shine as though he’s running his hands along a statue made from solid gold.

“You’ve put so much work into your beauty. I can tell. It isn’t easy, to be as beautiful as you are. It takes so much work. So much time. So much pain. You’re so dedicated. I want you to know that I don’t just see your beauty, I see the work and dedication behind it, and that makes you even more beautiful.”

Celia: Oh. He means now. She’s supposed to be doing something now, isn’t she? Talking to someone. Multiple someones. Wasn’t there a monkey…?

The thoughts fade away. It doesn’t matter. He’s going to paint her. He understands her. He knows what it’s like, the work she puts into it; she bets he wouldn’t laugh at her closet space or her piles of makeup or discredit her occupation for being frivolous because it isn’t intellectual. It’s art. It’s all art. She, herself, she’s art, and she’ll be immortalized, and that…

That is beautiful. Just like her. Like him. Like them.

They could be a them. They should be a them.

Does he want to be a them?

Shining, golden statues. How the heads would turn. How they’d whisper.

Outside the club, Jade presses against him. She lets the words he whispers in her ear travel through her, just like his hands move up and down her body. He’s good at that, the touch. But she’s better, and she wants to share too, to tell him with her hands what she struggles to put into words. She shows him how good she is at it, arms sliding around his body, untucking his shirt, palms pressing flat against his back once she moves the material out of her way. Up, higher, across the lats, the obliques, the fascia around his lower spine.

Like this, that touch says.

GM: Josua’s skin is smooth and firm, free of any fat and blemishes. He doesn’t even have any back hairs. Jade could rub his back forever, especially with the way he melts under her touch. He gasps and exhales with pleasure, his rapture evident with every second under his clanmate’s practiced ministrations. He doesn’t try to massage her back, as if realizing his efforts would be wholly inadequate before hers. But his hands still trace and travel the contours of her body, wordlessly praising the Toreador’s perfect form.

At some point they wind up in the cab. Jade isn’t sure when. All she notices is that the position of their bodies change.

Celia: She ends up on his lap. She always ends up on their laps. And this is a lap that deserves someone as beautiful as her on it. She’s happy to oblige.

GM: He presses his face to her breasts and nuzzles against them as though he’s an infant returned to his own mother’s. His hands explore her rear, too. There’s lust in them, but there’s more than lust, too. There’s appreciation for what she is, for the perfection she represents.

“You’re so good at this… oh, Jade, you make me feel so good… you’re a feast for the eyes… a feast for the mind… a feast on my skin… you touch me on every level…”

“You make everything better… you make everything beautiful… that’s why you need a painting, so you never leave, so you make things beautiful forever…”

Celia: It’s different when he does it, the way he touches her; others want to use, to claim. He wants to admire. She lets him. She basks in it, revels in it. She is perfect. She’s always been perfect. Flawless. Her work. All her work, all her time, energy, devotion, it has always gone into this.

Her fingers move across his back. Touching, stroking, teasing. His body is her playground.

Beautiful forever. She is. She will be. She won’t leave. She nods along, murmuring the same thing to him, that she won’t leave, of course she’ll never leave; where will he put her when he’s done? Where will he hang the painting?

GM: “Heaven,” he whispers, rapturously. “I’ll send it to Heaven. So the angels can admire it, and be jealous, too, of how they’ll never be as beautiful as you…”

At some point their ride steps. Josua pulls Jade out, by the hand, then hugs her close against his side, as if he can’t bear to be parted from her. He wraps both his arms around her as they walk, keeping her as close as possible as he nuzzles his face against her hair. He says how he’ll die if has to leave her, if he has to stop touching her. He has seen perfection.

He has felt perfection.

He has basked in perfection.

Celia: Heaven. With angels. Not the demons here on earth. No darkness will touch her there. No shadows will mark her days. She will be… ascendant. Transcendent.

Is that possible? She asks how it’s possible as he pulls her from the cab, tucking herself against his side. She wants to hang in Heaven. Tell me, she pleads, tell me how it’s possible.

Her eyes, full of him, only briefly turn away to take in her surroundings.

GM: They’re outside a riverboat. Then they’re walking inside.


Celia: She falters for the first time.

She’s not supposed to be here. She doesn’t have permission to be here.

GM: “By being so beautiful they have no choice but to lift you up…. that they’d be committing sacrilege, if they didn’t…” Josua whispers. His voice is ecstatic as he drinks her in, his every glance and touch brimming with worship for her body and the perfection she represents.

“My cabin’s just inside… I’ll paint you, and we can do anything else we want… I’ll worship you, Jade, worship you like you deserve to be…”

Celia: Twice in one week. She’ll be caught twice in one week where she shouldn’t be. And it’s only luck that kept Riverbend’s people from finding her.

But she’s already here. And his cabin is close, he said.

He’s unreleased. It isn’t his territory. It’s Marcel’s. She’s supposed to be courting him, not his toy, not…

Worship. The word sends shivers down her spine. She takes a step, then falters again. It’s wrong. Someone had beaten that into her.

“Ask,” she tells him, “ask him, if I can…” Jade gestures to the boat, the proverbial line in the sand that marks his personal territory. She takes his hand, pleading with her eyes. “I shouldn’t have to hide.” Perfection shouldn’t hide. Everyone should see. Call, ask, and they all can. The two of them.

GM: Josua presses a finger to Jade’s lips, then hugs her close against his chest as he strokes her hair, as though comforting a frightened child.

“Don’t worry… he’s fine with me bringing guests… just so long as we don’t do it in his bed…”

Celia: Oh. Oh. She likes this. Being held like a child, small and dainty and fragile. Jade presses her face against his chest, her arms moving around him. She really likes this. She nods her head while he strokes her hair.

GM: He plants a tender kiss on her head.

“Come…”

Saturday night, 12 March 2016, PM

GM: The walk to Josua’s cabin passes in a blur. There’s sounds and people, but none of the matter with his arms wrapped around her. The interior sumptuous-looking space with an amply large ovular-shaped shaped bed with silky red sheet. A TV hangs from one of the walls. There’s a phone and tablet on the bedside table. The rest of the space is taken up by a painter’s easel, canvases, and assorted brushes, paint tubes, and other artist’s supplies. It’s a relatively cramped room.

Josua falls into bed with her. Literally. He hugs her close against his chest, her back to his head with his arms encircling her waist, then simply falls backwards. They land with a soft oomph. He rolls to the side with her, then turns her around. His tongue hungrily and expertly explores the contours of her mouth as they kiss. His hands start to remove her clothing.

“I have a question…” he murmurs.

Celia: The lights, sounds, and smells of the casino disappear. It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter, the people around them, nothing but the sensation of arms around her, his body against her. She thinks they fall, but that doesn’t matter either, not when his lips press against hers, when the clothing starts to come off. Less than there would have been if she’s run into him first, before the other, but even that doesn’t matter.

She almost doesn’t hear his words. She’s doesn’t even cease the progress of her fingers down the buttons of his shirt, continuing to remove them one by one.

“Hm?”

GM: “Who you want on top.”

He throws her down suddenly, interrupting her progress on his shirt. One hand presses over her heart, keeping her down, while the other encircles the back of her head, as if to say he’s got this, and she can let go with him in charge.

“It could be me… I’ll use you, maybe roughly, maybe gently, but you’ll be mine to use as I see fit, and you’ll be my little girl, surrendered and helpless….”

Then he slides down, off the bed and onto the floor. His hands reverently stroke the smooth skin of her legs, then work their way down to a shoe-less foot. He cradles it in his hands as though handling a holy relic, and places it upon his face. He bows underneath the foot, prostate and submissive. He kisses it too, reverently, like he’s receiving the greatest privilege on earth.

“Or it could be you… your body is a temple and I am your acolyte, hoping only for the privilege of pleasing the goddess, however she sees fit…”

He smiles and pokes his head up.

“I don’t mind being top or bottom… I want to experience you, Jade… I want to experience the very best you, whichever you you feel like being…”

Celia: Little girl.

Her eyes close. The words send shivers down her spine, unconscious tiny little movements that betray her thoughts on the matter. Her body reacts like the girl she had once been; she doesn’t hide it from him, the stiffening of her nipples, the liquid heat that pools between her thighs.

Surrendered and helpless.

That one. That one, she wants that one. She wants to let go, to let someone else take control, to stop worrying about everything and just experience. Gently, roughly, it doesn’t matter. She wants to submit.

She half-rises onto her elbows as he works his way to the floor, watching with half-lidded eyes the attention he pays her body, the way he offers to worship. Only when he looks up again does she crook a finger at him, pulling him toward her by the shirt still half-buttoned on his frame.

“You,” she gets out, “you top.” That’s her best self. When they make her bend.

GM: Just like that, he’s gone from the floor. His hand clamps down over her throat, holding her down and cutting off her speech as he dextrously pulls off what’s left of her clothes. When she tries to take off his shirt, he slaps her hands down.

