“You only have one brother. You’re stuck with him.”
Celia Flores

---

Wednesday night, 16 March 2016, PM

Celia: Celia reaches for her phone to call herself a ride for the trek back to the Quarter. They make idle small talk while she waits and set a future date to get back together. Jade slides into the back of the car when it pulls up, aura dampened and face obscured to make her look like just another casino patron.

Despite his insistence that she send “Celia” to retrieve the items, Jade brings her luggage with her. She promises to send the girl by another evening for his amusement—“maybe to celebrate the return of the painting. Maybe you can have us both that night.”

She tucks the luggage full of belongings into the trunk and texts Randy to meet at her haven. She can hunt for Pete and Edith later; right now the world is literally at her fingertips and she has no desire to waste it. A second text to Reggie confirms that she is stopping by. Randy will pick her up shortly to serve as wheels into Mid-City, where both brothers wait.

In the back of the Ryde, Celia taps a message to Alana.

Didn’t tell me you fucked Josua. Nice score. Can’t be that submissive when you’re filling in, though. ;)

She sends the text and scrolls through her contacts until she reaches Reynaldo’s name. Why hasn’t he reached out to her? Is he not interested anymore because she’d shown him what she can do? She pouts at her phone as if an answer will appear.

GM: Josua pouts Celia won’t be by tonight, but seems content with that assurance of later.

Randy texts back he’ll see her at her haven.

Reggie says says he’ll see her there.

Alana texts back, Thanks! It was really easy to be around him, but I’ll try not to be in other places xoxo

A message from Reynaldo is not immediately forthcoming.

Celia: Jade sighs at her screen. It’s not as if the lick is psychic, she reminds herself. She’ll just have to go to him. That doesn’t look desperate at all.

Oh well. At least she has a reason to seek him out.

She fires off a text to Dani.

You up? Wanna hang? Have some errands to run but free in a bit.

GM: The text back is immediate.

Love to! I’m at your mom’s house, do you wanna meet there or someplace else?

Celia: Maybe my place?

GM: Ok, be there in a bit :)

Celia: It’s a quick ride back to her haven after that, where hopefully Randy is already waiting. She takes a moment to unpack and change into something more suitable for an evening of running around doing who knows what: black, short, with mesh cutouts along the midriff and thigh. A pair of nude heels complete the look.


“So,” she says to Randy, “what do you mean Mabel thinks Reggie is Evan?”

GM: “I heard her calling him Evan,” he says. “When they were fucking.”

“And he was, uh, calling her Mom. It was pretty weird.”

Celia: “Ah… yeah apparently Evan used to call her Mom. Had a thing for MILFs.”

Maybe Reggie can keep her and continue that relationship. Maybe all Mabel needs is a good, firm dicking every once in a while.

GM: “Also, damn, babe, do you look great!”

Celia: She smiles up at Randy.

“Thank you. We’re heading to the office for a bit.” She gathers what she needs so they can head out.

GM: Dani arrives around the same time. She’s dressed in a short-sleeved top, booties, and knee-length skirt.

“Hey!” she smiles as she hugs Celia.

Celia: Awkward. She’d said “in a bit,” she recalls, as in “after her errands,” as in “why is Dani at my house right now.” If only Celia had gone back to her other haven like she’d intended to all along instead of playing it safe and going to the “public” haven, “Celia’s” haven, which has already been exposed who knows how many times.

She really needs a change of address once everything settles down.

None of that makes it to her face. She’s not even stiff when Dani leans in for a hug. Just the smiling friend, hugging her back.

“Hey, glad you could make it. You were sleeping earlier when I stopped by.” A nod to Randy excuses him from the room. Celia pulls Dani’s finished mask from her bag. “Want to try it out?”

GM: Dani says hello to him too, and he says as much back, before he takes his leave.

Dani nods and takes it out. Her eyebrows raise as she runs her fingers over the material.

“Oh, wow. This is… incredibly realistic.”

“This doesn’t even look like a mask.”

Celia: “No,” Celia says as Dani takes the mask from her, “nor should you feel it. It’s made to blend into the skin once applied. A little bit of makeup will cover the seam so no one knows it’s not real. There’s a wig, too. Darker, like you asked.”

Celia helps her put it on and adjusts the fit. Once it’s in place she holds out a mirror.


GM: “Jesus,” Dani murmurs, staring at her new reflection. “I really look like a completely different person.”

Celia: “You’ll need a name.”

GM: “Hmm,” Dani says thoughtfully.

“So Danielle means ‘God is my judge,’ for Daniel surviving a night in the den of lions. That honestly seems pretty appropriate already. But we obviously can’t stick with that.”

“Hm, Daria, after the king who ordered Daniel thrown into the den?”

“Although maybe starting with a ‘d’ is too similar.”

Celia: “If you’re going to use this as your vampire name you could do something wild.”

GM: “Oh, what do vampires usually do there?”

Celia: “Depends. Some have normal names: Roderick, Reynaldo, Roxanne. A little dated, maybe, but normal enough. Some change them completely: Sundown, Harlequin, Perseus.”

GM: Dani thinks. “Maybe Attica, for Atticus Finch? He was always Stephen’s and my favorite literary character, growing up.”

Her face downturns briefly at the mention of her brother.

“Or, ugh, I already went with something legal for my tattoo. I guess I’m not a real person outside my job.”

Celia: “Keep the mask on for a while. See how it makes you feel. See what type of person it makes you want to be. There’s a freedom in being someone that isn’t you; maybe you’ll discover more about your real self when you’re not busy being Dani.”

GM: She looks in the mirror and gives a sigh. “Okay. I guess we don’t have to decide now.”

Celia: “Speaking of your brother.”

GM: “I haven’t decided how much rent to charge him yet.”

Celia: “I don’t think that’s going to be an effective tactic.”

GM: “Yeah, I don’t care. He owes me.”

Celia: “For what?”

GM: “Uh, everything?”

“How about we start with being a giant ass, hitting you like your dad did, throwing me around, scaring me, Dad loving him more, being a giant ass, letting us all think he was dead, being the golden son when he was alive, and oh, getting to be the golden son when he’s dead too, Mr. Primogen’s Childe, and being a giant ass,” Dani flares.

“And oh, did I mention being a giant ass?”

“And oh, all that bullshit about moving to Houston, because I’m just going to pack up my life for his convenience.”

Celia: “All right. Well, first of all, you don’t pick your sire any more than you pick your parents. They pick you. There’s not always a lot of say in whether or not you want it. Second of all, your dad loving him more is not Stephen’s fault, nor his being the golden child. That’s something that parents thrust upon you. Third of all, he had to let you think he was dead. It’s literally the first rule of being a vampire: you don’t talk about being a vampire.”

Celia runs a hand through her hair. This is not how she wants to spend her night.

“It’s not something he did lightly. Trust me. He’s cried about it. So if you’re going to be mad at him, be mad at him for things that he did rather than things that were done to him.”

GM: Dani’s glare subsides. A little. “Okay, I’m mad at him for physically abusing both of us, being a giant ass, expecting me to just move to Houston because he said so and the completely arrogant entitled attitude that’s reflective of for Mr. Golden Child, and also being a giant ass.”

“He hit you!”

“Your mom says that wasn’t really him, but I don’t really trust her advice when it comes to forgiving men who hit women.”

Celia: Celia gives that a wry smile.

“Any other time I’d agree with you. She and I also spoke about it earlier this evening. It’s… I hate to say it’s different, because don’t all battered women say that, but it’s different. I can show you. Not now, this very minute. But tonight.”

GM: Dani raises her eyebrows. “She said a monster took over. And that one also did when she fed you blood.”

“We talked tonight too, after I woke up.”

Celia: “The Beast.”

“What did you talk about?”

GM: “Uh, my living situation. I’ll be honest, I really wanted us to be roommates, but she said that wouldn’t work out.”

“And that… she and Emily really didn’t want me to be alone right now.”

“So we thought I’d stay with them until things are more… I guess settled.”

She gives a low, humorless laugh. “I guess until I’m less bothered by how somebody raped me.”

“Can I also just say it’s incredibly fucked up and makes flaming mad that every woman in your house has been raped?”

Emily was too, a long time ago in foster care. She says she’s past it. She mentioned it to help comfort Diana shortly after she moved in. Let her know she wasn’t alone.

Celia: “What is it, one in five? We’ve always been exceptional in my family.” It’s one of those things she has to laugh about so she doesn’t get upset.

“I am meeting with Reggie in a few minutes, but after that I was going to speak to the guy who runs the club where it all happened. We don’t usually come out right on cameras, but it’s a place to start. The blood sample you gave me unfortunately can’t be used to track your sire.”

“I thought I could take you with me to meet him, if you want.”

“I can’t promise he’s going to be civil.”

GM: “Oh,” says Dani when Reggie comes up.

“Yeah, I’d kinda hoped to tag along for your errands. It gets boring sitting around in a house where everyone is asleep all night.”

“But think I’ll pass on Reggie.”

“I said this over text, but when he was harassing your mom and me… it got worse whenever Lucy was in the room.”

“Like, she was catnip to him. It was so fucking creepy.”

Celia: “I think he has a thing for moms.”

GM: “Moms with six-year-olds.”

Celia: “Moms in general. He’s said some weird things.”

“The Blood can, uh… it can twist people.”

Or maybe Reggie was just always weird.

GM: “I’d cut him out of your life, honestly.”

Celia: “Mm, he does good work for me otherwise. I’ll just keep you guys separated.”

GM: Dani doesn’t look happy, but holds her tongue.

“Okay, I’d like to be with you when you talk to the club guy.”

“I’m guessing in case he knows anything about who did this to me?”

Celia: “I’m going to bring Stephen by later, after we talk to club guy, so I can safely show you the Beast and you two can hammer out the details of your relationship before we see your dad on Friday.”

“And yeah.”

“His club, he’s bound to know something, or know someone who does.”

“Granted, we don’t always know everything that goes on in our territory, so it could be a shot in the dark.”

She doesn’t think so, though.

GM: “Can’t hurt, though.”

“I’m also not sure I want to see Stephen, or to have him come to dinner.”

Celia: “It would mean a lot to me if you talk to him. He’s important to me. You’re important to me. I feel like it’s my fault your meeting went poorly and that I didn’t adequately prepare you, and… I want you two to have each other. Being a lick is lonely.”

GM: Dani crosses her arms. “I don’t expect a lot. But since you asked, okay, sure.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

Celia: “Thanks, Dani.” Celia ignores the crossed arms and brings her in for a hug. “He’s trying.”

GM: Dani hugs her back. “Also, I brought you something.”

She pulls out a sealed thermos from her shoulder bag.

“I went… hunting, earlier tonight. In the place you said I could.”

Celia: “Oh? How’d that go?”

GM: “I’m still getting the hang of this, but I have been doing it for a week. There’s some extra blood in there for you.”

“I guess I sort of assumed vampires could just get more whenever they wanted, but your mom made it sound like that was actually a pretty big deal.”

Celia: Celia eyes the thermos.

“It can be, yeah. Overcrowding, social events on the best hunting nights of the week, nocturnal hours, hunters…” She takes the thermos to check the volume of blood Dani has just handed her.

“This is great. Thank you. Really.”

GM: She’d peg it at two pints.

“You’re welcome. And credit where it’s due, it was your mom’s idea. I was bouncing around thoughts with her and she suggested you’d appreciate more.”

“I just… I don’t want to be a burden.”

“You’ve done a lot for me. And you said you owed it to Stephen’s memory, that night we first talked, but that’s obviously somewhat moot now that he isn’t dead.”

Celia: “She was right. I do appreciate it. And you’re not a burden. You’re just getting your feet wet. We all need someone to look out for us when we join this new unlife. Sometimes people get a bad break and they fizzle out, or get picked up by the wrong sort of krewe, or run into overly zealous hunters. I don’t want to see that to happen to you. You deserve more than that. And this is… this is really thoughtful, to bring this to me. Saves me a bunch of time tonight. Thank you.”

GM: “You’re welcome,” Dani repeats. “Like I said. I just want to pull my weight.”

“What are hunters?”

Celia: “Vampire hunters?”

“Monster hunters. Humans and other things that track us down and kill us. Or rip us apart.”

GM: “Oh.”

Celia: “There’s been some uptick lately in the city.”

GM: “I guess that was also in Dracula.”

“Are they as dangerous as they are there? They kill the count.”

Celia: “They can be. Some of them, the new ones, they’re not. Two of them picked me up recently and I was able to lie my ass off and get out because they just don’t know any better. They’re human, I’m a vampire, even if they’re physically stronger than me I have a variety of tools at my disposal to let me get away. The powers. The ability to temporarily make myself stronger or faster.”

The fact that she can lie her ass off.

“Some of them know more, if they’ve been around longer. Or they know what can hurt us. When I was with Stephen the other day we were attacked by three of them with stakes and lighter fluid.”

GM: “Oh my god! What happened?”

“Obviously you made it out…”

Celia: “He tried to shove me into a bolthole and let himself get taken like an idiot.”

GM: “That is completely the sort of thing he would do,” Dani says flatly.

“What a dumbass.”

Celia: “Wanted me to be safe, but… you know, I’m not going to sit there and let them take him away from me.”

GM: “So what happened? You fought them off?”

“And you showed Stephen that having a vagina isn’t actually a disability?”

Celia: “Ha. You know, he’s never really made any sexist comments to me like that. But it is part of why he’s going to teach me how to fight, since I only managed one on my own.”

GM: “He doesn’t know how to fight. Being a vampire just made him super strong.”

“Didn’t have to work for it or anything.”

Celia: “He’s learned. A lot of us make sure we know how.”

“You should learn, to be honest. Reggie said you weren’t holding the knife properly.”

“Emily’s boyfriend is teaching my mom to fence. It’s not the same as like… a bar brawl or anything, but it might give you a foundation if you want to join them.”

“Same with throwing a punch. Watched someone break their hand because they did it wrong once. I’ve gotten this far without knowing more than basics, but too many close calls recently for me to want to stay ignorant.”

GM: Dani’s silent for a moment.

“I think I’d feel good knowing how to defend myself, yeah.”

“I just… I never thought this sort of thing would happen to me. It was always someone else, you know?”

Celia: “We never do. This is the kind of thing that you see in movies or read about in books or hear about in the news. It’s never us. Until it is.”

GM: “Stephen said I’d always be weak. Because I’m duskborn.”

“Thin-blooded.”

Celia: “Yes and no. Your physiology is different. The girl we’re going to see tomorrow might be able to answer more of your questions; she’s had a thin-blood companion for… well, a long time. Oldest one I know of. That’s the problem, you know, not much is known about them. They—you—are new.”

“So I’m hoping she knows more.”

“You all seem to be different. Like. Take the average Toreador, right, we’re going to be mostly the same with few exceptions. But thin-bloods? I’ve seen some without fangs, or one fang. I’ve heard some have a Beast. I’ve heard some burn in the sun.”

GM: “I don’t know what to say there,” admits Dani. “But I guess, either way… if a vampire like Stephen attacks me, is there anything I can even do?”

Celia: “Stake him.”

GM: “But he’s so much stronger. Faster. He threw me around like I was nothing.”

Celia: “You fed recently, yeah? Have blood in you?”

GM: “Yeah, I do.”

Celia: Celia waves a hand at her couch.

“Throw it.”

GM: “…throw the couch?”

Celia: “Yeah, just see if you can throw it.”

“Or lift it.”

“Just as like, a baseline. To see what you can do.”

“Or, fuck, if you want I can make Stephen bring some weights with him tonight so we can get some accurate measurements.”

“And maybe go somewhere that we won’t destroy my stuff.” Celia casts a critical eye around the space.

GM: Dani grabs the couch around its bottom corners and tries to lift it up.

She gets about as far as any average breather before she has to let go. Its legs hit the floor with a clunk.

“He’s right,” she says dully. “I’m a fake vampire.”

Celia: “Nah.” Celia moves over to the couch and repeats Dani’s process; she doesn’t get it any higher than the other girl.

“We’re not all strong.”

GM: “You said you were good at other stuff, though.”

Celia: “Sure, but that was true when I was alive, too.”

“So, go inside your body for a minute, right? Focus on the blood in your veins. See if you can like… send it to the parts of your body you want to enhance. Picture giant, bulging muscles if you need to. And see if you can get the couch any higher.”

GM: Dani closes her eyes. She seems to try.

She tries to lift the couch.

She gets it no higher.

Celia: “Maybe you need lick blood. You’ve been able to use the powers before when you fed from me.”

GM: She looks at the couch for a moment, then sighs.

“I don’t mean to have a pity party. I want to be able to defend myself, it’s just… I just want us to be honest, so we’re not wasting time. I don’t want to overestimate myself and get into a situation I can’t handle. Will it actually make a difference?”

Celia: “Learning to fight? It’s better than not knowing.”

“But you’ll be at a disadvantage against someone like Stephen who can move as quickly as he does.”

“Then again, so am I.”

GM: “Right. That’s just what I’m wondering. If all real vampires can beat me anyway, and I can hit humans with that… charm, is there a point?”

Celia: “Sometimes you won’t be able to charm them. Sometimes it fails, or they resist it, or you just can’t touch their minds that way. Never only have one plan.”

GM: “Okay. I guess that makes sense.”

Celia: “We’ll test some theories tonight. Let me deal with Reggie real quick and get that out of the way, and then you and I can go talk to club guy, and then we can experiment.”

GM: “Okay. I can go back to your mom’s if you need time with him.”

Celia: “Meeting him in Mid-City. You can chill here if you want, or if you’d rather be at my mom’s I can call you when I’m done. You should just be able to peel the mask off yourself, Dicentra said.”

GM: “Oh! Speaking of, look at this.” Dani turns around. “You’ll have to pull my top to see, but it’s on my shoulder.”

Celia: Celia does just that, lifting Dani’s shirt out of the way so she can see the mark on her back. She lets out a low whistle.

“Lady Justice? I love it.”

GM: “Dicentra said it had to be symbolically fitting, because the tattoo would help me hide. I said that only by hiding could I receive justice, because existing vampire institutions don’t protect my life and liberty.”

“You should have seen the tattoo she gave your mom, too. It was a ballerina surrounded by flowers, with a tutu made out of petals.”

“I really liked her.”

Celia: “That sounds amazing. I’m glad that she was able to make it work for the two of you. She’s… she’s pretty great, yeah.”

It’s the second time this evening she’s had to talk about herself as if she were someone else, and at this point it’s not even mildly disorienting.

Is that a bad sign?

“Have you been practicing with it?”

GM: It can’t be any worse than having sex with herself.

Her doppelgänger. Not herself.

Right?

“I have, yeah, I went to school today with it ‘turned on.’ Nothing happened, but I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?”

Celia: The sex with herself was pretty hot, though. She can see why so many other people want to do it.

“That is the point. Usually it’s only other licks you’re going to try to fool. We can practice tonight.”

GM: “I really liked Dicentra. Pete said hugging was a no, but she was okay with it.”

“She said she’d been a mentor to you.”

Celia: “She has been. Makeup isn’t really a skill that vampires consider art, so there were some snide comments from other Toreador, but she’s been cool about it because she sculpts bodies and it’s kind of similar. She pushed me to do more of a med spa than just skincare and makeup.”

GM: “I set up an appointment at Flawless, by the way, I’m not sure if I already mentioned.”

Celia: “You did, yeah. I’m looking forward to it.”

GM: “Me too! Your mom said I shouldn’t pick anything, just lie back and let you do whatever.”

Celia: “Ha. It’s worked for her for years.”

GM: “Your receptionist was also really nice, she said she was a distant cousin of yours?”

Celia: “Natalie? Yeah. She’s great. Sometimes college kids and be flakes but she’s really on the ball.”

“Plus her dance schedule is crazy and I know what that’s like and we’re flexible with it.”

GM: “She mentioned she did dance, yeah, and that being able to get massages for her muscles was really a godsend. Your mom said she wished Flawless was open back when she danced, too.”

Celia: “Speaking of my mom. Your brother doesn’t know about her. Is it okay if we keep that between us?”

GM: “You mean that she knows about all this?”

Celia: “Yeah, that she knows and that she’s been given blood.”

GM: “Okay, I can keep that secret.”

Celia: “I might tell him eventually, I’m just… trying to be careful with how many people know. I don’t think he’d ever hurt her, but if he let it slip to the wrong person…” Celia trails off. “Our sires don’t get along.”

GM: Dani presses her lips. “I have a lot of bad things to stay about Stephen, but he isn’t a blabbermouth.”

“I wanted to tell Emily, by the way. What I was, and about all of this, because she’s your sister and she’s been so nice to me.”

“But your mom was really insistent I shouldn’t do that.”

Celia: “It’s less that he’s a blabbermouth and more just in case his sire can read minds, because I think she can also erase memories. Reading another lick’s mind is a really advanced talent, and one most of us can’t do, but I’d still rather not take chances with my mom.”

“And my mom was right about not telling Emily.”

“I’ve thought about it too, but it’s not worth what it would do to her.”

GM: “That’s basically what she said too.”

“Keeping secrets isn’t new in my family. I know there’s lots of ways for people to spill things when they don’t mean to, and that when there’s such a pervasive level of secrecy about something, there’s probably a valid reason behind it. I’m still just trying to understand what the specific reason is and how this all works.”

Celia: “Mostly it’s just like… we’re all assholes and will stab each other in the back for the slightest advantage.”

“So why give them the knife.”

GM: “I’d like to meet more vampires, so I can understand. But it sounds like we’re going to do that tonight, so, looking forward to it.”

Celia: “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” is all Celia says to that.

---

Thursday night, 17 March 2016, AM

GM: LegalWings is open 24/7, even if the place is less staffed at this hour of the night. Jade walks in to find Reggie making out with Bette Malone behind the reception desk.

“Mmm, I’d just love it if your kid could see…” he purrs.

Celia: “Doubt it,” Jade drawls as she steps inside, “pretty sure Ricky beat up her last guy.”

GM: “Exactly,” says Reggie, taking his girl’s arrival in apparent stride. “I’d like to see him try. Then we’d do it in front of him.”

Bette’s a good-looking Italian-American woman in her middle years with dark eyes who still sports long dark brown hair. She still wears it well, unlike many women her age.


“I’m sorry about that. Can we help you?” she asks, some red tinging her cheeks.

Celia: “I was here for him,” Jade says with a nod to Reggie, “but his brother will do if he’s otherwise occupied.” Jade winks at the pair of them and makes herself scarce, disappearing down the hall to Rusty’s office.

GM: She finds the oldest of the three brothers behind his computer.

“Yes?” he asks as she comes in.

Celia: The sight is a familiar one. Jade seats herself across the desk, one leg crossed over the other.

“Any luck with the phones?” Neither one of them waste time with pleasantries.

GM: “Yes. I’m in. What do you want to know?”

Celia: “Lee. I want to find Lee, or whatever his real name is. A living contact, someone I can pick up.”

GM: “There wasn’t anything on those phones for a Lee.”

Celia: “You said it could help find him.”

GM: “Could,” repeats Rusty.

Celia: Jade sighs at him.

“I need a living person to bring in so I can find out who they are and how they found me.”

“So anyone else they’ve had contact with. Anyone they’ve worked with. Anywhere they’ve been for extended periods of time.”

GM: “There wasn’t very much on these phones. I think they were expecting the phones might fall into other people’s hands.”

“There are calls made out to each other, as well as a single phone number.”

Rusty repeats it. It’s the same one Pete gave.

Celia: “Nothing else?”

GM: Rusty also gives her a search on one of them for an address in Mid-City.

It’s the exact same information Pete gave her after getting into them.

Celia: And Pete had only needed to wiggle his fingers to do it.

GM: “It’s 2016. People are getting smarter about privacy and security. They know how much information their phones can carry.”

Celia: “Is it too much to hope for stupid adversaries?”

GM: “Hope is for idiots.”

“As is carrying a smartphone everywhere.”

“Lots of celebrities are using dumphones like these again too.”

Celia: Maybe she should start doing the same. The smartphone is convenient, but even if she keeps everything separate it’s still a risk. Multiple phones only sounds good in theory; it doesn’t prevent them from tracking her through it or whatever else a tech wiz can do.

“So nothing new there. Back to square one.”

“The plants from last night?”

GM: “All quiet there. Might be something later.”

Celia: All quiet.

The words fill her with trepidation. Were she human she imagines that a cold sweat would trickle down her back. How could it be all quiet? Had she trusted the wrong brothers with the task she normally leaves to Rusty? He’s her stealth expert, her breaking and entering guru, the one she’d had trained in advanced forms of shadow dancing that go beyond even her own capabilities. Despite his lack of interpersonal skills he’s the one that she trusts to get shit done when she needs situations monitored from afar.

And now he’s telling her that it’s quiet, and she can’t help but think that maybe she trusted the wrong brothers with the task. Maybe she should have sent Rusty in later, after they’d gotten a measure of their adversary. Demon, she has been thinking; she bugged the home of a demon. If it’s a demon. Maybe it’s a very hungry ghost. Or a disembodied lick. Or a gaggle of licks playing tricks on her.

She’d been hoping for something, anything, to tell her who it is that decided to hire a thin-blood to bug her spa or, maybe more importantly, what the thing inside the house is.

Now, sitting across from Rusty with nothing to go on, there’s a flutter of something like nerves that starts in her core and travels outwards. Butterflies, she thinks, and she wishes they would go away. She doesn’t have time to be nervous. She has shit to do, goals to accomplish, snakes to throw under the bus so she can be lucky all night every night—

Lucky.

She can be lucky. She is lucky. She’d tasted the luck, the gold, the electricity that had traveled through his veins, and she reaches for it now. It’s inside of her. You are what you eat and all that, and she’d stolen it from Gunner and from Josua and that means that it’s hers. Hers to do with as she wishes. Hers to command the fates and the stars and the universe and whatever the fuck else is out there to do what she wants, when she wants, because she’s Celia Fucking Flores and she is a god-damned goddess and she will not be stymied by poorly placed bugs.

She reaches for the butterflies inside of her stomach, the ones that flutter nervously this way and that as if she is some helpless doe, and she twists them. She has always been a physical creature, master of adapting to the situation at hand, able to mold and sculpt people and things to her will; her body will not betray her in this.

Celia brings them into the garden at her core. They touch the petals of the flowers, the bridge she has so recently constructed under her sire’s watchful gaze, the spinning disks of color that make her who she is. She bathes them in the light inside of her, drenches them in liquid luck, and tells them what she wants. They twist, sharpen, change before her very eyes: little bits of her will and intention woven into the fiber of what they are.

She smiles at the sight.

And then she sets them free.


GM: Just like that, Rusty frowns and picks up a small device that Celia knows is the bug receiver. Voices emanate from it.

“I’m… hungry…”

“Tough shit.”

The voice is worn. Leathery. Pitiless. Female.

“You wait. Or you get nothing.”

“Back to eating humans.”

There’s a low, booming sound something hard rolling around inside an oven.

Then an even lower screeking sound, followed by a whoosh of preheating gas. Dull, heavy clangs sound at quieter volume, as though from more distant points.

“Bad idea,” says the female voice.

“If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands, if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands…” goes a recorded-sounding child’s voice.

There’s an abrupt slam. Dozen of slams A low, warbling, shuddering roar splits the child’s song. It sounds truly pained.

“CUNT I’LL EAT YOU I’LL EAT YOU CUNT I’LL EAT YOU CUNT I’LL EAT YOU CUNT EAT YOU CUNT EAT YOU…!”

“Yeah,” says the first voice.

“Bet you would.”

“But I’ve got that while I’m here, and we both know you can’t leave the house.”

The voices abruptly die.

Rusty frowns and checks the receiver.

“Damn. Lost reception.”

“But lucky you stopping by right now, I guess.”

Celia: “Lucky me,” Jade repeats. The bugs need fixed, then. She flashes Rusty a smile. “See what else you can find for me about the hunters.” She won’t tell him how; he’s better at the tech and tracking than she is and she’d be wasting her breath. He’ll know what to do.

The rest of her plans can wait.

In fact, everything else can wait. Everything else can be put on hold for this: finding the bitch before she flees the scene. Maybe it’s not the cunt that sent the thin-blood after her, maybe it’s just a friend of the cunt, or maybe it’s just the Oven Monster’s owner, but she’ll be damned if she lets the bitch get away and goes back to square one with this and the issue with the hunters.

Two quick steps take her to the window; she shoves it open. Her form blurs, twists, and the nightjar takes to the sky.

A little over two miles miles to the house if she’s constrained to roads and sidewalks, but birds don’t need to follow the rules of man. Her wings flap, lifting her higher into the air, riding the thermals to find the perfect cruising altitude and a tailwind to propel her forward. Maybe her luck is spent, but her determination sure as hell isn’t; she’ll run herself ragged if she needs to in order to arrive at the monster’s house with the woman still inside. A glimpse of the bitch, that’s all she needs, and then she’ll know where to go from there.

She can already picture it: dropping out of the sky onto an unsuspecting asshole. Stealing whatever it is that bound the monster to her. Feeding it to him, and what good friends they’d be after that.

She sucks in her aura as she flies, just another nocturnal bird against the dark sky.

She’s not going fast enough. The realization hits her as she flies; she’s caught up in the fantasy of digging her claws into the cunt that sent the half-breed after her. Inside of her the Beast roars with its approval; it all but salivates at the thought of what waits for it. Jade wrestles with it for control for a brief instant before finally giving in and letting it take the reins.

They’re in this together.

The Beast doesn’t just fly; it soars. It burns through the blood in her body, taking what it needs from the girl to fuel its furious flight across the city. It streaks through the sky, no more than a blur to those who happen to look up, instinctively taking the shortest route to the house that has been seared into the girl’s brain. The desire to rip and tear and shred overpowers everything else; her muscles would scream if they could. Instead it will be someone else screaming; all she has to do is find out who.

GM: The nightjar hurtles through the sky.

19.26 miles per hour.

Two miles.

Just over six minutes to get there.

Six minutes, for a normal nightjar.

One whose tiny wings and muscles aren’t dead and tireless.

One not blessed with the preternatural grace and speed of Arikel’s childer.

The unremarkable-looking bird is nothing like the Toreador who wears its shape. No one would notice it even if they could see it, and no one can see it. It’s too fast. It’s a gust of wind; a brief disturbance in the air. Cityscape soars past its binocular avian vision.

Just like that, the nightjar is there, at the Rampart Street address. It lands upon the roof. A woman strides out the back door.

She’s small of frame, around Jade’s height, maybe a little shorter. Caucasian. She looks in maybe her late 50s, with short gray hair and a lined, unattractive face. She’s dressed in a plain gray jumpsuit and sturdy, practical shoes. Women like her are invisible.

The only thing that stands out are her slate-gray eyes.

The eyes are hard and pitiless and ringed with dark circles. They’re the eyes of a human who just walked out of a monster’s lair, and they are utterly unafraid. Cautious, perhaps. But unafraid. There’s awareness of that fact, and even an arrogant, sneering disdain that covers the rest of the face, and speaks to the lone woman’s confidence. But more than anything else, the eyes speak to a soul-deep callousness. They’re eyes jaded to horror. Jaded to seeing it. Perhaps jaded to inflicting it.

The vampire doesn’t smell a drop of vitae on her.

The woman produces a tiny vial on a cord around her neck. She uncorks it and lets a drop of something red spill onto her finger. It looks like blood, smells like blood, but there’s something… off about the scent. The woman traces the blood over her forehead in a half-circular pattern, adds a line beneath it, and abruptly vanishes.

The nightjar is left seemingly alone.

Celia: Even in this form, the nightjar knows that her nose does not deceive her when she sniffs the air following the abrupt departure, searching for signs of the woman’s passing. She’s gone. Vanished. Not merely turned invisible, but actually gone—as if she had been teleported elsewhere.

Mage? Demon handler? She knows very well that licks are not the only things that go bump in the night. What sort of being can control a… demon? Poltergeist? She doesn’t know. Nor does she have any idea what it wants with her or why it had hired someone to bug her office.

Or if it was this thing at all.

She’d learned quite a bit for all that it didn’t truly answer her questions, though. Things to dissect later, when she does not have other pressing needs to attend to.

The nightjar flaps its wings, flitting through the night to find a safer place to exchange one form for another. She has hunting to do.

---

Wednesday night, 16 March 2016, PM

Celia: Celia takes her time getting ready for the hunt. It’s a delicate thing, this hunt. The right time but the wrong night, and if she were only hunting for herself it wouldn’t be such a big deal. But she isn’t hunting for herself, or rather she isn’t only hunting for herself. She’s hunting for the blood that she owes Lebeaux and the juice she’d promised Flannagan she’d bring to their meeting tomorrow.

And she’s hungry. So very, very hungry. She’s tired of being hungry.

She recalls, though, the thermos of blood that Dani had conveniently dropped off for her prior to her trip to Mid-City (she hadn’t wanted to see Reggie but is waiting for Celia to get back so they can run those other errands she’d mentioned, so she needs to make this quick), and after locking herself in the appropriate room in her spa—where else would she get ready?—she sniffs at the contents to make sure it’s an appropriate temperature. Her Beast howls its approval; the thermos had done its job well. She quaffs the blood, draining the steel container dry. She licks at the rim, licks at the lid, licks to make sure that it is entirely emptied and that not a single drop of blood remains. Then she tucks it back into her purse.

Maybe she’ll have Dani fill it again. Payment for services rendered.

Then she’s off again, face and makeup and hair done up to make her look like any other thrill-seeking young adult.

The thing about New Orleans is even though it’s a weekday there are enough tourists around that don’t need to be at work the next morning that the clubs are still poppin’. Not as busy as they’d be on a weekend, of course, but still busy enough for a lick to get her fix.

She finds it dancing on the floor of her chosen club, the Cat’s Meow, one of those lurid blue drinks in hand that seems to glow under the light from above. Celia’s smile is full of promises. A wink here, a touch there, and she has them eating out of the palm of her hand. They find a private locale and Celia sinks in.

GM: Wednesdays are a slow night for clubbing, but it’s never a slow night when you’re Celia Flores. Most guys are ignorant who she is, but their girlfriends all know. Celia lures a 20something yuppie tourist couple into a sweaty bathroom stall liaison. She rides the boy’s cock even as she eats out his girlfriend. She remembers the way Josua sank his fangs into her pubic mound and does that here. She feels her Beast’s hungry growls subside into a low murmur. She excuses herself for a moment, bleeding some of the vitae into Dani’s thermos, and returns to pleasure the boy with her mouth. It’s so easy to steal his blood together with his seed: the former is long since swallowed by the time she spits out the latter.

The boy complains about it.

Celia: Well she can’t have that. That poor kine, unsatisfied because Celia Flores hadn’t swallowed for him. She makes it up to him by taking him back into her mouth and giving him that red kiss, drinking more deeply from him than she had. She’d only taken a little nip before, just a taste to sate her Beast—she’d taken her fill earlier from his girlfriend—but now she gives him the same treatment until he’s weak in the knees and light in the head, excess going right into that thermos.

When he cums—and he does, she sees to it that he does—she swallows what she wants and then giggles and kisses his girlfriend, sharing the white stuff with her. Snowballing, they call it.

GM: Celia drinks deep. Oh so deep. The man sinks to the ground as she blows him, heedless of his girlfriend’s exclamations about how “oh my god, this is a public bathroom! You’ll have to sterilize those pants!”

He does things with his hands and mouth, at first. Pleasures her breasts while his girlfriend pleasures Celia’s loins with her fingers. As the vampire takes more, he eventually stops and just lays his hands on the floor, like a 19-year-old virgin Celia not sure what she’s supposed to do with them. His eyes close.

That brings him out of his funk for a bit, though, to see two kissing girls sharing his cum. Celia is so meticulous to share it all. The very fatigued-looking gives a very bleary smile and tries to stand up, perhaps hoping for round three. He awkwardly staggers forward, futilely tries to catch his fall against the stall’s obscenity-painted flat wall, and crashes flat on his face.