“You don’t get that privilege, yet. You haven’t earned it. You haven’t shown me you’re a good girl.”

His hands move from her throat to her wrists, pinning her down as he inspects her naked body, ascertaining whether it is good enough.

“What’s this?” he asks critically, staring down at her womanhood. He touches a finger to it and sniffs.

“How dirty. How perverted. You’re such a bad girl. Bad girls get punished until they can be good girls.”

He flips her naked body over his lap, still clothed in his dark jeans, and delivers a sharp smack to her buttocks.

“Say you’re sorry, you bad girl.”

His hand comes down on her rear again with another sharp smack. It doesn’t hurt as much as Maxen’s spanks did, and Jade’s body doesn’t bruise as easily. But her Beast does. Its pride bruises. It instinctively rebels against this rough treatment, snarls its protest. A sense of debasement surges through her blood, for she is a predator and chooses now to submit like prey.

Celia: Shame, hot and heavy, floods her cheeks. She could have hidden it. Should have hidden it. She’d thought, slut that he is, he’d understand. Instead he bends her over his knee and—

Oh.

It hasn’t faded. Not one bit.

Each smack sends tingles through the rest of her body. It stings but doesn’t hurt, doesn’t bruise, doesn’t leave behind handprints; it’s just the sharp smack of flesh on flesh, the humiliation of being bent over, the inherent shift in dynamic with him clothed and her not. Each smack summons forth a sound from her—a snarl first, until she tells the Beast to fuck off because right now she just wants to be a girl, not an undead abomination, then a whimper, a stifled yelp, and finally a broken, breathy moan. Even the thing inside her chest understands that.

She’s not a good girl. Good girls don’t get wet. They don’t become aroused when someone bends them over their knee. They don’t get off on the humiliation, the feeling of being exposed. They don’t fuck anything and everything they want to fuck for the sheer joy of it.

She’s not a good girl.

And she has nothing to apologize for.

GM: “Oh? Can’t get that out?” he asks. Smack, goes the open hand against her ass. Smack, smack, smack, like she’s a naked toddler over her daddy’s knee.

“I guess we’ll have to try something else, you bad, dirty girl. Such a disappointment to your daddy. You have so much to be sorry for.”

He yanks her off by her hair and throws her back down on the bed. There’s a blur of motion, and then there’s handcuffs around her wrists. He snaps each one around a corner of the bed, leaving her spread-eagled and exposed. He makes do with sheets to tie down her legs, then retrieves a paintbrush.

He runs it along her belly. The hairs are rough and ticklish. It descends steadily, steadily lower.

“I bet you want that over your clit, don’t you, you dirty pervert, for me to paint your clit until you’re wet as a sponge?”

Celia: She’s already wet. Soaked, even. The spanking had seen to that. Legs spread as they are, he can see it too.

Jade tugs at the cuffs around her wrists, testing their hold, then does the same to the sheets around her legs. Both hold firm. Surrendered and helpless, just like he’d said. She squirms as the brush trails down her skin, back arching, teeth sinking into her lip to keep herself silent, watching the movement of the brush with wide eyes.

Finally, she nods.

GM: The paintbrush descends teasingly close, stroking the folds of her outer lips.

“Such a dirty pervert. Beg for it, you dirty pervert. Beg me for it.”

Celia: She doesn’t need to breathe. She knows that. He knows that. But it hitches anyway when he draws the brush closer to where she wants it.

“Please,” she whispers, starting small.

GM: The brush snakes its way closer to her inner lips, then retreats back.

“I can’t hear you.”

Celia: Her hips lift, attempting to make him touch her where she wants.

“Please,” she tries again, and this time her voice is colored by clear desperation, “please, there, don’t tease…”

GM: The brush ‘paints’ over her inner lips for a second, then passes over her clitoris… and over it, without once touching.

“You don’t sound desperate enough. You don’t sound like you’re really begging. Swallow your pride.”

Celia: Her eyes close to shut out the beautiful, smirking face. Her eyes close because he’s right, she’s not desperate enough, she still has too much pride. She’s Jade, and Jade is never not in control. So her eyes close, and her tongue flicks across her lips, and Jade retreats to make room for the girl inside, the eighteen-year-old who has never been touched, the delicate flower that can’t even think the word ‘sex’ without turning red. Not Jade, not Star or Neveah or Violet. Not even Celia. Leilani. No physical change takes place but her face softens, her lips part, and her eyes… her eyes lock onto his when she opens them again, uncertainty and shyness shining out at him.

She becomes what he wants her to be. Surrendered.

“Please.” Whisper-soft, hesitant… but trusting. Helpless. “Please, touch me, show me, let me c…” Her cheeks burn. She can’t even say the word. She looks away, then back at him. Little girl. “Please, Daddy.”

GM: Josua pats her head like a child who’s done well.

“That’s better.”

The brush starts to ‘paint’ her clit. It’s not like a tongue feels. It’s dry and light, and ticklish, too. It reminds her of Pietro’s touch. It dances back and forth in Josua’s nimble hands, sometimes stroking other parts of her, but always finding its way back to her sweet little nub.

“There’s something my little girl still has to do, though. Does she remember what?”

Celia: She turns her face to press a cheek against the hand that pats her, seeking comfort in the touch. Her breath comes in quick, short puffs of air, chest rising and falling with the effort. Extraneous, all of it, but it sucks her into the role.

Something left. What’s left? She can’t think with the brush on her body, and every time she opens her mouth to answer he takes it back to that spot between her legs that makes her see stars. Her body trembles beneath his touch.

Apologize. It hits her all at once when he takes the brush away again, teasing her by denying what she wants. Only good girls get rewarded. She takes a breath she doesn’t need.

“I’m—I’m sorry I was bad.” A short pause, eyes closing, back arching off the bed when those bristles touch and flit away again. “I’ll be a good girl.”

GM: The hand finds her face again. It pats her head and remains nearby for her to nuzzle her face against it, then pats her cheek too. Josua smiles down at her.

“That’s a good girl. That’s a very good girl.”

The paintbrush doesn’t return, but another one does. It’s a smaller brush, lighter, and definitely softer. It tickles a lot more, too. Josua ‘paints’ it in steady clockwise patterns around her clit, bringing her closer and closer to release.

“My little girl is still a pervert, though. It’s one thing to be sorry, but you need to make up for what you’ve done, too.”

“So. If you’re enjoying this, then we’re just going to have to take it to its full conclusion. Are you prepared to do that?”

Celia: Jade—Leilani—strains against her bindings, pulling at them with every jerk and quiver that thrums through her. Make up for it. Full conclusion. She doesn’t know what he plans to do to her, how she’ll have to make up for being a pervert when she’s tied to the bed, but she doesn’t care. She wants it. Needs it. She nods over and over again, voice cutting her response to a quick and quiet yes, please.

GM: Josua nods, withdraws the brush, then leaves the room. He closes and locks the door behind him.

Celia: Oh.

That wasn’t…

“Um.”

Unsatisfied, still too close to the edge to think straight, still caught by the blessing of her clan, she stares at the door. She waits, nerves starting to get the best of her.

GM: Her nerves have enough time to do more than start before the door opens again. Josua walks back in, along with three men in suits, ties, and security badges. The first one, who smells like a ghoul, unbuckles his pants and forces his penis into Jade’s mouth without so much as a hello. The second man, a breather, unbuckles his pants and takes her in her womanhood. The third man, another breather, patiently waits his turn, hands clasped in front of him in a security professional’s stance. There’s no room for him to simultaneously take her third hole when she’s tied down, after all.

Celia: Betrayal stings, a sharp slap across the face. Trusted him. She had trusted him, had let him bring her here, had let him talk her into this, tie her down, had shown him secret parts of herself that no one else gets to see. She yanks at the cuffs, the ties around her legs, but they’re on her in seconds, filling her, holding her down. She bucks, arching off the bed, but the bodies over her are heavy. Wide, fearful eyes seek him out.

GM: He sits down on the bed and rubs a palm over her naked belly.

“This is how my little girl wants it. We both know it is.”

The ghoul slaps her face when she doesn’t start sucking. His erect member presses against her tongue. The other man’s balls smack against her thighs as he humps back and forth.

Celia: The slap across the face turns her head to the side, cheek smarting where the ghoul struck her. Her Beast snarls in response, demanding to be let out, to tear the hand from the mortal that had dare slap it. Pain, humiliation, degradation—she is not some kine to simply lie back and take it like this. She is not Celia, brought to her knees by stronger, more powerful people, helpless to do anything but scream the way they want her to and cry bitter tears while they take from her. She thrashes against her bindings.

But then he’s beside her, stroking a hand against her belly, reminding her that it’s just a game, reminding her that she had asked for this when she’d told him to take top. His touch keeps her claws from coming out, keeps the fangs tucked away, soothes the ragged, frayed nerves of the Beast who only sees the insult. Little girl, he calls her, summoning her forth. She’s not Celia, the survivor. She’s something… else. Different. More pure, more willing to submit, more… innocent. She’s Leilani again. His little girl. He knows best. He’s in charge. He coaxes her forward with the gentle stroking across her belly, telling her that it will be okay, that he has her, that he’ll be there the whole time. Watching. Guiding. Like daddies should for their little girls.

She craves his touch. Needs it to keep the rest of them at bay, to focus on the soft and gentle. This is her gift. Her reward and punishment both. Because she’s a good girl and she apologized for being bad, but she still has to make amends and this is how he has decided she will do it. Her lips finally close around the cock in her mouth. She sucks.

She pulls again at the cuffs, then at the sheets. Not trying to get free, but to shift, to give the third man the space that he needs so he, too, can fill her. Now, not later. Now, while Josua holds her and tells her that this is what she wants, while he touches and strokes and takes control so she can submit.

GM: Jade’s Beast rages and tries to break free at this latest humiliation. It would burst its bonds, rip out the men’s throats, and paint the bedroom in gore. But Jade’s—Leila’s—Celia’s—who even is she?—submissive instinct runs strong, and what is there to be angry about when there’s a fat cock in her mouth? That’s what she is made for. To suck fat cocks. “Yeah, you’ve done this a lot, you little cocksucker,” leers the ghoul, making a fist in her hair and yanking it forward to push his penis even deeper. It takes some effort for the third man to position himself, but he’s able to slip underneath Jade and fill her ass with his cock. He holds her shoulders as he thrusts back and forth. All three men vigorously pump her holes. Josua is there the whole time, to rub her belly, plant it with delicate kisses, and murmur sweet words. He rubs her belly a lot, and scratches it too, like she’s a pet who should take just as much pleasure in that as the actual intercourse. The men take turns alternating between Jade’s holes, giving her a taste of them in each part of her, but they all finish in her mouth. Or at least from her mouth. The first man pulls out and blows his load over Jade’s face. The second man pulls out and blows his load over her tits. The third man cums inside her mouth and tells her to swallow. “Swallow like the dirty little cocksucker you are.”

Her Beast instinctively rebels at this last demand. Cum tastes better than Diana’s cooking, but only because there’s less of it. She can let the cum sit there in her mouth, until whenever Josua lets her off the bed (only a very bad girl would spit it out), or she can expend precious blood purely to swallow this breather’s seed.

“Go on, little girl,” Josua nods encouragingly. “Swallow for Daddy. I’ll be very nice to my little girl, if she can just swallow for Daddy.”

“I know she can do it. I’ll be very proud of her.”

Celia: It washes over her: pleasure. Pleasure like she has never known, to have all of her holes filled at the same time, to have another whispering sweet, tender words of encouragement in her ear, his hands stroking her body. It’s that touch that keeps her grounded, that touch that prevents her from spiraling downward, that touch that tells her everything is okay. She can enjoy it. Lay back and let herself simply feel. She has never been taken like this before, submitting so fully to someone else, letting their whims dictate the terms of play. This is how she wants it, he’d said, and he’s right. They don’t hurt her. They don’t smack or spank or hit her. They just fill, and touch, and taste—one of them kisses her neck while he fucks her from behind, another flicks his thumbs across her nipples, and the last cradles her head while he thrusts inside her mouth. And Josua. Holding her. Touching her. Whispering to her how she’s such a good little girl to take it like this.

It’s overwhelming, an onslaught from all fronts, and were it not for daddy’s hands on her she might feel used; but he’s there for her and that makes it sweet instead of ugly, and when she wants to lose control he’s right there to bring her back. Punishment and humiliation, but exactly what she wants. It’s not mean or cruel, not meant to ruin her. It’s just what she wants and he’s making sure she gets it. She surrenders, losing herself to the movements, sucking, licking, trembling when they find those spots that make her toes curl and her breath catch and her whole body tighten. But they never send her over. He knows, or they know, or someone knows, and no matter how she pleads around the flesh in her mouth they keep her riding that edge until she’s a panting, quivering mess.

One by one they finish, denying her further when they don’t immediately start to fuck again, and she mourns the loss with a quiet whimper, a whispered plea, until another takes her mouth to silence her.

Now this. The finale. All she has to do is swallow. Good girls swallow, don’t they? And he said he’d be proud. She can make him proud of his little girl. There’s no hesitation when he puts it like that. When this final man blows his load in her mouth she swallows what’s left of her pride along with the cum.

She wants him to be proud.

Fitting, that the Beast finally rebels at her treatment of it. She had fucked last night without feeding. Fucked again this evening without even biting. Swallowed human swill and it had not complained, sated by thick, warm Brujah blood. But this? This takes it too far. This humiliation goes beyond what it will endure. The girl retains control, but the Beast takes from her, raking its claws inside her chest and stealing the blood that it wants to slake its hunger. It snarls inside her chest, leaving her with precious little.

But she swallows. And she keeps it down. And finally, finally, she turns to Josua, eyes wide in expectation.

GM: Josua smiles at her and pats her head approvingly.

“Thank the man for his cum, too.”

“Good girls say please and thanks.”

Celia: It’s an effort to look away from Josua, but tears her gaze away to find the man’s eyes.

“Thank you for letting me swallow your cum.” Jade’s voice, but… softer. No hesitation, though. No sign of insincerity. She looks at the other two, thanking them as well for their contribution. Good girls are polite, and she’s a good girl.

GM: “You’re welcome, cum dumpster,” grins the first man as he re-buckles his pants. The others do too. They walk out of the room without a glance back, except to close the door.

Josua moves over on the bed. He doesn’t untie her arms or legs, but he sits cross-legged and places her head upon his lap. Her smiles down at her as he strokes her hair.

“I’m so proud of my little girl.”

“She knows her place. She knows how to submit. She’s happy to submit to her daddy. That makes Daddy very, very happy.”

One hand steadily pets her hair as he tilts her head against his lap to stare up at his smile.

“I’m so proud of you. My pretty little girl. My happy little girl. My good little girl. Such a good girl.”

Celia: Cum dumpster.

Someone that might be Jade snarls at the words. She’s quickly beaten down when her head winds up on his lap, fingers in her hair. She basks in the attention and adoration he lavishes upon her, smiling up at him. Happy, pretty, good. She’s all those things. And she’s pleased. Pleased that he’s happy with her, that he’s proud of her, that he’d do this for her. Her head turns, cheek rubbing against his lap, his hands, whatever she can reach to stay in contact, to make him continue saying such sweet things.

It reminds her… no, those aren’t her memories…

GM: His hands tenderly stroke the sides of her face as Josua leans down to nuzzle her nose.

“Give me a big smile, little girl. Give Daddy the biggest, happiest smile you can. I want to see your soul shining through that smile.”

Celia: She smiles for him. A happy smile, a proud smile, a pleased, sated, satisfied smile. And no matter what face she wears or who controls the reins, it’s never anything less than a beautiful smile.

GM: Josua strokes her hair.

“Try harder, baby girl. Make it an earnest smile. It’s not a desperate smile, but you aren’t satisfied just yet, because you haven’t pleased Daddy yet. You want to please Daddy, because he wants a smile. He wants a big smile. He wants the biggest, happiest, eagerest smile his little girl has in her. She isn’t really tied down. Her smile is how she’ll hug Daddy, because it’ll be so big and happy and eager that he’ll feel it from here, and he’ll hug her back, and hold her close, and she’ll be safe in his arms as they snuggle. That’s what she’ll get, if she can smile for Daddy. All the snuggle times in the world.”

He pats her cheek.

“Smile for me, baby girl. Smile as big and wide as you can. You don’t need to talk. Daddy will do all the talking. Daddy will take care of the hard things. All you need to do is smile.”

“I know my little girl can do it. She’s such a good girl.”

Celia: The smile fades from her lips at his words.

It’s not enough. It’s never enough. She is never enough.

Her eyes close. She inhales air she doesn’t need, lungs expanding to lift her chest, all of it a waste of movement. A waste of energy. A waste of space.

Cum dumpster. Whore. Stupid.

They twist together in her head, dancing before her closed eyes, their voices taunting, cold and cruel. Snippets of conversation press against her, demanding to be let in, demanding that she remember, that she feel. She’s not Leilani. She’s not Jade. She’s not even Celia anymore.

She’s lost.

But Daddy’s there for her. He has always been there for her. He calls to her, coaxing her toward the safety of his arms. He’ll protect her. Take her away from the accident at the end of the hall. Dry her tears after her neighbor forces her to her knees. Hold her hand through the ordeal of being fucked, then tell her how proud he is, how happy she makes him. He’ll tell her how proud he is. How she’s special. His little girl. She is his little girl. His special baby girl. She tries so hard. And he’s proud of her.

Her eyes open, uncertain, as if expecting him to disappear in the seconds they had been closed. But there he is, waiting for her. Like he’s always waiting for her. Because he’ll always be there for her.

Her lips move without a command from her, lifting at the corners, curling upwards to give him the smile that he wants. It’s her. All of her. Broken, bent, raw. But shining. Like the flawless diamond that she is.