“Shit!” exclaims his girlfriend, rushing to his side. He moans under her touch.

“Oh my god, he’s pale. I think he’s really sick…”

“Those… hot dogs…” he groans.

“I told you those were sketchy! That guy had a handmade sign!” she berates.

Celia: They give her the excuse she needs; she’d been going to blame the alcohol, the sex, the sketchy bathroom. Maybe make up a lie about someone spiking drinks recently. No doubt that’ll end up online, though, and the place will take a ding, and it’ll make subsequent hunts harder.

This is perfect.

“Oh no,” Celia groans, “don’t tell me you mean the guy with the cart down the block?” A random guess, but vague enough that it might work. “You’ll want to take him back to your house. Hotel? Let him sleep it off, he might be down for a bit. My sister was knocked out for, like, three days after that.” Celia makes a face.

GM: “Fucking street vendors,” mutters the girl. “It wasn’t even a cart, it was a table with a sign taped to it. Just so sketchy.”

She tries to help up her guy. “C’mon, let’s get you out…”

She struggles under his weight as he lets her all but carry him.

“I don’t feel good…” he moans.

“Yes, I could tell.”

Celia: Celia hovers awkwardly, doing that vague thing with her hands that makes it look like she wants to help but isn’t sure how. She supports him where she can.

“Sorry,” she murmurs to the girl, “this probably didn’t help, you just seemed so excited about it and…” she trails off helplessly.

GM: “Just—ugh, there’s nowhere to sit in these stupid clubs! The bartender’d give us crap!” the girl huffs as she struggles under her barely shuffling boyfriend’s weight.

Celia: “Where are you staying? How far?”

GM: “At a hotel, it’s too far to walk, especially like this. I’d use my hands to hail a Ryde if he wasn’t about to friggin’ fall over!”

Celia: “Come on,” Celia says, “I’ve got him. Call for that Ryde and we’ll get him into the car.”

It’s a small thing, but maybe it makes up for what she’s done to them.

Maybe.

---

Thursday night, 17 March 2016, AM

Celia: ‘Good deed’ done for the evening, Celia gives Dani a call on her way to the Evergreen.

GM: It’s answered on the second ring.

“Hey,” she smiles.

Celia: “Hey Dani, wanted to see if you’re still up to go out. I know you have school early. I’m making a quick stop then can pick you up.”

“Or we can meet up first, if you’d rather?”

GM: “Is the quick stop anything you could use me around for?”

Celia: “Not really. Just dropping something off.”

GM: “Okay, maybe after then. There anything I should bring along?”

Celia: “Mm, wear something cute. We’re meeting some of my friends. I’d love for you to show off your new tattoo, actually.”

It’s about as subtle as she can make it while still telling her what she needs: it’s time to test the mask. They’d talked about testing it and now’s the time.

GM: “Oh, good idea. You think I should make the tattoo the center of the outfit, and not wear anything that’d distract?”

Actually wear something cute, or are they just testing the tattoo?

Celia: “Probably,” Celia readily agrees, “they’re pretty discerning and kind of snobby sometimes.”

They’re that kind of lick.

GM: “Okay, sounds good. I’ll see you in a bit.”

Celia: “See you soon!” Celia hangs up and heads into the Evergreen to ask after Lebeaux.

GM: Late Wednesday night at the Evergreen isn’t so busy as the weekends. Celia finds Mélissaire in the midst of arranging some trysts between clients and girls. The warden isn’t currently in, but they expect him back “around 4 AM.”

Celia: Celia pencils herself into his schedule at that time.

Celia: There’s something she needs to talk to Mel about, but Dani is waiting on her. She’ll come by later for that. She waves goodbye to the ghoul and heads out to meet the girl.

GM: She finds Dani dressed in the same outfit she last saw the girl in, a blue top and darker skirt. Her tattoo isn’t visible.

“I can change if this isn’t right for where we’re going.”

“Also, are your calls being monitored?”

Celia: “Not specifically, but my salon was bugged and hunters are known to do this sort of thing. Phones are easy to bug. You don’t want to say anything sensitive about any of this.”

“Anything sensitive, you say in person.”

“Not even hunters, just anything.”

“Did you think of a new name for your mask?”

GM: “Okay. That makes sense. I know the basics of wiretapping and all that.”

“I guess Van Helsing got high-tech.”

“And I guess I don’t have much imagination, because the best I came up with was Hannah.”

Celia: “You also might not want to mention Stephen by name via phone.”

“Since he’s… dead.”

GM: “Good point. That didn’t occur to me when I was mad.”

Celia: “All good. And Hannah is fine, if that’s what you want. You can always change it.”

GM: “I just picked it because it sounded forgettable.”

“Ordinary American name.”

Celia: “It is forgettable. And that makes it good.” Celia smiles at her. “So we can use the mask and pass you off as my ghoul if you’d like, since I wouldn’t bring a breather into this club. We’ll see if the Duskborn thing fools the guy we’re going to meet.”

Celia: “And if not, then we reassess in the future and change the mask.”

GM: “Okay, sounds good,” Dani smiles back.

Celia: “You remember how to act the part?”

GM: “Basically your employee. Subservient.”

Celia: “We’ll say you’re new if you slip up.”

GM: “Your mom said that licks can be really cruel to renfields. That they can see them as slaves.”

“Hit them and humiliate them.”

Celia: “And worse than that, yeah. I’ve seen some shit.”

GM: “She also said some are better.”

“Or rather, she said you said.”

Celia: “Some of them are better. Your brother is one of them.”

“And… well, me, I hope.”

GM: “Alana seemed… pretty okay.”

“What’s Stephen like?”

Celia: “One is a lawyer. She brings home work for him that he does and she gets the credit. He bills her but she looks good.”

“…I’m not sure about the rest.”

“But… I mean, out of all the licks I know, he’s the most… good.”

“I heard that he’s pushing for better ghoul rights.”

“Things like that.”

GM: “Maybe he’s actually a jerk if that’s all you know,” Dani hmphs.

Celia: “We’re very private people. He doesn’t know about all of mine.”

GM: “Why make people ghouls?”

“I mean, I get it, your mom explained they live forever.”

Celia: “They get powers from us. Stronger, faster. Live forever. They manage our affairs during the day.”

GM: “Sure, but there’s… side effects.”

“Some people might rather not be ghouls, so why not just tell them the truth?”

Celia: “People like your brother give them that option.”

“Some people don’t.”

GM: Dani looks surprised. “What’s he do if they say no?”

Celia: “Has his sire wipe their memories.”

GM: “Oh. That actually wasn’t what I meant. Why not have people serve a ghoul’s role without actually being a ghoul?”

“Like, why not just tell your mom the truth without giving her blood.”

Celia: “If anyone finds out what she knows she’s a risk to the whole secrecy thing. The Traditions.”

GM: “Sure, you’re following the law so the two of you won’t get punished for not following it, but I mean why do the Traditions mandate that. The Masquerade is obviously imperfect anyways if there are hunters. Why not just let ‘friendly’ humans know the truth? Why do they have to be ghouls?”

Celia: “It’s just against the rules. Someone who finds out will use it against you. Blackmail. I don’t think you understand the, uh, whole severity of it. The people in charge made the rules and we have to follow them because they have all the power. It’s like that with humans, too, and laws they make.”

There’s a brief pause.

“Honestly, your brother might be the best person to talk to about it.”

“He seemed to be better at explaining everything than I was.”

GM: “Okay, sure, but that’s not what I asked. I meant why are the rules this way. Why do they prohibit telling humans about vampires without also turning them into ghouls. Because the whole premise of the Masquerade seems faulty when there are vampire hunters. There are humans who find out anyway.”

Celia: “It was that way. A long time ago there was a city that was open about what they are, and vampires and humans lived and worked in harmony. And the Brujah say it was a really amazing place and things went well. But there was some beef between the Ventrue and the Brujah during the, um, Punic Wars. So the Ventrue started the Camarilla and said it was bad what the Brujah were doing, so they created the Traditions. It’s… literally just another way for them to control everything and say that they’re right since they think they that they should be in charge of everything.”

“Like, that’s how all governments are. They say what they want and create things to be that way and everyone goes along with it and if you don’t you’re punished. And there’s not really anyone you can go to to complain about it. Don’t like it? Leave the city. But it’s the same everywhere.”

GM: “So there isn’t an actual practical reason for it. It’s the same bullshit that says duskborn are ‘less than.’” Dani looks angry.

“I don’t think your mom wants to be a ghoul. But it’s that or you both get executed.”

“All the Camarilla seems like it does is make people miserable.”

Celia: Celia sighs.

“I’m working on another avenue for her. Did she tell you that? That she doesn’t want to be?”

“And… yeah. The world pretty much sucks. There are some cool perks, but otherwise it can be awful and lonely and isolating and demoralizing and all sorts of depressing. I didn’t have a choice, just like my mom didn’t have a choice. She… might have died, Dani, there was a lot of blood.” There’s a haunted look in her eyes as she lifts them from the ground to take in the girl before her. “We’re monsters. Worse than what they write about in fiction. It’s not some romantic tale about vigilante justice or eternal love or whatever the books make it out to be. We hunt and kill and prey on people. And when you do that long enough you turn into things like them, the people who are in charge. You stop caring. You get callous and cold and awful.”

“But, honestly, you’d need to ask someone better versed in history than me about it because I don’t think I’m doing a good job explaining things, and it’s all very one sided what I tell you right now because it’s what I heard from Roderick.”

GM: Dani listens to Celia’s explanation with that same unsmiling look.

“Well, who can I ask? You’re the only lick I know. You and my brother.”

“And Pete, but I don’t know if that counts.”

“I agree, though, that it’s important to know the history of all this, and how things got to be this way.”

Celia: “Your brother is a good source,” Celia says again.

“But we’re going to meet a Ventrue, I could talk to him about it if you want.”

GM: Dani nods. “Yes, please!”

Celia: “History just wasn’t… it’s not my sire’s thing, you know?”

“So I don’t know all of it.”

GM: “Well, that makes us all. And no, your mom didn’t tell me she didn’t want to be a ghoul, it’s just my read.”

Celia: “I don’t want her to be one any more than she wants to be one.”

“I’d also like you to speak with him tonight.”

“Your brother.”

“If your dad is coming over on Friday, and he’s going to be there, I’d like you two to work things out so there’s no drama at dinner.”

GM: “I figured you didn’t. That’s why it’s so fucked.”

Celia: “It’s a relief that she knows.” There’s a small smile on her face. “She… said she still loves me, even like this, and that’s… you know?”

GM: “Yeah.” Dani smiles. “I’m happy you both still have that. You deserve it.”

Celia: Does she? After all she’s done?

Celia doesn’t voice the thought. She’s glad one of them still thinks kind words about her.

GM: “And I’ll talk with my brother, like I said. I’m just not expecting a lot.”

“Wish I had a sibling more like yours.”

Celia: “Who, Emily?”

GM: “Yeah.”

Celia: “She makes up for the one I have that I don’t get along with.”

“For what it’s worth, Dani, he means well. He’s just… you know.”

GM: “Why are you changing your mind about him?”

Celia: “What do you mean?”

GM: “You weren’t pushing me to make up earlier.”

Celia: Celia sighs. She runs a hand down her face.

“I fucked up, Dani. The way I introduced you. I should have prepped you better, I shouldn’t have said some of the things I did, I should have… been better about it. I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”

GM: “You didn’t do anything. Stephen’s responsible for his own behavior.”

Celia: “I could have done it better,” Celia says quietly. “And now you two are fighting and it’s… it’s my fault.”

GM: “It’s his fault.”

Celia: “Will you at least talk to him and let me try to fix it?”

“So I can just… feel better about it?”

GM: “Yes, I said I’d do that.”

“I’m just not expecting anything to come of it.”

“Since he’s an ass.”

Celia: “Well, come on then, we can at least do something you’ll enjoy.”

---

Thursday night, 17 March 2016, AM

GM: The Twilight Club is located on the upper floor of a set of shops next to the Beach on Bourbon. Entrance to the club is obtained via a flight of stairs in the middle of the building that leads up into a hollowed alcove. At the top of the stairs is a solid white door that opens into the club. Because the club is not advertised and has no signs to attract attention, Jade knows almost no mortals try to go there, and those who do are told it is a private room.

The club’s interior is furnished in an elegant style resembling a gentleman’s club from the 1920s. Dark brown carpeting covers the floor from wall to large. Oak-stained bookcases reaching from floor to ceiling line two of the walls. The wall facing facing the street has two large French windows that open onto a balcony overlooking Bourbon Street. Jazz music wafts into it from the street and from nearby buildings. Piper would probably love the place.

The club is divided into two sections to accommodate the stairwell. One side serves as a game area, featuring a pool table surrounded by several barstools and with a light hanging overhead. The other side has a wide TV (currently turned off) set beside several lounge tables and chairs. The center of the room has large, plush leather couch with cherry-wood end tables on either side and a glass-topped coffee table before it. The table has current copies of various magazines and newspapers from Forbes to The Wall Street Journal. Two wingbacked chairs with tan upholstery sit on opposite sides facing the couch, along with several more end tables.

Several Kindred are at the club tonight. Gui is there, playing a game of cribbage with Sterling (“The Man With the Silver Smile”) while several ghouls watch. Eris D. and Emerson Newhouse Hearst play a game of pool.

“Laura Melton” is also present, smiling as she watches the cribbage and pools.

“…so, boom, just like that, he blew the head clean off,” says Hearst over a tap-clunk from the pool stick.

“Ooh, I’m still gonna get some fourth opinions from the voices, but… I think I believe you,” smiles Eris.

“‘Cuz I’m handsome?” smirks Hearst.

Eris giggles. “Okay, because of that too.”

“Also, if he was really exaggerating, he’d have said he did it,” Laura Melton smiles up at the biker.

Hearst inclines his head in gracious acknowledgement.

Gui, meanwhile, motions for a pause to the cribbage game as he gets up to greet Jade.

“Miss Kalani, always a pleasure. More beauty is never an unwelcome sight at my door.”

He doesn’t spare Hannah a glance.

Celia: Celia (Jade) tells Dani (Hannah) on the way that there’s a chance she’s going to be completely ignored by the Kindred in the hall. A lot of them don’t even notice the ghouls that serve; they’re all but invisible to the licks of the city. But she also mentions, because she has a penchant for over-complicating everything with “what if?” scenarios, that they might pay attention to her as a new face with Jade, and suggests that they play into the “temporary ghoul who caught my interest” stereotype that is true of almost all Toreador. She remembers that Dani had an interest in writing when they’d met all those years ago (something about the school paper?) and suggests she try something along those lines.

“Maybe poetry. Or tongue-twisters. Or riddles!” She gives her a few that stuck with her from months ago, though she doesn’t mention the when or why of how she came across them, and only shrugs if Hannah asks.

She leads the way up the stairs, eyes sweeping across the room to take in the various licks and ghouls—where’s that white one that runs around with Sterling?—though her attention is captured almost immediately by Melton (convenient) and Gui.

“Mister Gui.” Jade purrs his name as he steps closer, a smile curling the corners of her lips and lighting up her eyes. She rises to the tips of her toes to air kiss both cheeks when he stops before her. “You certainly know how to make a lick feel both welcome and desired.”

GM: Dani thinks those are good riddles. She’ll try those if anyone pays attention to her.

The albino actually isn’t here tonight.

Gui kisses her cheeks back.

“Easy to do both when it’s a desirable lick. What can I do for you this evening?”

Celia: One of these nights she’ll stop in just to say hello and play a game of pool with the licks at the table. Maybe when she doesn’t have her boyfriend’s sister in tow.

“I’m hoping to steal a moment of your time, if you don’t mind stepping away from your game.”

GM: “All right. Miss Melton, maybe you and Sterling would care to start a separate game.”

Both Kindred indicate they’d be happy to.

Gui takes Jade outside to the to the balcony overlooking Bourbon Street. Hannah is still ignored.

Celia: Jade lets Hannah decide what she wants to do, whether that’s remain behind to watch the licks with the other ghouls or follow her out to the balcony.

Celia: Once outside she leans a hip against the balcony, looking out over the streets below.

“There was an incident a few nights ago at one of your clubs,” she says after a moment. “I’d hoped that you could help shed some light on it.”

GM: Hannah follows them.

“Go on,” says Gui.

Celia: “A girl was Embraced. I’d like to find out by who. You don’t happen to have cameras in your club, do you?”

GM: “Sure. Cameras won’t catch any licks, though.”

Celia: “They’ll catch this one.”

GM: “Oh?”

Celia: She gives him a look. There’s only one sort of lick caught on cameras.

GM: He shakes his head in disgust.

“Don’t know what it is to you, but I’m not going to have licks making abortions at my club.”

Celia: “Hence my desire to find the thing.”

GM: “I’ll take care of them. I trust you’ve already taken care of the bastard?”

Celia: Jade gives him a playful smile.

“Remember that thing I showed you? I need more parts. They’re so… versatile.”

GM: “Yes, I do. You’re a lick of many talents.”

Celia: He has no idea.

“That’s why it interests me,” she says with a shrug, “and why I’d like to find him and take him off your hands.”

GM: “Assuming it’s a he.”

Celia: “He, she, they’re both destined for death. Does it matter?”

GM: He stares down over the busy street’s throngs of partygoers. Bourbon Street is never quiet, at least at night.

“I suppose not. I’ll let you know if my people find anything on the cameras.”

Celia: “Thanks, Reynaldo.” She smiles up at him.

GM: “My pleasure, lush.”

Celia: “You’ll let me know if not so I can pursue other avenues, won’t you?” She doesn’t quite bat her lashes—it’s not that obvious—but her eyes widen as she looks up at him with slightly parted lips and they flutter becomingly.

GM: Gui looks at her with some amusement.

“That’s a lot of trouble for the sire of an ashed abortion.”

“There are corpses in the Red Room if you’re short on parts.”

Celia: “Corpses can’t regrow,” Jade pouts.

GM: “I didn’t know abortions could do that.”

Celia: “They’re full of surprises.”

GM: “I suppose they are.” He glances back in the club. “Ah, seems Hearst’s left. We’d better help keep the game going.”

Celia: “Pool?” Jade arches a brow but follows him in.

GM: The pair are interrupted when the club’s door slams open. Camilla Doriocourt and Alexander Wright stride in, accompanied by several ghouls.

Doriocourt stares coldly at Sterling.

“You. With us.”

Celia: Jade hangs back with Hannah, watching the events unfold. She wonders what Sterling had done that Wright and Doriocourt have been sent to retrieve him.

GM: “Me?” asks Sterling in an amusedly quizzical tone. He points to his head with both hands as if to make fully sure. “‘With you’ in what sense, Hound Doriocourt? Because I ca-”

Whatever witty line he had gets cut off as Wright blurs forward and rams a stake into the Malkavian’s chest. He topples over backwards.

Celia: She makes no move to intervene. Not her fight. She barely knows the gambler.

GM: Laura Melton and Eris D. look as if they’ve both reached a similar conclusion.

Gui seems to read the room and consider the odds. Two of the hounds and their ghoul backup against him and any of the renfields that are his. Three noncombatant licks who’d probably rather save their skins.

Celia: She’s less interested in her own skin than the “ghoul” she’d brought with her. It’s a quick swipe of a blade to separate her head from her shoulders. Jade makes a motion at her behind her back to stay there; they’d been on their way in from the balcony, but Hannah hadn’t yet crossed the threshold. Jade plants a hip against the door and crosses her arms, a casual pose that lets her body block the girl from coming in.

“What’d he do?” she drawls as the Malkavian falls.

GM: The hounds ignore Jade completely as their ghouls hoist up the staked Kindred.

Celia: Cunts.

GM: “We’re happy to assist the prince’s justice,” smiles Gui. “Do you need help moving him to your car?”

“No,” responds Doriocourt.

Wright doesn’t say anything. Without further ado, the hounds and their ghouls troop out of the club with Sterling’s paralyzed corpse.

Celia: Jade really hates that bitch.

GM: “A visit from the prince’s jackbooted thugs. That’s always fun,” says Melton after they’re gone.

Celia: “They sure know how to ruin the mood.”

Emerson certainly had a timely exit.

GM: “Why did that happen?” Hannah asks Jade. Her eyes don’t fully rest on the Toreador’s, though, as if hoping some of the other Kindred will explain.

Gui glances at the ‘ghoul.’ It’s not an inviting glance.

“Let’s show them they can’t,” he smiles, as if she hadn’t said anything.

Celia: Jade’s lips twist. She doesn’t offer an explanation to the other licks for her overly curious ghoul.

“What do you have in mind?”

GM: “I’ve got a bottle of vitae from a rather succulent vessel saved here. It’ll go to whoever beats me at poker. And if I win, the loser has to bleed herself.”

“I’d rather watch,” smiles Melton.

“I’ll be the moral support.”

Hannah doesn’t look happy to be ignored, but says nothing further.

Celia: They have time for a game. Jade fires off a quick text to Roderick about meeting up later and gives an approximate time for the three of them to get together. Then she takes Sterling’s abandoned seat.

“I hope this spot isn’t unlucky.” A glance at Melton, a lift of her brows. “I’ve got a seat for you if you want to be my moral support.” She pats her lap and winks.

---

Thursday night, 17 March 2016, AM

GM: Melton is happy to “support” Jade during her hand, but she ends up breaking even when Eris D. wins the poker game and claims Gui’s bottle of vitae. Shep Jennings comes in with Marcio de la Cruz at the tail end, and it’s like Sterling wasn’t staked and abducted on the premises at all.

Hannah doesn’t look especially happy as they drive away.

“They treated me like I was invisible.”

Celia: “Yes,” Jade agrees. She’s not terribly upset about not winning; at least she hadn’t lost. And Melton hadn’t seemed too put out with what happened in the shower, or at least hadn’t brought it up, and Jade had left it alone. No one else’s business, really. She’d alluded to getting together later and left it at that.

“They would treat you worse if they knew what you are.”

“Being invisible can be useful.”

“They say things around you. Think you’re not listening.”

GM: “I guess. This was… honestly pretty disappointing.”

“I thought I’d at least get to talk to other vampires.”

“And the ghouls didn’t seem like they wanted to talk either.”

“I’m happy I have you and your mom, but I just wanted to get to know some other… blooded people.”

Celia: “I’m sorry,” Jade says to her. “I know how much you want to be part of the group. This is what I mean, though, everyone is…. kind of an asshole”

GM: “Just was really disappointing.”

“Are all get-togethers like this? Are there ones I can actually talk to other vampires at?”

Celia: “As a ghoul or thin-blood?”

GM: “Either.”

“And I like ‘duskborn’ more than ‘thin-blood.’”

Celia: ‘Thin-blood’ is better than ‘abortion,’ but Jade doesn’t point it out.

“I’m going to talk to someone who knows more about the duskborn tomorrow. She’ll have a better idea. Alana might have a good idea for ghoul get-togethers, too. They’re usually not very, um, front and center at lick events.”

GM: “Can I come to that? I’d like to hear whatever she has to say too.”

Celia: “Yes.” A pause, then, “She’s kind of weird.”

GM: “Well, so’s all of this.”

Celia: “She’s weird by lick standards.”

GM: “I’ll take it if she at least talks to me. I’ll ask Alana about ghoul get-togethers, too.”

“Maybe I should try to meet other duskborn, though. They don’t have any reason to treat me badly.”

Celia: “You’re pampered by another lick,” Jade points out, “they could be jealous.”

“I’d leave that out of any chatting you do.”

GM: “I won’t say anything, then. Do they have a place they tend to meet up?”

Celia: “I see a lot of them around Jackson Square, but… I’d look for someone more like Strickland. She seems to have a better handle on things.”

GM: “Strickland?”

Celia: “Pat. Patricia. She’s duskborn like you. Was one of the only survivors of the massacre I told you about. She fights pretty hard for equality.”

GM: “She sounds like the first person I want to talk with, then.”

“Where can I find her?”

Celia: Aside from her lover’s house?

“Not sure. The girl tomorrow might know.”

GM: “Okay. All the more reason to see her, then.”

“I hope Gui can find something on those cameras.”

Celia: “Me too. Otherwise I’m sure I’ll need to trade him a favor to get access to the club and do some digging.”

“And possibly tell him that I have more of a personal interest in it than I let on.” She sighs.

GM: “I’ll make it up to you, if you have to. Just tell me how.”

“I don’t want to be a burden.”

Celia: “The blood you brought me earlier? That was really thoughtful. And helpful. Kept me from losing my cool when I had to pick up more.”

GM: “Okay. I can do that again.”

Celia: “I’ll let you know if I think of anything else. But it saves a lot of time, too. I appreciated it.”

GM: “I’m glad.”

Celia: “Ready to see your brother?”

GM: “I suppose as I’ll ever be.”

---

Thursday night, 17 March 2016, AM

Celia: Celia takes Dani back to her place, the one where they’d met up earlier this evening. She’d offered Roderick the use of Randy to drive if he needs to do his incognito thing; no one will think it weird if Randy is coming to meet her.

“I suppose I could clean up a bit,” Celia says wryly, eyeing the destroyed chair from last time she’d brought Roderick over. “I still need to order furniture for my other place. Want to help me pick some stuff out?” She pulls out a phone.

GM: Dani is happy to and spends a while picking out pieces with Celia. Eventually, there’s a knock at the door.

Celia: “You ready?” she asks the girl.

GM: “I’m not scared of him. Just mad.”

Celia: Celia squeezes her hand. “It’s gonna be okay.”

She moves to open the door.

GM: Roderick walks in. “Dani, Celia. Hey,” he says, giving Celia’s hand a squeeze but not a full hug, seemingly so as not to block out Dani from his sight.

“Hey,” his sister responds curtly.

“So, there’s going to be a dinner with dad-”

“Yes, I know,” she interrupts.

“Right. I’d just like to clear the air, so things aren’t tense at it.”

“Okay. Go clear the air,” says Dani.

Celia: Celia takes a seat, gesturing for Roderick to do the same.

GM: Roderick gratefully takes the opening.

Dani stands for a moment, then sits on a separate chair, crossing her arms.

“I’m sorry I scared you the last time I was here,” he starts.

“I’m not scared of you.”

He doesn’t argue the point. “I’m sorry I lost my temper and physically manhandled you.”

“Great,” says Dani.

Roderick’s silent for a moment at the aloof response, then continues, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me to be. I know how hard all of this has been for you, and-”

“I don’t think you know at all, actually,” says Dani, arms still crossed.

“Since when haven’t you been the golden child who wins at everything.”

Celia: The girl has a point. Roderick has been exceptionally lucky with his Requiem.

GM: “Believe me, Dani, I know what it’s like now for not everything to go my way-”

“Oh, yeah right,” his sister scoffs.

Celia: “What happened?” Celia asks him, concern in her voice.

GM: “It’s nothing new,” he answers. “You’ve just… you’ve shared a lot with me recently, Celia. You know my Requiem isn’t a bed of roses, and that I have problems too.”

“Oh, I feel so bad for you!” Dani exclaims, rolling her eyes. “Poor Stephen, not everything going his way! Too much tarnish on the silver platter?”

“The Requiem isn’t easy for anyone, Dani-”

“Oh, sure! Way fucking easier for you than me, looks like!”

“Hey,” she continues, “if yours is so bad, wanna trade? You wanna be an ‘abortion?’”

Celia: “Rod, why don’t you—” she cuts off, wincing at Dani’s slur.

GM: Roderick winces. “I’m sorry you heard that term.”

“You’re sorry, that’s useful.”

“I hope it can be. I came here to apolog-”

“Great, you’ve apologized. Good for you. Did your good deed. Your sister’s being totally unreasonable if she’s still mad.”

Celia: “Dani,” Celia says softly, “you only have one brother. You’re stuck with him. Maybe just… give him a chance to explain some of what’s going on with him?”

GM: “Oh so it’s about him. His problems. His apologies. Him getting to cross that off his do list, ‘said sorry to my abortion sister.’”

Celia: “That’s not what this is about.”

“And if it were, you know I’d boot him out of here.”

GM: “She would,” says Roderick. “This is about you.”

Dani just waits expectantly.

Celia: “He’s starting off with an apology because you deserve an apology for what happened, not to lighten his conscience.”

“Rod, why don’t you… tell her a little bit. About stuff recently?”

“Or do you want to see that he wasn’t making up the thing about the Beast, Dani?”

GM: “Yeah, let’s see that. I don’t care what he’s been up to,” says Dani.

“Because, oh my god, does this whole ‘Beast’ thing sound just like Celia’s dad.”

“’It’s not really me that’s beating my wife and kids!’”

Celia: “Do you want to, ah, hold me down, or do you think you can catch me when it gets out?”

GM: “I can catch you,” says Roderick.

“Because you’ll always win against a girl,” says Dani.

Celia: “He’s stronger and faster than me.”

“His clan makes it more pronounced.”

GM: She doesn’t argue the point further.

Celia: “You can… um, you want to just punch me, or…?”

That definitely sells the idea he’s not abusive.

GM: “Oh my god,” says Dani.

Celia: “There are only a few ways to bring it out. Violence is one of them.”

GM: “Yes, heaven fucking forbid you should lose it if someone hits you!”

“Especially a guy who says he loves you.”

“I’m sure that isn’t a sore spot at all.”

“Maybe we should bring it out another way,” says Roderick.

Celia: “I just ate,” Celia sighs.

GM: “Okay. We could try fire, but that might set me off too.”

Celia: “No fire.”

GM: “Maybe Dani could hurt you.”

Celia: “You’ll catch me before I get to her?”

GM: “Yep.”

Celia: “You swear?”

GM: “I swear. I won’t let you hurt her.”

“How noble,” says Dani.

Celia: “There’s probably a knife in the kitchen, if you want to stab me, Dani. Or could punch my nose, I guess. Quick jab, break it.”

GM: Dani takes that in slowly. “You want me to break your nose?”

“It’s fine,” says Roderick. “We heal easily.”

Celia: Celia just nods.

She rises, readying herself to get hit in the face.

“Pretend I’m him,” she suggests.

GM: “I don’t want to hurt you…”

Celia: “It won’t.”

“I mean, it will. But not lasting.”

GM: “…I’m not sure I can break a nose with my hand, either. It’d have to be the knife…”

Celia: “Nose bones are pretty easy to break.”

“But you can grab a knife if you want.”

GM: “They look that way in the movies, but movies get a lot of stuff wrong.”

Celia: Celia’s nose has been broken enough times that she’s pretty sure they’re more delicate than all that, but she just smiles.

She moves into the kitchen to find the blade, offering the large butcher’s knife to Dani.

“It will hurt for a minute,” she says, “but no lasting damage.”

“And I think it’s important you see this.”

“Because the Beast is very real. And it comes out enough that you should be aware of it. In our society, you’re held responsible for what it does, even though it’s not you. But with your brother and I… it’s different when you’re in love, Dani. I can’t blame him for what he does to me when he’s like that, because it’s so, so hard to control.”

GM: Dani looks dubious as she accepts the knife, but says, “Well, all right. Do you have anywhere you want me to… stab you?”

Celia: “Side has worked before.”

“Or back, so I’m facing your brother.”

GM: “Okay. Do you do you want to take your dress off so I don’t ruin it?”

Celia: “Good thinking.”

GM: “Your belly might be best,” says Roderick. “So she can see the change on your face.”

Celia: Fortunately, Celia’s never minded nudity. She lets Roderick unzip the back of it for her, thoughts traveling to another lick who had helped her out of a dress only recently, and steps out of the material. She’s left in her lacy black bra and panties and looks not the least bit uncomfortable as she stands in front of Dani, waiting for the girl to plunge the knife into her stomach.

“Ready.”

GM: Dani looks a little bashful at Celia’s near-nude state, but doesn’t look away. She lifts up the knife. She looks at Celia’s belly, then back to the knife.

She lifts it higher.

She looks back at Celia’s stomach.

Her grip around the knife tightens.

Her face scrunches.

Finally, she lowers it.

“I… I can’t,” murmurs the twice-bound duskborn.

Celia: Well, here goes nothing.

“You’re a fucking abortion and I was embarrassed to be seen with you,” Jade snarls at her.

GM: Dani glares angrily. Her knuckles around the knife tighten.

But that’s all they do.

Celia: “You can’t even stab someone?”

“Christ, waste of space. She’s all yours, Rod. I’m done wasting my time on this pathetic half breed.”

GM: Dani’s eyes brim with anger.

She tries to lift the knife again.

But she cannot bring herself to strike her regnant.

Roderick frowns.

Celia: “Do it,” she tells Roderick. “Show her.”

GM: “You could stab yourself. Pain is pain. Beast doesn’t care who it’s from.”

Celia: “Great, thanks for making me look like a bitch for no reason.”

GM: “It was a good idea,” he says.

Celia: “No it wasn’t. Now she thinks that’s what I think of her.”

“It was stupid. It’s all just fucking stupid.”

Like me, goes unsaid.

GM: Dani’s silent throughout the two’s initial exchange.

“I know it’s not,” she finally says, slowly. “You just…”

She looks at the knife, then lowers her head.

“I’m so pathetic. I can’t even stab someone.”

Celia: Celia doesn’t let the thought linger. She seizes the knife from Dani and plunges it into her own thigh.

GM: “That’s n-” Roderick starts.

Pain stabs through her. It’s more than enough, on top of the humiliation. The anger. The stupidity. The Beast roars to break free.

Celia: She doesn’t even try to hold it back. She lets it out.

All the pain, all the anger, all the everything she has ever felt because of him. Because he had to go and get Embraced like a fucking putz because he couldn’t handle that a girl broke up with him. The jealousy that he’d gotten a better sire, one who pays attention to him. The times he’d implied she’s less intelligent than him. The times he’d turned her down for sex. The bragging she’d done on his behalf at Elysium to keep him from getting his ass kicked by Garcia in a duel so he could save face, and she gets none of the credit for waking his ass up before he got jumped and died. The way he’d fucking cried over rapist, scumbag assholes that would have torn him apart.

And that time—those times, multiple, with an S—that he’d taken it out on her. His fists. Her face.

The Beast hates him. Because of him she’s stuck with this pathetic halfbreed. Because of him she can’t enjoy the sex she has with other people. He told Coco about her. Her whole family is in danger and it’s

because

of

him.

A snarl rips from her throat. The Beast doesn’t care what the girl wants, or maybe they’re just in agreement here, because she launches herself at him with no regard to her own safety or anything even resembling emotions.

She just wants to rip his fucking head off.

GM: But she’s used to not getting the things she wants.

The rage explodes through her an inferno. When the red flames clear, Roderick’s got her pinned to the ground in a double wrist lock. He doesn’t even look particularly strained from holding her down and waiting for the frenzy to run its course.

Say what one will about her lover, maybe she was wrong about the “get his ass kicked in a duel” part.

Almost absurdly, the scene makes her think of her sire. How this is what he’d do if she attacked him, and he didn’t simply destroy her. Hold her down like a disobedient child. Perhaps he’d even spank her, like Roderick has said he’s not into, for being such a bad girl. It’s so hard not to think about him, even here.

“You okay?” Roderick asks.

He slowly eases off of her, stands, and offers a hand up.

Celia: It’s not fair. Why does he get to just hold her down like she’s nothing? Why does he get to be strong and smart and capable and have a good sire and get everything he ever fucking wants? She hates him, she hates him, she hates him. It’s all she can think about while she’s thrashing beneath him, snarling and bucking and raging at how much she hates him.

Even when she snaps back it takes a moment for her to come into her own. Beneath him. Like he wants her to be? Is Dani right about him, that he’s just the golden child(e) and she’ll always be less than? She doesn’t know.