GM: He’s there. Waiting. So very patiently.

Leilani. Jade. Celia. They’re just names.

She doesn’t need to be anyone. Just so long as she has Daddy.

Daddy starts to smile, then holds up a finger.

“Hold that, baby girl. Freeze that smile on your face.”

An easy thing, without face muscles that get tired.

Celia: She doesn’t question him. The smile freezes.

GM: “Good girl.”

“I’ll have an extra special treat for you, if you can hold that smile long enough.”

Josua sits down by his painter’s easel. In a blur of motion, it’s turned around, paint tubes are out, and Josua’s brush is racing around the canvas like a fast forwarding video.

Celia: She doesn’t get tired. She doesn’t need to breathe or blink or shift positions. She doesn’t move, doesn’t stir from the spot where he placed her. None of her muscles twitch. She stays, frozen, exactly how he left her. The smile never dims.

GM: The paintbrush continues to blur across the canvas. Time passes. The brush eventually stops moving.

“There. All done. Does my little girl think she’s been really patient? Should she get a treat?”

He smiles at her.

“No talking or moving her head. I haven’t said she can stop smiling yet.”

Celia: Her eyes flick toward the clock on his wall. Her head stays in place, smile never slipping.

GM: “Mmm, what’s that? Is my little girl trying to say something?”

“If only she could stop smiling, that would make things do much easier.”

Celia: She doesn’t want to stop smiling. But she does want to know how long she has been here, tied to the bed, waiting so very patiently for her reward.

She’s not the only one in her mind. Hers aren’t the only thoughts that swirl, and with each passing moment the other one gets stronger, chipping away at her control. She has to be somewhere. She has to be somewhere that she’s not, somewhere that isn’t here. But here is important too. If only she could check to make sure that the other one will still make it. She needs to know. She has to know, or it all comes crumbling down around her, and something like the Beast but less hostile paces in her chest, spiraling outward toward her limbs. She doesn’t move, but it swells beneath the surface of her skin, a bubble of anxiety that she can’t stifle because she needs to know.

GM: Josua walks over to the bed and sits down. He tilts Jade’s face up towards his and runs his hands along er cheeks.

“My silent beauty. Such a pretty little girl.”

“It’s okay, pretty girl. You don’t need to talk.”

“All you need to do is smile. It makes Daddy so happy to see his little girl smile.”

Celia: But she is smiling. She has been smiling. Even now, tied to the bed, anxious that she’s supposed to be somewhere else, she smiles for him.

Finally, she blinks. It’s as clear as she can make it, that blink. No muscles but those controlling her lids move, a quick flip down then up. Her smile stays in place. Her head doesn’t do so much as twitch. None of the rest of her body dares move either; like someone’s doll, she lays where he had put her, and only the eyes give the answer he’s looking for from his earlier question: yes.

GM: Josua gives a velvety laugh.

“I think my little girl is trying to say something. I think she does think she’s been patient. Well, okay, baby girl. I think you’ve earned it, with that pretty smile. So Daddy’s going to give you a very special treat.”

He unbuckles his pants and pricks his penis with an ornamental penknife from the bedside table. The heady smell of Kindred vitae suffuses the air. He daintily opens her mouth, as though he needs to do it for her, and guides his bleeding member inside.

It’s a small prick, at the head of his penis. Jade will need to suck really hard to get more than a trickle of vitae out.

Josua seems to concentrate for a moment, then his member grows firm and stiff in her mouth.

Celia: She’d thought that maybe, given his reputation, they were the same. That he, too, still got off the breather way.

But it’s just her. The pervert. Alone in her deviance.

The blood touches her tongue, though, and she doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter that he has to force it, or that he’d had to have someone else fuck her because he couldn’t. He’d done it for her. She knows that. He’d done it for her, and now he’s doing this for her, because it’s what she wants. Her lips close around him, sucking at the tiny knife wound to bring that precious vitae forth even as he stiffens in her mouth. The smell and taste grow her fangs but she keeps them tucked away, taking what he gives, how he gives. Submitting even now like the little girl she is to what her daddy wants.

GM: “Such a good girl…” he whispers, cupping the back of her head with his hands. He thrusts his hips back and forth, pressing his crotch against her face.

Josua’s vitae is sweet like candy. There’s almost no other flavor, it’s so sweet, but there’s the faintest undercurrent of sour underneath, like a few grains of salt at the bottom of a sugar-coated gummy.

“There’s nowhere on earth that my little girl is happier than with a cock in her mouth, is there?

Celia: Even with his cock in her mouth she manages a tiny shake of her head. No, there’s nowhere else she’d rather be. She belongs on her back or her knees or bent over a lap; wherever he wants her, that’s where he can put her, and she’ll be pleased all the same.

The flavor is so sweet it’s almost cloying, but she swallows it down obediently, even eagerly, happy to have it. And even though it doesn’t do anything for him, even though he doesn’t get off the same way, she gives him the same treatment she’d given his friends earlier just to show him how much she appreciates it.

GM: Josua’s sweetness, for all its strength, is a good kind of sweetness, like the natural sugar found in a succulent fruit. It isn’t the cheap kind instilled by star mode, that tastes so much like sugar dumped over already prepared food. Pietro always did say it’s “worth getting them in the mood.” Jade can taste her clanmate’s lust for her, but it’s a curious sort of lust. It’s more than lust. There’s enrapturement with her beauty on an aesthetic and intellectual level, beyond merely sexual attraction, although there’s a great deal of that too. She feels as if he worships her with the totality of his being. His sweetness fills and speaks to her on every level. But there’s a sour and salty undercurrent to it, too, the more she drinks. Anger and melancholy. All is not well in paradise.

It’s easy to see why Alana wants to do this with her, though. Jade is hard-pressed to think of many blowjobs that actively pleasure her like sucking blood straight from a cock does.

Celia: Her hands, bound as they are, hang uselessly from the cuffs. She wants to touch him. To let her fingers find the source of his trouble and fix it for him. That’s what she’s good at. Fixing. Making people feel better on a physical level. And if she can do that for him why wouldn’t she? She strains against the cuffs but they hold her fast. She can only drink what he offers. And drink she does, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of the sweet, hot red stuff. It wipes the cum from her palate, rids her tongue of the salty taste of kine. This is what she wants, what she has wanted the whole time. He rewards her for being a good girl and she can’t get enough of it.

GM: “Such a good girl… she doesn’t need to move her hands… she’s right where she needs to be, Dady’s cock in her mouth…. my little girl’s so good at sucking cock, and Daddy is so, so proud of her…” Josua whispers, stroking Jade’s cheeks as she rapturously sucks.

“Such a good girl…”

Celia: Is she? Does he like it, when she moves her lips like this, when she draws her tongue along the bottom like that? Does it turn him on the way it would for someone who could still feel pleasure like that? She stops pulling at the bonds, lets her hands hang limp, content to let him retain control. He’s Daddy and he’s in charge, and his little girl will take what he offers.

GM: Josua presses his groin up against her face. Her cups his hands around the back of her head, pushing her closer. She doesn’t need to breathe. She doesn’t need to see. All there is his cock in her mouth and his blood running down her throat. The moment could last forever, until he says, “All right, baby girl, I’m going to pull out soon… get in some good last sucks…”

Eventually, he does. He undoes the sheets around her feet, then the cuffs around her wrists. He sits down at the edge of the bed and pulls her onto his lap. He’s fully clothed, with his jacket on and his shirt buttoned up, and she’s still naked as the day she was born. He adjusts her legs, keeping them on the bed and folded against his body, making her as small as possible. He hugs her close and cradles her head low against his chest, such that she can hide underneath his arms. It’s like the way he held her earlier, like someone would hold a child, but it feels more like he’s holding an infant now. She feels so small and vulnerable and exposed. But Daddy is there, his arms around her. He strokes her hair and slowly rocks her back and forth against his chest.

“That’s my little girl…”

“I know it’s hard for her, losing Daddy’s cock… but she did very well tonight, and Daddy is so, so, proud of her… she’s the most special little girl in the whole wide world…”

Celia: She makes a sound when he pulls back. A quiet whimper of mourning that he has taken the source of such enjoyment away from her. She doesn’t mean to; it just comes out, followed by a soft sigh. The disappointment fades as soon as he draws her onto his lap. She snuggles against him, cheek against his chest. Naked, vulnerable in her nudity, but safe in the cocoon of his arms around her. She nods her head as he speaks, a gentle smile pulling at her lips. He’s proud of her. She made him proud. She’s pleased with herself, with him, with their time together this evening. A feeling like bliss settles over her. She’s a good girl.

GM: “Such a good girl…” he whispers, and then his fangs pierce her neck. Physical bliss washes over her, comingling with the mental bliss.

She’s doing Daddy proud. She’s making him feel good. She’s making him feel so, so good, giving of her life to sustain his. There’s no truer expression of intimacy, than feeding. To give of yourself, to sustain another. To trust them that intimately, that profoundly, to take as much as they choose.