But she does think of her sire. How easily he’d pin her down. How he’d promised to punish her if he caught her again in his territory. How he’d knelt before her to offer his vein, pressing his wrist against her fangs, the cold taste of him in her throat.

Another snarl rips through her. Not from anger this time, but from desire. Even back in her own body with her own mind she bucks, thrashes, grinding up against him with whatever part of her can reach.

Then he’s gone. Off of her. Offering a hand. And, once more, she’s left unsatisfied, and she looks…

Ridiculous.

GM: Roderick doesn’t remark on it. Like it’s all part of the frenzy. His hand remains out.

Dani’s standing nearby. But not too nearby.

She doesn’t look like she doesn’t believe in frenzies anymore.

“Jesus…” she murmurs.

Celia: Celia doesn’t quite meet her gaze. She reaches blindly for her dress.

GM: She doesn’t feel it nearby.

“Sorry. Didn’t want to risk you shredding it,” says Roderick. He hands it over.

“What you saw can happen to all of us,” he tells his sister. “It just hits my clan worse.”

“Worse?” Dani asks.

“Yeah. A lot more things can set us off. And it doesn’t help how strong we tend to be.”

Celia: “More frequently.”

Celia pulls on the dress. She’s still looking anywhere else.

GM: Roderick kneels down and rests a hand on her shoulder.

“You sure you’re okay?”

Celia: How can she explain the shame? The lingering emotions that she doesn’t want to voice?

She takes a moment to smooth her dress down over her stomach and hips and pulls the knife from her thigh. A wince accompanies the motion, then she lifts a hand to touch Roderick’s fingers.

“Yeah. Just… yeah.”

GM: She finds the knife already gone, perhaps yanked out during their scuffle, or perhaps already removed by Roderick.

He wraps an arm around her so she can lean against his shoulder.

“Sorry. Letting the Beast out never feels good.”

Celia: Celia leans into him, pressing her face against his chest. She’s quiet for a long moment, nodding her head in agreement. Finally, she looks up at Dani.

“It sucks. Every time it comes out, it ruins things. You’ve seen… you know what it did. What happened because of it.” Her mom, she means. “And you’ve seen it on him. And you’ve seen it from me now. It’s awful.”

GM: Roderick hugs her close, wrapping both his arms around her and running a hand down her hair as she processes.

Dani is sitting down on the floor too by the time Celia looks up. She remains at a safe distance from the two.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t… I didn’t realize.”

“Your… ghoul,” she substitutes, “even told me how scary it was, when you were thirsty.”

“I didn’t believe. I’m sorry.”

Celia: “It’s that old saying,” Celia says with a shake of her head. She makes no motion to move away from Roderick. “Seeing is believing. Hard to take something seriously without witnessing it. You saw that earlier tonight, too.”

GM: “I don’t hit her when I’m myself, Dani,” Roderick says. His voice is soft as he holds Celia. “I’m not her dad. I love her. I’d never do that to her.”

“But the thing inside both of us, inside of every nightborn Kindred, is as bad as her dad.”

“Worse than her dad, by some metrics.”

Celia: “There’s no reasoning with it. It overcomes you and you get lost in it, and there’s not… it’s not you anymore. I wanted to kill him.”

GM: Dani looks between them.

“So what do you… do about it?”

“Am I ever going to ‘frenzy’ like that?”

Roderick shakes his head. “I’m not an expert on duskborn physiology, but no. They don’t seem to have Beasts like we do.”

“That’s… one of the advantages they have over nightborn Kindred.”

“You can spend time around Dad without ever worrying about losing control.”

Celia: “That’s why I’m not afraid of letting you near my family.”

GM: “That’s why… that’s why I cut myself out of your lives.” His voice gets a little choked.

“It was terrible to do. I know.”

Celia: “And why Roderick couldn’t be. Why he…” She trails off as he echoes her thoughts.

GM: “But I couldn’t… I couldn’t risk a scene like this happening, around you.”

“Around Dad.”

“I couldn’t keep putting your lives in danger.”

“And I did lose it around you both. You don’t remember, thanks to Coco, but… that was that. I knew I couldn’t… couldn’t stay.”

Dani is quiet for a while.

Celia: Celia is quiet while he talks. She keeps him close to her, their roles switching as soon as the words leave his mouth. Her hand rubs up and down his back, her touch light and gentle.

GM: “I’m sorry,” Roderick repeats. “I know how much leaving hurt you both. I miss Dad. I miss… I miss him so much, Dani, you know how close we were.” His voice starts to break again. “But I, I couldn’t just keep… putting your lives in danger, just so I’d get… get to keep a family…”

He buries his face against Celia’s head. She can smell the faint coppery tang leaking from his eyes.

Celia: It’s hard to ignore the voice that whispers her sire wouldn’t cry over kine. That he would never feel the need to explain himself to a thin-blood.

It’s an effort to shove the thought away. To keep him close to her, crying as he is.

“It’s a risk,” she says to Dani, holding her brother close, “every time I see my family. I take precautions when I can, but it’s… it’s hard. It’s so hard. To go from what he was, what anyone was, to… to this. Knowing there’s a thing inside of you that only wants to fight and kill and feed.”

And fuck.

That most of all. Even now the scent of blood sharpens the fangs in her mouth.

GM: Dani inches forward and lays a tentative hand on Roderick’s shoulder.

He pulls his head up from Celia as he feels it, then removes one arm from her to slip around his sister.

“I just… I just want to help you, Dani. I’m sorry this happened to you. I want to make it easier, however I can.”

Her face wavers as her eyes cut to Celia’s.

Celia: Celia meets her gaze. She reaches out, bringing the girl’s hand into her own. The rest of her stays curled against Roderick. He’s not her sire, but he’s warm and available and loves her, and maybe if she believes in it hard enough it’ll be… well, it’s something.

“We met with the guy who runs the Quarter. He’s fine with you staying. There’s not going to be an active hunt on you or anything. No raids or purges or massacres. I also… he knows who I am. My real identity. Who you are to me. You’re not a political prisoner or anything, like Rod—Stephen thought.” Celia doesn’t quite purse her lips, but they twitch as if she might.

Celia: “I have territory here. It’s—sorry, Rod, but it’s true—the best feeding in the city. You won’t be hungry. Ever. I don’t have any other tenants, so there’s plenty to share.”

GM: Dani takes her hand. Celia can feel her lover’s body instantly tense.

“Dani,” he says slowly, “there’s something you need to understand about licks.”

“A lot of us are very bad people.”

“Even without the Beast.”

“And the older we get, the worse we tend to get.”

“We hurt people. We kill people. For our own selfish benefit.”

“A lot of Kindred society ultimately comes down to fighting other Kindred, for social dominance and control of resources.”

“Think of the Camarilla as a giant crime family. Or perhaps more accurately, like the Commission.”

Celia: Celia sighs, but doesn’t otherwise interrupt.

GM: “There are maybe five different ‘families’ in the city here. All competing for resources—blood, money, territory, social influence.”

Dani looks at Celia when she sighs, but nods along at her brother’s words. “Okay…”

“Some of them, and this is my personal opinion, are better than others. I think the one I work with is the best option.”

“Most licks work with a ‘family’ they think is the lesser evil, or which can best serve their personal interests, or both.”

“But you can’t really opt out.”

“The Kindred who Celia is talking about, Antoine Savoy, runs one of the bigger families that controls the French Quarter.”

“He got where he is by being ‘nicer’ to young licks and duskborn than his two biggest competitors.”

“That’s also relative when I say ‘nicer.’ He still treats duskborn like garbage. He just doesn’t engage in active genocide like the biggest family does.”

“Celia explained this,” nods Dani. “The Sanctified, led by Vidal. The prince.”

“Yes, that’s them,” says her brother.

Celia: “Your brother has met him one whole time. I’ve been dealing with him for years. He’s repeating what he has heard other licks—who don’t like him, by the way—say.”

GM: Roderick frowns. “I’ve seen and listened to him countless times in Elysium, Celia. I’ve also seen him when the Cabildo has met with him.”

“But all of that is moot, because I don’t need to know him personally to know how he runs his ‘family.’ Do you need to have met Lucky Luciano to know how he ran the Genovese?”

“Of course not,” says Dani. “If you met him in person he’d have spun things and lied about it.”

“You’d only need to meet him if you were working with law enforcement to bring him down. And you’d want to try to independently verify everything he said.”

“Exactly,” Roderick nods.

“Savoy is basically a mob boss, Dani.”

“An almost literal one, in fact. He works with the mortal Mafia.”

Celia: “So does Vidal.”

GM: “One of his subordinates does. But that’s still why I don’t work for Vidal. He obviously has nothing against the Mafia.”

Celia: “No, just your sire, who—”

Celia cuts off abruptly.

GM: He looks at Celia sharply, then back Dani. “I work for the Anarchs. Who my sire leads. They have what you could call a nonaggression agreement with Vidal, rather than Savoy, because they consider him the lesser evil. He murders duskborn just for being duskborn. He’s not a good person by any stretch.”

“Savoy isn’t a good person either. They’re both mob bosses. Both are totally committed to expanding their power at whatever the cost in human suffering.”

“And Savoy wants to use you to get to me.”

Celia: “There’s a separate sect of Anarchs that jumped from his sire’s side to Savoy’s a few months back,” Celia cuts in.

GM: Dani looks between them.

“There are,” Roderick says. “They’re led by a lick who murders and humiliates people for fun.”

“I consider them a greater evil than the faction of Anarchs I’ve remained with.”

Celia: “That’s my sire you’re talking about,” Celia says sharply.

GM: “It is. Do you deny she does that?”

Celia: “Do you deny yours sold out dozens of duskborn to curry favor with the prince?”

GM: “She didn’t sell them out. She couldn’t have stopped it. That massacre was happening with or without her.”

Celia: “Uh huh.”

“She didn’t give him the location and make herself scarce to save face.”

GM: Dani looks between them.

“If there’s one thing you should take away from this, Dani, it’s that there are no true good guys,” Roderick says heavily.

Celia: “Savoy literally told you he doesn’t want to use her to get to you. If you want to take your chances with her outside the Quarter, fine. See how well she fares against the raids. See if your sire cares that it’s your sister who she’s selling out.”

GM: “You actually fucking believe that?” Roderick exclaims. “Celia, he doesn’t care about Dani. She means nothing to him. Just like I mean nothing to him. All he cares about is how he can manipulate us to advance his position.”

Celia: “And how is he going to do that when he told you to get her out if that’s what you wanted?”

GM: “Butter me up, for starters. He has a plan to lure me to his side, and Dani is one piece of it. I know how elders work, Celia. I get to see them with their hair down.”

Celia: Yeah, he’s so important with his special scribe duties that lets him find out all sorts of things and see how awful the rest of them are.

Celia huffs, but keeps the “pet” comment to herself.

GM: “That’s why I wanted to get you out of the city, Dani,” Roderick says. “I’m not going to make you, if you don’t want to. But I don’t believe you are safe here in the city, with a mob boss who knows who you are to me, and who will seek to use you against me. I think it’s just as unsafe for you to stay here in the Quarter as it was for me to stay in your and Dad’s lives. If I don’t play ball the way Savoy wants, it’s entirely possible he’ll conclude his current tactic isn’t working, and switch to a much nastier one.”

Dani looks back to Celia, the question in her eyes.

Celia: “It’s possible that Savoy wanted, past tense, to use you against him. And if I hadn’t come to Roderick about it, he might have succeeded. But I did.”

Celia makes an aborted motion to reach for his hand. She halts halfway, fingers curling into a fist. She looks away.

“I know you think I’m st—… ignorant. You’ve said as much.” Multiple times. She blinks away something that might turn red if she let it manifest. “I’m not, not here. Killing her is just going to turn you against him. It’ll probably turn your sire against him. And it’s going to turn me against him.”

Celia looks up at Dani. She doesn’t want to hear whatever it is Roderick will say about that. Something like, “why would he care if a neonate is mad at him? What are you going to do, Celia, you dumb whore?”

“He’s known who I am for my entire Requiem. He helped me move my family into the Quarter, when things were bad with my dad. He knows who they are. What they mean to me. I spent… I spent everything I had on a night doctor to fix my mom after my dad took her toes off. I had nothing. He put me up, paid for Emily, helped me open my business without scoffing at the idea of a vampire playing with makeup. He…” she looks down at her hands, uncurling her fingers. “I messed up once. Early. He wanted me to do something, and I messed it up, and it was… it was bad. Something he’d been working on for years that I just blew up. I was weeks old. He didn’t have any reason to be nice about it. But he was.”

GM: “I don’t think less of you intellectually, Celia,” Roderick says gently. “I just think he’s manipulating you. That’s a thing crime bosses do. They tell their people not to cause trouble around a certain neighborhood, and to do nice things instead to win the residents’ loyalty. But all of it is with a payoff in mind.”

“And Savoy’s actions do have a practical payoff. They’ve made you loyal, and they’ve gotten you in his camp. You’re a useful asset. But if you stopped being useful, he’d drop you like a hot potato.”

“And if there’s ever something he really wants to do, that he knows you won’t like, your opinion isn’t going to stop him. He’ll just do it behind your back. And even if you find out, what’s a neonate like you actually going to do?”

Celia: She can’t tell him the truth about it. That she’s his blood. That if she were anyone else, sure, she’d get it. But she’s not anyone else. She’s his grandchilde.

“There’s plenty I could do,” is all she says to that. “You don’t spend seven years in someone’s court without learning a thing or two about how they operate.”

GM: “Then you should be scared,” says Roderick. “Because if he thinks it serves his interests to do something you might not like, and if he thinks you could find out, he might just kill you too. He’s an elder, Celia, and you’re not his childe. You’re not his Blood. That’s all they care about.”

Celia: But she is.

GM: “He’s fooled you like he has everyone else.”

Dani looks between them. The two’s words tug at her. Celia’s message of hope and comfort and belonging. Her brother’s practical, fact-based cautions. That term over and over, “mob boss,” that means so much to the Garrisons.

Both of their words pull at her.

But in the end, so does the bond.

“I want to stay in the Quarter,” she finally says. “With Celia.”

Roderick effects a sigh.

“All right. It’s your decision.”

“You’re an adult. And your own Kindred.”

Celia: “I’m not going to let anything happen to her, Roderick. Just like you wouldn’t let anything happen to me. We’re going to be sisters soon, aren’t we? You’re not alone in this.”

“I’ve already made arrangements for her. She has a new identity. We have a cover. And…” she looks around. “I can ditch this place anyway, get something closer to the border for you two.”

GM: “Well, that’d be something,” says Roderick. “And maybe I can take you out of the Quarter sometimes, too. It’s not safe for me to come here all the time.”

“I got a tattoo,” says Dani. “That lets me appear mortal. And another face.”

“Mask?” asks Roderick.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, that could work. That’s safe.”

Celia: “I passed her off as a ghoul earlier. In front of a fair number of licks. No one noticed anything. And it’s not like I’m going to tell Savoy about her new face.”

GM: “Let’s keep it that way. Only we three need to know.”

Celia: “Well… I mean, Dicentra knows. I thought maybe we’d have her make another for Dani the duskborn versus Dani the ghoul, since her other face has been seen as Jade’s ghoul. But I don’t want to get too complicated. Thought I’d talk to you about it.”

“There’s also…”

“We, um, so I took her out as my renfield tonight, and two of the hounds showed up. I, uh, was a little panicked they’d come for her, so I thought about paying Dicentra for a… for a mark. Just in case she’s ever picked up like that.”

GM: “That’s the tattoo?” Roderick asks.

“Yeah,” Dani nods.

“All right,” says Roderick. “So, you have two faces. Celia’s ghoul, who Dicentra definitely knows about, and some other licks casually saw.”

“And you have Dani, who’s mortal to most people but a known duskborn to Savoy, Preston, and anyone else they’ve told.”

“Plus, maybe, your sire.”

Dani gets a still look at that.

Roderick touches her shoulder. “We’ll find them.”

She nods.

“I think it would be safe to have a third mortal face who only we know about,” says Roderick. “Dicentra’s an unknown quantity. Who knows who she works for. You should probably just use mundane wigs and makeup for that.”

“Celia can do that, makeup wizard that she is,” he smiles.

“Okay,” says Dani. “Though what would we use that face for?”

“I’m not sure yet. Just useful to have the option,” her brother answers.

“Anytime you don’t want to take a chance on other licks.”

Celia: “I have someone looking into her sire,” Celia tells Roderick. Then, by way of explanation, “not my turf. If it doesn’t pan out I’ll get more personally involved. Just didn’t want to step on toes if I could avoid it.”

He’d seemed surprised to hear about the thin-blood in his club for all that Savoy and Preston had implied he was watching her.

“More identities is never a bad idea,” she says to Dani. “Too many people know about Celia and Jade.” A sigh. Roderick’s sire is the only one that really concerns her. She looks at him, as if to convey that same thought.

“But I meant the… mark of the city, you know, the duskborn thing.”

GM: “Seems fair to try the easiest way first,” he nods.

“But that also isn’t a bad idea as far as the brand. The main question is whether she could still hide it. Because it’s better to get mistaken for a ghoul than even a branded duskborn.”

Celia: “As long as it’s in a hide-able place. Watch band. Upper arm.”

GM: “I want to talk to other duskborn,” says Dani.

Celia: Celia nods at Dani.

“We’re working on that, too,” she says to Roderick.

GM: “There are ones in Mid-City I could introduce you to,” he says. “Just not as Dani.”

“I thought the prince massacred them…?” she asks.

“He picks them up where he can,” says Roderick. “Sends the hounds through on sweeps. But there are some. They just don’t advertise it.”

“Still. If people think you’re Jade’s ghoul with your earlier face, another disguise wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“I just don’t like Celia owing Dicentra so many favors.”

“I can’t even volunteer any of them, because I don’t want Dicentra knowing we’re related.”

Celia: Well there goes that plan.

Celia shrugs.

“We can settle up later if you feel the need to make it up to me.”

GM: “Cute,” he smiles. “I can’t make it up to you in ways that count with other licks, though.”

Dani rolls her eyes. “Get a room, you two.”

Celia: “Mm, yes please.”

GM: Roderick chuckles at that and gives her a squeeze.

Celia: Maybe they’ll skip sparring tonight, get right to the other sort of manhandling.

GM: “Later. I can bring you back to my haven for the day.”

“Oh my god, are you seriously talking about banging in front of me?” says Dani.

Celia: Celia wiggles her brows at Dani.

GM: “Blugh! I don’t want to hear about my brother’s sex life, thanks!”

Roderick chuckles some more.

Celia: “If he’s technically dead does it even count as being related anymore?” Not that she would ever bang a relative.

GM: Just spank one bare-bottom.

And ask to be spanked back.

But she was copying another relative, there. For that first part.

“Oh my god, of course it does!” says Dani.

Celia: Well, she’d also fucked her cousin, so there’s that. But she tries not to think about it too hard.

GM: “I’m actually glad it still squicks you out,” says Roderick. “Some licks can get into some… pretty deviant stuff.”

Celia: Celia abruptly realizes why the idea of sex in general might make Dani uncomfortable. She busies herself with her cuticles.

“We don’t have to talk about it.”

GM: “Yes, I’d prefer that,” Dani agrees.

“Okay. Dani, maybe you’d like to spend some time together tonight,” says Roderick. “I cleared my schedule.”

“Oh, doing…?”

“Just catching up. We could get some food. Take a walk someplace.”

“You can eat food?”

He shakes his head. “I have to throw it up. But I can enjoy it. Most licks think that’s pretty gross.”

“I don’t think it is. I mean, I still eat,” says Dani.

“But, okay. That sounds good. Getting some food.”

“Great,” Roderick smiles. “Maybe… hmm. I’d rather not be seen around the Quarter. Or either of us be seen together.”

“God,” sighs Dani. “Is it really like this all the time?”

“We can’t just get some beignets or whatever without worrying about being seen?”

Celia: “Pretty much,” Celia says. “Roderick and I don’t go out on normal dates, either. Can’t be seen together.” Her shoulders lift in a shrug, as if it doesn’t bother her, but her tone betrays the truth.

GM: “What a fucking miserable way to live,” says Dani.

“We’ll order in,” says Roderick.

Celia: “I can scram if you want to stay here,” Celia offers. “Less chance getting picked up on your way out.”

GM: “I’d really like to stretch my legs or just get a change of scenery,” says Dani. “You know, after all that’s happened here?”

Celia: Celia nods.

“Sure thing. Understandable.”

GM: “Can we really not go anywhere or do anything?”

“Maybe with another mask,” thinks Roderick, “but that also means Celia-”

“This is miserable,” says Dani.

“We really can’t just drive to a park or whatever?”

“Or just fucking drive a while?”

“We can,” says Roderick. “But there are risks.”

“I almost don’t care at this point,” says Dani. “This doesn’t sound like any way to live.”

“Okay. Maybe… Celia, could you disguise her?” Roderick asks. “Mundane makeup, wig, change of clothes? You can use your tattoo, and I can take you someplace.”

Celia: “Do you have your mask on you?” Celia asks Roderick.

GM: “I do,” he says. “Doesn’t hide that I’m a lick, but can’t hurt to combine with that.”

Celia: “I might have something that can help. Hold on, let me find it.”

Celia rises to her feet and moves into the other room.

Celia: It’s a quick search to find what she’s looking for: a piece of cardstock and a black marker. A few quick strokes in the general shape of a cloak (for “hiding something”) and she caps the marker, tucking the cardstock into one of her many purses. She brings the purse out with her, rifling through it to find the cardstock she’d just drawn on (as if she hadn’t just planted it).

“She’s been working on this new thing,” Celia tells Roderick, “like a temporary tattoo, for emergency situations. Or something like this.” She smiles at him.

“Where do you want it?”

GM: “If you paid her for that, I don’t know we should use it on this,” says Roderick. “It’s enough to have Dani use her tattoo and get a mundane disguise.”

Celia: “It’s an experimental thing, she wanted me to test it.”

GM: “All right. Anywhere’s okay with me.”

Celia: She has Roderick remove his shirt so she can put the temporary tattoo on his side, hidden beneath his clothing.

And now the tricky part: doing the thing without letting him know she’s doing the thing. Her claws come out—she can hardly say that she has tattoo equipment laying around—and she dips the tip of them into her already bleeding thigh. No need to make a new cut when this will do. The claws pick up the blood, tracing the black lines she’d drawn on the cardstock. She presses it against his side, warns him she’s going to make the cut, and does so. It’s quite unlike getting a tattoo: the tips of her nails drag rather than dig, marking him with a scar that looks like the cloak she’d drawn. She murmurs as she works, the words whispered over and over beneath her breath, barely loud enough for him to hear.

“Tatuajes oculto.”

When she’s done she sits back on her heels, pulling the cardstock away. It’s crude work, nothing like what Dicentra had done for his sister, but it should serve his purpose for this evening.

GM: “Wow, you got buff,” Dani remarks when Roderick takes his shirt off.

“Yeah. I made sure to work out a lot before my Embrace,” he answers.

Both siblings watch with interest as Celia administers the quick tattoo.

“Huh,” says Roderick. “That’s very convenient. How long will it last?”

Celia: “Temporary. The rest of the night.” A wry smile. “You’d hardly want that on you forever.”

GM: “Ha. Very true.” He pulls his shirt back on, then kisses her cheek. “Thanks, Celia.”

Celia: “Rude,” she huffs, but there’s no heat to it.

GM: “Do we have what you need here to disguise Dani, or is that at the spa?”

Celia: “You think I don’t keep makeup literally everywhere?”

GM: He laughs. “Clearly I wasn’t thinking.”

Celia: Her laughter follows her out of the room. She’s back again with kit in hand, tells Roderick to pick something cute out of her closet for his sister, and gets to work turning Dani into someone else.

Celia: Celia doesn’t need to resort to fleshcrafting when she’s as skilled as she is with a makeup brush. There’s a lot that can be done with mundane powders, liquids, and colors: contour can change the entire face shape, foundation can be mixed to make someone lighter or darker, various hues can be used to completely hide features or accent others. Celia does it all, and she does it well. Where Dani is angular she makes her round. Where Dani has blemishes or rough patches she smooths it out.

But it’s the eyes that steal the show. Her flat, almost boring blues are brought to life with the golds and browns and other neutrals that Celia piles on around them, lashes lengthened with mascara, eyes lined in black liquid. She doesn’t wing it—this face is too soft for that look—but she fills in the little gaps between her lashes to create one long, unbroken line. A pop of color on her lips—matte, something that will last through whatever food they decide to eat—finishes it off.

They chat while Celia works, a more easy-going conversation than it would have been prior, and she’s happy that the siblings finally have something nice to talk about. She twists Dani’s hair into a complicated updo and sets it with a spray.

At some point she mentions that she’s probably going to ditch this haven, and asks Dani if she still wants a place together. Part time. Celia barely sleeps in the same place more than one night in a row, these few evenings with Roderick notwithstanding.

GM: Dani nods eagerly that she would love a place together. She can spend nights Celia’s not there at Diana’s place. And possibly a few anyway. She doesn’t want to stay with Celia’s family forever, just until she’s on her feet.

Roderick comes back with the clothes while Celia works. Contrary to “cute,” he seems to have picked something designed to be forgettable, simple jeans and tee and sweatshirt, though in colors Dani doesn’t usually go for.

Brother and sister are very impressed with the results of Celia’s work when she’s finished and shows it off in the mirror. Like everyone always is. “I have to give you credit,” says Roderick. “I really wasn’t sure how much you’d be able to change with just makeup. This is really good.”

“Spoken like a true guy,” says Dani dryly. “Makeup can do a lot. My facial shape looks different.”

Roderick nods. “I still think it’d be best to change her hair with a wig. You don’t have one around, do you?”

Celia: She probably does. Mundane wigs work for plenty of on-the-go disguises. She excuses herself to find one, returning with a long, dark wig that compliments Dani’s coloring.

“You can change in my room if you want,” Celia says to Dani after she puts the wig in place. They’re relatively similar sizes.

And it’ll give her a moment alone with Roderick.

GM: “If you have any glasses, that’d be even better, though I fee safe enough with the wig and makeup,” says Roderick.

“I’ll try to avoid smudging the makeup,” says Dani as she takes the clothes and wigs. “Should’ve changed first, in hindsight.”

She heads off, in any case.

Celia: Celia watches her go, shaking her head at the comment. She should have suggested it.

Her attention shifts to Roderick, brows lifting slightly. She takes a step toward him, then another, and finally presses herself against him, looking up at him from underneath her lashes.

GM: He smiles and runs his hands along her hips, leaning in close to breathe in her scent.

“I’ll still fuck you silly before sunup.”

Celia: “That a promise, Mr. Durant?”

GM: His hands move lower down to appreciatively squeeze her rump.

“A promise whose fulfillment is eagerly anticipated, Miss Flores.”

Celia: “You’re insatiable,” Celia murmurs, leaning in to press a kiss against his lips. She keeps it brief, aware of his sister’s presence in the next room. “You’re not doing anything dumb tonight with her, are you?”

GM: “Only because you’re irresistible,” he smiles. “And no. Just catch up over the past too many years over some food.”

Celia: “I’m glad you worked it out.” Or rather that Celia worked it out.

GM: “I am too. Thanks for your help with that.” He gives her a squeeze. “With everything.”

“It means so much to have someone in my unlife who’s not just working another angle.”

“Who actually just cares.”

Celia: She ignores the pang. She does care. Of course she cares.

She buries it, lifting herself to the tips of her toes to press another kiss against his lips. Dani be damned, she wants to ignore how ugly the world is for a minute. She wants to forget about the time she betrayed him, wants to forget that they’re on opposite sides of this war, that she’s working to undermine his sire, that her sire… something. Her sire something. That’s as far as she gets before she loses herself in the feeling of his lips on hers.

GM: Roderick returns the kiss with vigor, before sweeping her legs out from beneath her and hoisting her into the air, arm underneath her knees, as his lips continue to explore hers. That continues for a too-brief moment before Dani walks in and he sets Celia down.

“Get a room already,” his sister huffs.

Celia: “We are in a room,” she shoots back, not bothering to stop what she’s doing.

GM: “Later,” Roderick repeats, amused, as he disengages from Celia’s lips. “We’ll have plenty of time.”

Celia: Celia heaves a sigh.

“Be safe tonight,” she says as he sets her down. “Both of you.”

GM: “You too,” Roderick says, giving her a chaste kiss on the cheek. “I love you.”

Celia: “I love you too. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

She hopes she will, anyway. The he hasn’t just used her to disguise Dani and himself to get out of the city, that all of the work she has put into cultivating Dani as an almost pawn will be for nothing, that she won’t go back to Savoy and have to say, “so about those siblings…” and be dropped like the hot potato Roderick mentioned.

But he wouldn’t do that, would he? She can trust him, can’t she? He loves her. And they’re both twice-bonded to her. Even if Roderick gets her out of the city of course Dani will come back. Celia had dangled all the answers in front of her: her sire, the thin-bloods, a place together. She’d peppered their conversations with enough to tempt the girl into coming back, has done far more for her than her brother can despite their shared blood (and how much does that count for now anyway, with his sister what she is?). It’s why she hadn’t pushed harder about his sire being a bitch, because she can’t risk alienating the both of them now when everything is coming together. Push too hard and he’ll see it for the obvious ploy it is when the truth of Carolla comes out.

It’s enough. Even if the thought of Roderick having someone else to lean on chips away at her own hold over him.

She’ll just have to do something about that, won’t she?

---

Previous, by Narrative: Story Thirteen, Genevieve V, Sterling V
Next, by Narrative: Story Thirteen, Celia XI

Previous, by Character: Story Thirteen, Celia IX
Next, by Character: Story Thirteen, Celia XI

“Beautiful.”
The Man With The Silver Smile

---

Thursday night, 6 June 2013, PM

Genevieve: This time of night a line wraps around the side of the building, eager club-goers waiting for a chance to test their luck against the players at the Silver Dollar. Some of them just came for the atmosphere, one of the few places left in the Quarter that doesn’t cater to the tourist crowd. Hardly a literal hole in the wall, just lesser-known than the prime stomping ground of Bourbon or even Royal Street. The kind of place where anyone can get their rocks off, either through the openly flowing booze, the easy access to drugs, or the girls who shake everything they’ve got in the face of everyone they see. Slinky dresses, sky-high heels, the smell of their last cigarette on their breath. Extra pairs of panties in their purses for those times someone decides they want to pay the fee for a little extra and take them out into the alley, the bathroom, or just a dark corner to cop more than a feel.

It always rubbed Gen the wrong way.

She wouldn’t be here if her domitor hadn’t expressly summoned her this evening, told her to meet him at 11 PM sharp. Something about someone that needs to be fired. He’d gotten misty-voiced over the phone, told her he didn’t want to do it himself, that it needed a delicate touch. A woman’s touch. Something like that; she’d stopped listening the moment he told her that he needed her. That had been enough. She’s pretty sure the rest of it was a lie, anyway.

Haymaker is at the door to let her in, the “employee” entrance that actually is a literal hole in the wall, a small opening tucked tight between two buildings that leads to the steel door where Sterling’s people come and go, and where, she knows, other licks like him often show up to get their jollies off. No waiting at this door, you just knock and someone lets you in, though if they ain’t ever seen you before there’s bound to be some questions. It’s the worst kept secret in the city; Gen even thinks that Sterling was the one to start the spread of it so that those who walk the night like him don’t need to wait. She’s sure he’s got other secret entrances too—why wouldn’t he?—but this one is the one he has his people use, so that’s the one she goes to.

She spares a look for Haymaker as he shuts the door behind her. The black man just shrugs.

Interesting.

Without a word she strides down the hall that will take her to where she assumes her domitor waits for her, the office at the top of the stairs that overlooks the whole place.

Sterling: The office is nice without being exquisite. Everything in here, from the glossy pinups to the vintage jukebox to the gassy, greasy lighting screams wealth without taste, power without restraint.

The men in here are like that, too. There’s always a few guys in here; it’s less Sterling’s office than it is his clubhouse. There’s Caprese, fat and sweating and always ready to break somebody’s nose, fiddling poorly with the Jukebox and muttering under his breath. There’s Mouse, named for his big ears but not his size, which is considerable. Heckle, the manager, who looks like he still doesn’t know how he got this job. All wear cheap suits that look like it and do nothing for their gout. The rest of Sterling’s goons are probably working the floor.

And of course, there’s the monster himself, dressed like a supervillain and looking innocent as a priest behind his desk. He gives her a sad smile.

And then there’s the woman. Girl, really. She can’t be more than 20, in a cocktail dress and mascara that’s running down her cheeks with tears.

Gen’s usually the only woman in here. The other girl doesn’t seem to notice her coming in.

“I-I’ll do better next week, Mister Oz. I promise. I just—I need my paycheck now. I really can’t wait until Monday-“

“We’ve heard you already, you slow bitch,” mutters Caprese as he thuds the jukebox. “More whining won’t make the big man care more.”

“I’m afraid he’s right, Candice,” Sterling says apologetically. “Me, I like bending the rules. But I made Heckle the manager precisely because he’s a stickler for these kinds of things. I’m afraid you’ll have go put in extra hours if you want fast cash—in the high rollers lounge.”

Candice flushes, looks to the ground. “I’m not—I’m just a waitress.”

Heckle guffaws. “Didn’t stop you showing some tit to get the job. Whores always get prideful once they get paid.”

“I’m not—“ but the rest of her words are lost to her sobs.

Sterling regards her placidly, then looks to his Conscience. Green eyes glitter with something neither good nor evil, and certainly not human. She recognizes the look.

He wants to play a game.

Genevieve: It’s a look she recognizes, but not one that she likes. The door closes behind her, cutting off the girl’s cries before they can carry down the stairs. Her eyes sweep the room, taking it all in. Sterling might be the only one to notice the way her jaw works as her stare lands on Caprese, on his fist striking the jukebox. Graceful movements take her across the room, the sort of coiled energy found in the predators like him, the gift of speed he’s given her flitting through her veins to make every motion precise. She’s got the sort of easy languidness that comes from years of throwing her body across a gym.

Gen bends at the knee, reaching behind the jukebox to lift the plug. She doesn’t say anything to the fat man as she hands it over; her look does enough of that for her.

Moron.

“Accounting trouble?” she asks Sterling.

Sterling: “Something like that,” he agrees cheerfully. “Heckle, what’s our policy on advance pay?”

“We don’t,” the manager grunts. “But we always need volunteers for the lounge, if they’re willing to put some skin on the line—“

“-and in other places,” guffaws Caprese. He leers cheerfully at her. It’s the closest she’ll get to a thanks.

“And yet, Candice here seems to value her dignity more highly than her… what was it? Dental bills, right? Never had to deal with them, myself. Perks of being an absent parent.”

Candice is still crying. “I don’t—I don’t value—I’ll do anything, but isn’t there another way?”

Sterling shrugs. “I can’t think of one. Can you, Conscience?”

Genevieve: Gen doesn’t so much as grind her teeth together. Another way, indeed. The leers of the fat would-be mobster will be the least of her worries if she steps in.

“She could ask her dentist for a payment plan,” she says carefully. She knows it isn’t what he wants, but he’s fooling himself if he thinks she’s going to put her own skin on the line without exploring other options. “Credit cards. Payday loans. The interest will eat her alive.” So will the boys in the high roller room.

Sterling: “I already did,” sniffles the unfortunate waitress. “I’m already broke. I wouldn’t be asking if I wasn’t tapped out.”

“You could always play our tables after your shift,” Sterling says breezily. “You might get lucky.”

She cries harder.

Sterling conjures a handkerchief from nowhere and flicks it at her daintily. Always the gentleman.

Genevieve: Of course she wouldn’t be asking if she weren’t tapped out. No one asks Sterling unless they’re desperate. Or foolish. He always finds a way for the house to win.

He’s not that bad. That’s the blood talking, though, she’s sure of it.

“Give her the advance, Mister Oz. To cover the bills and whatever other creditors she sold her soul to. Send her home.”

She meets his eye. Gives him a long look, then finally a nod.

“If it’s a body the lounge needs, Nicoise is enough to go around.”

Sterling: She’s seen some of the high rollers lounge, but never been made to linger. Anything can happen there, if somebody wants to pay for it. And the clients always can.

Caprese scowls at her jibe, but the other men chortle.

“Nobody’ll pay to see his fat ass on all fours,” Heckle says dismissively. “Boss, let’s just kick her out. Going back and forth on this. Candy, do you want cash or do you want to pretend you aren’t for sale?”

Candice doesn’t look pretty, when she’s crying. Just broken. “I—okay, okay, I can—I’ll do it, if I can get the money tonight.”

Heckle whistles lewdly and starts counting out bills from his wallet. “And you can keep whatever you make inside, obviously.”

Candice shudders.

Sterling shrugs and leans back, but he looks coolly amused.

She’s going to have to say it, in front of the goons and everybody. To volunteer. She can spare an innocent, if she wants to. Can help Sterling do the right thing.

The righter thing, anyways.

Genevieve: Her lips flatten into a thin line.

Bastard.

“Go home, Candice. I’ll work the lounge.”

Sterling: The waitress blinks and stares at her as if seeing for the first time. “W-what? No. No, I need the money.”

Behind her, Caprese chortles. “The freak’s a little strapped for cash, huh?”

Sterling holds up a finger. “Conscience, do you need the money? Or would you like to work so Candice doesn’t have to?”

Genevieve: “Her makeup is smeared,” Gen says, voice cold. As if that is the only reason. “She won’t earn a dime like that, and the lounge will be known as a place where broken girls work, which will cut into future profits. Send her home. Give her my take.”

He knows she doesn’t need the money. Caprese should know that too, though she can’t imagine how he rubs two thoughts together let alone retains what he does manage to think.

Sterling: He’s smarter than he looks. Probably he just thinks she’s a whore.

Genevieve: He couldn’t pay her enough, even if she were.

Sterling: “Are you—really?” The girl says, still in shock. “You mean it?”

Genevieve: She’d need a pair of tweezers to find the limp excuse of flesh he calls a dick.

Gen just looks at the girl. Then jerks her head toward the door.

Sterling: Heckle gives her the money, shaking his head. She can’t get out fast enough, still murmuring her disbelieving thanks as she goes.

“You’re too soft, sweetheart,” he tells her. “Shift starts in fifteen. Hit the dressing room. There’s always a few extra ‘tards in there. I hope you’re not on your period, either, because you don’t get to wear anything else. No pads or tampons or whatever the fuck. Nobody wants to see that.”

Caprese laughs again. “Maybe I’ll visit you on my break, pasty.”

He’s white, too, of course. But not like her.

Not like a freak.

Sterling goes back to a game of solitaire. Maybe she’ll see him later. Or maybe not. Maybe he just wanted to see if she would actually submit herself for the sake of some random girl.

Maybe he was testing her. Did she pass?

Genevieve: “I hope you do, Caprese. Bring a map and I’ll show you where everything goes, even.”

Her eyes slide toward her domitor. She thought he’d say something, at least. Acknowledge what he’s making her do, what he knew she would do if pressed. She won’t have that conversation in front of the others, though. She won’t let them see how much it takes out of her to do this thing for the girl, for him.

She has half a mind to tell the boys to get out so she can have a word with him. But if he wanted a word he’d have made it happen, wouldn’t have turned immediately to the game of cards. Maybe he doesn’t see the look of wounded betrayal on her face when she turns to go. Muddying his Conscience again.

Sterling: She slinks off. The waiting room is full of other girls, waitresses and “entertainers” with less modesty. Somebody tosses a leotard at her when she asks. It’s silver, form-hugging, and leaves her back mostly bare. It doesn’t cover so much as it clings. There’s other girls in leotards, too. The other volunteers trying to make money, except they actually need it. None of them look happy, or comfortable in the outfit.

People stare at her as she changes. That’s the same as ever. She’s a freak, after all. Everybody wonders what an albino looks like naked.

Genevieve: White. She looks white. She looks the same as them, the same bits and pieces, only hers are white on white on white. Pale pink nipples, pale pink lips. Darker now that she’s flushing, that the other girls are looking—staring. She turns her back to the room as if that will help, as if that makes any of this better.

She hates him.

How can he make her do this?

No, that’s the problem, isn’t it. He didn’t make her. He didn’t say anything. He just expected her to do the right thing, to submit herself to humiliation rather than let some poor girl do it in her stead. He knew exactly what she would do but let her make the choice.

She looks in the mirror when she’s done. The silver hugs her like a second skin. Her body shivers at the chill— she’s sure that he keeps it cool so that his patrons can see the outline of her nipples beneath the thin fabric. As requested, she’d stripped completely to put it on. No bra, no panties, not even pasties. Someone passes her a tube of lipstick that she swipes across her mouth, the same pale pink shade as the rest of her. She has a face that’s made to be stared at, meant to be different; she won’t hide behind the powders the other girls use. A pair of heels complete the look, lengthen her legs, lift her already firm ass.

She hates him.

She really does.

That’s all she can think about as she walks through the door of the dressing room to make her way to the lounge.

Sterling: And yet, and yet, the bond whispers to her. The way he held her before a mirror and called her beautiful. The small kindnesses he’s shown her.

The ways he seems to delight in humiliating her, in particular.

“You look marvelous, Connie.”

His voice is a whisper in her ear as she walks past patrons on the floor in step with the other volunteers, naked without the dignity of being naked. Mobsters leer. So do the gamblers, drunks and carousers who ogle her, the whitest girl in New Orleans. Worst might be the woman she passes, who smirk at her, secure in their obvious superiority. They get to wear real clothes. She’s just a piece of the scenery.

She looks up and sees him across the room, regarding the floor from his elevated mezzanine. He can whisper to her without deigning to acknowledge her in public. It probably wouldn’t be proper for him to mingle with the entertainment.

And yet—he says she looks marvelous.

“You didn’t have to do what you did. You still don’t. You can quit at any time. You’ll just have to give the money back. Or, well. Candice will. The choice is yours.”

Choice. His cruelest gift to her.

Genevieve: It isn’t fair.

It isn’t fair that he can whisper in her ear like that from across the room. It isn’t fair that the sound of his voice sends shivers down her spine, that his comments make her flush, that he can watch her from above and pull every thought from her mind.

She looks towards the windows she knows he’s peering out of. The expression on her face doesn’t change, but she shakes her head. No. She won’t go running. If this is how he wants her to serve—if this is how he wants to see his conscience, spread open for the rest of the world’s viewing pleasure—then who is she to deny it?

She turns her face away, then her whole body. She will not give him the satisfaction of watching her sweat. Her eyes dart toward the other girls, watching to see how they do it so she can best play along.

Sterling: They aren’t any more experienced, for the most part. Most of the girls who volunteer for this don’t do it a second time. It pays well.

That’s the only reason anybody would do it at all.

There’s five of them in their leotards, all at least a little attractive but none so uniquely freakish as her. One of the bouncers leads them to the lounge entrance, but he doesn’t follow them in, only holds the door open.

They aren’t supposed to be protected inside.

The lounge is busy tonight, which means a dozen or so patrons. Mostly men, but a few bored-looking women too. The lighting is dark and purplish with patches of neon glare. The silver leotards practically seem to glow under the lights. There are games tables, a bar tended by another silver-leotarded bartender, a jacuzzi, what looks like a mud pit, lots of private booths with curtains for isolation.

A place to sin in peace.

There’s a DJ, too, who calls over spinning tracks and thudding bass:

“The dolls are here, ladies and gents. Here are the rules: they say no, they leave without pay. You offer them money, even a penny, they say yes. Every single one of them agreed to be here, and every single one is yours to play with for whatever you pay them. They listen to whoever pays them the most. And that. Is. It.”

The cheers and lewd laughter are audible even over the music. Some of the younger faces seem agog with the possibilities.

The other ‘dolls’ do their best to force smiles. But it’s okay that they don’t look happy. That’s not the priority of this particular game.

“Look at that one,” one of the women says. Twentysomething, fat. Pointing at Gen. “Is that a fucking albino?”

“Looks like it.”

“Poor thing probably couldn’t make any money at the circus.”

Her friends laugh.

One of them’s waving her over. People are pulling out their wallets.

Genevieve: Even a penny.

Sterling, you bastard. If he’d wanted to see her naked there are easier ways.

Gen doesn’t pretend to smile. She won’t put on a show for these people, not like that. It’s almost a relief to be called over immediately, to have the choice of her actions taken from her for the evening. The humiliation can begin immediately. At least it isn’t like a normal club where she’d need to approach them, debase herself before them, and hope they find her alluring enough to shove a dollar in her thong.

Gen cuts smoothly through the crowd, the first of the girls to be given work. She’d be proud if her stomach weren’t twisting. Her brows lift once she reaches the fat woman’s side.

Are there rules against talking? Bartering? No one had told her. That must mean there aren’t.

“Yes?”

Sterling: “Not even polite,” the fat lady snorts.

“She’s uncultured,” the man next to her says. He looks like her, but he must be anorexic, or have some other kind of eating disorder, because he’s bone-thin. “Probably never had an etiquette lesson in her life, poor little freak.”

“Let’s teach her some manners,” says the lady. She digs out a purse, rifles through it. There’s a lot of green in there. “What’s your name, honey, when you aren’t prancing around commando for petty cash?”

She draws out a penny, looking faintly surprised she found it. “Let’s start as cheap as you, hmm? Apologize for being rude, ugly, and indecent. Oh, and a mutant.”

“I don’t think she’s ugly,” the man opines.

“That’s because you’re a skeleton, Tristan,” the woman says exasperated.

Genevieve: She’s already thinking of ways to get him back for this.

“My sincerest apologies, madam, for offending you with my very nature. Uncouth beasts should not be allowed to parade in public. Shall I call the zoo?”

Sterling: Tristan giggles. It’s an ugly sound. “She’s funny.”

The lady sneers. “I didn’t hear you say anything about being ugly. Or indecent. Or a mutant. I want to hear you say you’re sorry for being such a hideous albino mutant whore. Or no penny for you.”

So this is how people act, when they don’t have to pretend to be nice.

Genevieve: Gen spares a look for Tristan. She favors him with a wink.

“I will allow you to give me a dollar per apology, if that appeases you. But it is my mother you must make apologize, truly, for it is from her I sprung to be the mutant you see before you. And perhaps my father is to blame as well, for teaching me moderation. How very alien that concept must be.”

Her eyes cut down the woman’s “figure.”

Sterling: “You can take the penny, you arrogant little whore, or you can refuse and leave.”

Her eyes are dangerous now. “And then you won’t make a red cent. And you’ll be just as much of a freak, but without any circus money.”

Those are the rules. They aren’t meant to support her needling the clientele.

Genevieve: Gen looses a breath. If she is kicked out for her attitude then all of this was for nothing, and the girl she sought to “save” from this fate will only be worse off. She bows her head. Lets the woman feel powerful.

“Yes ma’am, I thought only to provide entertainment to your friend, free of charge. I misspoke. I apologize.”

She pauses, but only briefly. Long enough to swallow her pride.

“I’m sorry that I am a mutant freak. I wish it were not so. I admit to being ugly, indecent, and arrogant.”

The words are stated flatly, to the woman’s shoes.

Sterling: “Good girl,” the lady purrs. “I saw you wink at my brother. Do you have a little crush, circus freak?”

“Marge, please,” Tristan mutters.

“We can make things interesting. I’ll give you… fifty dollars if you sit on his lap. He’s bony, but I think he’ll manage.”

Tristan sighs. He does not, however, argue.

Genevieve: “Yes, ma’am, the circus freak has a crush.”

Easier that way, to refer to herself as the freak. Shedding her dignity is less painful if she can pretend she’s talking about someone else.

Gen slides in front of Tristan, lowering herself onto his lap. It’s an odd pairing, the skeleton and the albino. She holds herself stiffly, keeping herself as distant from him as she can for all that she is perched on his lap.

Please don’t touch me.

Expectant eyes turn to Marge.

Sterling: But he does touch her. One hand on her thigh, the other on her ass. A faint squeeze. She could fry something in the grease from Tristan’s smile.

“Circus freak,” the fat lady says, “you dirty little girl. Do you like your outfit, or should I pay you to take it off? That way everybody would see what a freak you are even more clearly.”

She reaches out and traces a finger across the leotard’s chest. Her chest.

“Or are you going to ask us nicely to let you keep your whorish little leotard on?”

Marge pinches her nipple through the fabric, suddenly and sharply.

Genevieve: Her cheeks heat at the words and Tristan’s touch. Surely she can’t be made to strip; there must be rules, things they can’t make her do, guidelines, anything. She clings to that hope… then, with a lurch of her stomach, recalls the sorts of horrors she has seen here, the games with the guns and bullets and spray of blood across the walls.

No limits. Why would they come if there were limits?

Her mouth is half open to answer the question when the woman strikes. Instinct makes her pull back, as if to escape the pinching fingers, but Tristan’s bony form is behind her and she only ends up sprawled more thoroughly across his lap. Nowhere to go. She cries out in shock and pain, shaking her head back and forth as her fingers twist.

Ask nicely, she’d said. Gen grabs onto that, working the words out around the lump that has settled firmly in her throat.

“Please let me keep my whore outfit.”

Sterling: Marge stares at her. Looks her in the eye, one woman to another.

And then she lets out the laughter. Bright, cruel peals of it, every bit as sharp and evil as any high school girl’s.

“Oh, sweetie. You actually—” She laughs harder. “I’m sorry, your face, your voice—oh, I’m sorry.” Her tone says she isn’t. “I love this place. Let the poor girl up, Tristan. She’s in for a hard night.”

Another squeeze, and she’s thrust upwards, discarded. Tristan’s laughing, too.

“Oh, and here’s your money. Circus freak.”

She feels her leotard’s rear pulled away, stretched like a swimsuit, and before she can even process the violation she feels a bill slipped between her exposed buttocks and the outfit as it’s allowed to snap back against her flesh, the numeral fifty protruding from the garment’s rear. Like an obscene, sideways tail. The dismissal is as clear as it is brutish.

They’re done with her. For now.

Genevieve: Gen doesn’t know if—or even how—she should respond. The flush spreads from her cheeks to her neck and chest, turning her red beneath the lights of the lounge. She thanks the woman for her time less she think that Gen is ungrateful for the money, slapped even as it is so rudely against her ass.

Fifty dollars. And a penny, but maybe the woman forgot, and she isn’t going to go back for a penny. How much does the girl need? How much is dental work? How long until the night is over? How long before she can slink out without even her pride intact? Her eyes search the wall for a clock, though she knows she will find none. No clocks in casinos, even underground ones, nothing to remind people that there is life outside of these walls.

Gen slinks away, eyes on the floor. Perhaps if she does not see them wave at her she can safely ignore them.

Sterling: But they see her. She’s quickly called over, made to fetch drinks, to prep tables, ordered this way and that by men whose only purpose is to keep her running. She’s pulled into more laps. Called more names. “Slut” is popular, but so is “Casper.”

It’s not long before somebody gets bored and tells her to bare her breasts.

“And bounce around a little. Squeeze ’em together,” the drunk fiftysomething man says, brandishing several hundred dollar bills. His friends laugh indulgently, all eyes settled on the albino.

Some of the other girls have already been made to get naked. One is getting fucked on a table across the room. Another is merely being passed around a gaggle of men that grab at her with impunity.

But not the circus freak. They just want her to show some tit and shake.

GM: The grabbing is only the prelude.

At one table, a woman lies back-down over the surface while a man shits in her mouth. The stench is awful. The revulsion on her face is even worse. His friends hold her down as they chant, “Swallow! Swallow! Swallow!” She’ll get extra money if she swallows. The second man who’s burying his cock up her cunt seems almost an afterthought.

Another girl, also lying back-down over a table, is also tied down and getting fed water through a funnel in her mouth. That looks harmless enough, until Gen sees how much water. The nearby men have at least a dozen milk jugs. There is no possible way that much fluid can fit in her stomach, but it looks as if the men are doing their damndest to find out how much can. They say she’ll earn a thousand dollars for every jug she swallows. The ones who aren’t force-feeding her are also taking turns fucking her. They smack her grotesquely swollen belly like a drum as they thrust back and forth. Genny can hear the water sloshing around inside.

At another table, the men are preparing to waterboard another tied-down girl, except with booze instead of water. They laugh about how this is actually “boozeboarding.” They say how CIA agents break after only 14 seconds, so she’ll get a thousand dollars a second. Ready? Go.

The next table over, the patrons are playing Russian roulette. There’s some kind of betting pool going on. Gen isn’t sure exactly what, only that one of the girls is taking turns firing the revolver at every patron, in clockwise order around the table. Click. Empty. Click. Empty. Click. Empty. Click. Boom. A wide-eyed corpse slumps forward as the bullet takes him right in the forehead. The girl screams as blood gets everywhere. The men roar with laughter and pull off the newly-dead corpse’s pants. Its cock is still hard. They make the girl fuck it.

At still another table, every man has a switchblade and girl on their lap who they’re offering money in return for “pounds of flesh.” The more pieces of themselves the girls let the men cut off, the latter explain, the more the girls get paid. There’s also a pool going. Whichever girl gets cut up worst not only gets the money from that, she also gets all of the other girls’ money. So no matter how deeply the knife bites, they get nothing, if it doesn’t bite them deepest of all. It’s a race to the bottom. A race to hurt themselves worst. Gen watches the pale-faced and eventually red-spattered girls start with nicks along their wrists, then work their way up to teeth and nails and arm stabbings, then severed ears and fingertips and facial scarring, and then one deliriously crying and beeding girl begs her man to stab out her left eye when he promises her a jaw-dropping sum, because oh god she needs the money. The men laugh that unless someone else wants to lose both her eyes, they have a winner. Everything has its price.

The lounge is everything Sterling said.

Anything goes.

Genevieve: She doesn’t disappoint with the drinks, with the tables, with the side work that they make her do before the patrons snatch her up again. She’s quick. Smart. Everything gets to where it needs to go, nothing is spilled, someone even tips her for the trouble. She can almost pretend that she’s just a waitress.

Until they start to fondle her again. Until they pinch and pull and—

No. She’s not going to uncover herself, she isn’t.

But the threat is there. Do it or walk away with nothing.

She’s on his lap, made to straddle him only moments ago. If she does it here at least no one can see, right? No one but the drunk man. And his friends. And anyone looking at her. She almost shakes her head. Almost gets up, walks to the door.

Gen lifts a hand to slide the strap of her “outfit” down one shoulder, then the other. The movements are slow, hesitant. The material clings to her chest rather than fall of its own volition. Too much to ask for it to do her that courtesy; she can’t just pretend it fell. It takes conscious effort for her to slide it down her chest, face smarting in humiliation.

Pale. White. Alabaster. Exactly the ghostly color for which they call her.

The blood that Sterling gives to her keeps her young. No matter her real age, she has the tight, lean body of a woman in her twenties. So when she moves, they bounce, nipples stiff in the cool air of the lounge. She covers them when he tells her to press them together, as if that will preserve whatever is left of her modesty.

Her face turns away.

Sterling: Cheers and guffaws meet her display. Her hands are teased away from their position, and the drunkard leans forwards and actually runs his tongue across one breast, to the delight of his friends.

“Bet you taste like white chocolate,” one of them slurs at her as she’s assaulted. Then he tosses some money at her, for compensation.

The man who’s lap she straddles slides a hand up her leotard, tracing between her legs.

“Say you like it,” he says between tonguefuls of her breasts. “Scream it for us.”

Genevieve: The taunting comes from all around her. She has no safe place to rest her eyes, no friendly face that she can look upon in the crowd. Just this leering, drunk, desperate man. Her whole form is stiff; she presses her thighs together as if to stop his wandering hands, but his fingers find her anyway. She finally just closes her eyes. With her eyes closed they can’t hurt her, they can’t touch her, she can pretend that he is someone else.

Ever fiber of her being rebels against the idea of telling them she likes it. Even if she did, she isn’t that sort vocal creature.

She shakes her head back and forth.

Sterling: “You need to offer her money,” one of his friends says. Her assaulter traces her mons, bounces her like a child on his leg.

“A thousand bucks, you beautiful white cunt. Say you like it. C’mon. Say it. Nice and loud.”

His fingers poke at her entrance, but don’t penetrate. His tongue lashes against her nipples, stiffening them mercilessly.

“Say you like it, you silly little whore. Shout it. Or I’ll make you dance for us.”

They know she doesn’t want to. That’s what makes it so fun for them.

“And open your eyes, or I’ll make you say it again.”

“Say it.”

A flash. Somebody’s taken a picture of her.

Genevieve: Gen squirms on his lap. She starts to shake her head again, to deny him, but the offer of money holds her fast. She has to. A thousand dollars—that’s a lot of fucking dental work. Her nipples are so hard they ache under his continued assault. The threat of his fingers sliding into her, the threat of being forced to dance for them, the flash of the camera—it’s too much.

She wishes the floor would open up and swallow her whole.

“I like it,” she whispers. Her lips barely move, eyes still squeezed tightly shut. They open a second later.

Sterling: “Louder, sweetie,” he says. He bites, this time, gnawing at her nipples. “Shout what a slut you are.”

His fingers find her lips. They start to pull them apart.

Now or never.

Genevieve: Her head drops back when his teeth sink into her flesh, mouth opening in a wordless cry. Words fail her. She doesn’t know what to say, how to say it, what they want to hear.

“I’m a slut,” she manages, barely louder than before. Her eyes find the ceiling. “I’m—I like it, I do, I’m just a freak whore, a dirty slut.” She doesn’t even know what she’s saying. None of it sounds right; it’s the awkward confession of a girl who has never done this before. She presses her hands against her face to hide her shame.

Sterling: She feels his fingers on her lips. Holding her open.

Then they retreat.

“Good whore,” he says, and spits in her face.

They’re guffawing as she’s pushed off of his lap, the joke over, her leotard half-off.

Genevieve: She lands hard on the ground. No one steps in to help her up, no one offers a hand. Her eyes stay down as she rises, spit dripping down her face. She turns away with her ill-gotten cash and tugs the straps back into their rightful place to cover herself once more. She doesn’t thank him for the privilege.

Sterling: A hand on her shoulder. An arm around her waist. Somebody’s dabbing at the spit on her face with a handkerchief.

“Ah, Conscience. You can quit at any time.”

It’s him. Him, come to watch her degradation. Maybe even to participate.

Did he hear her say she liked it, a moment ago?

Genevieve: Gen jerks away from him, anger in her eyes.

“My name,” she hisses at him, “is Genevieve.”

She stalks off.

Sterling: He’s with her, keeping pace easily. “So indignant! Would you prefer I treat you cruelly, or lie? Your strength of spirit makes you beautiful, Gen. I want to share that beauty. To celebrate it.”

He presses a money clip into her hands.

“Now, are you mine or not? Will you endure these humiliations, or leave?”

Genevieve: Gen halts once the money touches her hand. She looks down at it, then up at him. She plasters on a smile, sickly sweet; she’s never smiled for him, not like this.

“Shall I simper for you, sir? Is there a dog in a corner somewhere you’d like me to fuck?”

Sterling: “No. I just want you to take off your leotard and follow me to the stage.”

He says it so easily. So smoothly.

“Or you can leave here, and abandon your foolish quest to do the right thing.”

Genevieve: Naked. On stage. All eyes on her. Even if they’re not inclined to look he’ll make them look, make them watch, make them see.

He can’t. He can’t do that to her.

Her stomach has fallen to her feet. She is not sure if it will ever right itself. The false smile disappears as quickly as it came, and the eyes that look to him now are full of apprehension.

“Don’t,” she whispers, shaking her head, “don’t make me. Not that.” She presses the money back toward him, as if that will make this all disappear.

Sterling: “I’ll be with you,” he says. “Holding you. Protecting you. But I won’t make you do anything.”

He doesn’t take the money back.

“You can stop anytime, Gen. If you only silence your conscience.”

“I’ll even take your memories, if you like.”

Genevieve: That’s what he wants, isn’t it? For her to be as heartless and misguided as him.

She won’t. She won’t be like him. She will never be like him.

She strips. The silver leotard comes off in one fluid motion, dropping down her body, down her legs, to pool around her heels. The look she gives him could melt steel.

Sterling: He beams.

He takes her hand.

He leads her through the lounge, as people whistle and catcall—but they do not presume to approach. Not with him by her side.

He leads her, naked and white, onto the stage, his arm around her bare waist.

“Brave, bare Gen,” he whispers without moving his lips. “Beautiful.”

Genevieve: I hate you, she thinks back, and she hopes that he can hear it.

Sterling: Her heels make her naked body taller. Tall enough that he has to stretch slightly to kiss her on the forehead. She can feel the tenderness in the motion. His twisted, bizarre love.

Eyes pivot as they take the stage, the man with the silver smile and his naked, stark-white Conscience.

And then he’s twirling her, and they’re dancing.

He’s dancing with her, in public, like she’s his queen. Like he does with his paramour, sometimes.

Except she’s naked.

But nobody laughs as they dance.

Nobody jeers.

Genevieve: Their gazes are heavy, all the same. She cannot forget they are there.

That they can see.

Her. All of her. Exposed.

Sterling: He twirls her for them. Bares her front, her back. Pivots and bends her backwards.

But he isn’t just exposing her. He’s… displaying her. Like he would a piece of art. A prized possession.

He strokes between her legs, and his hands move with impossible speed over her body. Tweaking. Teasing.

Arousing.

She can see Caprese in the crowd. Heckle, too. Faces she knows. That know her.

They look awestruck.

Genevieve: It can’t be her they’re looking at. It has to be him. His speed, his grace; the fact that he twirls so effortlessly across the stage with the help.

She doesn’t look. Can’t look. Can’t bear the sight of the crowd, knowing that they’re looking at her, that there will be not a single pair of eyes in this city who doesn’t see her next and wonder at what she looks like in the lounge, on her knees, spread open, poked and prodded and pulled until she finally snaps.

She does not dare close her eyes. She keeps them on him, as if there is no world except for him, as if they are not on a stage. Her body quivers at his touch, bending, arching, spinning; she is just an extension of his will.

Sterling: But she keeps pace with him. Complements him so effortlessly.

He’s kissing her, suddenly, full on the lips, kissing her and his Blood inside her is screaming, as his hands roam her body and start to play.

“Beautiful,” he whispers, as he pushes her buttons and makes her come undone, onstage.

Next to him.

Genevieve: He can’t be.

It’s against the rules.

There’s no kissing in the masked city.

She’s a slave, she’s beneath him, she’s—

But he is. He is kissing her. In front of everyone. They can all see his hands on her. Hear the breath leave her body as he touches, strokes, displays. Smell the molten liquid that makes her slick to his touch. Her tightly coiled control rips itself apart; her seams split, exposing the truth, her truth, and leaves her a quivering, heaving mess of a woman with nothing to lose, whose cries split the air when he sends her over the edge. She comes apart in his arms. The rest of the world doesn’t matter. Not now.

Not ever.

---

Previous, by Narrative: Story Thirteen, Celia IX
Next, by Narrative: Story Thirteen, Celia X

Previous, by Character: Story Thirteen, Genevieve IV, Sterling IV
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“Feeling lucky?”
Gunner

---

Wednesday night, 16 March 2016, PM

GM: The pair lie upon the floor in one another’s arms. Their hair and makeup is mussed, despite their best efforts, but Josua doesn’t seem to care. Not if he may hold the goddess close—or rather, be held by her, his head resting just below her breasts, her hands stroking his hair. He rubs his hairless legs against Jade’s, shivering at the sensation.

“We’re sex bombs. You know that? Just look at us. We’re primed and ready to explode.”

“And we just did.”

Celia: “We just did,” she agrees. Her fingers run through the silky smooth strands of the dead girl’s hair. What had her name been? Brianna? Bree? Brittany? She thinks it might have been a B, but she doesn’t recall ever asking. Just draining her, swallowing every last drop, sinking into the warmth of blood and ecstasy.

Literal ecstasy.

God, what a night.

Jade’s lipstick does not bleed, but Joy’s had. So had some of the power around her eyes, and the wings she’d been given look a little… off-kilter. It will be a quick touch up to set it right, made faster still by the gifts of her clan. In a moment, though. Now, she wants to enjoy the weight of Joy pressed against her, the feel of those silken strands.

“A bit premature,” she says idly, “we could have ensnared a whole slew of mortals, brought them back here to worship.”

She touches a finger to Joy’s lips.

“I’ll see you on your knees yet, darling.”

GM: “Oh, yes, mistress,” purrs Joy, nuzzling her belly. “We both want to see me suck a whole army’s worth of cocks. These lips were made for cocks.”

Celia: “They make gags, did you know, that keep your mouth open. O-ring gags, they’re called. You’d just have to kneel there and take it while they fuck your face if I got you one of those. Strap you down. Let men fill you from both ends.”

“You’re such a fuckable little bitch.”

GM: “I really am. I dress like such a slut, too. I can’t even leave my dressing room without fucking someone. I’d probably take the entire casino in my mouth and up my ass if I tottered out of here.”

“I wouldn’t even get to feed, with an o-ring gag. I wouldn’t even be a real lick. I’d just be a piece of ass.”

Celia: That’s all she is now. A piece of ass. Jade’s piece. Jade’s creation.

Jade shifts, thighs spreading to either side of Joy’s hips. She uses the weight of her body to pin the slut down, reaching for the bag of cosmetics. A few tweaks and her face is set to rights again.

“Next time,” she tells Joy. “Next time, I’ll let them bend you over like the whore that you are and stick as many cocks in you as they like. Now, though, we have a game to play.”

GM: Joy beams and bats her lashes under the makeup artist’s touch.

“We do. I haven’t even sucked any cocks yet, but I just want to say how educational this has been, and how much better I understand women now. I’m just as promiscuous as I was as Josua, but when I’m Joy I’m this absolutely shameless, cock-ravenous slut who’ll spread her legs the moment someone looks at her. It’s so illuminating to see myself that way.”

“I’m just such a slut.”

Celia: She longs for a cock again. She’d make Joy swallow it.

“Such a slut,” Jade agrees. She rises, towering over the girl on her back. On her back, like sluts should be. Back or knees; that’s where they belong.

Jade fixes her appearance in the mirror. Only when she’s done does she return her attention to Joy the slut.

“I suppose it would raise too many questions to make you crawl after me. Pity. You look good on your knees.”

Celia: All the same, a snap of her fingers summons Joy after her as she strides from the cabin.

There are more people yet to admire her work.

GM: Joy dutifully licks her shoes as she fixes her face, running a longing tongue up and down the straps and heels.

“Are we going to see Marcel, mistress?” asks Joy, her own heels clicking after Jade.

Celia: “Is it time already?”

GM: “We have some time left, mistress.”
“I could really lick your shoes, get them up to polish.”

Celia: “Mm,” Jade hums, finally turning to look at her, “and how would your lover feel if he found you with your tongue on my shoes?”

GM: “He’d know this is where an enormous, completely shameless slut like me belongs. But he’d be too polite to say it.”

Celia: “Do my heels need shining?” Jade glances down at them. “Did you miss a spot earlier?”

GM: “Oh I bet I did, mistress, I was probably too busy imagining them as cocks down my throat to do the job properly.”
“Or you could take me out in front of the casino guests and show them what a complete slut I am.”

Celia: Jade taps the roof of her mouth with her tongue, tutting at the excuse.

“If he finds cause to be displeased with my appearance because of your oversight, I’ll see to it that the next man who touches you splits you open.”

She knows just the one.

“Come, Joy. Let’s give them a show.”

GM: “It’s impossible for anyone to be displeased by your appearance, mistress. Just my polishing job. I hope he is, though. Getting split open is just what a hungry slut like me gets wet thinking about,” giggles Joy.

She clicks along after Jade to the main gambling hall, where the pair are assailed by a riot of sounds, smells, and scintillating colors. The first thing they notice is the massive array of slot machines with blinking lights, whirring sirens, and tokens clattering into the metal payout drawers. Gold and bright primary colors glint excitedly everywhere. Rowdy jazz music plays from speakers and a live band. Crowds of clapping, exclaiming, shouting people are clustered around the array of games, including three-card poker, blackjack, roulette, craps, Mississippi Stud, and Ultimate Texas Hold’em—and the ever-present slot machines that make up the most of any casino’s revenue. An all-you-can-eat Creole/Caribbean-themed buffet and bar is set up in the corner, along with the band. Cocktail waitresses weave their way through the lively crowds while suited croupiers smartly deal out cards.

Celia: She’d been too wrapped up in Josua’s embrace to pay much attention to her surroundings last time. Now, though, freed from the blessing of her clan, Jade sweeps her eyes around the casino. Larger than she had anticipated for it being on a boat. Nicer, too; she’d been picturing more of the same from the racino.

She ignores the slot machines entirely—she has had no luck there and her particular skills suit her better at the tables where she plays against other patrons rather than the house. Hold ’Em, specifically, though she doubts the prince will take kindly to her robbing his players blind.

“What’s your poison?” she asks Joy. “Craps is always a crowd favorite. Maybe someone will let you blow on their dice.” High energy around a craps table.

And half the players don’t understand the rules, just throw their chips onto numbers and hope for the best.

GM: “Craps sounds perfect, mistress. I’ll lick those dice right in front of them, totally shameless,” giggles Joy.

Celia: “I bet you could blow someone under the table. No cameras down there.”

GM: “I’d want a camera to capture that, though.”

Celia: “Not some stern-faced security guard that drags you before your mistress and asks what you think you’re doing sucking a cock without permission?”

GM: “The guards would all want me to blow them too. And you’d say yes, a slut like me was born to swallow dicks down her mouth.”

Celia: “If I had a cock,” Jade murmurs in her ear as they wind through the floor of breathers, “I’d make you kneel under the table no matter where I was with it in your mouth at all times. I’d let other people take a turn for a red chip. You would work your way around the table, swallowing load after load, until I told you to stop.”

GM: Joy gives another girlishly delighted giggle. “Why don’t we do that, mistress? I can just suck the heel of your shoe, instead of your cock.”
“See how many red chips you can pick up.”

Celia: “Your friend won’t mind the spectacle?”

GM: “Would you, mistress? If it were your casino?”

Celia: Probably.

She looks around to get the measure of the typical patron, wondering how far she can push this.

GM: New Orleans isn’t Vegas, and the Alystra isn’t Harrah’s. They look mostly middle-class. “The richer patrons usually go to the baccarat lounge upstairs,” Joy adds.

Celia: She’s less interested in their wallets than she is the sort of person they are. The kind who don’t bat an eye at a BJ under the table? How many other hookers are here this evening? Jade scans the crowd.

GM: This place seems higher-class than Harrah’s.

Which is to say, the hookers are more discrete, and any giving under-the-table blowjobs are being pretty careful not to get caught.

Celia: Jade won’t be the one to cause a scene within someone else’s territory, tempting though it is. She shakes her head at Joy’s insistence.

GM: Joy makes a pouty face. “We’re a pair of sneaky girls, aren’t we?”

Celia: Jade can’t help but smirk.

“Are you trying to get me kicked out so you can hog him to yourself? That’s rude, pet.”

“That makes you a selfish little slut.”

GM: “You need a self to be selfish, mistress. Joy is just an extension of Jade. She’s a piece of Jade’s art.”

“I’m definitely a slut, though.”

Celia: “The thing about sneaking, you know, is that in order to do so you have to be ordinary. Nothing about us is ordinary. We turn heads. We want people to look at us.”

The look she gives Joy dares her to disagree.