In those moments of feeding, two lives become as one.

Celia: Her lips part in a silent sigh when his fangs pierce her neck. Her eyes close as it washes over her, entire body caught by the shiver of desire and need and something softer, something that might be trust or affection. Something sweet that flavors her blood, deeper than lust, stronger than the charm their clan so often employs.

Something beautiful, like her, the little girl on Daddy’s lap.

GM: The moment of bliss and beauty feels like it could last forever, but like all things, it must come to an end. Josua finally pulls out and affectionately rubs her cheek with his hand.

“All right, baby girl… Daddy’s going to step outside for a bit, okay? That’ll be so she can get changed into being Jade the badass bitch again.”

“Tonight was very special. Daddy loves his little girl very, very much.”

Celia: She gives a slow nod at his words. She doesn’t want it to end, but the mention of Jade… there’s something there, something she’s forgetting. She clings to him a moment longer, nuzzling at his neck with her lips. Shyly, before he goes, she tells him that tonight was special for her too, and that she loves her daddy. There’s a moment of hesitation where she wants to tell him who she is, but she’s worried that once he’s had her he won’t want to see her again. She finally looks up at him.

GM: He smiles down at her, eyes full of warmth and understanding. He runs his hands up and down her cheeks and the sides of her head in petting-like motions, then finally tilts her head up so she meets his gaze. She doesn’t need to do that herself. Daddy will do it for her.

“My little girl can tell her daddy anything.”

Celia: “Leilani,” she tells him, voice as soft as the silken sheets beneath them. It’s the first time she’s ever admitted aloud that she exists. For a brief moment she’s afraid he won’t understand. But he’s her daddy, and she’s his little girl, and he has to understand. She says it again, quiet but sure, that she’s Leilani and she wants him to know.

GM: “Leilani. What a pretty name for what a pretty girl,” Josua smiles, hugging Leila against his chest again. His rubs his hands up and down her back, stroking her hair.

“I’m very pleased to have met you, Lani.”

“You’re a very special little girl. You’re very lucky to have a tough big sister like Jade keeping you safe.”

Celia: She is lucky. She nods her head in agreement. Jade takes care of all the mean people so she can be soft and sweet and nice and let daddy spoil her with friends and blood and pon—

No. Leilani has never had one of those.

“And a daddy,” she tells him, snuggled against him once more. “To be happy.” There’s the briefest of pauses. A moment of hesitation. She remembers the taste of his blood on her tongue, the salty, sour emotions beneath the sweet. Good girls care about their daddies, don’t they? They should. She does.

She asks if he’s happy, too.

GM: Josua’s smile dims a bit.

“Daddy’s Requiem isn’t perfect, baby girl. Nobody’s is.”

He squeezes her shoulder. “Except Lani’s.”

Celia: “Jade can beat someone up for you,” Leilani offers with all the assurance of a little girl who thinks her “big sister” hung the moon.

GM: Josua laughs. “Maybe I’ll ask her. But that’s grown-up talk, little Lani, for the grown-ups to worry about. You don’t need to worry about anything when you’re with Daddy.”

Celia: And just like that, she’s forgotten it. The grown-ups can handle it, and she’ll be safe and warm and happy on his lap. She nods her head in agreement.

GM: He hugs her close for a while longer. Little Lani is right where she belongs in Daddy’s arms, without so much as a worrisome thought to worry her pretty little head.

“All right, Lani,” he finally says. “After I leave, it’s going to be time for Jade to come back out, okay?”

Celia: “Okay,” she agrees with another nod. Jade can come out and play again, and Leila can go back inside. Leilani says a final goodbye to him, a chaste kiss on his cheek before he goes.

GM: He plants a kiss on her brow, gives her hair a last tousle, then places Jade’s clothes on the bed before closing the door behind him.

Celia: There’s no physical change. Nothing to signify that one mask comes off and another takes its place, nothing to tell the world that Leilani has gone to bed and Jade is once more in control. One moment she is daddy’s little girl, the next she’s the childe of a harpy, cold and cruel and conniving.

Her stomach rebels as soon as the the swap occurs, and Jade comes to with her face inches away from a trashcan while she hurls up the jizz she had been made to swallow earlier. At least no one is present to witness the undignified way it slides back up her throat and splatters in the bottom of the wastebasket. Rancid, foul, but over quickly enough. She wipes at her mouth, tongue slicing against her own long fangs as if that will chase away the taste.

Her eyes sweep the room. Cramped, but a door to one side opens into a bathroom and Jade helps herself to his shower. A quick rinse to rid herself of the smell of kine: sweat and cum and other rank odors. Three minutes, in and out, scraping the gunk from her skin with a soapy rag, focused on her face, chest, and between her legs. Perhaps she should have asked him to join her. Leilani would no doubt appreciate bath time. Extra bubbles for daddy’s little princess, and they can play at being mermaids and she can paint his face with beard-bubbles and show him her dolls. Jade smiles at the thought; next time, she tells the little girl, next time she’ll ask. She does not bother to wash her hair, and when she steps out to look in the mirror she see is pleased to see that no traces of the kine remain. Her fingers blur across her skin in routine sweeps, touching up her makeup in half the amount of usual time. She dries with a towel and finds her clothing waiting on the bed. Quick movements put it all back where it belongs, sans stolen panties. It takes less than ten minutes before she is truly Jade again, once more ready to be seen in polite society.

She glances at her phone to check the time, then reaches for the door.

GM: It’s been about 2.5 hours since she ran into Josua at the nightclub. She’s likely missed the ‘court’ part of Savoy’s weekly court, and a decent chunk of the party, though it probably still has some time before it wraps up.

She finds Josua outside, playing on his phone. He smiles and tucks it away at her appearance.

“Would you like to see your portrait?”

Celia: Awkward. Now she’ll never know if opening her mouth last night did anything or if it had all been wasted breath. At least her meeting with him is after the party. Small blessings and all that.

“I would,” she tells him. “I assumed you didn’t want me peeking, so I refrained.”

GM: “Very thoughtful. You looked radiant with your clothes off, by the way, but you look radiant with them back on.”

Celia: “Careful, there, I might think you’re trying to get me out of them again.”

GM: He smiles again. “I think we were ‘under the influence’ most of these past few hours. Clan blessing and all. It’s nice to meet you.”

Celia: Clan blessing indeed. She’s glad she’s dead, that no flush gives her away.

“You too.” She can’t help but laugh. “We’ve done it all backwards.”

“I suppose I should introduce myself now that we’ve already gotten to know each other. Miss Jade Kalani,” she offers with a wry smile.

GM: “Josua Cambridge. I find introductions are usually less awkward this way. Or at least more fun.”

“You were every bit as amazing in bed as I thought you’d be.”

Celia: One brow lifts.

“Do you think about me in bed often?”

GM: “When we met, definitely, though I think about what everyone would be like in bed.”

Celia: “I suppose we have that in common.”

GM: “I wonder what Vidal would be like.”

Celia: “Rigid.”

GM: “I can say from experience, Ventrue can be really hot.”

Celia: “Perhaps we should ask his lover, then, and see if we can take a turn with him.”

“Hard to refuse two gorgeous licks like us.”

GM: Josua laughs. “If you’re serious, I wouldn’t mind screwing the seneschal either. I really wouldn’t. I’m curious what a real elder would be like.”

Celia: “Yours doesn’t do it for you anymore?”

GM: “Oh no, Marcel’s great in bed. But why have one when you could have two?”

He looks her over appraisingly. “Marcel would definitely like to bang you, though he prefers them less submissive than Lani was.”

Celia: Jade laughs. “I’ve no doubt. Get me a date with him, then, and I’ll show you both the other side.”

GM: “Now that I’d be very interested to see. I figured you’d be more like your sire.”

Celia: “Mm, truth be told Leila hasn’t come out like that before.”

GM: “Really? I feel special.”

Celia: “You should. She’d like to see you again, but I’ll let her down easy if you’re not interested.”

GM: “Mmm, maybe later. I’d like to see this other side to Jade, first. I’m not usually that dominant.”

Celia: “No?” Jade eyes him up and down. “I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

GM: “Oh, no. The lick I fuck the most these days is Marcel, and I’m never on top with him. He likes me as a boytoy.” Josua grins. “Sucking blood from a cock was something he showed me.”

Celia: “Now that,” she says with a matching grin, “was wickedly delicious.”

“But the breather way doesn’t do it for you.” A question more than a statement; she assumes the answer already.

Celia: “If you want another elder,” Jade offers after a moment, “you could come to the Evergreen with me sometime.”

GM: Josua shakes his head at her question.

“That’s really tempting. I bet he’s great in bed. I don’t think Marcel would be happy to share me with him, though.”

Celia: She doesn’t seem terribly upset. It’s the answer she expected.

A quick step closes the distance between them; one hand flattens against his chest to push him against the wall, lips at his neck, while the other hand drifts upwards so that her fingers curl through his hair.