She casts another appraising eye around the room, looking for a likely target. Someone with whom Joy can get down and dirty like she wants to. Someone who might even pay for the pleasure of it, turning Joy into the literal whore that Jade knows she is.

And there they are, the sort of mark that Jade searches for. Seven of them at a Hold ‘Em table with their leisure suits or their t-shirts paired with jeans and their stacks of chips. Casually dressed, but to the trained eye—her eye—they scream what they are. Wealthy. Experienced. She pegs the short, dumpy, dark-haired one as a pro player. The thin, twitchy one as a dealer or bookie, maybe both. The old one as a retired… something. Something that hardened him, that makes him slow to smile, but she knows with certainty that it isn’t his pension or his 401k that he’s gambling away this evening. A larger one, black, with a silver watch on his wrist. Blancpain. She can see it from here; despite the loose jeans and too-large shirt, he’s a man of means. And a virgin. She can tell by the way he smiles at the cocktail waitress in her little corset and skirt, by the way he laughs too long and too loudly at her joke, by the way he hands her an extra green chip when she drops off the drink and touches a hand to his shoulder.

Clever girl.

Jade watches the play from the corner of her eye as she approaches the cage to exchange her cash, handing over five crisp bills to receive a plastic tray full of red and white. Jade thanks the cashier with a smile and moves off, tugging Joy with her. A word to the hostess and the two girls are on their way to the table.

“Stand behind me,” Jade murmurs to Joy, “and work out that knot in my shoulder. We’ll see where it goes from there.”

There’s no such knot. Jade’s body is flawless.

“Evening, boys,” she says to the assembled men as she takes the final seat, just in time to catch the little blind. She sets down two white chips and waits for the cards, lifting just the corners to check them.

GM: Joy murmurs for Jade to appear normally in the cameras. Marcel’s people are trained to look for players who don’t show up normally, and will automatically assume they are cheating.

There may not be a knot in her shoulders, but Joy relishes touching them all the same. Very clearly so. She flashes the other players a wide smile as she works her hands back and forth over Jade’s skin. Both girls draw immediate looks from everybody. Some of the players try to look less smitten than others. But all of them must be.

How can they not be, to play alongside a goddess and her creation?

The short, dumpy man smirks between the pair of them. He looks pretty young. “Evening, lovelies. Feeling lucky?”

The older one grunts, though his stare lingers on Jade. Is it lust?

Mr. Blancpain them both and repeats, “Evening, lovelies,” with a wide smile.

Definitely virgin, to be repeating the other guy’s greeting.

Joy eyes all three, and the others too, as if deciding who to blow.

Or blow first.

The dealer, meanwhile, deals cards. Jade gets a nine and six of spades.

Celia: Jade inclines her head toward the dealer, the man she pegged as the pro player (now reconsidering, since she’s never known a pro player to talk about “luck” at a poker table when they all mostly believe it’s a game of skill), and the virgin. She follows Joy’s advice to make sure that she appears normal to the cameras; she’s had so much practice with it, after all.

“Brought my darling charm with me,” she says all the same, making a vague gesture toward Joy, “how could I not?”

Not a great start to her night with that hand, but six and nine are rather auspicious for her, aren’t they? Blatantly sexual and all that; maybe she’ll catch a straight. She’s already in for two. She’ll call the five and limp in if the table lets her.

But when the betting comes back around and the short man raises by $150, Jade simply folds her hand.

GM: There’s three cards on the table now. Seven of clubs, ten of clubs, three of hearts.

“Good luck charm might work better than a darling charm,” says the short man.

“Oh, a darling charm can work for a lot of things,” smiles Josua, still working Jade’s shoulder.

The virgin’s stare lingers on them both.

The fourth card is an eight of diamonds. Another man folds. The others check. The short man raises another $50.

The fifth card is a jack of diamonds. Everyone reveals their hands. The short man has the ace of hearts and a six of clubs. The chips all go to him.

“I don’t believe that poker’s a game of skill,” he says as he collects his chips.

The older man looks at him like he’s stupid.

“If luck is on your side, it doesn’t matter how good or bad you are.”

“Should I suck his cock?” Joy murmurs in Jade’s ear.

Celia: The words draw a peal of laughter from Jade. She lifts a hand to cover her mouth, and if anyone glances her way she simply shakes her head. Amusement dances in her eyes.

He’s one of those.

The button moves to the left and Jade is now the big blind. She sets down her red chip before the cards ever pass to her.

“Luck,” she says with a faint smile, “or a large stack to buy the pot.”

She does not dignify Joy’s question with a response. It’s a clear no.

GM: She gets the ace of clubs and the ace of spades.

One man calls.

The short man just smiles and raises another $150.

The virgin calls.

The older man folds.

One man folds. Another calls too.

Celia: Pocket aces? There’s no hesitation. Jade calls.

GM: Everyone plays through the hand as the dealer deals his cards. There are some more calls, checks, and folds, but two aces make the hand a largely foregone conclusion. When all the cards are laid out, and everyone reveals their hands, the short man had a king and queen. A great hand, but not good enough. The virgin and the others didn’t even venture higher than numbered man.

The chips go to Jade.

“Luck’s on your side this time,” the short man says breazily.

The old man snorts. “I’da raised earlier.”

Celia: Jade stacks her winnings in front of her, one brow arched at the old man’s comments. She’d gone all in by the end of it.

“Sure,” she says, “and chased everyone off the hand.” Which means less winnings, but Jade won’t be so crass as to discuss money at the poker table. She just smiles.

“I s’pose my girl is a good luck charm after all.”

GM: “Yeah,” says the virgin, “she’s definitely a good luck charm!”

“There are places you can just buy it, kid,” says the old man with another snort.

Celia: “A cute, lucky charm,” Jade agrees. She blatantly eyes him. “You want to borrow her?”

GM: The short man grins. “I believe in luck, but not lucky charms. Though she’s clearly charmed the table.”

There’s nothing at all subtle about the hungry smile Joy flashes the virgin.

“You sure you won’t need her luck?” the virgins asks with a mildly forced-sounding chuckle.

Celia: “I can come off her for a hand or two. Just make it worth my time.”

“Those hands of hers are magic.”

GM: Joy gives a bimbo-ish giggle and touches her fingertips to her lips. Her eyes don’t leave the virgin. She doesn’t say anything. Just plays the dumb bimbo on Jade’s arm.

“Okay then, you bet I will,” the virgin readily agrees.

Celia: Jade waves a hand at Joy.

“Go on then, dollface.”

“Make the man happy.”

GM: Joy gives a delighted giggle and starts to work her hands up and down the man’s shoulders. She’s very intimate in her touch. She leans in close so her hair brushes against his shoulders, but she doesn’t stay still. Sometimes her breasts brush against him. Sometimes she breathes half-audible sultry-sounding things in his ears. Jade is pretty sure she fondles his dick under the table, too.

Far from being a good luck charm, the virgin is flustered to the point he can barely think straight. He places big bets and raises as often as he can, just to look big and bold when Joy coyly whispers what a big pair he has.

The cocktail waitress gives Joy a dirty look when she comes by again.

Celia: As if Joy or Jade care about the dirty looks given to them by the kine who carry drinks for a living.

Maybe the others at the table don’t notice the way that Joy’s hands slip beneath the table, but Jade, seated right next to the virgin, hears the sudden intake of his breath when Joy’s hands find the spot where he’s really tense. She smirks and plays her hand, taking advantage of his distraction to force him into a large bet that nets her half his stack.

Joy carries on while Jade plays with the boys, making idle chitchat as the time passes. True to his word, the short, dumpy guy who believes in Lady Luck seems to have a knack for getting exactly what he needs. Lucky plays fast and loose with his chips as if he knows that she’s smiling down on him, and more than once he flips his cards to show something Jade wouldn’t have kept—lower, off suit—but still manages to win the pot. One hand he forces another player all in and they reveal their hands; it looks like the other guy has him beat until the dealer lays out the last card and the gentleman who loses mutters angrily about “catching the nuts on the river” before he stalks from the table. Jade winks at Lucky as they watch him go.

There’s always someone waiting to take the empty seat. Players come and go as the cards are dealt and chips change hands. Lucky tips the dealer well when she rotates out to make room for one of her coworkers.

By the time Jade and Joy start thinking that they should get going to meet Marcel, Lucky has the rest of the table beat in stack height. Jade isn’t so crass as to count her money at the table (or reference the song), but she’s at least doubled her initial investment and is pretty secure with her “second place” earnings.

GM: The virgin tries to stay attached to Joy. He offers to buy her drinks. “Or food. Or whatever you want.”

Joy gives a delighted-sounding giggle and glances Jade’s way as if for permission.

Lucky grins at both ladies as the game concludes and walks over to a Mississippi Stud table. He promptly starts winning at that too.

Jade sees the pit boss and several guards and floormen all watching him now.

The eye in the sky, of course, is always watching.

Celia: Jade gives Joy and the virgin a long look, then finally nods her head. Of course Joy can play with her new toy. She pulls Joy close as she starts stacking chips on the rack to cash out, leaning in to whisper in her ear.

“You are going to take your new friend into a private, secluded area and blow his mind. Get on your knees. Unzip him. And suck his cock like the fuckable little faggot I’ve turned you into.” She touches a hand to Joy’s cheek, thumb tracing her lips. “Make sure you swallow.”

GM: Joy gives another bimbo-ish giggle.

“Yes, ma’am. Right on my knees, like I’m meant for. I’ll throw up in front of you, so you can be double sure.” She hungrily licks her lips. “Unless you’d like to watch?”

Lucky, meanwhile, soon wins a jackpot. He’s got so many chips.

Celia: He has to be doing something. No one is that lucky. And he hadn’t played well enough for her to think that he’s some sort of idiot savant.

Jade shakes her head at Joy, nodding for her to enjoy the virgin on her own. She’s tempted—she’d like to watch Joy be a slut—but the intrigue surrounding Lucky simply calls to her.

It’s not natural.

What is it?

It reminds her, frankly, of her Uncle Seb and his uncanny ability to win whatever his little heart desires. Jade watches from nearby to see if she can suss out his trick.

GM: Joy takes the virgin by the hand, rubs her hips against his flank, and makes off with him, promising to “blow your mind, sweetheart.” She’s all giggles and sly (or obvious) touches, constantly in motion, constantly teasing and caressing and flirting. The man stammers is assent as if unable to believe this is happening.

Lucky doesn’t seem to be palming cards or leveraging sleight of hand. If the dealers are in on it, they’re very good actors, because they’re watching him just as suspiciously. Jade can’t see anything untoward in what he’s doing.

Beyond the fact that he just keeps winning.

Or that he doesn’t seem to care how intently the casino is watching. He can’t possibly be unaware.

Celia: He’s still winning by the time the cashier finishes with her chips. Jade finally slides closer.

“You weren’t kidding.”

GM: “I was born lucky,” he replies breezily.

He counts his many, many winnings.

“Want to hit the slots?”

Celia: “You lucky there, too?” She sounds amused, but walks with him.

GM: He walks up to one, feeds in a coin, and pulls the lever. Three bananas turn up. Coins pour out.

“I’m lucky everywhere,” he grins.

“Want some of those? I can just get more.”

He indicates the coins.

Every employee eye in the casino is on him now.

Celia: “Lucky everywhere?” Jade eyes him as the coins pour out of the machine. It’s the sort of thing she’s only seen happen in movies. “How do I get some of that to rub off on me?”

GM: “Honestly?” smirks the kid. “You’re either born lucky or you’re not. Good things happen around me, though. Stick around and some will probably happen to you.”

Celia: “You mean like I’ll get to watch the security guys use your face as a punching bag?”

GM: His smirk doesn’t fade. “Didn’t I just say I was lucky at everything?”

Celia: “Even love?”

GM: “Yeah, I’ve banged a ton of girls.”

“Everyone likes a winner.”

Celia: “So you use your luck to rob casinos blind and get into girls’ pants.”

GM: “Yep. Can you think of a better use?”

Celia: Several.

“Probably. But I see the appeal.” Since he has none of his own.

GM: Lucky pulls the levers for a few more slots. He wins at every one.

“Hey, can I get a bag for all this?” he asks an employee.

“Of course, sir,” comes a very frosty response.

The pit boss and several security guards walk up to him.

“You need to come with us, sir.”

“Oh, sure,” he says absently. “Bag first, okay?”

Celia: Jade does that thing she does sometimes, the one that makes people like her and listen to her as if she has any right to be there. She says she wants to tag along and bats her lashes even though it isn’t strictly necessary.

GM: All of the employees prove more than amenable to her company.

“You’ll get your money from us, sir,” says the pit boss.

“Okay, that works,” shrugs Lucky.

Everyone goes back to what looks like the manager’s office. The manager is a bearded, balding, middle-aged man in a dark suit who does not look at all happy to see Lucky and Jade across from his desk.

“So,” he says, spreading his hands.

“You think we’re fucking idiots?”

“I’m just lucky. That’s all,” grins Lucky.

“You’re lucky,” says the manager.

“Yep,” says Lucky.

“You just won the privilege to play a very exclusive game with us, Gunner. You’re the only guy in the casino who gets to play it.”

“Really?” asks Gunner. He’s leaning back in his seat and not looking at the man anymore. He’s staring up at the eye in the sky.

The manager follows his gaze to the camera with a thin smile. “Yes, Gunner, we’re watching here.”

“We’re watching everywhere.”

Celia: Jade wants to play, too.

GM: “So what’s the game?” smiles Gunner, finally looking back at the man.

“We take turns beating your ass until you tell us why you’re so lucky,” says the manager with a very nasty smile. One of the guards grabs Gunner’s chair, spins it around, and throws a punch at him.

The man trips over his own feet and crashes flat on his face.

Celia: Oh.

Oh.

He’s actually lucky in all things.

GM: Gunner clucks his tongue.

“So, can I have my money now?”

Celia: What does lucky blood taste like? If she drinks from him, will she absorb some of that?

She doesn’t know, but she wants to find out.

GM: The manager rises from his seat.

The ceiling fan suddenly snaps off and crashes into him. The man goes down in a heap behind his desk.

Gunner looks at the other guard, who’s pulled a gun.

“Hey, are you allowed to have those?”

The man squeezes the trigger. The explosively loud bullet ricochets off the wall and hits him in the knee. He goes down in a screaming, bleeding heap.

“So, should I go to the cage?” Gunner asks, removing his hands from his ears. He covered them just in time.

“You… idiot…” rasps the manager’s voice from below his desk, “when our boss gets back…”

Jade smells blood from there.

“So he’s not here? Wow, lucky me,” smiles Gunner.

He looks at Jade. “Wanna visit the cage? I don’t think these guys actually have my money.”

“It’ll turn up, though.”

He peers down at the motionless first guard.

“Oh, wow. I think he actually knocked himself out. What a fucking clutz.”

Celia: Jade had nothing to do with this, but somehow she feels like Marcel is going to find a way to blame her for it. Maybe if she keeps tabs on the lucky guy he won’t have a reason to.

“How deliciously illuminating. I think you’re right that they don’t have your money; shall we?” She rises, stepping neatly over the prone man to move toward the door.

GM: The bleeding, sweating man on the grasps for his gun.

Gunner shakes his head at him.

“That’s a really bad idea.”

He kicks the gun away, slips an arm around Jade’s waist, and walks out with her.

“Believe me now?”

Celia: “You certainly caught my attention, and that’s lucky in and of itself.” She’s a shameless flatterer.

Of herself.

GM: Gunner laughs. “You wouldn’t be here with me if it wasn’t.”

Celia: “Does that mean anything we do together is bound to succeed?”

GM: “Basically, yeah.”

Celia: She can think of so many fun uses for a lucky friend.

Jade smiles winningly up at him as they traverse the floor and head to the cage, already running through a handful of scenarios.

Maybe she’ll keep him.

GM: Gunner smiles back and squeezes her ass. He walks up to the cage and asks for his winnings. The man on the inside saw him go off with the pit boss. Everyone saw him. He hands over the money in a bag.

Celia: “We should make you really lucky,” she murmurs into his ear as he collects his winnings.

GM: “Huh, I think the pit boss ran off,” says Gunner, striding towards the exit with her.

“How do you figure there?” he asks, amused.

“You wouldn’t believe some of the things that’ve happened to me.”

Celia: “No?”

“Tell me.”

GM: “Let me show you.”

Celia: “Show me?”

GM: The two walks down the riverboat casino’s ramp. Gunner walks dead into traffic, spreads his arms, and falls over onto the road like he’s doing a snow angel.

Traffic screams and blares. Tires squeal. Cars furiously honk. Drivers shout from their windows. Gunner just lies there.

More cars madly careen past. Horns ceaselessly blare. Some tires miss him by bare inches.

He just lies there. Untouched.

Celia: Jade waits safely on the sidewalk.

“That’s hardly proof,” she calls out to him, “since they’d avoid hitting you anyway.”

GM: Gunner gets up, takes his time dusting himself off, and walks back as passing drivers scream after him.

“We’re pretty past proof.”

“I’m invincible. I don’t think there’s anything that can actually hurt me.”

“Believe me, I’ve tested it. I’ve jumped off buildings. Tried to shoot myself with a gun. OD’d on drugs.”

“I think I’m some kind of god or something.”

Celia: “A god,” she repeats, amused.

GM: “You got a better name?”

Celia: “I don’t know if I believe you, is all. If you jumped into a bathtub with a toaster are you telling me that you wouldn’t die?”

GM: “Yep.”

Celia: “You’ve never gotten sick? Broken a bone?”

GM: “Nope.”

Celia: “Have you ever actually been sad?”

“Lost your keys?”

“Been broken up with?”

GM: “Oh, yeah. But I always find someone new.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever lost my keys.”

Celia: “Hm.” Jade eyes him. “Did you grow up in New Orleans? I can’t imagine you’ve been able to hit the casinos here without getting caught for that long.”

GM: He just laughs. “Get caught and… what?”

Celia: “They’d ban you, wouldn’t they?”

GM: “You think that’d stop me?”

“But no, I’m not from here. New Orleans was just a place I wanted to visit.”

Celia: “You in town for a while?”

GM: “Haven’t decided. Long as I have fun.”

“Where do you want to go bang?”

Celia: “My cabin is on the boat.” Jade eyes him. “Think you’re lucky enough to get out twice without the guards catching you?”

GM: “Sure am. You work for the owner or something?”

Celia: “His lover. I guess we’ll see if you can win me over.”

GM: He shrugs. “I will or I won’t. Either way, I’ll end up in someone’s bed.”

“I can say basically whatever I want to girls. If I really want pussy, some will fall into my lap.”

Celia: “Funny,” she says as they head back inside, “I have the same effect on men.”

GM: “It’s probably what you’re best at.” Gunner follows her in. Things have seemingly gone back to normal in the casino, though employees immediately start watching him. He’s seemingly unconcerned.

Celia: “Mmm,” Jade muses, watching the guards watch them. She winks at one. “You’re probably right. I suppose you’ll have to let me know how I compare to the bevy of other beautiful women who throw themselves at you.”

Where had Joy gotten to? Jade scans the casino floor as they go.

GM: Joy’s back at another table, shamelessly flirting with several men at once. The slut must have sucked off the virgin already.

Celia: Jade wiggles her fingers at the girl in a sort of “come hither” motion.

“You don’t mind sharing, do you?” she asks her would-be companion.

How lucky: two gorgeous girls and one man.

GM: Joy murmurs something to the men, fondles both of their dicks, and saunters on over.

“Just my luck,” grins Gunner.

Celia: “Look what I found,” Jade says to Joy, taking her by the arm, “the luckiest guy in the city.”

“And he’s all ours tonight.”

GM: “Lucky us,” giggles Joy.

“You don’t know the half of it,” smirks Gunner. “I’m Gunner.”

“I’m Joy. I’m a slut,” beams Joy.

“Wow, I really am lucky,” says Gunner.

Celia: “She gives great head,” Jade offers.

“Spends a lot of time on her knees, you see.”

GM: “I was born to be on my knees,” nods Joy. “I’ve already sucked off one guy tonight and I’m hungry for more.”

Celia: “And did he tell you how amazing you are with that pretty little mouth of yours?”

GM: “Oh yes, mistress, he was ecstatic. He blew the biggest load into my mouth and I swallowed it all.” Joy giggles again and brushes against Gunner, all smiles and tender caresses. “But enough talking, talking isn’t what my mouth is for. Getting dicks crammed into it is what my mouth is for. If I’m talking and not sucking a dick, something is really wrong.”

“She your sub or something?” Gunner asks Jade, amused.

He’s already very, very hard, though. Joy smiles and strokes his crotch.

Celia: “She’s my pet,” Jade tells him. “If she’s good tonight she gets a little collar and everything. Isn’t that right, sweetling?”

GM: “That’s right, mistress. You can lead me around on a little leash and everything,” beams Joy.

Celia: “Only if she’s a good girl,” Jade says to Lucky. “Otherwise she gets the boot. You’ll have to let me know how she compares, too. Lucky was just telling me about all the women who throw themselves at him because he’s such a lucky guy. I don’t think any of them were as cute as us, though.”

GM: “Or as eager,” grins Gunner. “Lead the way, ladies.”

Celia: Jade leads the way toward Joy’s cabin, giving the girl a look as if to ask if it’s okay that they take Lucky back there.

GM: She nods, but also taps her canines, shakes her head, and mouths ‘permission.’

Celia: Jade knows the rules, but she appreciates the warning regardless. She gives a tiny nod and a shrug in response; maybe she’ll sip from Joy once she’s had a taste to see if they both get lucky from the kine’s blood.

It doesn’t take long to reach the cabin. Jade has Joy let them in and closes the door behind the three of them.

She doesn’t lock it, just in case Joy’s other lover decides he wants to get in on the action with Lucky.

GM: Gunner pushes them both onto the bed and starts hungrily pulling off the girls’ clothes.

Joy goes straight for his cock.

Celia: There’s not much to pull off beneath Jade’s dress; when the material clings so soundly to her body she doesn’t bother wearing anything beneath it to break up the clean lines. She lays Gunner out on the bed while Joy toys with him and searches briefly for the handcuffs to bind his wrists to the posters.

GM: “Ooh, nothing underneath,” Gunner grins. He starts to pleasure her breasts with his mouth while Joy sucks his cock. He doesn’t fight, though, when Jade cuffs him to the bed. Just grins.

After all, can they keep him there if he really wants to leave?

Celia: They’ll find out shortly, won’t they?

But why would he want to leave?

He’s got a girl on his knees for him.

And another one stretched above where he’s sprawled out on his back, teasing him by letting him kiss her mouth, then her neck, then her nipples, then finally positioning herself over his face so he can use his tongue between her legs while Joy takes him into her mouth.

GM: Gunner licks, nips, and tugs Jade’s nipples, burying his face against her breasts. He hungrily eats out her pussy and sounds like he’s thoroughly enjoying himself from the way Joy sucks his cock. Maybe she’s just great at blowjobs.

But Jade can smell the blood in her mouth.

It’s like nothing she’s smelled before. Somehow… electric.

Celia: She wants it. It isn’t fair that Joy gets to take his blood when Jade was the one to lure him back here. Joy hadn’t done that. She’d gone off to fuck the virgin and Jade had followed Gunner and stayed near his side and brought him back to the ship. Even his attention to her clit with his tongue doesn’t distract her from the scent of the blood.

Her fangs grow long in her mouth as she pictures herself leaning down to take a little nibble for herself.

There’s a compromise in here somewhere, isn’t there? Joy takes from Gunner. Jade takes from Joy. It’s a second-hand, vicarious sort of hit, but maybe it will be enough to scratch that itch. She bends at the waist, keeping herself positioned above Gunner, and pulls Joy’s hair to the side to expose the back of her neck. The tips of her fangs dig into skin.

It’s not technically poaching.

Blood wells. Jade licks it clean.

GM: Joy’s blood, or rather, Gunner’s, tastes like… gold.

Electricity.

Slowly but surely, an exhilarating sense of infinite opportunity steals through Jade. She feels as though she can do anything, anything at all… and the impossibly seems suddenly not only possible, but positively easy…

But it’s only for a moment, and gone just as fast she pulls back from Jade’s neck. There’s only a pleasant buzz on her tongue, a sense of having touched something huge, something incredible… and walking away with a thimbleful.

Joy continues to rapturously suck Gunner’s cock.

Celia: Liquid luck.

It’s like liquid courage, only Jade knows that no matter what she attempts to do it’s going to turn out just right. Not just to her, either; it’s not the sort of thing that makes a sorority girl think she killed it at karaoke when she’s never been able to hold a tune. It’s the sort of thing that makes the same girl actually kill it when a record label exec just happens to be drinking at the bar and “likes the cut of her jib, why don’t you sign right there on the dotted line sweetheart so we can make all your dreams come true?”

It’s the sort of thing that puts a tingle in her spine and a fire in her core. It’s gold and diamonds and every home run and royal flush and winning lottery ticket.

Maybe he is a god. Maybe he’s the god of luck. Maybe he’s the god of luck and she’s the goddess of love and beauty and together they can make lucky, beautiful things happen.

Maybe the luckiest thing that could ever happen to him is that he meets Jade and she gives him immortality in exchange for the gold in his veins.

She struck gold.

And she keeps digging.

She doesn’t let up; she drinks from Joy until Joy ceases drinking from Gunner.

GM: She doesn’t.

But Joy promptly turns and throws her off.

“You got a taste already,” she purrs. “Rest is mine. Only so much I can take while playing it safe.”

She rapturously licks her lips. “God, what the fuck even is he…?”

“Hey, cock here, requires sucking,” says Gunner.

Celia: Her claws almost come out when Joy tosses her aside.

She almost throws down with the greedy bitch who thinks to deny her the spoils of her oh-so-clever hunt.

Only almost, though. Waste of luck, isn’t it? She can think of so many better uses for what thrums through her veins right now.

She leans in only to lick closed the holes her fangs left behind.

“You heard him, slut. Put that mouth off yours to use.”

GM: “With pleasure, mistress,” Joy beams, all submissive smiles again as she wraps her lips back around Gunner’s lick. There’s absolutely nothing fake about her pleasure. She pleases him real good. Gunner is gasping, straining against the cuffs, his toes all but curling.

“Oh, fuck, you’re good…!”

Celia: Jade’s probably better.

But she isn’t so crass as to say it. She watches instead: watches her tease him with a tongue along the shaft, watches her use her fangs to tear tiny little cuts into his flesh so she can lap at the blood, watches her close her lips around the head of his cock. She takes her pleasure from his mouth instead, muffling the cries about how good Joy is, putting his tongue exactly where she wants it to be: worshiping her.

And when she finally does find her release it’s the kind that makes her toes curl and her (useless) breath catch in her chest and drenches him with the evidence of a job well done.

Joy can’t take that away from her.

GM: “What should we do with you…” purrs Joy as the three lie spent in one another’s arms. Wet in one of their cases, sweating in another one’s, and satisfied for all three. There’s cum all over Joy’s face, but she daintily removes as much of his blown load as she can with her fingers and slowly licks it up. She swallows it down with an audible gulp, as if to give him the best of both worlds.

“Marcel should be back soon. It’s funny he isn’t here already, he normally isn’t late for anything.”

Celia: “Mm,” Jade muses, trailing a hand down Gunner’s chest, “maybe he’d be mad about this one robbing him blind and his luck saw to it that he was kept away.”

GM: “Or maybe it’ll be my luck he gets back and sees me in bed with his girl, before I get away again,” Gunner remarks lazily.

“Someone’s confident,” purrs Joy.

“It’s easy to be confident when you’re lucky,” says Gunner.

“Why isn’t anyone doing anything if you robbed the casino blind?”

Celia: “They tried.”

GM: “Maybe they’ll try again,” says Gunner. “Or maybe they just don’t know I’m here. Lost me in the crowd or something.”

“You never know what luck’s gonna be.”

“Guess not,” says Joy, resting her head against his shoulder now that his cum’s all licked up.

“You’re so tasty… I really wonder what we should do with you…”

Celia: Jade knows what she wants to do with him.

But she doesn’t share her thoughts.

She doesn’t even think her thoughts.

She fills her mind with images of watching Joy suck off a line of cocks while chips rain down around them.

GM: “Maybe we should get in touch with Marcel, just to see what happens…”

Celia: “Give him a ring, then.” Jade trails a hand down Gunner’s chest. “Let him know we have a new toy for him to play with. Maybe he’ll have you bend him over for being a bad boy.” She nips at his neck, careful not to draw blood.

“I’d offer to blow him while we wait to end that age-old debate about who does it better, but you’ve got the advantage of equipment there.”

GM: Gunner frowns.

“Er, what?”

Celia: Jade giggles, pressing a finger to Gunner’s lips.

“Shh, it’s okay.” She shifts, moving over him to straddle his hips. “Joy’s really good with her mouth, but I blow her out of the water when it comes to being on top.”

GM: Gunner’s erection is getting increasingly limp.

“You said equipment…” he says with a long look at Joy.

Joy gives a delighted giggle.

She lifts her dress and pulls down her panties.

Gunner blanches.

“You… FREAK WHORE…!”

Joy giggles again. “And you loved every moment of it. We could tell.”

Celia: “It’s okay, baby, don’t be too upset with yourself. Joy’s mouth is magical. But so is my pussy, and all you had was a taste.” She wiggles a little, using a hand to stroke him firm again. “Don’t you want the real thing now?”

GM: Gunner twists and pulls at the cuffs. They come off.

“Oh no!” exclaims Joy.

“You’re fucking SICK!” yells Gunner, rolling off the bed and pulling up his pants.

Celia: He throws Jade off of him as easily as he gets out of the cuffs. She lands on the other side of the bed, giggling all the while, watching in amusement as he gets dressed.

“He’s so cute when he’s flustered,” she says to Joy. “Get Marcel in here, pet, he’ll be interested in seeing this.”

GM: “Sure thing, mistress,” giggles Joy, tapping off a text.

Celia: “Come back to bed, Gunner, let me show you how it’s done.” She pats the spot beside her, reaching toward him with the innate gifts of the blood. Her clan’s gift. Her gift. Her gift more than anyone’s. Seduction, the thing that makes men want to bury themselves between her thighs and women fall to their knees in submission. Seldom used—when has she needed the assistance to make someone want to worship her?—but still a valuable tool in her kit all the same.

That sense of heady desire flares from the very core of her being, unfurling like a mist to surround him, to fill him with that same sense of lust and craving that ensnares so many others with just a tilt of her head and crook of her finger. Lucky guy, isn’t he, to have such an alluring woman like her interested in him.

Her smile promises such a good time, if only he’ll come back to bed.

GM: Gunner stares for a moment, then pulls his pants off. He pushes Jade down against the bed and buries his now-firm cock between her thighs.

Celia: With luck—and they seem to have that in spades—Marcel won’t see Jade rutting with the kine like some sort of breather herself. But she can’t think about that now. Now she’s focused on absolutely blowing his mind with her body. Maybe it’s him. Maybe it’s her. Maybe it’s a combination of them both, or the fact that there’s danger lurking, or the effects of the star mode she whacked him with; whatever it is, he hits all the right spots on her and she hits all the right spots on him, and they fight and tussle and grapple for dominance. Jade lets him take top for a time, then flips him over and shows him how it’s done. Like this, she says with her hips and her hands and her mouth.

She lets him finish inside—her cunt is as dead as the rest of her despite its warmth—and feels it trickle out of her when she finally rolls off.

GM: They don’t fight alone, either. Joy clambers on too. Gunner starts again with instinctive revulsion, then Joy smiles and touches his cheek. All his disgust melts away. She sits on top of his face and lets Gunner suck her cock while she buries her own face between Jade’s breasts, licking, nipping, biting, and sucking. The coppery scent of vitae fills the air while while her fingers play alongside Gunner’s cock, mercilessly teasing and rubbing Jade’s sweet little nub.

Gunner feels pretty exhausted, though, and isn’t the best partner. His thrusts lack vigor and he seems relieved to just lie there as Jade takes top and does the heavy lifting. His face is pale. Joy did feed on him fairly deeply.

Celia: It’s enough for her, at least; she finds release between his cock and Joy’s fingers, and when it’s over she’s covered in cum and sweat and blood and—

“—desperately need a shower,” she says to Joy, “before Marcel arrives. Both of us.”

GM: “Oh, I think I rather enjoy looking at you three this way,” comes a man’s smiling voice.

Baton Rouge’s prince-in-exile is a tall and handsome man with rectangular features, a prominent nose, dark caramel-brown hair sculpted into a short mustache and goatee, and deep blue eyes. Two gold crucifix earrings hang from his ears. Jade’s never seen him without them. He’s dressed in a tailored navy silk jacket that flatters his trim physique, tan slacks, and a white dress shirt without a tie.


He glances at the large bag full of cash, then smiles back at Gunner. “It’d be my pleasure if you and your friends could join me for a late dinner. The Alystra’s biggest winner deserves some comps, after all.”

Gunner looks at Marcel with something between amusement and curiosity. “Your people tried to beat the shit out of me for cheating.”

“Yes, I’m terribly sorry about that,” replies Marcel. “They’re fairly zealous. Have to be in, this business. Gamblers will always look for a way to cheat. But I’ve reviewed the tapes, talked with my people, and I’ve concluded that you owe your streak of good fortune simply to being very, very lucky. There’s no rule against being lucky.”

“I’m glad you see it that way,” replies Gunner. “I am lucky. Very, very lucky.”

“As this encounter rather proves, doesn’t it?” Marcel agrees amiably. “Come, why don’t you three put on your clothes—or leave them off, as you prefer. We won’t be disturbed.”

Celia: Naked, covered in blood, and smelling of sex isn’t exactly how Jade had wanted to greet the prince-in-exile.

Well, that’s not true. Naked and covered in blood seems appropriate given what Josua has told her about the lick; it’s the sex thing that gives her pause, and maybe the fact that he heard her call him “Marcel” to Josua, but a quick glance at his face—smiling—tells her that maybe he’s not bothered by it.

Maybe she’s gotten lucky.

Jade winks at the prince in lieu of an obsequious bow in front of the mortal—Masquerade and all that—and slips into her dress. She’s not modest or shy about her body, but she’d gone through all the effort of selecting the gown and by God Marcel will see her in it.

GM: The ex-prince smiles back, then looks at Joy. “This is a new look on you.”

“Does it please His Majesty?” smiles Joy, tilting her head and placing a hand against her hip. She’s still wearing her dress.

“Oh, yes.”

“Are you a king or something?” asks Gunner, amused.

He’s fairly sluggish in pulling on his clothes.

“Or something,” agrees Marcel. “Don’t forget your money. Leaving that much on the floor is tempting fate.”

Gunner puts on his shirt and slings the bag over his shoulder. The three proceed to a private dining room with a lone table seated next to a window overlooking of the dark Mississippi. Staff bring in plates of food that looks like it’s from the buffet. They don’t give funny looks or ask questions about the three’s messy state.

Gunner plops down heavily in his chair and digs heartily into the shrimp and sausage jambalaya. “God, that took a lot out of me.”

“I can’t blame you, those ladies look very vigorous,” smiles Marcel. He doesn’t move to eat any of the food on his plate. “Salt?”

“Sure,” says Gunner between a mouthful.

Marcel moves to pass him a shaker, but knocks it over. Salt spills all over the tablecloth.

“Oh, dear. I hope you don’t believe in bad luck.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t,” smiles Gunner between a bite of shrimp.

“Really?” asks Marcel, before a broad-shouldered and well-muscled man smashes Gunner’s face onto the table. The grim-faced, suit-wearing man kicks out Gunner’s chair, then delivers two more brutally hard kicks to the man’s gut after he hits the floor. Gunner gags and jerks.

“You should.”

Celia: Jade ceases pushing the food around her plate at the commotion, looking first to Gunner and then to Josua. She sighs heavily, forcing the air from her lungs.

“How silly of us,” she says to the boy-turned-girl, “there are plenty of mirrors in your cabin we could have broken to save His Majesty the trouble.”

GM: “Yes, that’d have rather done the trick too,” says Marcel.

Joy holds a hand to her mouth and giggles. She hasn’t touched her food either.

Marcel glances at the large, suited man.

“Get my money back where it belongs.”

The man picks up the bag of cash and tosses it to another employee, who disappears through the door.

“Wh…” gasps Gunner. He tries to rise to his feet, but the suited man delivers another hard kick to his kidneys. He curls up and moans.

“I’m afraid luck can only get you so far without brains, Mr. Gunner,” says Marcel. “And by my estimate you’re in rather short supply of both right now.”

“Not a good place to be, given how much you owe me.”

“Owe… you?” Gunner gasps out from the floor.

“Yes.”

“Got back your… mon… how th’ fuck di…”

“So I did. But you also owe me for my time and trouble, my injured employees, and not least of all, my casino’s loss of reputation. It’s your ‘luck’ no one heard the gunshot, but everyone saw you cheat. This sort of thing looks very bad. At least with most forms of cheating, the entire casino can’t tell when someone thinks they’re getting away with it.”

“And since I owe Miss Kalani for bringing you back after you got away, we’ll put you on the hook to her too.”

“Ooh, someone’s gonna get it,” giggles Joy.

Celia: She almost feels bad for the kine; it’s easy to imagine that someone as old as Marcel has plenty of ways to make a man pay, none of them involving dollars or cents.

Waste of blood though, isn’t it? Especially that blood.

Perhaps she has a solution.

In fact, she does have a solution.

“Madam Alsten-Pirrie has shown me a number of decidedly delicious punishments for those with grasping hands, my prince. I’d be delighted to take him off of yours and mete out justice on your behalf.” She smiles down at the man on the floor. “I’d offer something in return, of course.”

GM: “No doubt you’d be equally happy to make sure his blood doesn’t go to waste, Miss Kalani,” says Marcel with a knowing smile.

“But I’m a reasonable prince. Go on.”

“Listen… I can, get you money…” wheezes Gunner.

“I’m sure you can,” Marcel says to the kine. “But I have money, and if I let you go, I’m fairly confident I’m never going to see you again.”

“You’ll probably catch a lucky break, if any of us go looking for you.”

Gunner doesn’t deny it.

Joy clicks her tongue.

Celia: Jade smiles at Marcel’s words, giving a little shrug of her shoulders.

“Waste not, want not. Josua has told me you have a little problem with the rattlers. One of them owes me a favor; perhaps I can be of some assistance there.”

GM: “So you’d trade me the favor for Gunner’s blood,” considers Marcel. “Who’s the rattler?”

“Bl… ood?” Gunner gets out.

“Oh yes, Mr. Gunner. Your blood is worth a great deal,” says the ex-prince.

“You’ll be paying me back with it, one way or another.”

Celia: “He’s new,” Jade says, lifting her shoulders with another shrug. “But if you’d rather not take a gamble there, Your Majesty, then I understand if you’d rather utilize my skill set to find out what you need to know.”

She has already proved her worth, hasn’t she?

GM: “Yes, I only gamble recreationally,” says Marcel. “There’s no gambling at all in running a casino. Take it from me, Mr. Gunner: the house always wins in the end.”

“That’s why you should just let the house fuck you,” agrees Joy.

Gunner gives a moan.

“There’s a variety of ways I can use the luck in your blood,” says Marcel. “I’m undecided on how, though.”

“I’ll tell you what, Miss Kalani,” he says. “I’m a reasonable Kindred, and you brought Mr. Gunner back after he gave my people the slip, so I’ll consider half the blood originally in his veins to be yours.”

“Help me with my cottonmouth problem, and I’ll tell you just what Mr. Gunner is, what ways there are to use his luck—beyond the obvious—and what ways there are to witlessly spoil it. For us as well as him.”

“Deal?”

Celia: Jade only has to consider it for a moment before finally nodding her head.

“You have yourself a deal, Prince Guilbeau.”

GM: “Wait,” Gunner wheezes, raising a placating hand. “What if-”

“Be quiet,” orders Marcel, his voice heavy.

Gunner’s mouth works. No sound comes out. Joy smirks. Marcel turns back to Jade, then dismisses the suited man (ghoul?) with a wave.

“People like Mr. Gunner, you’ve probably guessed, are naturally blessed with good fortune.”

“Some say they’ve made deals with a crossroads devil. Some say they’ve made a lucky prayer or tossed a coin into a fountain at some Japanese deity’s shrine. Some say they were born under a lucky comet. Some say they’ve ritually stolen their good fortune from others. And some just say they’re naturally lucky bastards.”

“Could be some, all, or none of those things. Who knows.”

“Don’t ask your average Tremere about them. Most warlocks probably won’t know a thing.”

“They’re drawn to casinos, though, for obvious reasons. Like flies to honey. Mr. Gunner isn’t the first one I’ve dealt with, though he is one of the stronger ones. They aren’t all as lucky as him.”

“There’s no reliable way to detect them that I know of. The smart ones, they play some losing hands, win a jackpot, play some more losing hands, and then never come back.”

“Of course, most of them aren’t smart. They live on the edge. And why shouldn’t they? Their luck always carries them through. They have no reason to change their behavior if they never experience consequences.”

Marcel smiles down at the curled-up and silently mouthing Gunner.

“If.”

“Omens of bad luck neutralize their powers, for a little while. Spilled salt, broken mirrors, black cats, walking under a ladder, you name it.”

“There’s no power without a catch. For them, us, anyone.”

Celia: “Everything has a price,” Jade agrees with a small smile. “Perhaps he should have realized that when I went to fetch him and brought in another just as lovely.” A nod toward Joy.

“He’s human, though? Or something different?”

GM: “Besides being preternaturally lucky, he’s as human as anyone not in this room.”

Celia: Jade nods. She leans back in her chair, contemplating the man on the ground and the exiled prince in front of her.

“Bit of a gold mine, isn’t he.” How fortunate for Marcel that Jade brought him back and all but hand-delivered him. “And aside from robbing casinos—” which Jade has no need for, since she all but cleaned house at the poker table on skill rather than luck and has no desire to wind up on the other end of that large ghoul’s fists despite her natural hardiness “—how might one best utilize that luck?”

GM: “There are four ways.”

“One, we can simply drink it. Some of the good luck will rub off on us. Outrageously good things can happen, or calamities can be turned aside. The deeper the drink, the stronger the luck. And before you ask, keeping kine like Mr. Gunner chained up in a dungeon surrounded by spilled salt so we can drink them forever doesn’t work out. Too much bad luck rubs off.”

“Secondly, there’s ghouling them. That makes their luck stick around quite a bit longer than drinking it. Eventually, though, that luck fades away too. Something within our blood just doesn’t agree with it. The Embrace would probably kill it even quicker, but that’s conjecture on my part.”

“Third, there’s stealing their luck and binding it to a talisman, like a rabbit’s foot. As long as you carry it, you’ll be lucky. The good luck never seems to extend to keeping the talisman, though. They have ways of getting lost after a while. But they’re usually good for more luck than just drinking it.”

“Fourth, there’s stealing their luck and transferring it to another person. A ghoul works like I’ve described. An ordinary kine, though, would enjoy Mr. Gunner’s good fortune for the rest of their life.”

Gunner’s eyes widen with horror as he reflexively tries to rise, earning another swift kick to his belly. The large ghoul’s foot stomps down over his back several times for good measure. Hard. His mouth works in a silent moan.

“Oh, yes, perhaps that’d be the most cruel punishment of all,” says Marcel.

“Letting you walk out of here, alive and whole, with only a few bruises and edits to your memories. But without your luck.”

He smiles down at the beaten man.

“And what are you without your luck, Mr. Gunner? Not much at all, I’m inclined to think.”

Joy titters.

Celia: There goes her plan to keep him locked in a room with an assortment of black cats.

“If you bind his luck to another kine, you’d run into similar problems as before: you can’t keep them. Unless they already like you and want to stick around, or owe everything they are to you…”

Or they love you unconditionally.

So much so that they’ll submit to being a ghoul and getting a tattoo and feeding you and learning how to fence if it means getting to keep their memories of what you are, and maybe a little bit of luck is enough to get them off the blood that hooks them so they can enjoy a mortal life without risking the Masquerade because, lucky them, no one ever looks their way.

“Can it be split between multiple talismans or people? If he’s as strong as you say, Prince Guilbeau.”

GM: “His probably can, yes,” says Marcel. “They’ll be individually less potent, though. You have the same amount of luck, it’s just a question of where you want to spread it around.”

Celia: “A ritual, is it? The stealing and binding?”

GM: “Yes, it is.”

“That brings us to our next order of business.”

“I’m going to stash away Mr. Gunner someplace safe and secure. I’m going to bleed him periodically, and he is going to make me very lucky. I’ll give it a week before his luck starts to atrophy, and probably a month before it’s gone completely.”

“You have that long to bring me actionable information on my cottonmouth problem. If you don’t, you’ll owe me a different favor in return for the information I’ve given you. "

“If you can go one further, and actually lift Marie out of her torpor, I’ll do you one better.”

“I’ll give you all that’s left of Mr. Gunner and his luck. You can drink him, or I’ll perform the ritual on a talisman, ghoul, or kine of your choice.”

“Also, if you’re tempted to steal him from me—don’t take this personally, I do run a casino, and you’re friends with a master thief—I’m probably the only Kindred in the city who knows the ritual. If you manage to spirit Mr. Gunner away, all he’ll be good for is drinking.”

Celia: “Not to mention it will sour all future arrangements between the pair of us, and there’s still so much we can do for each other.” Her smile is full of promises. “The earlier mentioned half,” she asks, “what of that?”

GM: “You’ll get that over the next few nights. Josua’s already bled him deeply and I don’t want to kill him from overfeeding.”

Joy titters again and strokes Marcel’s arm. “Just wait until you try him, my prince. He tastes incredible.”

Celia: “Will you tell me about Marie? What you’ve tried? What you know? I’d hate to waste time treading the same ground.”

GM: Marcel does so. Marie and Anthony were out hunting together when they were attacked by Setites, who torpored Marie and almost slew Anthony. Marcel has fed Marie his blood to no effect, and he’s fed her blood from another Kindred of comparable age, just to be sure the problem didn’t lie with his vitae. Both have had no effect.

“I think the Setites cursed her somehow,” he says. “The serpents who torpored her would likely know more. Perhaps how to lift it.”

“I’ve spoken to blood sorcerers from the Sanctified, the Anarchs, and the Crones, but they’ve been of little assistance.”

“And the Tremere will not help Marie.”

“So that leaves the serpents who did this to her, but my reach in the Quarter is limited.”

Celia: “The Tremere won’t help Marie?” Jade lifts her brows at that.

GM: “She’s a renegade from the Pyramid under sentence of death.”

Celia: “That sounds like an interesting story.”

GM: “Yes, it is. But it’s decidedly moot until she wakes up.”

Celia: Jade assures him that she will do what she can for Marie. His influence might not stretch far enough into the Quarter to be useful, but hers certainly does.

And she has just the friend to speak to about this.

---

Wednesday night, 16 March 2016, PM

Celia: It’s with an additional spring in her step that Jade takes her leave of Marcel for the evening, their plans to share the prince-in-exile put on hold with the appearance of Gunner and the oh-so-tempting bait he’d dangled in front of her. The two Toreador return to Josua’s cabin to retrieve her things and collect her painting.

GM: Josua, still dressed as Joy, reports to his/her chagrin that Jade’s portrait has gone missing.

“Believe me, I’m as pissed off about it as you are,” s/he pouts.

“It was a really good portrait and I was going to charge you a decent amount for it.”

The pair are interrupted, though, when Josua/Joy has to run to the bathroom to vomit up the cum s/he’s swallowed.

Celia: “…it’s missing?” She waits in the doorway while he vomits.

GM: Josua/Joy wipes his/her mouth, and with it, some of the lipstick. Josua seems like he’s coming back.

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I have no idea where it’s gone.”

Celia: “How could it have gone missing..?”

GM: “I wish I knew. It was such a good painting!”

Celia: “It’s a casino. Did you check the tapes?”

GM: “Oh, that’s an idea. I hadn’t gotten around to it.”

“Ok, I’ll ask the guys there to take a look.”

Celia: “Thanks. When did it disappear?”

GM: “Hm, I think a few nights ago?”

Celia: “Someone ransacked your room a few nights ago and you haven’t gotten around to finding out who?”

GM: “Well, you know, things and people to do.”

“And the painting was all that disappeared, it’s not like they tore up my room.”

Celia: “And you don’t think that’s weird?”

GM: Josua slips out of the dress and folds it up.

“Well, stuff gets stolen. It was a really good portrait.”

Celia: “Yes,” Jade agrees, “that’s why I want it back.”

GM: “I’ll get it back, don’t worry. I want you to have it just as much as you do.” He takes off his bra and panties.

Celia: “Didn’t you have other work go missing?” Jade crosses her arms. The word ‘hunter’ had been thrown around over that.

GM: “I did, yeah. Marcel’s really worried about it.” Josua unbuckles the straps to his heels.

“But nothing’s happened, so how bad can it be?”

Celia: “Hunters.”

“Or, you know, your sire.”

GM: “Maybe if I’m lucky they’ll ash her.”

“And I am lucky. I drank a fair bit of that guy’s blood.”

Celia: “No,” she corrects, “what I meant was maybe it’s her keeping tabs on you.”

GM: Josua pauses at that.

Something passes in his eyes.

“Okay, I’ll talk to the people who watch the tapes, first thing.”

Celia: “If you want assistance tracking someone, let me know.”

GM: “I will. Marcel would be, uh, really upset if he knew this happened again.”

Celia: “Especially if it means his security failed to prevent it.”

GM: “So I can’t really ask him to have his people look for it.”

“He’s already got them looking for my sire, anyway.”

Celia: “Might be worth letting him know his place is compromised.”

GM: “Maybe after we get the portrait back. Less bad news.”

Celia: Jade rubs a hand across her face.

“I have enough going on without getting picked up by hunters.”

GM: Josua steps behind her and rubs her shoulders.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get it back. That’s a really smart idea with the casino cameras.”

Celia: “Unless she’s shadow dancing, or morphed, or came in through your window…”

GM: “You’re way too sexy to get picked up by van helsings.”

Celia: “Mmm, did I tell you about the pair who found me and how I convinced them to fuck and let me go?”

GM: Josua laughs. “Oh my god, for real?”

Celia: “‘Sex ritual,’” Jade tells him with a roll of her eyes.

GM: His hands wander down her breasts and hips.

“Oh, I’d like to do a sex ritual.”

Celia: “I bet you would,” Jade murmurs, leaning back against him.

GM: “You’re sex on legs, you know that? Someone could spend all day fucking you. And me. We have so much in common.”

He hugs her close, back against his chest. His mouth trails her neck, planting licks, nips, and kisses.

Celia: “No wonder Marcel didn’t tumble with us. He wouldn’t have gotten anything done the rest of the night.” Her head tilts to the side, exposing the long line of her neck for his mouth. “You’re insatiable.”

GM: “Only because you’re so, so much to state with… someone could fuck you forever, and it’d never get old… I can’t get enough of you… and I’m such a sexy sexy slut, you can’t get enough of me…”

He tugs her back to the bedroom, naked but for his wig. He falls back onto the bed with her, his supple hands caressing up her belly to squeeze and pinch her breasts. Then he crawls around and buries his mouth between her thighs in a 69 position. His firm cock rubs against her face.

Celia: It doesn’t rub against her face for long; within seconds she takes it into her mouth. Her fangs puncture his skin near the head of his cock, but she brings the whole thing into her mouth to show him once more that his words about it “never getting old” are absolutely spot-on.

GM: Josua’s fangs pierce the flesh above her clit even as his tongue seeks out her sweetest spot. The minutes pass, and her lover’s mouth leaves her screaming and clutching the sheets as wave after wave of sensation rocks through her loins, sating the Beast and the Man (or Woman) in equal measure. His hot blood shoots down her throat like cum as she rapturously sucks his cock. She can see why Alana gave the most enthusiastic blowjob she’s ever seen (from someone else). It’s just too bad all the things she can do with her tongue don’t do anything for him: now that she’s had a cock and had it sucked she does have a better idea of how to pleasure someone else’s.

She sups from him, and he sups from her. The two’s blood becomes as one. They leave each other in a spent and sated pile on the bed. That tingling sense of infinite possibility lingers on her tongue like electricity… and stronger than it did before.

Celia: She’s giddy by the end of it, her body a bundle of sensitive nerves and bliss that might have once left her lightheaded and dizzy and absolutely unable to bear the thought of prying herself out of bed to face the night. Now, though, now she’s electric; now she’s charged; now she’s fire.

She can do anything.

And there’s more. So much more waiting for her, all she has to do is skin some snakes for Marcel.

Marcel. Now there’s a lick she can get behind. Maybe she’ll reach out to her contacts in Baton Rouge, see if she can’t find out how to put him back into power up there, split her time between the cities on the lap of luxury in both. Pity he’d thrown in with Vidal; he’s so well-suited to the Quarter, isn’t it?

She giggles at the thought. She barely knows him. She’s just imagining.

“Do you think he liked me?” she asks Josua when she finally takes to her feet, reaching for the understated clothes she had arrived in.

GM: “I think so,” says Josua, leaning his head against his fist and laying another hand over his thigh. “I mean, maybe it’s a little early, since you haven’t even fucked him yet, but he’s definitely interested if you can help out Marie.”

“And you did bring back that Gunner guy.”

“I mean, probably the only way he’d be happier there is if you brought him the other one.”

Celia: “What other one?”

GM: “The other lucky guy.”

“He mentioned that to me once, a while back. He said there was one in the city.”

“Could be a lucky girl, for all I know.”

“But they’re smart and subtle and haven’t ever come to the casino.”

Celia: “Hm. How’s he know about them then?”

GM: “Couldn’t tell you. He just said he had his ‘sources.’”

Celia: “Mm, the old licks and their secrets.” Jade thinks she might know someone who knows someone who might be lucky.

GM: “But whatever. This Gunner guy is really lucky. Marcel’s really happy to have his hands on him.”

Celia: “I’m glad I lured him back in, then.”

GM: “Serves him right, robbing the casino. That was a really stupid idea.”

Celia: “Marcel was right about playing it smart. Play some losing hands, at least. Don’t brag about winning.”

GM: “Yeah, I remember. He said to play some losing hands, then win a jackpot, then lose some more, then never come back. That seems pretty smart.”

Celia: “He was pretty smug about the whole thing.”

GM: “He is Ventrue,” laughs Josua.

Celia: “Oh, I meant Gunner.”

GM: “Oh, I thought you thought Marcel was smug.”

Celia: “Marcel was… surprisingly approachable.”

GM: “I think he’s a little smug.”

“He’d be a great prince, wouldn’t he?”

“Gunner was pretty stupid, you’re right. I don’t think he even knew about vampires.”

Celia: “Well, neither did either of us prior to our Embrace.”

GM: “Marcel says a bunch of licks have tried to rob him before. That they see the casino as this great place for fast cash.”

“But he knows pretty much all the standard tricks, and he automatically assumes that any lick with a really lucky streak is cheating.”

Celia: “Uh oh. Is he going to send someone to break my kneecaps because I won at poker?” She sounds more amused than worried.

“I avoided the other table games so he wouldn’t think I was stealing from him.”

GM: “I don’t think so. He knows that game’s more skill than luck.”

“He’s okay if licks play at his casino, anyway, he just says they should view it as a fun evening rather than a place to make lots of money.”

Celia: “Never gamble what you can’t afford to lose and all that. It could be easy, though. To dip into their heads and see their cards, that sort of thing.”

“Stupid, though. Wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of whatever he could dish out. Unless it’s in like… a hot way.” Jade wiggles her brows at Josua as she finishes dressing.

“I’m going to head out. Let me know about the painting and what you find on the security footage.”

GM: Josua grins as he watches her pull on her clothes.

“This is like covering great art. It’s a public service if everyone gets to see it.”

“Oh well, you picked a good time. I don’t think Marcel’s really in the mood for sex right now.”

“Thinking about Gunner and his casino and everything.”

“That’s how you know he’s a blue blood and not a torrie, fucking always comes second.”

Celia: “What a terrible way to prioritize.” Jade smirks at him. “I won’t take it personally that we didn’t end up in bed, then.”

GM: “I know. It really is.”

“Feel free to send back Celia to pick up all your clothes.”

Celia: “So you can fuck her again?”

GM: “Why else?” he grins.

Celia: “I’m sure she’d enjoy that.”

GM: “You know I’d show her a great time.”

“There’s just nothing like the sight of a famous breather on their knees. You must fuck her all the time too.”

Celia: Jade just grins at him.

“You’ve no idea.”

---

Previous, by Narrative: Story Thirteen, Celia VIII
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Previous, by Character: Story Thirteen, Celia VIII
Next, by Character: Story Thirteen, Celia X

“Just look at what you’ve done to us."
Josua Cambridge

---

Wednesday evening, 16 March 2016

GM: Celia wakes up in her lover’s arms. Her phone, like so often, has a number of text messages.

The oldest, from Logan, reads Robby is a cuck.

Celia: Celia exhales sharply through her nose at the message. Quietly, though. She thinks maybe she woke up before Roderick for once. Not that her half-laugh would wake him.

lol why?

GM: Her brother does not immediately reply.

A later one, from Emily, reads Oh man. Story for you later tonight.

Celia: Oh boy.

Oh boy.

Are you bringing Robby to dinner?

GM: A third, from her mom, reads Would you like to swing by later tonight, sweetie? Maybe I can have a better dinner for you then :)

nah just us + mom + Lucy + Dani, Emily texts back.

Celia: oh okay. i wanted u 2 meet someone but can do another day

GM: can do tonight if you want, it’s just a casual dinner

Celia: “You up?” Celia asks over her shoulder.

GM: There’s another text from Randy.

Reggie’s been fucking Mabel, do u care?

Celia: Consensual?

GM: “Mmm. Yeah,” Rod answers, giving her a kiss.

maybe?

Celia: find out.

“Oh. I was going to shave your head.”

GM: kk

“Ah, but I’m a dude, that’d actually look good on me,” he smirks, pulling her against him.

Celia: “I dunno, I bet you have a pointy dome under there.”

She snuggles closer anyway, peering up at his head as if she can see beneath his hairline.

GM: “We can find out, if you like. It’ll just grow back.”

Celia: “Mm. Maybe tonight, then.” She can replace Blossom’s beau’s hair with Roderick’s, if she wants. She’d cut and colored her own, but if he’s offering…

“Mom is having Dani over for dinner tonight.”

“I was going to ask if you wanted to join us, but then I thought maybe not a good idea..?”

GM: He thinks. “Maybe ask Dani?”

“Actually, she’ll probably be pissed after you tell her she’s not emotionally blackmailing me for rent money.”

Celia: “Maybe you two can work it out tonight so Friday isn’t awkward as fuck.”

GM: “Ah, that’s a really good point. I don’t want to get into anything around Dad.”

“I also don’t want to around your family, frankly. Maybe we should just meet somewhere privately?”

“This isn’t their drama.”

Celia: “Oh. Yeah, for sure. She said she’s relatively free tonight.”

Celia fires off a quick text to Dani.

He wants to talk to you. Can we meet after dinner?

GM: There isn’t an immediate response.

Celia: “Mostly,” she says, “I want you to meet my mom with your new face.”

“So that when you inevitably ask me to marry you it’s not going to be weird.”

It won’t be anyway, she knows, since Diana knows.

But it’s better for her cover.

“And Emily,” she adds.

GM: “Okay,” he says. “Let’s just resolve our drama away from them. It’s really bad manners to drag uninvolved people into it.”

Celia: “Nah,” Celia disagrees, “Emily and Mom would love to play mediator, and I’d make a big batch of popcorn for all of us.”

“And we’d throw it at you when you say the wrong thing.”

“Very helpful.”

GM: He cracks a smile. “Ha. Maybe that would lighten the mood.”

Celia: “And Lucy would tell you you’re both being silly and to hug and make up.”

GM: “Six-year-olds can be smarter than grown-ups a surprising number of times.”

Celia: “I am a genius,” she tells him, setting her phone aside to flip the pair so that she straddles his hips.

“More that they lack a filter.”

GM: “Who says that isn’t smarter?” he asks, pulling her in for a deep kiss.

“God, you’re so hot.”

“It’s such a privilege to wake up next to you, you know that? So many licks don’t have that.”

Celia: “That’s why they’re all miserable old cunts.”

GM: “Whereas we have your happy sexy cunt.”

Celia: “Wet, too. You should do something about that.”

GM: “I still owe you.”

So he does.

---

Wednesday evening, 16 March 2016

Celia: When they’re done, Celia tells Roderick that she’ll let him know what Dani says. They can meet up at the place they met before, if he wants (“Celia’s house”), and then she’s on her way to Flawless to meet Alana and have a quick bite before dinner.

The routine for a quick snack is pretty simple: Alana brings the client back to work on them, flips a switch that lets Celia know they’re ready (whether this means they have a mask on or are laying face down with their eyes closed varies from service to service), and Alana makes some excuse to open the door. Hot towels. Hot stones. Glass of water. Need more product. Whatever it is, she lets Celia slip inside to feed.

Alana, still wearing Celia’s face, is with a local EMT that hates how she looks and still lives with her mom. Celia has been able to help suggest style and makeup changes, removed a lot of the old acne scars that had plagued the girl since childhood, and over the past few months has really let the inner glow shine through. Celia snacks on her while she’s masking, eyes closed beneath the damp cloth stretched across them that “reduces puffiness and delivers hyaluronic acid to the area to minimize fine lines and wrinkles.”

It’s a convenient excuse.

GM: It’s a convenient feeding routine.

Alana looks just like Celia. Can do the same things to a client that Celia does. The hapless kine likely wouldn’t even notice the switch, even if she had the open eyes to see.

Abby White looks better under Celia’s capable hands. She’s still overweight, but that’s nothing Celia couldn’t fix either, if she wanted to. Alana looks at the plump girl with the same withering contempt she regards all overweight people.

But fat or thin, her blood is just as hot and vital over Celia’s tongue. Her Beast was a hungry thing, after all that sex with Roderick.

After all that sex the previous night, too.

Celia: And tonight, with as much as she has going on and all the flesh she has to sculpt, Celia takes more than she needs. She doesn’t have time to see more clients and take little sips from them all as she normally would; she bleeds herself instead while she works, making an excuse about a new product and microneedling that’s going to make Abby feel tired for a few days and to take it easy while her body recovers.

Her Beast, at least, is content with the knowledge that she has banked as much as she has, and looks forward to imbibing it later. Celia pointedly does not think about the other people the blood is for; she only plans to drink it if something crazy happens.

Celia slips back out the door once she’s done with Abby, moving into Jade’s suite to get ready for Alana. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes for her to finish with Abby; she’d been on the second mask and all that’s left is to remove it and moisturize.

GM: Alana is back promptly.

“It was good for everyone to see you around during the day, mistress,” she says as she lays down.

“I had Louise fill in again during the audition.”

Celia: “How did it go?”

GM: “It went very well, mistress! Ron said it was mostly a formality, we’d have the part ‘as long as we didn’t vomit over the camera.’ But I still think that it did.”

“I asked if he could schedule any night roles or shoots, too, just in case you wanted to do some acting yourself.”

“He said he’d get back to me.”

Celia: “Perfect.” Celia smiles down at herself, syringe of anesthetic in hand. “I’m very proud of you, ‘Lana. I’m excited to see where this goes. I don’t know that we’ll be an actress forever, but it will be fun for a while.”

“Little pinch, darling.” The needle pierces her flesh.

GM: Celia’s face beams at her mistress’ praise.

“I loved being you, mistress. I spent soooo much time in front of the mirror, after you gave me permission…”

Celia: “I don’t doubt that,” Celia says with a grin. “Maybe I’ll keep you like this for a while when we go to LA and turn myself into your boyfriend instead of Jade.”

GM: “I’ll suck your cock all night long, mistress,” Alana purrs. “I’ll go to sleep with it in my mouth.”

Celia: “We’d never leave the haven.”

GM: “I’ll snuggle up to you during the day, when you’re asleep, fit your dick in my mouth, and lie there until you wake up. For hours. Sucking your cock is such an honor, mistress.”

Celia: Celia leans down to press a kiss against the lips that look like hers.

“You’re insatiable, pet. I love it.”

GM: Alana kisses her hungrily back.

“I had another dirty thought, mistress… there are cock gags, I’m sure you know. Gags shaped like cocks, with these big thick panels in front. Very sexy. But they’re made of plastic, of course.”

“You could make a real cock gag, with a real cock, for us. You could lock it on me so I’m stuck with a real dick in my mouth until you decide I can use it for something else.”

“You could take me out in public, somewhere with lots of people. And I’ll have a real dick in my mouth the entire time, and not be able to say anything.”

Celia: “Like a sex club?” Celia muses, unsurprisingly aroused at the thought.

GM: “Yes, mistress. Where they all could know.”

“Or even somewhere boring, like a church. Somewhere you’re not supposed to do sexy things. I could stare at a priest with a real dick in my mouth.”

Celia: “Pretty sure we’d be chased out of a church.”

“I’ll consider it.”

GM: “A sex club would be very sexy too, mistress. The only thing more sexy than a gag in my mouth is a gag that’s also a real cock.”

Celia: “Tempting. What if we made it hollow so that anyone could put their cock inside of it? I could walk you around on a leash and let people use you like they want to.”

GM: “A cock in a cock, mistress,” Alana beams. “That’s perfect! Then they could all cum in my mouth too, and you’d never even have to take the gag out.”

“I’d have to swallow all of their cum. Or just let it all sit in my mouth.”

Celia: “Good girls swallow.”

GM: “Yes, mistress. I’d swallow it all.”

“It’s just very sexy to know I wouldn’t have a choice.”

“If I were bad and didn’t swallow, you could say you wouldn’t remove the gag until I did.”

“I might have this big, big load of cum in my mouth, from god knows how many guys, that I’d have thought I could get away with spitting out, once the gag was out, and then you’d punish me for being bad by making me swallow all of it at once.”

“It would be like drinking cum, there’d be so much.”

“Drinking, not just swallowing.”

Celia: “I’ll work on something for you, then.”

GM: “Thank you, mistress,” Alana beams.

Celia: Then the work begins, the sculpting and twisting to turn Celia back into Alana: lighter hair, darker skin, eyes that gently lift in the corners, lips a little more full than Celia’s own. Less padding in the breasts and butt—Celia has always enjoyed a tiny bit of extra there, whereas Alana does not like any reminders that she used to be fat. She scrubs away Celia from her ghoul until just Alana remains, working quickly but not impossibly fast.

GM: Alana’s voice slurs as the anesthesia kicks in. She remains still as Celia works on her, then thanks her mistress for giving her her body back. And for her use of Celia’s oh-so-sexy body.

Celia: When it’s done, Celia asks Alana if she was able to get ahold of Lucia for her.

GM: “Yeth, mithreth. The thaid the could mee’ you a’ the Thangio’anni manthe in thoo thayths, a’ 3 AM.”

Celia: “Friday at 3?” Celia repeats.

GM: Alana nods her head.

Celia: “Perfect.”

Celia tells her to enjoy her evening and that she’ll be wrapped up with family stuff for a while.

Once Alana is gone, Celia turns to the next mask that she needs to make. She has no immediate plans to put Diana around any Kindred, but Roderick will need a disguise for this evening. Her fingers form the second of his masks, smoothing it out into a face that looks nothing like him but is still attractive enough to be seen with Jade. It doesn’t take long.

Once it’s done she slides both masks and the wig into her bag to distribute to the Garrisons tonight and heads out to meet her mother.

---

Wednesday night, 16 March 2016, PM

GM: Dani still hasn’t gotten back to Celia. Roderick texts that he supposes Celia can ask in person, then. He’ll come over when his sister gives the thumbs up.

Celia: She says she’ll let him know.

GM: Celia arrives, meanwhile, at her family’s house. Emily and Diana both greet her with her hugs. Lucy is asleep in bed. Dinner is already eaten. Diana makes a show of offering Celia food, “If you haven’t already eaten, sweetie,” but doesn’t press as hard this time. The question mainly seems asked for Emily’s benefit.

“All right, I gotta tell you this,” Emily grins, plopping down on the living room couch.

“So, between Mom and I wanting to learn how to stab properly, and then Logan too, Robby decided it might be best to just practice on our own, outside of HEMA.”

“And we were able to fit in some time to do it today, at Mom’s classroom. Which was pretty convenient.”

“Wide open space we wouldn’t be bothered and all.”

“We wanted you to come-”

“-but you had an important client,” Diana nods.

“So hope you don’t feel bad we didn’t invite you, sweetie.”

“Also, Emi, do we really need to tell this stor-”

“-are you kidding, Mom? It’s a fucking awesome story!”

Diana hems and wrings her hands.

“So, Logan was a total butthead,” says Emily, turning back to Celia.

“He went on about a bunch of machismo bullshit, some real he-man stuff, about having a ‘hunger to win’ and how you had to enjoy hurting people to be good at fencing.”

“He gave Robby a ton of pointers. Robby, who’s been practicing swordfighting for years, unlike Logan, who’s only just picked up a sword.”

“Yay for my boyfriend getting to experience some mansplaining.”

“He really was just trying to help, sweetie,” says Diana.

“Well, he wasn’t. He had this really arrogant, confrontational body language too. Implied Robby was a ‘nice guy’ and a wimp. And a nerd.”

“And, you know, Robby can be a little shy. And he’s pretty modest. He’s not as much of a bitch as me.”

“So he didn’t make too big a deal with Logan, though I was starting to get pissed.”

“So, they’ve got all their equipment on, got the swords, Logan boasts about his ‘hunger to win’… and Robby completely hands him his ass.”

“Like, it’s not even close. Robby just knocks the sword out his hand, twice, and has his sword at Logan’s throat. Like Logan’s got butterfingers.”

“Then when they go again, and Robby lets Logan take the offense—lets him—he just blocks and dodges everything Logan throws at him when he’s nothing, and when he makes these big stupid charges, Robby taps his chest with the sword. Where he coulda slashed him open.”

“It goes on like that. Logan just completely fucking loses it, screaming all sorts of shit, and then Robby literally knocks him on his ass. Like, trips him. The whole thing’s just laughably one-sided.”

“So much for Mr. Nice Guy Cuck.”

Emily’s smiling widely. Diana just makes a fretful expression and clears her throat.

Celia: “Jeeze,” Celia laughs when the story is over, “I was wondering why he sent me that text. That puts everything into perspective.” Celia shakes her head. “He said similar to me yesterday, about needing a killer instinct.”

GM: “Shows what that counts for.”

Celia: “How’d it go otherwise?”

GM: “Well, I was really turned on. Seeing my boyfriend kick ass. I gave him a blowjob in the car at the McGehee parking lot.”

Diana looks scandalized. “Oh! Emi!”

Celia: “Hell yeah.” Celia high fives her.

GM: Emily high-fives her back. “I mean it was strategic, doing it in the car meant he was ready to go again when we got back to his apartment. Because I was still really horny.”

“Sweetie, that’s—someone could have seen you!” exclaims Diana.

“And—the car, you might have… gotten it dirty!”

“Relax, Mom, I swallowed so we didn’t have to clean up cum from the car seat,” Emily grins. “Whole thing was very efficient.”

Celia: “That’s the best way to do it,” Celia nods.

GM: Diana looks like she’s about to pass out.

Celia: “Stephen and I used to fuck in the car. Windows got all foggy.”

GM: “Aw, that’s sweet,” says Emily. “In semi-public?”

Celia: “Think someone took a photo.”