“Disappointing,” she purrs. “I imagine you’d be quite a hit at the party next week, and I’d have loved to show you off even if we didn’t end up in Antoine’s hot tub…” She nips at his neck. “I suppose I’ll content myself with flipping the script from tonight and letting you present me to Marcel.”

GM: Josua grins at the aggressive motion, showing his now-protruding fangs. His hands encircle Jade’s body, lovingly caressing her back as they slowly work down to knead her rear. It’s not unlike how Roderick would do it, but there’s a feeling of reverence in his Josua’s hands distinct from the affection (and lust) in her Brujah lover’s. It’s a feeling of profound regard, like he’s getting to handle a holy relic, and getting a huge boner from doing so. His fangs brush against her cheek, letting her feel their sharpness and the softness of his lips, but stopping just short of drawing blood.

“Maybe we could sneak me in as a girl… Marcel likes to have me dress as one, sometimes… we prefer me as a man, but I make a very pretty girl, too…”

Celia: No wonder his count is as high as it is if this is how he treats all his lovers. She’d positively swoon if she were physically capable of doing so.

“I’m a magician with a makeup brush,” she tells him, “though if you ever really want to be a girl…” She trails off, her eyes raking his body. “I’m sure I could make it happen for a night. Ask nicely and I might even let you raid my closet.”

GM: “Oh, yes please, mistress,” he purrs, pulling Jade close and pressing her breasts against his chest. He closes his eyes for a moment, seeming to bask in the sensation of their physical proximity. He breathes his next words in to Jade’s ear like he’s sharing an intimate secret, his tongue lapping against her earlobe. “But I would never raid your closet. I would supplicate myself before you. I would pray that I was worthy of the honor and privilege of wearing clothes that had once touched the godhead, the divine feminine. I would tell you I felt as if I was carrying part of you with me, when I wore your clothes. I would tell you I felt safe and comforted to have some piece of you, not adorning me, but exalting me. I would approach your closet as though it were a temple and pray to receive of its blessings.”

Celia: Oh yes. She can definitely get used to this.

A shiver travels down her spine at the words, eyes widening when she lifts her head to look up at him once more. The very tips of her fangs peek out from behind her lips, though she keeps them to herself for now.

“Careful, pet,” she warns him, voice thick, “or I’ll steal you away from him and keep you for myself, and you’ll never get up off your knees again.”

GM: “But what if I don’t want to get off my knees,” he murmurs, sinking down to them. He presses his face against Jade’s crotch, like a child at its mother’s breasts, and hugs his arms around her legs.

“There’s no place I’d rather be than a woman’s knees. Than your knees. I love a woman’s knees. I love everything about women. There’s so much to love about women. I love the richness and fullness to their hair, how I can just run my hands through it forever. I love women with long hair. I love the softness and curvaceousness to their faces. I love how puberty doesn’t make them hard, how every woman still has a little girl’s face, how every woman is still a child at heart. I love the firmness and softness to their breasts, and how they nourish innocent young life with those perky, milky orbs. I love to suck on women’s breasts, but I didn’t with Lani, you know, because she didn’t feel aware she had breasts, innocent child that she was. I love the supple curves to women’s bodies, how symmetrical they are. I love how just the outline of a woman’s form is a work of art in of itself. I love the delicate, mincing steps women take in heeled shoes, how it makes their hips delightfully sway back and forth. I love the softness to their smooth, hairless legs. I could run my hands along a woman’s legs forever. I love the rosiness to their cheeks and lips. I love the wide, trusting nature of their eyes. I love the dainty smallness of their hands.”

Josua isn’t still as he talks. His hands lovingly caress up and down her legs the entire time. He plants tender kisses along her thighs, then her knees, working steadily downwards to her feet.

“I love women. I love fucking women, and I love admiring women. I love everything about women. That’s why what you do is so important, Jade. Because women aren’t beautiful on their own. Being a woman, really being a woman, is an art. It takes work and pain and dedication. Women must suffer to be women. They must bleed. They must know pain.”

“Art demands no less.”

He plants a loving kiss on Jade’s right foot. A blissful shudder runs through his body as he closes his eyes, then rubs his cheek against her foot as though to ‘seal in’ the kiss.

“And you… are an artist.”

Celia: It’s the sort of speech that makes a woman lose herself. The sort of thing that makes her eyes shine, her breath catch, her toes curl. His words do more for her than the clumsy, fumbling movements of so many men who try and fail to replicate what he says without thinking, and the touch on her legs, the kiss on her foot, the pure adoration that he lavishes upon her…

She breathes it in. Breathes it in with long, shaking breaths that she doesn’t need, but she doesn’t care because that, too, is art; looking human is art, breathing and forcing her heart to beat and letting her body react the way it wants to is art, art that she created through blood and time and tears because being a woman is art and she is its master.

Jade uses the foot he’d kissed to nudge him aside, putting him onto his back with his belly and throat exposed like the submissive toy that he is. She traces the tips of her fangs with her tongue, then drops. Her thighs spread to either side of his waist, dress hiked up around her hips to give her the freedom of movement. Her knees hit the floor hard, hands flashing out to catch his wrists and pin them above his head.

“Trouble,” she tells him, nipping once more at his throat, “you’re trouble, with a tongue like that.” She aches to break his skin, to sink her teeth in, but she holds off.

GM: “Oh, yes… I’m in so much trouble with you, mistress…” Josua purrs, his eyes lighting up as she spreads her thighs around him. He doesn’t fight her grip, but he wriggles his hips, grinding his crotch against hers. He pushes up and down from the floor as though trying to reach heaven. He mouths her breasts through the fabric of her dress, running his tongue across them in clockwise motions even as he contently suckles at the covered nipples. It’s a curious sensation, to receive such pleasure through a cloth barrier, but it’s far from unpleasant.

“You’re….” Josua murmurs, “a calamity, if I’m trouble… an apocalypse… I’m in completely over my head… what have I gotten myself into… once Jade is on the scene, all bets are off… all will be as the goddess wills, and mere man can never know her will…”

Celia: Less curious than he might think; she’s always been a sucker for teasing over the clothes before finally tearing them off, and her Embrace had only heightened those senses. She makes a sound deep in her throat, eyes closing when his hips move upward to rub against her. She presses down, not evening pretending anymore that this hasn’t turned into round two, that she isn’t slick and ready to go again. Even her Beast is ready to pounce and tear into this delectable young thing beneath her.

“Insatiable,” she murmurs, shifting to hold his wrists with one hand—it’s a loose grip at best—so she can drag her nails down his chest. “But you’re right,” she breathes into his ear, “that you don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into; I’m going to leave you wanting and begging and panting for more, and all you’re going to think about these next few nights is how badly you want me to come back and finish what I started.”

Her lips press against the underside of his jaw, just over the pulse point on a mortal, and the tips of her fangs drag against his skin. Then she’s gone, pulling up and off of him, rising to her feet in a fluid motion and peering down at him with eyes that smolder in their intensity.

GM: “Oh, yes… I don’t know, mistress… I thought I saw you, with Lani, but you’re her wicked twin sister…” Josua murmurs. He rises, but not to his feet. He wraps his arm around Jade’s leg and presses his cheek against the skin, rapturously, like a freezing man clinging to a vertical space heater, or an ecstatic Indian to a sacred totem.

“There are so many sides to you… just when I think I have you figured out, you show me I don’t know anything… you’re an eternal mystery, try though I might to understand you… man cannot understand the goddess, only try to please her…”

Josua smoothly slides down from her thigh to her foot in a bowing-look motion. His hands to start to caress the sides of her shoe as he kisses its front, then licks the underside to polish it clean.

“You do torture me, mistress, and it hurts so bad, to be deprived of your touch… but it’s a privilege to be tortured by you… to know that my pain pleases the goddess, and that she sees fit to listen to my begging… it’s enough to help me through my pain, but to leave me on the brink of madness, wanting more, wanting so much more… but my wants don’t matter, only her pleasure…”

He fits the heel of Jade’s shoe into his mouth and begins to rapturously suck it, like he would a man’s cock. His lips move up and down the heel as his tongue laps across each side. He makes the same noises he would with a cock, too. Slowly savored “mmm… mmm…” ones in between each suck and inhalation. His eyes close contently.

Celia: She leaves him to it for a moment, amused by the sight of him on his knees in front of her, aroused by the way he clearly worships the entirety of her being. Were it any other night she might even keep him there; her mind runs wild with the fantasy of putting him on a leash, making him crawl after her, turning him into her very own pet.

But it isn’t any other night, and she does, unfortunately, have places to be and people decidedly less attractive to speak to, and despite his assurance that Marcel doesn’t mind sharing or guests she still doesn’t want to be caught where she shouldn’t be. Nothing like being forced to explain why she got caught trespassing to kill her boner. They’re not even in his room, she can’t help but note, but still outside of it where anyone could walk by.