GM: Diana’s hands fly to her mouth.

“Relax, that would’ve been… seven years ago,” says Emily. “Doubt anything’s going to come of it after this long.”

Celia: She can’t share that she just did it last night, too, but with someone else.

So she doesn’t.

Just grins.

GM: “I didn’t know windows actually fogged, though. Robby and I’ll have to try that.”

“Oh! Sweetie, you could get caught! Please don’t!” their mother exclaims.

Celia: “Tell them to join in, if you are.”

GM: “Bingo. They’ll be co-conspirators in the… crime?”

“Please tell me you’re pullin’ my leg,” murmurs Diana.

“I dunno, depends how hot the photographer is,” says Emily.

Celia: “Bingo,” Celia says, “no uglies. No uggos in your threesome.”

GM: Diana clears her throat and says, “The practice went very well, otherwise, sweetie. After, ah, Logan quit. I kissed his boo-boos all better-”

“-which he was a jerk about too, but I guess at least he let you,” says Emily. “I’m glad you stayed, though.”

Celia: “Glad you had fun with it. Learn a lot?”

“Did Dani already head out? I thought I was on time.”

GM: “Dani’s asleep, sweetie,” says her mom. “She came back from school and-”

“-wait, Mom, you’re not finished. Tell Celia how great you did,” smiles Emily.

“Oh, well, I was a lil’ nervous at first, but Robby told me how Jean-Claude Van Damme did karate and ballet, and thought ballet was way harder. So that made me feel better.”

“But it was interesting! I knew from an academic standpoint that ballet had its roots in fencing, but it was pretty neat to give that the ol’ college try!”

“She did great,” says Emily. “Robby complimented her technique way more times than mine. His girlfriend,” she emphasizes with a mock-severe look towards their mom. “Kept saying how graceful and flexible she was, and how she made every move look like a dance.”

“Oh, he had plenty to compliment you about, sweetie, for one thing you were-”

“Nah, you earned it, Mom. You beat me fair and square,” says Emily. “You did great. Be proud of that.”

Celia: “That’s awesome, Mom. I’m real proud of you. Gonna stick with it?”

GM: Diana blushes a little. “Thanks, you two. And I think so! Robby said my bum leg would probably give me a hard time, at some point, but there was no reason we couldn’t take things a lil’ slower.”

Celia: “Awesome. I’m glad you had fun and learned a lot. That’s great! And I’m glad you are gonna take it slow when your leg hurts.”

“Speaking of…”

“When do you want me to set up dinner with Maxen?”

GM: “Oh, we actually did set up a dinner date this Sunday, sweetie, through Logan. Does that work for you, or should we reschedule?”

Celia: “Oh. Yeah, that’ll work. What time?”

“Are Logan and David coming?”

GM: “7 PM. We thought we’d do it after Lucy’s in bed. I don’t… quite want to have them together, just yet.”

Emily gives a firm nod.

Celia: Celia nods as well.

“For the best.”

GM: “And no, it’ll be just us three and your father.”

Celia: “Sounds like a plan. What happened with Viv, Em?”

GM: “I thought we’d invite the others, after… after we’ve eased back into things some more.”

Celia: “For sure. I feel like I haven’t seen David in ages. Maybe I’ll call him, see if he wants to go out.”

GM: “I know he’s been busy with law school. He and Dani are actually classmates! Maybe somethin’ with them both?”

Celia: “That could be fun.”

Double date with two sets of siblings, that’s not weird at all.

GM: “So with Viv, she said if she wasn’t arrested or anything, there was little legal question here,” answers Emily. “She said Maxen could come forward later, but that it’d mostly be a ‘he said, she said’ and she doubt Mom would sell me out.”

Diana gives a firm nod.

“So 2 v 1 witness and no claim at the time. She said that’s pretty open and shut.”

Celia: “Sounds like it worked out pretty well then. That’s great.”

“Stab him again on Sunday if he gets lippy.”

GM: “I’ll be sure to.”

Emily sounds mostly kidding.

“Viv ran through with me how that might play out. Maxen comes forward this morning and says, ‘Emily stabbed me.’ Police ask why he didn’t call them at the time. Mom and I deny it. And now the story is ‘big former football player claims he is stabbed by way smaller woman. She and his ex deny it.’”

“Viv said he could pursue a civic tort, but hard to win that one for the same reason. Big strong guy claims weak little girl stabbed him, how do you break as a juror? She said he could mostly make headaches, make our life annoying, file a police report and get me brought in for questioning, bothered by cops, etc. But unless Mom breaks against me, hard to sell.”

“And that’s happenin’ when hell freezes over,” says Diana.

Emily smiles. “Plus, that isn’t a police report he wants to file as a legislator, let alone a prospective governor. ‘Majority leader’s ex-wife’s adopted daughter stabs him when he visits ex-wife with restraining order.’”

“Viv did say this would be a different story if I was Emile, though. Yay for having a hole between my legs.”

“But she said without evidence, like a knife with my prints and his blood, or a recording, this whole thing is just a domestic squabble.”

“And even then, his whole tough guy reputation as a big strong physical dude gets undermined if he fires a report about a girl stabbing him.”

“Plus, finally, she said you and Mom have the resources to help me through anything that’d really fuck a lower income person. Days off from work, going to court, talking to cops, etc.”

“So, yeah,” Emily finishes. “I’m just really relieved not to have this hanging over us.”

Diana nods. “Viv does good work! I made her a batch of cookies to say thanks.”

“You do pay her, Mom.”

“I know, but still. She’s done a lot for us.”

“You’re right, she has.”

Celia: Celia listens to it all, looking for any holes in the story, anything that Maxen could use against them. It sounds, though, like the biggest threat to them right now isn’t the mortal world at all.

It’s her world.

And she’s not really concerned about that, either.

She’s glad of that, at least, and she says as much—though not in so many words—slinging an arm around Emily and announcing that “I guess we’re stuck with you, which is great ‘cause listen I don’t think Robby wants to fight me for conjugal visitation rights.”

GM: Emily grins and squeezes her shoulder back. “Then don’t. Maybe you could both… visit. At once. Do they allow that?”

Celia: “I’d blow your mind, sweetheart, Robby would never hold a candle to what I can show you.”

Celia wiggles her brows.

“But also no, I think you’re limited to one.”

GM: “We’ll smuggle you in then. In a cake you can burst out of.”

Celia: “Naked.”

GM: “Like with a file. But a bigger cake. Mom can bake it.”

Celia: “Mom, get crackin’.”

“Emi said she’d lick the frosting off my… nose.”

GM: “I’d lick you in lots of places, to be extra sure I got it all. And you’d wonder if we were still in prison, ‘cuz you’d be seeing stars.”

Celia: “Oh damn, girl, maybe I should introduce you to my new friend-boy, we can tag team ’im.”

GM: "Dangerous. Both of us together might leave him in a coma. But isn’t the love that burns brightest that which burns briefest, or something poetic?’

“Yes, let’s talk about your new beau!” Diana agrees emphatically.

Celia: Celia giggles at the mortified look on her mother’s face.

“I think we broke her brain,” she loudly whispers to Emily.

“Technically, Ma, we’re not sisters. Technically. So it’s not weird.”

GM: “And if I shove you off a cliff, it’s gravity or the ground which kills you, not me,” Diana huffs.

Emily whistles. “Love the new attitude. Seriously.”

Celia: “Y’think it bothers her more that we’re two ladies or that she considers us both her babies?”

GM: “Mom, which is it? Inquiring minds want to know.”

“Not-dirty minds wouldn’t think to know!” Diana declares with another huff.

Her attempt at a glare still looks a kitten trying to mimic a roaring lion.

Celia: “Uh oh. Now we’ve done it.”

GM: Emily grins. “Maybe practice in front of the mirror a few more times.”

Celia: “Maybe get a sword, I bet you’d look more intimidating with a sword.”

GM: “I don’t have a sword,” Diana hmphs. “You two have such dirty minds, you really know that!”

“Do we? That’s news to me,” says Emily.

Celia: “I had no idea.”

GM: “Because I thought we had really squeaky-clean minds and needed to visit some, uh, ‘places of ill repute’ to get some experience. Stop being so sheltered.”

Celia: “We should go make it rain on some strippers. See how flustered Robby gets. Let some other girl tease him for an hour or two. Then take him home and blow his mind.”

GM: “Er, rain?” asks Diana.

“Pee on them,” says Emily. “That’s what you do at strip clubs, you pee on the girls. Make it rain.”

“What!” exclaims Diana.

Celia: “Yeah, golden shower, Ma. Real messy. That’s why the floors are so sticky.”

GM: “How do you know they’re stick… oh, lord, sweetie, have you been to one?! You could get… you could get…!” Diana waves her hand, fumbling for words.

Celia: “Danced on a pole once and everything.”

GM: “It’s true, I was the pole,” says Emily.

Celia: Celia shifts onto Emi’s lap, moving her hips in a suggestive way.

“All those dance lessons made me real flexible.”

GM: Emily smirks and runs her hands up and down Celia’s torso.

“You could get more flexible with, with ballet lessons! Which take a lot of time, so no time for strip clubs!” says their mom.

Celia: Celia purrs at Emily.

“Twenty dollars and my shirt comes off.”

GM: “Forty dollars for the shirt to stay on!” declares Diana.

“Oh, bidding war,” says Emily.

Celia: “How much am I worth to you, Emi?”

GM: “Sixty, at least,” says Emily.

“Eighty!” counter-bids Diana.

Celia: “Sorry, Emi, looks like the ballerina has you beat.”

“Private show later,” she stage whispers behind her hand. “Don’t tell Mom.”

GM: “The ballerina is goin’ to ask her lawyer to write an airtight contract so the eighty is binding ’til Kingdom Come,” huffs Diana.

Celia: “Speaking of lawyers.”

Celia finally slides off of Emily’s lap to take the seat next to her instead.

“Watcha makin’ for Friday?”

GM: Diana looks relieved.

Emily gives her a look of exaggerated longing.

Celia: Celia winks and blows a kiss.

GM: “Ah, let’s see, I was thinkin’ some oven-fried chicken, or maybe crock pot chicken and dumplings,” says Diana.

“With some kind of salad or green side, and shoofly pie for dessert.”

Celia: “Sounds delicious.”

They both know it doesn’t.

GM: “Maybe a second side too, since we’ll have lots of people. I’m goin’ to go grocery shopping tomorrow.”

But they pretend.

Celia: “I, ah, was gonna clear it with Dani first, get her opinion on it, but I ran into a guy who used to know Stephen. Went to school with him. Was thinking about bringing him.”

GM: “Oh, he your new guy?” asks Emily, wiggling her eyebrows.

Celia: “Actually… yes.”

GM: “Good. Randy wasn’t going anywhere. Not with you, anyway.”

Celia: “At least you and Logan agree on something.”

GM: “A stopped clock is right twice a day.”

Celia: “I think you’ll both like him. Might bring him by before Friday so it’s not your first time meeting him.”

“Probably not tell Henry he’s my new guy, focus on the friend angle.”

GM: “Be happy to,” nods Emily.

“Just give advance notice, so I can cook up somethin’ to woo you his heart,” her mom winks.

“Huh. He’s got the same name as Stephen’s dad,” says Emily.

Celia: “Oh. No. I meant Henry as in Stephen’s dad.”

“Don’t tell Stephen’s dad about my love life.”

GM: “Oh. Yeah. That makes total sense.”

Diana nods.

Celia: “Awesome. I’m excited for you two to meet him. I told him about Robby,” she says to Emily, “and his HEMA stuff. He said it sounds cool and that he might want to play some World of Shadow games with us.”

GM: “Yeah, you mentioned earlier. Robby said he’d be happy to run a session for us all.”

“It’s good nerdy fun with lots of banter between dice rolls and unhealthy snacks.”

“Oh, I’ll make y’all healthier snacks, if you want,” says Diana.

Celia: “I think it’s the point of the gaming,” Celia says to her mom. “To eat junk food.”

GM: “But don’t you want to eat healthy food, if it’s still tasty?”

“Well it’s sort of like you could give a blowjob in the privacy of your own bedroom, or on your knees in a school parking lot,” says Emily.

Celia: Celia snorts into her hand, dissolving into laughter.

GM: “I don’t know what the appeal is there,” Diana mutters.

Celia: “The thrill of someone wanking while they watch from afar and knowing you got two dudes off at once?”

GM: “It’s—it’s a girl’s school! The only men are responsible adults, thank you!”

Celia: “Show the girls what waits for them in their future, then.”

GM: “Or their parents. Yell, ‘This is your daughter pursuing her dreams of higher education!’ at them.”

Celia: “You know what they say about successful women.”

GM: “What, that they suck cock too?”

Celia: “Somethin’ somethin’ makin’ bank on their back.”

GM: “Er?” asks Diana.

“Never mind, I don’t want to know!”

“She’s so innocent,” says Emily. “Part of me wants to croon and preserve it, and the other part of me wants to totally despoil it.”

Celia: “We can bring her clubbing with us.”

GM: “Fuck, it’s been forever since I went out. School and all.”

Celia: “You’ve been real boring lately,” Celia agrees. “Blow it off, let’s go out soon.”

GM: “We’ll make it a girl’s night and pick up lots of hot guys.”

“You two have boyfriends!” says Diana.

“And we still will, if no one’s a blabbermouth,” smiles Emily.

Celia: “Variety, et cetera. Plus half of them are for you.”

GM: “Blugh! No thank you! We’ll do an arts and crafts night with Lucy instead, how’s that?”

Celia: “Hmm… hot sex, drugs, dancing, and loud music… or coloring with a six-year-old…”

GM: “That is a very easy decision!” declares Diana. “We can take turns sitting her on our laps and coloring over her shoulder.”

Celia: “Uh huh. We could do both.”

GM: “Read my mind,” says Emily. “We can draw sex positions with them. Sort of a ‘pick in advance’ thing.”

Celia: “Bingo.”

GM: “You are not drawin’ sex positions around my baby,” hmphs Diana.

Celia: “She’s gotta learn sometime.”

GM: “Start ‘em young. Plus we’re all your babies, aren’t we?”

“Yes, you are. And speakin’ of, Emi, don’t you have school to study for?”

“Ah, yeah. I kinda do.”

Celia: “Go, go,” Celia shoos her, “so we can play Doctor later.”

GM: “I’ll know that many more spots to touch you.” She gives Celia a hug. “This is fun, though, having someone else in the house with some adult humor.”

Celia: Celia slings an arm around her. “I’m always gonna be here for you. We’ll get the boys together soon. I’ll text you.”

GM: “Rad. Count on it.” Emily gives Celia another squeeze, then she’s off to her room.

“You two drive me bonkers, sometimes, but I’m glad you have each other,” smiles Diana.

Celia: “Me too. Minus the bonkers.”

GM: “I don’t mind, sweetie. I really don’t. Sisters tease.”

Celia: “That might be something you need to come to terms with, though.” Celia glances down the hall to make sure Emily’s door is shut. “There’s a lot of that kind of stuff with my kind.”

GM: Emily sleeps in the attached carriage house (more like carriage room), so there’s that much extra distance.

“Oh, like how?” Diana looks worried.

Celia: “Just if you’re ever around it, there’s a lot of… sex, I guess.”

GM: “Ah. Well, I’d appreciate you not takin’ me to that, sweetie. It just isn’t my scene.”

“But if it happens, I suppose I’ll just try and pretend I’m in a rose garden, or somethin’.”

Celia: “I’ll, ah, try to avoid taking you to anything like that.”

“Your leg okay after the fencing?”

GM: “Thanks,” her mom nods. “We took things slow, and Emi gave me a massage after we were done. But I wouldn’t say no to another,” she smiles.

Celia: “A quick one, if that’s all right. I have a few meetings tonight.”

GM: “Of course, sweetie. My leg doesn’t really hurt right now, anyways.”

“I wanted to talk to you about Dani, unless you had anything to bring up first?”

Celia: “No, go ahead.”

GM: “She… told me about Stephen,” Celia’s mom says quietly.

“Is it true that he’s… Celia, is he hitting you…?” she whispers, her eyes wide with a mother’s concern.

Celia: Oh.

“She… told you about Stephen?”

GM: Diana nods.

It’s probably no surprise, with the amount of time the two have been spending together.

Celia: Celia runs a hand through her hair. She hadn’t decided yet if she wanted to tell her mom who her boyfriend really is.

Maybe it’s better this way.

“He’s… it’s… he’s not abusive, Mom.”

GM: “But is he hitting you?” she asks.

Celia: “He just… it’s different, with his clan, they just have this anger about them. And… he did, yes, but it’s… he… I don’t want to say that I deserved it, but the situation was… complicated.”

“I had to break up with him. When I was turned into this. I had to tell him something that would make him not want to see me ever again. So I told him I cheated on him.”

“And then I saw him later, and he was like me, and he… we started talking, a little, and I told him who I was, and he was… he blamed me for being turned, too. Said that I tore out his heart and that he wouldn’t have accepted it if not for me, that when his sire asked if he wanted it he said he had nothing else to live for.”

GM: “Oh, Celia, baby…” her mom whispers, her face pained as she squeezes her daughter’s hands.

Celia: “I guess he’d been kind of stalking me online. And Lucy. He thought she was his. And he asked if that’s why we needed the pill the one night, if she was someone else’s kid.”

GM: “Oh. What did… you tell him about her?”

Diana’s face is wary.

Celia: “That she’s not mine. He knew the dates didn’t add up anyway. And then he said I was lying and he lost control of his Beast and attacked me.”

“We didn’t talk for a few years.”

“And then I… asked him out.”

“And things were good for a few weeks.”

“…and then they weren’t.”

GM: Diana listens, holding Celia’s hands in hers but not judging yet. There’s an odd tinge of apprehension and hope to her face.

Celia: “He wanted to know the truth about the cheating. Said that… that our past dictates our present. So I… I told him. I told him the truth.”

Celia looks away from her mom.

GM: “Oh, Celia…” Her mom murmurs, embracing her tight and stroking her hair.

“It’s okay, sweetie… we all make mistakes, we all fall short… I don’t blame you…”

Celia: “So he… he hit me for it,” Celia whispers into her mom’s shoulder. “He got angry and lost control.”

GM: Her mom just hugs her close and runs a hand up and down her back.

“I’m sorry, baby… that must have been very, very painful…”

If nothing else, she knows what she’s talking about there.

Celia: “We’re hard to keep down.”

GM: “We… vampires?”

Celia: “Yeah. Your type, too.”

GM: “We are?”

Celia: “Yeah. You heal with blood. I could stab you and you’d heal it. Only a few things can really kill me. The rest of it just knocks me out.”

GM: “Oh. That’s… handy, but here’s hopin’ we won’t need it much.”

There’s a hungry look in Diana’s eyes at the words ‘heal with blood.’ Perhaps Celia would then have to replace it.

But she quickly asks, “But you got back together?”

Celia: “Yeah. Recently. But it’s… it’s hard to date like this. People just… they suck. I’ve had a handful of flings—” more than a handful “—but no one I love.”

GM: “I’m sorry, sweetie. A mom’s love might not be the same, but you’ll always have it,” her mom smiles in answer to her initial words, rubbing her arm.

Celia: “Can’t take you to bed with me, though,” Celia tells her, echoing the words she’d said to her and Emily nights ago.

GM: “Well, hence not the same,” her mom says with a wry half-smile.

Celia: “But I love him. I can talk to him. I can be Celia around him.”

GM: “So you have to be Jade around other vampires. But Stephen brings out Celia?”

Celia: Celia nods.

“Yes, exactly.”

GM: “That sounds like something very precious and special.”

Celia: Her sire brings out Celia as well, but that’s too complicated to get into with her mother.

“It is. He loves me, too, even though he… even though he hurt me. It’s not like it was with Dad. It’s not.”

GM: “Is he sorry he did?”

Celia: “Yes.”

GM: “He’s said so?”

Celia: Had he? She thought so.

“Yes.”

GM: “Then that’s somethin’ your father never did,” Celia’s mom nods. “Until now, anyway. He never once said sorry before, even when we made up.”

Celia: “He’s not like Dad. It’s different. It was just twice, and… I’ve gotten faster since then, so if he’s about to lose it I know to get away.”

GM: “It sounds like you both messed up… but wanted to make up.”

Celia: “We did.”

GM: “That happens.”

“You think he might… lose it again, ever?”

Celia: “…honestly? Yes. But not at me. Not like that.”

“It’s like… okay, the other night when I was in the tub.”

GM: “I remember that. It was very scary…”

Celia: “I lost control. But it wasn’t at you, it was just… I was hungry, and you were there.”

“That’s when the Beast comes out. And that’s what happens with him. He loses control.”

GM: “That wasn’t you I saw in your eyes, baby. A mom knows her kids.”

Celia: “It’s not me. It’s this other part of me. We all have one. I mean, Dani doesn’t, but it’s different.”

GM: “Oh, why not?”

Celia: “Thin-blood. Their physiology is different. They’re too far removed from the original vampire to manifest a lot of the same things we do.”

GM: “Oh. Dani explained that. She said she wasn’t a real vampire.”

Celia: “Some people think she isn’t. They’d call her a half-breed.”

GM: “She said you said she had fangs and drank blood.”

Diana is quiet for a moment. “Jade called me a half-breed. Or… you did, as Jade, rather.”

Celia: “It just means ghoul, in that case. In Dani’s it’s… like a slur.”

GM: “Dani doesn’t deserve slurs. She’s a sweet girl.”

Celia: “True-blooded vampires think they’re better than everyone else. Ghouls, thin-bloods, kine. They’re the white supremacists of our world, basically.”

Celia shakes her head.

“It doesn’t matter how sweet she is if no one accepts her. They killed someone at a party on Saturday just for being like her.”

GM: “I accept her.”

Celia: “You’re not a vampire.”

GM: “Well, I thought that didn’t really matter?”

Celia: “I mean it doesn’t matter if you accept her.”

GM: “I think it matters a lot to h-” Diana starts.

Celia: “Not to my society.”

GM: “Oh, I see.”

Celia: “It’s like the Mexican kid telling the black kid that he accepts him. None of us care. You’re not white, so that’s all they see.”

GM: Diana frowns faintly at that comparison.

Celia: “There are people, like me, who aren’t bothered by it, but most people… most people consider them abominations.”

“Even her brother…” Celia shakes her head. “He lost it when he found out.”

GM: “His Beast, you mean? Or really him?”

Celia: “He lost it and his Beast came out.”

GM: “Okay. Dani is… blaming him, rather than the Beast.”

Celia: “She hasn’t seen it. She doesn’t understand. He almost lost it when they met but I… I got in the middle of it. Calmed him down. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t.”

“I didn’t warn her well enough about him,” Celia says with a sigh, “and now they’re mad at each other.”

GM: “I think we can both try to calm the waters,” says Diana. “If we explain what the Beast is, maybe.”

Celia: “I don’t think explaining is going to work. Maybe if we show her.”

GM: “Dani is very, very lonely. She might be mad at her brother, but I think she really wants to have someone else she can talk to and confide in. She needs more people than just us.”

“A big brother’s love would be a wonderful thing for her to have right now. Especially Stephen’s! He was such a nice boy, it kills me that she doesn’t want to see him.”

Celia: “I’m trying to get them together tonight so they can talk.”

GM: “Sooner they make up, the better,” Diana nods.

“Showin’ her the Beast might be a good idea too, if she doesn’t get hurt. Show versus tell, and all.”

Celia: “I could have Stephen, ah, cuff me or something.”

GM: Her mother gives a worried frown. “Would that hurt you? I know you said you don’t as easily, but…”

Celia: “He’d have to bring it out. It comes out when we’re hurt, hungry, angry.”

GM: “I don’t want to hurt you, sweetie…” her mom murmurs. “Maybe I can just explain what happened with us, to Dani.”

Celia: “You can try.”

GM: “And you could too. Two trusted voices and all.”

Celia: “Worth a shot. Being stabbed isn’t my idea of a good time.”

GM: Her mom squeezes her hands. “I won’t let someone stab you, sweetie. I’ll fight ’em off, if they try.”

Celia: Celia smiles at that. “One fencing lesson and you’re ready to take on the world.”

GM: “When my baby’s on the line, you bet,” her mom chuckles. “If it keeps you safer, my heart’s all in it.”

Celia: “I’m glad to hear it.”

“I didn’t tell Stephen about you.”

GM: “Oh, yes, we got distracted! I just want to say, sweetie, he’s an absolutely wonderful boy and I’m overjoyed he’s still alive and that you two can still be together. He did so much for our family. For you. He was really… I could just tell, he held your heart in a way Randy simply didn’t. I am beyond happy for both of you. I wish you many long and happy years together.” Her mom smiles and rests her hands on Celia’s shoulders as she talks.

Celia: Celia tries to smile. She does. But the thought of the future that’s waiting for her, the idea of turning him into something like that… The smile takes longer than normal to lift her lips, and it doesn’t quite meet her eyes.

“Me too, Mom. I just hope one night it’ll be easier than it is right now.”

GM: “Can I help make it easier?” Diana asks, glancing long into her daughter’s eyes.

“I want you to be happy with your beau.”

Celia: “It’s just… politics. Bit of a Romeo and Juliet situation.”

GM: “Well, if it means somethin’, your family approves. Theirs didn’t.”

Celia: Celia laughs at that.

“That’s true. Now we just need the vampire family to approve.”

GM: “We’ll work on that, then. But what matters is you two have each other, and you have something very precious. Anything that can drive back Jade and let you be Celia is worth its weight in gold.”

“Anyway, sweetie, we got a lil’ side-tracked. I wanted to talk about Dani.”

Celia: “Right. Go ahead.”

GM: “All right, so, here’s the situation with her. She’s told me just about everything I think she’s told you. I’ve helped her move her things over here, temporarily. I woke her up early today, to go to law school, and she came back and passed out. I want to get her on a schedule where she’s up early, stays awake, and goes to bed early, ‘cause it’s not healthy to break up your sleep.”

“For, ah, non-vampires, anyway. I don’t know if that’s the same with vampires.”

“She’s sleeping in my bedroom right now, by the way. I’ve been sleeping with Lucy. Fun lil’ slumber party for us.”

Celia: “We normally sleep all day and don’t sleep otherwise.”

GM: “Ah, well, sounds like the rules are different for her. She’s asleep in my room now, like I said.”

“I’ve talked to her about school, and she’s been… sweetie, she was raped and turned into a vampire. She’s fallen behind. In her coursework, job, you name it. I’ve talked with her boss and professors, to help straighten things out without saying too much about her situation, just letting them know she’s goin’ through a hard time and still wants to do her best. Emily and I have also helped her with her phone bill, laundry, car maintenance, basically all the lil’ life things she was letting slide."

“Emily has also been very good to her. Even if they can’t talk about quite as much. But she knows Dani was raped, and thinks that’s why she’s spending a lot of time in bed.”

Celia: Celia listens quietly. She hadn’t realized that Dani had fallen so behind.

GM: “She says she spent a lot of her time at that bar, trying to track down who did this to her. And just stay fed.”

“I’m very glad you found her. I think her life would have spiraled apart if you hadn’t.”

“She’s a smart and brave girl. She is able to talk about what happened to her and call it what it is. But… I think she is in a very vulnerable place, still. I really don’t think she should live alone. After your father… after your father raped me, I was so thankful to have Emily living in the same house. Because she knew and believed me and did so much to support me and help out. Especially pregnant. I really think Dani needs that kind of 24/7 support in her life right now.”

“I’d be happy to be that for her, and I think she’d be if I was, too. But she talks about you all the time. She talks about how much she’d have loved to be your roommate, and she was really sad you couldn’t be. Can I get you to reconsider?”

“She thinks just the world of you.”

Celia: Ah.

Yes.

The bond has come back to bite her in the ass.

“I… I’m never home, Mom. My house is literally a closet and a bed. I barely even sleep there most nights, and there’s a lot of… I mean, I have a very private life, it’s hard to just invite someone in to that. I could get, like, a communal place with her, but I’m not going to be there all the time. Like tonight I have a handful of meetings, and tomorrow I’ve got two more, and Friday is… well Fridays are usually pretty full, Saturdays I’m gone most of the night…”

Celia exhales heavily.

“And Stephen and I are supposed to get a place together. There’s a lot of, uh, sex.”

GM: “Hm. I don’t think she’d be offended, but bein’ a third wheel isn’t much fun.”

“I don’t think Dani wants to spend all of her time at home, anyways. I don’t think that’s good for her either. She needs to keep livin’ her life.”

Celia: “I told her the same thing.”

GM: “I just want her to have support when she is home. I don’t want her to live by herself right now.”

Celia: “I’ll think about it, see if I can figure something out. I just don’t know how supportive I’m going to be if I’m never home.”

GM: “Well, that could be here, if you can’t figure out something else. We have room to do this for a while. I’m just worried how we’ll explain her hours to Emily. Maybe we can get her accustomed to bein’ up during the day.”

Celia: “I’m supposed to meet with someone tomorrow night who knows more about the thin-bloods. I’ll see if she has any suggestions there.”

GM: “Okay. For now, I’d postpone the apartment idea, until she’s in a better place mentally. Right now I think she would benefit a lot from some live-in support.”

Celia: Maybe she can give her Mabel and they can… support each other.

GM: “Also, sweetie, I think she feels very helpless.”

Celia: “Helpless?”

GM: Her mom nods. “She didn’t find out who did this to her. She’s heard from you about how bad duskborn have it, what second-class citizens they are. She’s had to hide from and tiptoe around other vampires, get a special tattoo, jump through hoops with her job and work, not even pick up her own things from her apartment, that whole incident with her brother…” Diana pauses. “To be clear, sweetie, I believe you’re doin’ what’s best for her and her safety. I think she would be in a vastly worse place if she hadn’t met you. But I don’t think she feels like she has very much control in her life, or is able to do things that build confidence. I think that’s why she’s lashing out at her brother, because it lets her be in control of something. That’s my read, anyway.”

Celia: “Ah…” She hadn’t considered that. But she’s been acting like a mother bear, hasn’t she, to keep Dani safe.

“What do you think I should do?”

GM: Her mom thinks. “Is there anywhere you can let her make many choices? Or, color outside the lines? Help you out in some way? I think she’d feel better if she felt needed and useful. Like she was earnin’ her keep. You remember how important that was to Emily, when she moved in with me.”

Celia: “Maybe?” Celia hedges. “I’ve gotten so used to doing things on my own, I didn’t really think about asking her for help. I didn’t want to burden her after everything she’s been through, thought she could just focus on school…”

GM: “I think if she’s at all like her brother, she feels best when she feels needed. Like she’s making a difference.”

“And I think she is a lot like her brother, despite how… how low an opinion, I guess, she has of herself.”

Celia: “All right. Yeah. I can think of something.”

GM: Diana beams. “Wonderful, sweetie! Do you want to wake her up and tell her about it?”

Celia: Celia checks the time.

GM: The ladybug clock reads half past 8.

“Or I could pass it on, whatever works,” Diana says at her glance up.

Celia: “Ah, I can’t right now actually. I need to be across the city in thirty minutes.”

“Can you tell her I’ll call her later? I have a meeting, but I’ll swing by after.”

GM: “Okay. I’ll probably be asleep, if that’ll take you a while, so you can let yourself in.” Celia still has a house key.

“Or, actually, you could give her a call first, so she can clear out the cats. They don’t seem to mind her at all.”

Celia: “Thanks for putting them away. I was wondering why no one hissed at me tonight.”

GM: “Yes, they’re in Emi’s bedroom. I’ll do that whenever you come over now.”

Celia: “I have to get going, though. I didn’t realize the time.”

GM: “Oh! One last thing, sweetie. Are you hungry?”

Celia: “…yes?”

GM: Her mom nods. “Would you like my wrist or neck?”

Celia: Is this weird?

This is weird.

Pete would be so mad at her.

But the woman just tastes so good.

“Whatever you’re comfortable with.” Her fangs are already out; she runs her tongue across the sharp edges. “You’ll be woozy tomorrow. Nothing important going on?”

GM: “How woozy? I have work, but I could call in sick if you need a lot.”

Celia: “No, no. Just… a little more tired, maybe. I only need a little.”

GM: “Okay. I can manage that for you, sweetie.”

Diana leans forward, baring her neck.

Celia: She’s just never going to tell Pete.

Ever.

Already close enough to touch, Celia closes the distance between them. It’s like going in for a hug and resting her cheek against her shoulder, only now… now she opens her mouth and pierces her mother’s flesh with her fangs, sinking into the embrace and closing her eyes as the rich, warm blood spills across her tongue.

She drinks.

GM: It tastes like love.

Just like last time.

A mother’s love. Endlessly, willingly, happily giving. Like warm chicken soup, homemade just for her. There’s a stronger, purer flavor to it, this time. There’s none of the fear, shock, and disorientation that spiked her last libation from the woman. That bitter undercurrent is all gone. This is rich and warm and full. For a moment, Celia can forget her Beast’s pangs, and glow under the taste of that liquid love, that she could cultivate from no other vessel.

And Celia knows. She can taste it. Her mother wants this. Not just the pleasure of Celia’s kiss. She may not even want that at all. She wants to give of herself, to help her daughter. There’s joy in her blood, at being able to give of herself for Celia. At being able to feed her baby.

Celia: Her kind will never know this taste. She can’t imagine there’s anyone else in the world who will ever know what love this pure tastes like.

She’s lucky.

So incredibly lucky.

She savors every mouthful that she swallows, letting it fill her with the emotion that everyone like her thinks is dead to them, lost forever when their mortal coils slough away. Is this what Celia tastes like when Roderick drinks from her? When her sire drinks from her?

Love. Pure, raw, unfiltered. Someone she’d do anything for.

She sips at the divine nectar offered to her and for a moment lets her troubles fade away. She wraps herself in love, a warm blanket on a cold night.

When she finally pulls back, licking closed the holes, she swears that she can see stars.

GM: Her mother’s breath comes heavier in her ears. A blush has crept across the woman’s paler cheeks. Her eyes shine as she touches Celia’s cheek.

“You’ve had enough, baby?” she smiles. “I could give you more in a thermos, where it’ll stay warm, if you want some to save for later…”

Celia: Tempting. So very, very tempting.

But Celia shakes her head at the offer.

“You’ll hurt yourself if you give too much. I need you healthy. Once or twice a week, no more than that. Small amounts like this, right from the vein. That’s when it’s best. Something I can look forward to.”

GM: “Okay, sweetie. Just know that I’m always, always here if you need me, and if you need more, okay?”

Celia: “I know, Mom. I love you.”

GM: Her mother hugs her. “I love you too, Celia.”

“Carpe noctem, is that what the phrase is? Go seize the night,” she smiles.

Celia: So she does. Celia melds into Jade when she turns away from her mother, fingers blurring across her face to transform the girl into the lick. Even in this face, Celia’s smile briefly shines through at her mother. She’s Jade, yes, but the daughter remains beneath the surface of the domitor. Her form blurs, first into a familiar gray cat to rub up against the woman’s legs with a purr and a meow, letting her know that something good still resides within her, and then the cat takes a running leap and shifts again. Fur becomes feathers, limbs become wings, and the nightjar takes off into the sky.

---

Wednesday night, 16 March 2016, PM

Celia: From this vantage point, high above the city, the girl and the bird both find peace. Even the Beast, hungry though it is, cannot help but be silent within her while she soars across the sky. Perhaps it, too, is thinking of another night, another flight; how many of them now has she spent with her sire?

She understands the yearning he has to travel as he does above the heads of the kine that scurry like ants beneath his booted feet. This is my city, she imagines him saying, though words do not frequently pass his lips. He had once told her it would all be his. Years ago, on the highest building in the city where he had collected her from her cousin’s apartment, he had said those words to her. It had pained her then. She had thought of how easily his plans could be stolen from her; she had not understood the words that followed, the place that he intended for her. Now, as the years have passed, she does. She is his tool.