She moves her foot, removing it from his mouth and settling the sole of it against his chest. Another nudge lays him out once more, denying him the satisfaction of touching her.

“Enough.”

GM: He quavers underneath her foot, but simultaneously presses his chest against the shoe, as though it’s his last and only chance to get as close to her as possible. He loves the sensation of her sole, that much is plain.

“Yes, mistress,” he whimpers.

Celia: “Show me what you created. Your painting. The art. Show me me.” She turns, pulling her foot off of him, and strides toward the door. A snap of her fingers summons him after her.

GM: He swiftly rises behind her. “Yes, mistress. Right away.”

They walk back into the cabin. Josua turns the easel so that she can see.

It’s her.

The painting depicts her lying back-down on the bed, her arms spread. Josua hasn’t painted the handcuffs, but it’s a vulnerable and exposed-feeling position. She’s lying right there for the viewer to claim, everything from head to her belly. She’s a helpless prize to be won. There’s a rosy hue to her cheeks and the tips of her breasts that feels simultaneously innocent and suggestive. Indeed, the whole piece feels that way. One could appreciate it for its aesthetic merits or masturbate to it as pornography. An appreciative enough viewer might even be able to do both. Jade feels like Josua could do both.

But the crown jewel is the smile.

Everything shines through in that smile. Part of her looks happy. Her eyes glow with happiness. She looks eager to please, too. Her expression makes Jade think of all those times people told Celia to smile, and how Emily says it’s sexist. But the girl in the portrait smiles anyway. Part of it does feel a little sexist, the weight of patriarchy bearing down on her slim shoulders, and she can’t do other than go along. But she also feels like she’s smiling because it’s her. Really and truly her. It’s an innocent smile, fragile and broken. It lights up the world and shows all of its cracks. Jade can see the pain in the girl’s eyes. It’s a soft pain, long accustomed, that she meekly accepts as part of herself, yet perhaps yearns to break of and knows she can’t, because it’s not her place. She shares it all with the viewer. She’s smiling directly at them, sharing something innocent and fragile and trusting. She trusts you with her true self, in all its innocent fragility. The smile is just for you.

Trust. That’s a big part of what shines through. Jade may think back to Josua saying she couldn’t talk. She didn’t need to talk. She could place her trust entirely in another person’s hands. It makes her think of subspace, that state of mind Alana sometimes gets into. The ghoul becomes completely pliant and willing, aglow with pleasure at letting someone else totally control her and make all the decisions, because that person loves her enough to make all the right ones. It’s a position of total trust. The girl in the portrait doesn’t look fully in subspace; there’s no lust in the smile. But she looks like she’s familiar with what subspace is.

It looks like the kind of smile a girl would show her daddy. Or her lover. It’s the kind of smile that doesn’t exist between sisters, or between mothers and daughters. It makes Celia think about her family. Emily, who always will be her equal and peer. Diana, who’s brimming with affection, but who’s never been the one to protect and keep her safe. This smile is the look a girl reserves for her daddy. A dominant man who can make her his little princess. The pictures makes Jade wonder what life would have been like with Maxen as her loving father. In that smile, she sees a mirrored longing. A girl who’s close enough to see the daddy she’s always wanted, but too far away to touch. He’s missing from the picture. There’s just her.

A beautiful girl with a beautiful smile.

Celia: She takes a breath.

And then another.

Useless, those breaths. They do nothing to stem the tide of emotion that threatens to take her in its grasp and strangle her. The corners of her eyes burn as she stares, silently, upon what Josua has created.

Her.

It’s her.

Every empty, aching, twisted part of her resides within that smile. Every word that has ever been flung her way, every negative thought, every everything that makes her her. Not Jade, not Leilani, not Star or Lily or Violet, not the whore or the sinner or the bitch, not the harpy’s slut or the sheriff’s childe or Savoy’s pet neonate or Roderick’s girlfriend or Alana’s mistress.

Just her. Just Celia.

The girl without a dad who desperately wants one. The girl with four paternal figures who are too busy or too distant or too important to want to have anything to do with her.

It’s beautiful. And it’s devastating. And for long moments she can only stare at herself, at this fractured, fragile thing in front of her, at her complete and utter willingness to trust in someone else to take care of everything, and wonder where it all went wrong.

Canvas is not her medium. She can’t speak to brush strokes and dimension and proportions, can’t judge the color or the composition. She doesn’t try. She only stares, and wonders, and feels.

She doesn’t know when she took his hand, only that she reached for something to anchor her and there he was, and her fingers feel small in his grip and maybe that’s okay, maybe that’s what she needs right now, maybe just for tonight the mask slips and she’s not Jade anymore, she’s not Leilani, she’s just Celia.

A beautiful girl with a beautiful smile.

At last, she finds her voice.

“It’s me.” Quiet words, hardly louder than a breath of air. Her tongue flicks across her lips.

“It’s me,” she says again. She turns to face him, cheeks stained red. She points, as if she needs to, as if there is anything else she could speak of.

“It’s me.”

It’s truth. It’s beauty. It’s both. There’s no need to decide between the pair with each at home on the canvas.

GM: Josua squeezes her hand and guides her to a seat on the bed, pulling her up against him, back to his chest as they sit and look at the painting’s smiling sibject. His hands slowly work and caress her shoulders.

“It’s you,” he echoes.

“Art doesn’t lie.”

Celia: It can lie. Makeup lies. It makes the ugly look beautiful, the old look young, the barely adequate divine. It can change the shape of the face or hide deformities, smooth uneven complexions and whittle away too-broad surfaces.

But this doesn’t lie. This portrait, her, it doesn’t lie.

She nestles against him, eyes drawn back to the work of art. She can’t look away, even as his fingers work her flesh, even as her muscles tense, hold, and finally release beneath the pressure.

GM: “Where are you going to keep it?” he asks, continuing to attentively knead her shoulders. He’s no professional like she is, but the sentiment is there.

Celia: Her haven, she thinks, but she doesn’t know how she’ll explain it to her partner, or what his reaction will be if she tells him that she sat for it. Even without the sex, posing nude is… well, he’s not an artist, he doesn’t understand.

“I don’t know,” she admits.

With the dolls, maybe, the other little pieces of her soul, but this… this deserves a prominent location. Private, but prominent.

GM: “You could give it to someone else, too. But it’s a very intimate look at you.”

Celia: She can only think of one person she’d let see her like this. Even so, if he were ever to lose control of his rage and destroy it… well, she thinks she’d have to destroy him, then. She shakes her head.

“I don’t want to share it. I want to keep it. To… remind me.”

GM: “Hmm. Maybe there’s a lot to remind yourself about. Lani is so submissive. Not at all like Jade.”

Celia: “No,” she agrees. “But that isn’t Lani. Or Jade.”

GM: “You’re right. She is different. It all comes out on the canvas.”

“It’s interesting how we take new names.”

“I almost wish I had, before everyone knew who I was.”

“Everyone loves having a mystery. Being a mystery.”

Celia: “There’s beauty in honesty. In not losing sight of who you were, who you are.”

“That’s more important than we like to give credit.”

GM: “True. But we’re not who we once were, either. New names reflect that.”

“Maybe they’re more honest, in their own way.”

“Or maybe there’s a lie either way.”

Celia: “There’s a line about names and roses from Shakespeare.” Jade lifts a shoulder. “Sometimes the masks get heavy, too.”

GM: “We can take off masks.” He looks thoughtful. “Maybe. There is that quote, too, about masks ceasing to be masks.”

Celia: “Can you take off the mask? I haven’t been honest with anyone since the night I died.” She nods toward the painting. “That’s the most real thing I’ve seen in a long time.”

GM: “I think you can. It’s just a question of how much it’ll hurt, isn’t it?”

“There is hurt in her eyes.”

“Hurt and a lot of other things.”

“Either way, if you’re going to disguise me as a girl, I should take a new name anyway. There’s something fun about slipping on new masks. It’s why we played dress-up as kids. Getting to decide who we are.”

Celia: She accepts the change of subject with something that might be a sad smile. Turned away from him like she is, she doesn’t think he sees, and her shot at raw honesty fades into the night.

“What name would you pick for your feminine self?”

GM: “I think we should wait until we see how she looks.”

Celia: “She’ll be beautiful,” Jade tells him, “like you are. But we can wait and see.”

GM: “I know she will, in your hands. There’s something pure in that, in beauty. It can hide things, but beauty is always honest about itself.”

“I think you’ve probably been more honest than you give yourself credit for.”

“Jade and Lani are both honest. They’re both beautiful.”

Celia: What does that make Celia?

GM: “The world is worse if there’s just one of them. Instead of me sucking your heels, and you sucking my dick, there’d have to be just one of those.”

Celia: “Perish the thought. I wouldn’t deprive the world that way.”

GM: “Which one would you take? Are you a top or a bottom, or does the truth depend on the mask?”

Celia: “I’m a switch. I change to be what’s needed.”

GM: “I think I’m a bottom at heart. But I can switch.”

Celia: “Sometimes it’s nice to give up control.”

GM: “It’s an expression of trust. If someone can hurt you and they don’t.”

Celia: Jade twists in his arms, lifting her face to look up at him.

“Does he?”

GM: Josua grins. “Only in fun ways. So I guess not really.”

“Everyone says Ventrue have sticks up their asses, but he’s very laid back.”

“He’s helping me when he doesn’t have to.”

Celia: “Everyone has a reason they do things, even if they’re not readily apparent.” She pauses just long enough. “Personally I think it’s because you’re adorable.”

GM: He gives a velvety laugh. “Of course. My good looks.”

“They got me almost everywhere in life, I guess the Requiem shouldn’t be any different.”

Celia: “You don’t sound very enthused about that idea.”

GM: He pauses. “I wonder, sometimes, if they’re why my sire turned me.”

“Maybe I’d be happier if I’d been just a little less handsome.”

He smiles. “But not too much less. Only a little.”

Celia: “One of those famous writers once said that the most important days of our lives are the day we were born and the day we find out why. I think the same can be said of anyone who was turned without a choice.”

GM: “She turned me and just… disappeared. I still have no idea why.”

Celia: “You could let it consume you, let that question turn you into a bitter shrew. Obsess over it. Wonder why you were abandoned, why she didn’t stick around, wonder if it’s because you somehow didn’t measure up, like you weren’t good enough, like it’s acceptable to just pull someone from their life and ruin it and ditch them, like maybe you were a mistake all along, or a moment of passion that turned into regret.”

“And that’s fine. Plenty of licks do that. Plenty of people, too.”

“Or…” She turns fully, perched on his lap once more, knees bent with her arms around his neck. “You can accept that sometimes… sometimes there isn’t a grand plan. Sometimes things don’t happen for a reason. Sometimes you get a shitty sire and someone else cares enough about you to take you in.”

GM: “You are right there,” he grants. “I could’ve been Embraced as a thin-blood. Or been found by a thin-blood.”

Celia: “My breather family,” she says at length. “My sister was adopted. Her bio mom didn’t care enough about her to lay off the bottle, and she had a rough go of it. Bounced around foster care. We met and hit it off, and my mom brought her into the family, and they’ve been happy. No blood binds them, but they’ve got a better relationship than most people I knew.”

GM: “That’s a happy ending for them both.”

“Is she hot?”

“Your sister and all.”

Celia: “Oooh, yeah, not gonna happen.”

GM: “Ah, well. You’re hotter anyways, I bet.”

Celia: “I am.”

GM: “She must be happy, though. My dad was a douchebag too. For a long time, all I wanted was to fill that hole. Not many people get to.”

Celia: Jade makes a sound that might be choked laughter.

“Yeah,” she says, “I know that feeling.”

GM: “Douche dad too?”

Celia: “Abusive.”

GM: “That’s just a travesty. Like defacing the Sistine Chapel.”

Celia: It almost comes out then. The whole story about dinner, the apology, wanting to make amends.

But that’s a truth she isn’t ready to talk about, and it’s not just her unlife on the line.

“Yours too, sounds like.”

GM: “He wasn’t abusive. He just walked out and never paid child support.”

“One of my sisters still has some serious self-esteem and abandonment issues from it.”

Celia: “Sometimes it’s easier to cut someone out when you realize they’re toxic than coping with their absence.”

GM: “Easier said than done for a lot of people.”

“But this is getting glum.”

Celia: “What, you’re not turned on by emotional pain?”

She tsks at him.

GM: He laughs. “I’ve seen some weird fetishes, but never that one.”

“But you have a beautiful man with his arms around you. I have a beautiful woman on my lap.” He plants a kiss against her neck.

Celia: “Oh, no, no,” she murmurs, shaking her head. “I know how this goes. You tell me how pretty I am, I let you seduce me, we fuck again, I miss the rest of the party I’m supposed to be at…” She makes no move to get off his lap despite her protests.

GM: His hands start to massage her breasts as he plants kisses along her cheek.

“The party is wherever you are.”

Celia: Oh.

Well.

That’s certainly true.

GM: “It’s their fault if they didn’t get the memo where it was at.”

Celia: “How selfish of me to deny them my presence.”

“But logistically,” she murmurs, arching her back to lean into his touch, “they wouldn’t all fit in your room, and even if I were inclined to skip it and take you again, there’s the issue that I’d lose all control and rip your pretty throat out, and then you’d never let me turn you into a girl so we can tag-team Marcel.”

“And that, Josua, would be a travesty.”

GM: “I suppose you’re right,” he says wistfully. “When do you want to do that?”

Celia: “Mmm… sometime this week? I can make myself available.” She offers Tuesday or Wednesday.

GM: “Hmm, Wednesday’s better,” says Josua. “I’ll check things with Marcel.”

Celia: “Let me know. In the meantime, I don’t suppose I could talk you into smuggling me out of here and giving me a lift back to the Quarter?”

GM: Josua laughs. “You wouldn’t rather stay for round two? Are you sure?”

Celia: “I’d like to. I’d really, really like to.”

GM: “I know you would. You’re a switch. You’ve only seen half of all I can be…”

Celia: “Hard to say no when you put things like that…” Her fingers slide through his, halting the movement of the hands on her body before the rest of her self-control can slip away. Even if she didn’t have to go she couldn’t stay, not when it means poaching to avoid a bigger mess. Another twist and her lips find the corner of his mouth. “But I need to go. We’ll save it for next time when I turn you into my pretty little girl. Come, though, be a good boy and I might even let you worship me on the way back.”

GM: Josua sinks rapturously into the kiss, his tongue hungrily seeking out hers.

“Oh, but it’ll be a whole new way for us to fuck once I’m a girl… a whole new way of worshiping you… there are so many ways you can be worshiped, mistress, and so many you deserve to be worshiped… none of them enough… but mere men must try…”

He doesn’t try to remove his hands from Celia’s, but lowers them and casually hikes up the hem of her dress.

“Tonight we can still do it without protection… there’s only two nights we can do that… let me show you something, mistress, I think you’ll like it…”

Still holding Celia’s hands, as though because she hasn’t given him permission to let go, Josua bows his head and nimbly snakes it under her dress. He starts to lick her in her sweetest spot, just like Roderick does. But Roderick never did it with such an air of pure pleasure, pure joy, from pleasuring her.

Then, also unlike Roderick, Josua sinks his fangs into the flesh just above her clit. Celia feels the ecstasy of the kiss take immediate hold, shuddering up her loins like an electric current as her clanmate sucks her blood. His tongue simultaneously laps around her little nub in long, soft, counterlockwise circles. Pleasing the Man (the Woman) and the Beast at once.

He finally lets go of her hands. His fingers slowly and softly find their way towards her g-spot, then stroke it in steady rhythmic motions.

Celia: Words themselves lose all meaning. Thoughts dissolve into fragmented snippets of sensation: falling, drowning, and an overwhelming ember that starts a fire in her core. It burns. She burns. “Stah—” she thinks she might say, but without the pop of her lips to form the P it’s just more noise percolating through the atmosphere. Currents of electricity buzz through her body. Her back arches, the girl made marionette through tongue and teeth and fingertip.

Her protest dies before it has a chance to live. She succumbs.

GM: Josua brings her over the edge. She’s not even sure how many times he does so; it all blurs together under the ceaseless ecstasy of the kiss, gasm after gasm that turn her thighs to jelly. At some point he switches positions, 69ing with her so that she can suck the blood he’s taken back out of his (erect) cock. The fire in her core burns and burns and consumes him too, until they’re both guttered out and smoldering in one another’s arms.

“Bet they wouldn’t have worshiped you at that silly party,” Josua purrs, his tongue idly tracing a path across her labia.

The clock, however, tells another story. If she doesn’t hurry, the party may be almost over.

Celia: The mention of the party is enough to clear the fog from her mind. She sits up suddenly, breath hissing from between her teeth. Josua finds himself quickly displaced when she rises to her feet.

“Shit,” she says, pulling her dress down.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she says, reaching for her purse.

“Shit,” she says, glaring at the door where beyond waits guards and licks and ghouls and who knows what else that will try to keep her from making it back in time to do… anything.

“Come on,” she says to him, reaching for his hand. “Show me the way out.”

GM: There’s also the window, if she cares to take a swim.

Celia: She has wings, she doesn’t need to swim.

GM: “That’s not usually what a partner likes to hear after sex,” Josua replies amusedly, but pulls on his pants. “All right, though. Follow me.”

Celia: Unless he’s going to take her all the way to the border… maybe the window is the better bet. She eyes it. Then asks.

GM: “We don’t really keep any cars on board here, but I can hail a Ryde to take you to your party.”

Celia: “No,” she says finally, “we’ll pretend we’re in high school, only the roles are reversed.” Jade crosses to the window and shoves it open. “Keep my painting safe for me. I’ll be back to collect it.”

She takes a step back, then launches herself through the open window. Her body twists and she disappears with a flap of wings.