Something within her, something made of steel rather than flesh, rebels at the thought.

She does not want to be a tool.

But that is the way of things, is it not? The elders among them turn the younger into pawns and tools until those younger prove themselves to be capable, to be worthy, and ascend further. So many her age are content to live their nightly existence; they never hunger for more, never seek to rise above what is handed to them. She and Roderick had spoken of it once, the neonates that pay lip service to their patron of choice and offer to be “ears on the ground,” as if there are not dozens like them who do the same thing. Selling hot air.

Jade, Celia, the Beast—they do not want to sell hot air. They wear the masks and say the words, but inside they scheme.

And tonight… tonight they prove to themselves, to their friends, to their sire and their grandsire why the Blood is not wasted on them.

Tonight they turn a boy into a girl, indifference into passion, acquaintance into ally.

Tonight they push the first of the dominoes that will spiral through the city.

The nightjar flaps its wings and soars, reveling in the freedom of the night sky and the thoughts that flit through its mind. One night, perhaps, it will fly beside the sire who blooded it.

Tonight, though, its mission is solitary.

The lights from below beckon the bird to begin its descent, spiraling slowly through the clouds to find the glow of the riverboat. Her playmate waits within.

She glides toward the window left open for her and drops into the painter’s cabin. She shifts from bird to lick.

Jade has arrived.

GM: Jade has arrived, and not a moment too soon.

Perhaps a few moments too early.

As the nightjar swoops by, it see Josua in bed with another vampire. She’s a short, slim, and black-haired Asian-American vampire who isn’t wearing anything. Josua isn’t either. The two Kindred are locked in one another’s embrace—or at least locked under the female one’s. She’s pushed him face-down into the bed and is straddling him from behind, raking fangs and nails down his skin as she laps up the cooling blood. Josua writhes underneath and whispers sweet, submissive words, the kind that are an endless roll of velvet against one’s ears.

There’s a precise perfection to her appearance, the esthetician behind the nightjar can tell. Neatly trimmed hair, long unbroken nails, plucked eyebrows, smooth shaved skin—care was taken prior to her Embrace, care that speaks to her sire’s attention to detail and calculated intentions. Details invisible to the kine, invisible to the trash at the edge of society, but all-too clear to those in the halls of power—or someone who runs a spa. It speaks to legacy and affection. The same care is evident in her manicured and painted nails, carefully styled hair, and a carefully styled, conservative-looking dark blouse and skirt currently lying on the ground.


Alana, at least, has also come through. The nightjar sees the expected makeup case and two suitcases likely filled with folded clothes sitting in the corner of the room.

Celia: What’s this? Another tasty little morsel for her to top?

Someone else might be jealous, but Jade sees the offer for what it is: two for the price of one. Isn’t there a saying about early birds and worms?

Jade shifts, fangs already long in her mouth at the sight and scent of blood.

“Naughty naughty fledglings, starting without me.” Velveteen words drip from her tongue like thunder poured over ice, arousal and hunger in her eyes.

She doesn’t ask for permission. She doesn’t say that she’s going to join them. She just does, stalking forward on heeled shoes without bothering to remove the rest of her clothes. She slides in behind the Tremere—archon’s childe, she remembers from the club, and some part of her purrs at the delectable little treat he’s taken for himself, though she would expect nothing less than perfection from a fellow surgeon—and sinks the points of her fangs into her neck.

GM: “You showed up early,” laughs Josua. “I have a very full schedule…”

Kyrstin gives a low growl and turns around just as Jade’s fangs pierce her neck. The Tremere’s blood and her mother’s are like night and day. Yes, it isn’t brimming with love. But it’s stronger, headier, and with such a darker, sharper taste, all grim determination and jagged glass. It’s the difference between a loved one’s home-cooked soup and a highly-rated restaurant’s. It might not have the same love, the service with a smile. But it’s made by more technically proficient hands, from costlier ingredients, in a dedicated and likewise costlier setting. It’s a good contrast to go from day to night, rather than day to shoddier day like if she’d supped from another ghoul who didn’t love her.

Kyrstin’s hands, meanwhile, already work to tug off Jade’s shirt, then her fangs sink into the Toreador’s neck. The archon wouldn’t choose someone weak for his childe. Josua, beneath them both, pulls down Jade’s panties and teasingly traces his fangs across her lower lips. His painter’s hands appreciatively squeeze her posterior.

“A body built for bedrooms…” he murmurs, then sinks his fangs into her pubic mound.

Celia: Everything she takes the girl takes right back from her. Pity; she hadn’t wanted to need to break into the supply she has built up. But she will. After she enjoys these two.

Her clothing comes off with little regard to its structure, shirt shredded when the Tremere takes too long with the buttons down her front, skirt hiked up around her hips to give Josua the access he needs. A shift of her lower body positions her shins across his forearms, pressure applied to keep him pinned beneath her.

“Hush, pet,” she growls, lifting her mouth from Kyrstin just long enough to get the words out. Another shift of her hips and she’s put the best part of herself over him, pressing down to smother his lips with hers and present him with the feast he so clearly desires. Jade leans in again, claws and fangs tearing across Kyrstin’s chest. Her tongue follows.

GM: Josua likely couldn’t be happier to have any speech muffled beneath Jade’s best part. He struggles with his arms and makes little gasps and squeals in a very sexy way. His tongue expertly goes about its work, lapping and stroking and teasing her in all the right places even as bliss shudders up her loins from the kiss of her clanmate’s fangs. She’s sitting on a volt of electricity. She wants to scream and leap off, but not really, she actually wants to grind down, wants to shove her cunt against his face like she shoved her cock down Alana’s mouth, to make two holes become as one. He’s a fire smoldering beneath her, lending fuel to the lovemaking machine she is up top. Kyristin mirrors her motions. She bites and kisses, but mostly bites, across Jade’s lips, neck, shoulders, breasts. She rakes skin with her nails. She waits those tortuously long seconds for the blood to cool, then laps it up. The Tremere neonate doesn’t have passion so much as she has determination, relentlessly seizing what she wants. She isn’t a virtuoso like Josua. Her touch doesn’t please so much as take. She is, Jade assesses, his junior in the arts of love.

But then, she isn’t a Toreador.

Celia: She takes after her sire in that manner. Or at least that’s what Jade had always imagined when she fantasized about the archon: taking what he wants. Seizing it like he seizes everything else in his Requiem. Controlling her pleasure like he had controlled her body so effortlessly on the floor of the club; a hand here, a touch there, she had bent to his will. Restrained strength. Even his mind in hers had been delicate and precise, never venturing beyond what she had offered to show him.

Pity, too, as she’d had such wicked visions she could have shared that all involved his taught, toned body intertwined with hers.

She contents herself with the childe, some small part of her wondering if Grey and North have ever fucked, another part wondering at his response if she takes the fledgling for a lover to show her how it’s done.

Like this, her touch says, fangs trailing shallow scratches from clavicle to nipple in slow, prolonged movements. She goes the other way to lick it clean, down to up rather than up to down. Down, though, her hips over Josua’s mouth, riding the tongue he uses to tease her with as assuredly as she would ride another part.

GM: Maybe if she fucks Kyrstin hard enough her sire will feel it. Through the Blood.

What a compliment that would be.

Does Donovan feel it, when she gets fucked really hard and really well? Does he sense her pleasure? What feelings does it stir in his cold breast? She fucks so often, and so expertly, surely he’s felt it at least a few times.

It’s enough to think about him while she’s with them.

Jade shows the Tremere how it’s done. Like this. Like that. Slow. Savoring. Compatible with taking. Just do it right. She shows them both how it’s done. She reminds Josua it’s his place to lick, from the bottom, to worship her cunt and be thankful for it. He is. He so clearly is. The three lie spent on his silky sheets (of course he has good sheets) when they’re done, slick with one another’s vitae.

“Always a pleasure to be fucked by an expert…” the other Toreador purrs, stroking a hand along Jade’s vitae-smeared flank.

Celia: Does he feel it when she has a particularly strong release? Does it strike him in the middle of important meetings, a vision of her topping or being topped by someone else, the echo of her pleasure arcing through the space between them?

It’s a decidedly delicious thought, made all the better by the way the Tremere responds to her instruction.

When they’re both spent—she did that—and collapse onto the bed, Jade curls up behind Josua and nuzzles the back of his neck with her lips.

“Happy to assist,” she murmurs against his skin. Her tongue flicks along his flesh, wiping it clean of blood. She itches to sink her fangs into him again.

“I’m Jade,” she says to Kyrstin.

GM: Josua clearly has that same thought. He grins and starts to clean her up with his tongue too. They won’t let a droplet go to waste.

“Kyrstin,” replies Jon’s childe, propping her head up with her fist.

Celia: “I know your sire,” Jade says to her as Josua busies himself once more with his tongue. Her eyes flick down the naked girl’s body, appraising, then back up. “He has good taste.”

GM: “Then I am sure you are unsurprised. He is meticulous.”

Celia: “Excellent word choice for him.” Jade finally smiles, running a hand through Josua’s hair. “Are you being released upon his return?”

GM: Josua grins and continues to lip the bottom-most portions of her breasts. They’re clean of vitae.

“I am being released this Sunday,” Kyrstin answers.

Celia: “Congratulations,” Jade tells her, only momentarily distracted when Josua’s lip closes around a nipple. “I’ll be sure to attend. Is he back, then?”

“Perhaps a party afterward,” she muses, clearly already planning something.

GM: “Thanks,” says Kyrstin. “Archon North has pressing business elsewhere, but I’d still enjoy a party.”

“That must suck he won’t be there,” says Josua between sucks.

Kyrstin shrugs her slim shoulders. “He knows. He’s proud of me. It’s enough that I’m here because of him.”

Celia: It was enough for Jade that Donovan and Lord Savoy had been present at her release despite being introduced to their society as Veronica’s childe.

She asks after Kyrstin’s schedule and what night would work best, already wondering where she can throw a party for the girl. The one Veronica had hosted for her had been a night to remember; Jade will step in for North, if he’s busy with his archon things.

GM: The harpy’s childe got a party just for her, after all.

Kyrstin is free the Wednesday and Thursday after her release.

A buzz goes up from the phone amidst Jade’s clothes.

Celia: Jade lets her know she’ll be in touch.

“Hold that thought, pet,” she says to Josua, rolling off the bed to pluck the phone from where it sits beneath her clothing. She gets Kyrstin’s number and checks the message. Efficient.

GM: It’s from Randy, on her question about whether Reggie was fucking Mabel with her consent.

Mabel maybe thought it was Evan fucking her so kind of?

Celia: Thanks. I’ll handle.

Reggie is going to be the sort of rapist-vampire that nightmares are made of.

GM: He said it himself. He takes what he wants.

On the other hand, Jade’s heard a few licks say they’re all rapists, in their own way.

Celia: “I’m excited for the party now,” Jade says, dropping her phone back onto the pile of clothing and sliding into bed with the two. “I don’t suppose your lover will let you come to the Quarter if I host it there, hm?”

GM: “I don’t suppose so,” Josua says with an effected sigh.

“Perhaps Marigny,” says Kyrstin.

Celia: “Might as well.”

GM: Kyrstin doesn’t look disappointed, at least.

Celia: She would if she knew what sort of parties the Evergreen sees.

But Jade won’t burst her bubble.

Something Roderick had said to her about Tremere comes to mind. The demon thing. Is there a casual way to link demons, sex, and parties?

If anyone can do it, Jade can.

She makes idle chitchat for a moment, asking after the Tremere’s studies, and finally slips it into the conversation. Grunewald was the ghost expert; who’s the demonologist of New Orleans?

GM: Apparently, Jade can.

Kyrstin answers little about her thaumaturgic studies, directing conversation back to the party, but looks amused by Jade’s “joking” question. While the chantry doesn’t have a dedicated demonologist, Erwin Bornemann and Elsbeth von Steinhäuser likely know the most about demons, by dint of being the chantry’s senior-most Tremere.

Celia: Jade tucks that information away for later and lets Kyrstin steer them back toward party talk. She wants to know what Kyrstin wants to do to cut loose now that she’s “her own Kindred.”

GM: Kyrstin wants to indeed cut loose. Dancing. Partying. Music. Attractive vessels. “Like in college.”

She’s not interested, though, in “the kinkier shit.” Like vitae-gorged ghouls raping each other to death for the promise of more in front of laughing crowds.

It would be a lie to say Jade has never seen that.

Kyrstin, meanwhile, allows herself a faint smile.

“Lucky me to have a Toreador volunteering.”

Celia: Lucky indeed.

“I have a handful of clubs in the Quarter if you ever feel the need to cut loose after this party. Let me know; I’d be happy to take you out again.”

GM: Kyrstin nods. “I also enjoy piano music.”

Celia: “You should hear my grandsire play sometime.”

GM: “I fucked someone on a piano once,” Josua mentions idly.

Celia: “Did you play a tune?” Jade asks, one brow arched.

GM: “Sort of. I tried to hit the keys with my feet, but the positioning was awkward.”

Celia: “We should try again sometime.”

GM: “Yes, we should.”

Celia: “Or set a canvas on the ground and roll around in paint.”

“Or both.”

GM: “Mmm. I’d want to paint every last inch of you…” Josua murmurs, suckling her other nipple.

Kyrstin looks faintly amused again.

Toreador never stop thinking about sex.

Celia: Josua might have more sex than she does.

Is it possible?

Hadn’t she had three threesomes in one night last week?

Christ.

She’s happy to go again, though, or to let Kyrstin get on her way so she and Josua can get down to business. Sex business. Very serious stuff.

GM: Kyrstin’s libido seems satisfied. The blood disappears from her body with a murmured invocation and wave of her hand as she dresses. She says they have her number, then heads off.

Not everyone can be as much of a champ as the two Toreador.

---

Wednesday night, 16 March 2016, PM

GM: Josua doesn’t seem satisfied at all. He goes again with Jade. It’s everything and more that it was last time. It leaves her shivering with satisfaction and her Beast howling for more. They’re insatiable.

She’s not even sure how many times she had sex last night. There was Roderick, Reggie, Alana, the two breathers she picked up… and when was Vinny? That was also with Alana. It’s all blurring together.

“Mmm, good warm-up,” Josua purrs.

“But this is just practice for us with Marcel, me as a girl…”

Celia: They end up sprawled across the floor when they’re done the second time; at some point they had shifted and fallen and kept going, neither one of them bothered by the abrupt shift in position. Jade rests now with her head on his chest, tips of her claws running across his stomach.

“Mm,” she agrees, “just practice for Marcel.” Her eyes find the suitcases. “I see my delivery made it on time. Did you get a look at the girl who brought it?”

GM: “Yes, she was great in bed.”

Celia: Jade lifts a brow.

“You fucked Celia?”

GM: The other Toreador laughs and strokes her backside.

“You couldn’t have expected me not to help myself, sending in a treat like that.”

Celia: She’d left that out of the report.

GM: “I follow her on social media, so that was even better. There was lots of anticipation.”

Celia: “Wait a minute, so you got it up for her or you fangbanged her?”

GM: “Fangbanged. I’m happy to get you off the breather way, but it doesn’t do anything for me.”

“I did get her off that way too, though.”

Celia: “How chivalrous,” Jade says dryly. She’s both amused and aroused by the thought of Josua following Celia online and finally getting a chance to bang her. “Measure up to your expectations?”

GM: “Oh, yes,” he purrs. “I’d jerked off to her photos when I was alive. She was more submissive than I expected, but that might’ve been the renfield in her talking.”

“I gave her some of my blood, too, to balance what I took away. Since I’m so chivalrous.”

Celia: “Pity,” Jade says, nails tapping against his chest, “I was going to take it from you.”

GM: “She took it from me. I had her suck it from my dick.”

“There’s really nothing like the sight of a famous breather on their knees for you.”

Celia: Jade shifts, sliding down Josua’s body until she’s kneeling between his legs.

“Was she better than me?” Jade asks, fangs trailing down the inside of his thigh. “Should we compare?” She laps at the blood her teeth bring forth, not bothering to wait for it to cool; she wants to give him the full effect of the pleasure she can bring him.

GM: “Oh, there’s no comparison…” Josua grins. He sits up and wraps his legs around her torso, pulling her in close against him. His painter’s hands close around one of her breasts, not directly kneading it, but rubbing his palms against one another with the nipple caught between.

It’s tricky positioning, with her head so close to his cock.

Celia: It doesn’t stop her from taking what she wants from him. Last time he had put a tiny little prick at the head of his cock for her; now she creates the same sort of hole with the point of one fang, eagerly sucking the blood from him. Her mouth vibrates around him when he begins to touch her breast, growl or purr or breather-like moan muffled by the flesh in her mouth.

GM: He leans down, fangs piercing her neck as her own pierce his stiffened manhood. Bliss shudders through her as he wraps his arms around her, holding her close against him with all four limbs.

Celia: She doesn’t let it devolve into another full round of sex; they need to meet Marcel, after all, and Josua needs to be transformed first. She gives him enough of a taste to put her assuredly ahead of her ghoul before releasing him, pushing him back down onto the floor and settling herself above him.

“We should shower before we meet him, no? Come in fresh?”

GM: “Mistress knows best,” he smiles, his fingers idly finding their way towards her womanhood.

Celia: Her fingers close around his wrist, preventing him from touching her.

“I assume the breather way does nothing for him, either. I’d prefer if you not tell him, if that’s the case.”

GM: “Yes, I was going to say. Don’t cum. He’ll be really grossed out.”

Celia: “Old licks are so…” Jade just shakes her head.

GM: “I wish I could still fuck that way,” Josua sighs.

Celia: “Honestly, it’s pretty much the best of both worlds.”

GM: “I’m so jealous. I can still make myself hard, but it does nothing. Seeing Celia Flores suck me off is satisfying on a purely psychological level.”

“Don’t get… wet, either, or let your nipples get hard. Can you turn that off?”

Celia: “Ah. Right. Yeah. Kind of like how you turn it on. Just blood control.”

GM: “Okay, good. But don’t worry. It’ll still be a fantastic time. He’s amazing in bed.”

Celia: “Maybe I’ll join his harem and move in with you here,” Jade muses, “we’ll never leave the boat.”

GM: “He’d like that,” smiles Josua. “He’s always looking to build his harem.”

“Well. Since before Matheson, anyway.”

Celia: Jade winces. “Yeah, I imagine that put a damper on things.”

GM: “Yes, it’s an ugly look now.”

Celia: “I mean, it’s not like he’s doing the same thing.”

GM: “Oh, he isn’t, at all. But he figured the optics would be too hard to explain, and licks looking to sling mud might seize on it.”

“So with Marie in torpor and Evan gone, I’m the only one of his regular harem left.”

Celia: “Evan was his?”

GM: “Well, used to be. Roxanne was really jealous, so Evan left. He was really apologetic about the whole thing, tried to offer Marcel a boon, but he said no.”

“He’s pretty casual about it all, he knows flings don’t last forever.”

Celia: “Oh. Huh. I didn’t know that. I mean, I knew Roxanne was jealous about him being with other people, but… huh. Did Marcel ever look into what became of him?”

GM: “Oh, Rocco talked to him about it. But not really. Licks go missing sometimes and he figured the other Storyvilles would try to find Evan.”

“After this long he’s probably ash, which sucks. He was good in bed.”

Celia: “Always a loss.”

“Also, not to sound ignorant, but isn’t Marie relatively young? Why’s she torped?”

GM: “Marie got torped by Setites. Marcel’s fed her his blood, but she hasn’t woken up.”

Celia: “…what?”

GM: “We dunno what’s wrong with her.”

“Marcel thinks maybe the Setites put a curse on her or something.”

Celia: “That’s awful.”

GM: “Yeah, she was great in bed too.”

“She and Marcel had amazing chemistry. Even outside of bed.”

“Which was interesting, because he usually likes boys. Like, it’s not a hard preference, but I’ve seen him go for a lot more guy licks than girl licks.”

Celia: “Why does he make you dress like a girl, then?”

GM: Josua smiles. “Variety is nice, isn’t it?”

Celia: “Would he like me more if I were a boy?”

GM: “Hmm, maybe? Like I said, girls can do it for him. He was really into Marie. He just tends to prefer boys.”

“I guess it depends how sexy a boy you make.”

“He likes his boys sort of feminine, too. Hates facial hair on them. So I think that’s why the idea of me being a boy in girl’s clothes does it for him.”

Celia: “Well considering the base I’d have to work with…” Jade gestures down at her flawless self.

GM: Josua laughs.

“It’s a perfect base. Don’t worry. He’ll be all over you.”

Celia: “Mm. Good. I hate feeling rejected. I’d have to bring you back here for round… seven, or something, to make me feel better.”

GM: “He’ll love you. Just fuck him the way he likes it, and it won’t matter if you’re a boy or a girl.”

“He likes being on top. Ventrue, prince, and all.”

“But he doesn’t like it if you just submit and simper, he likes lovers with spirit. Who push back.”

“But he wants to win, because Ventrue prince and all.”

“And when he does win he doesn’t want to just beat you into submission, he wants you to surrender.”

“And he wants you to be happy surrendering. Because you realize his way is the best way. You know?”

Celia: “Surrender to the prince,” Jade says, nodding. If she weren’t busy practicing not getting wet in front of Marcel Josua might notice her arousal at the thought. Or maybe that was there from earlier. Who can tell with her.

Jade takes a moment to look around his room, searching for a microwave.

GM: There is none in the small cabin.

“He loves it when people call him ‘my prince,’ too. Or ‘Your Majesty.’”

“He’s a great prince, I think he should still be one.”

“I think it’s so awful what those sewer rats did. It’d have been so much fun to live in Baton Rouge under him.”

Celia: Well fuck.

“If and when he takes back the city, are you going back with him?”

GM: “Oh, yes! I’ll be a real prince’s boytoy, won’t I?” Josua grins.

“And he can do whatever he wants to me…”

Celia: “Does that make you a princess?” Jade asks idly.

GM: “I’d love to be his princess.”

“His princess bitch.”

Celia: “Mmm. Now that sounds delightful.”

GM: “He says he ran a lot of the city out of his bedroom, too, so that’s fun.”

“If you had sex with him and he liked it he’d give you better hunting grounds.”

Celia: Jade arches a brow.

“Marcel for prince,” she declares.

GM: “And if you lived with him in his haven, as part of his harem, then you’d really have it made.”

“He says neonates all competed with each other to impress him so they’d get to live with him.”

Celia: Jade can’t think of anyone who would offer her real competition.

GM: She’s flawless, after all.

Celia: “Are we sure he’s Ventrue? Sounds like the sort of Toreador prince I could get behind.”

GM: “Oh, so, that’s the thing.”

“He actually is Ventrue, and really Ventrue. He’s just really subtle about it.”

“He still, I guess you could say, thinks with his head. All of that with his harem, and the fucking him for better feeding grounds, is calculated. He has this whole rational explanation for why he does it.”

“I mean, he also likes it, but he does it because he thinks it works best.”

Celia: “Approachable, blood bonds, good time, doesn’t look like a stiff, instills competition to stay in his good graces. Probably more I’m missing.”

GM: “Yes, that’s basically it.”

Celia: “Makes sense.”

“If I’m ever prince maybe I’ll keep a harem, too.”

“Maybe I should start one now.”

GM: “I’ll compete to be in your harem.”

Celia: “You can keep the rest of my bitches in line.”

GM: “I’ll blow all the other entrants out of the water, when I’m not blowing you.”

Celia: “Are you going to blow me? I can find a doc to give me a cock if you’d like.”

GM: “Really? I thought you could use one of those double strap-ons. Where there’s a dick on both ends, so the deeper you peg a guy, the deeper you get fucked too.”

Celia: “Oh. Yes. I like that more. Let’s do that.”

GM: “I don’t know why any girl uses a single strap-on.”

Josua glances at the time. “We should get showered and changed, I want to hit the casino as a girl before we fuck Marcel and my clothes get ruined.”

Celia: “I, ah… you don’t have a microwave in here, darling,” she finally points out after she’s decided the appliance isn’t hiding behind an easel somewhere.

GM: “It’s cramped here. Why do you want a microwave?”

Celia: “Flying gave me the munchies and I brought a snack because I thought it might and cold blood is gross and I don’t want to lose it on your lover.”

GM: “Oh, okay. There’s a microwave in one of the staff rooms, we can use that.”

Celia: “Perfect.”

GM: “Permission to rise, mistress?”

Celia: “I suppose.”

GM: They get up. They shower. They still wind up fucking in the shower.

Josua gets dressed, leads her to the staff break room, gets out everyone but a girl he starts making out with, perhaps to “distract.” Jade is left to microwave her snack.

Celia: Distract.

Right.

Jade heats the saved blood in the microwave until it’s a little warmer than most humans run, then tells Josua she’s “riding the edge” and goes back to his room to lock herself in the recently fucked-in bathroom. Just in case.

She drinks all of it, already adjusting her schedule to give herself time to get more for Edith and Pete. Inconvenient. But it gave her wings. The literal sort, and the metaphorical sort; without them she wouldn’t have been able to add Grey to her list of conquests or find the next crumb in the trail that will lead her to finding out more about demons.

Not really a path she ever thought she’d want to go down, but here she is.

GM: Here she is.

It would be so easy, though. To just drain someone completely. To have more than enough blood for her needs.

Josua comes back soon enough. “Ready for my makeover?” he smiles.

Celia: She probably will, anyway. After she leaves here. Call Reggie and give him the task of getting rid of the body, which in this case really just means dragging it back to the spa for her. Still, it’s good practice for when he eventually joins her in undeath.

God, she’s really going to miss fucking him. She can’t imagine he’s going to be able to get it up like she does once he’s dead.

“Ready,” she says, makeup bag already unrolled and brushes on her hip. She gestures for him to take a seat. “Thanks for the assist.”

GM: “My pleasure,” he replies, sitting down. “Don’t we do makeup after I’m dressed up, though?”

“Unless it’s a dress that doesn’t have to go over my head.”

Celia: “Usually,” she agrees, “but we’re not quite the same size so nothing I brought is something that will need to go over the head. Zippers and whatnot, things you can step into.”

His chest is larger than hers. Not the tits, but the ribcage itself.

“If you’re eager to browse, though, be my guest.” She gestures toward the luggage full of clothing.

GM: “Makes sense,” he agrees, slipping off his shirt. It’s a trim, hairless, and well-proportioned chest.

“Oh no, we’ll do everything your way, mistress, in just the order you want,” he grins.

Celia: “I hope you know how to walk in heels,” is all she says to that.

GM: “Step down heel first, then toe. Take shorter steps.”

Celia: The work begins.

Josua is hardly the first male client she has ever put makeup on. Aside from Landen—whose face is structurally more masculine than most of her clients even if they aren’t technically a boy—she’s had plenty of them come into the spa over the years. Drag queens, male models, boys who just want to look pretty. Plus the dolls; though less frequent than the female dolls, she and Elyse have still worked on a handful of males.

The application process is similar. Josua has no hair to remove, no scruff on his face that she needs to get rid of, and the gel that she pumps into her fingers and smears across his skin meets no resistance.

“Moisturizer,” she explains, “to help the rest of it go on smoothly. If you like, I can have Celia drop off something for you to use nightly. Our skin takes a special sort of product.”

Her eyes find his again, lips curving into a smile.

“Not that you need much. You’re gorgeous.”

Familiar words; hadn’t she said the same to a blonde Ventrue once?

She dismisses the thought as quickly as it comes, reaching for the primer that will even out any rough patches, fill in any tiny little holes, and help the foundation adhere to his skin.

“Base coat,” she says, pouring a measure of liquid onto the back of her hand and dabbing at it with a brush. That, too, goes across the entirety of his face, blended out with a damp egg-shaped sponge and another brush all the way from his hairline to beyond his jaw. She lets it sit while she reaches for a palette of shadows, beginning with a flesh-toned color to create a base layer along his eyes to help blend everything together. Then white in the corners, applied with a tiny brush that only puts the pigment where she wants it to go. She pauses a moment while she looks into his eyes, debating on color for the lid.

Green can go a handful of ways. The neutrals work best with browns and taupe to make them pop, or any of the other smoky colors. Plum and gold can work as well. Green, too, to give vibrancy to the eyes themselves. He doesn’t have the coloring for plum, she thinks, and neutrals can be boring. But gold… gold might work. Gold and green? Is it too reminiscent of a snake?

No, she thinks, when Marcel sees him he will have no reason to think snake.

A new brush gathers the pigment from the palette, swiping it across his lid. Gold, olive, and pine, the colors bleeding into one another as she blends, blends, blends. Always blending. There will be no unblended lines on this masterpiece, not with Jade wielding the brush. A tiny drop of a green with hints of blue at the outer corner—dare she call it jade?—before the whole thing darkens and dissipates into a smoked out look toward the brow’s tail. Black liner across the top lid, flicked into a wing, and white at the waterline to widen his eyes.

Drama, she thinks. She has given him drama.

He will not be the playful sort of sub this evening; when the pair of them meet with Marcel they will show the faces of two beings that must be conquered by the prince before they will roll over and submit.

Jade works his brows next, plucking the stray hairs that make them too thick to be feminine and filling in the rest with a brown pomade slightly darker than his natural strands. She sculpts them with her tweezers and her pot of color, giving him a fine arch that makes it look like his eyes are constantly smiling.

Another coat of foundation erases any of the fallen pigment from his shadows. She uses another brush to swipe on highlighter that brings attention to his recently decked-out eyes, contour to erase the hard lines of his jaw, and blush to give his face a delicate flush.

She blends it all with brush and finger and sponge.

The boy beneath the makeup disappears as she works, the features becoming less masculine and more feminine with every stroke. A final application of powder locks the liquid in place, and a spritz from a black-capped pink bottle melds it all together.

Then it’s time for the extras: the strip of lashes she applies with a tiny amount of glue, the mascara to meld them together. And lipstick. Green can be hard to match, but Jade has all sorts of colors in her box of goodies, and she finds a liner and liquid lip in a berry that goes well with both the gold and the green.

“One moment,” Jade says before he looks into the mirror. She steps away to pick through the luggage, coming back with a wig and band. She pushes his hair back from his face and secures it with the band, then sets the wig overtop of it and secures it with a brush, a bit of glue, and a handful of tiny little clips that disappear as soon as she places them.

When she’s done, it looks as if she has taken an airbrush to his face.

His skin is smooth. His eyes sparkle. His features have been both softened and hardened, creating the illusion that Jade wants the world to see: Josua Cambridge, female.

Celia: When it’s done, Jade spends a long moment looking him over. She searches for flaws, searches for mistakes, searches for any sign that this isn’t what he might want. She tells him to smile, then to scowl, and finally to pout.

Perfection, she thinks. He is not a cherub-faced saint, no, but the drama of the eyes has not turned him into a vicious killer, either. It is not a look she would put on Veronica or Caroline, two licks with steel in their spine, but neither is it a look that she would give to a child, Leilani, or Celia herself. With this he can be what he wants: predator, prey, strong, weak, goddess, acolyte.

He can wear the mask he chooses.

She holds out a mirror.

GM: Jade and Elyse have worked on their share of male dolls. They’re a lot like Gabe was. Being given female bodies and dressed in female clothes is an immediate, humiliating blow to their spirits. Jade could call it sexist. Could remark on the things it says about gender roles and social views. But there’s nothing like being made to a wear a dress, panties, and bra—with real breasts—to emotionally castrate all but the most defiant males.

GM: Humiliation, Elyse always says, goes so much further than physical chastisement. Pain is an undesirable stimulus dolls will try to avoid. But humiliation destroys the capacity for resistance by making the doll see itself as less than it formerly was.

But Jade and Celia have worked on their share of men who enjoyed being prettied up, and Josua is no exception.

“Really, we still benefit from moisturizer?” he asks. “I thought our skin was perfect. Or at least stuck basically the way it was.”

He smiles at her words. “Yes please, though. Whatever makes me more gorgeous.”

They are familiar words.

But how many times has Josua probably described how much he loves women to other women, like he told Jade he did?

And Josua does clearly love women. Love being made up as a woman. He sits still, and with more difficulty, holds his face still as Jade reworks his face from male to female. He has good facial structure. Delicate lines. Not that a hand as masterful as Jade’s needs those, to bring out someone’s inner beauty, but it’s faster when there’s a lot of outside beauty already. He comes out divine. He’s gorgeous. Stunning. Head-turning. Josua holds the mirror to his face, but only high enough to see his lips—“Our clan blessing is going to kick in, if I see myself all dolled up, and then I’ll try to fuck you. We should at least wait until I’m done.”

But he relishes smiling, scowling, pouting in the mirror. He relishes smiling more than scowling, and pouting more than smiling.

They’re pretty lips.

They’re a pretty everything.

Because everything turns pretty around Jade.

“Wow. Just look at those lips,” he exclaims, holding his finger up to just beneath them, careful not to touch the lipstick. “I could suck so much dick with these lips.”

Celia: “You’re going to suck so much dick with those lips,” Jade tells him.

GM: He puckers his newly-red lips and kisses the air twice. “Yes ma’am!”

Celia: “Do you really think our clan’s blessing is going to make you want to fuck if you see yourself?” It’s an amusing thought.

“I can take a picture, if you want, to show you later.”

GM: “Oh, I’ll be completely off my game if I don’t even know how I look. You can just stop me if I try, and drive me crazy with anticipation, crazy enough to make me soaking wet if I was a real girl, until we see Marcel.”

Celia: “I imagine you’re going to be hit on more than me once we hit the floor,” Jade says with a pout.

“Why don’t we make a game of it? Whoever collects the most numbers wins.”

GM: Josua grins. “Oh, I’m amazing at fucking people, and getting people to want to fuck me, but I just know I’m going up against a master, here. I’m going to have to be at the absolute top of my game.”

“Loser owes the winner a boon?”

Celia: “No cheating. You can’t whack someone with star mode.”

“You need a name,” she adds. “And clothes.”

GM: “Hmm. How’s Josina?”

Celia: “Is Josina a real name?”

GM: “Does it sound real?”

Celia: “No.”

“Jessie?”

GM: “Jessie feels like a tomboy to me. I don’t want to be a tomboy, I want to be pretty girl who sucks so much dick. What about Joy?”

Celia: “Joy could work.”

GM: “Joy it is. Can you do anything for my shoulders? Those can be such a giveaway with transgender girls.”

Celia: “Any practice with a female voice?”

GM: “Hmm.” Josua clears his throat. “How’s this?” he asks in a smooth and velvety, higher-sounding one. It’s on the deeper end for a woman’s voice, but not unusually so.

Celia: “Better,” she nods. “I brought things that will hide the broader shoulders, in any case. With draping and such. And a bra. Unless you want me to cut you open and remove some parts. Just grab me a butcher’s knife, yeah?”

GM: Josua laughs. “Maybe if we had more time. I heard there are licks who cut out parts of themselves.”

“I’m not sure why they do it. So they weigh less?”

Celia: “Convenient carrying case.”

“I heard about a lick who pulled out his intestines and used them to strangle people. He didn’t want to lose any blood so he thought that was the best way.”

GM: “Seems easier just to carry rope.”

Celia: “I mean, I’m pretty sure he was fucked in the head before his Embrace, and it just brought out something even worse inside of him.”

Conscious of the time, though, Jade crosses the room to open the rest of the luggage. Inside is a pretty hefty selection of dresses, skirts, and lingerie in all sorts of colors and lengths.

“I brought a little bit of everything so you’d have options. A deeper V will distract from the shoulders. So will a cutout on the shoulders themselves. Probably nothing sleeveless or strapless, though.”

GM: “Let’s go with the v-neck. Really show off my new assets and draw eyes there.”

Celia: “Spoken like a true slut.”

GM: “I’m going to be a complete and total slut. The only reason I’m not already is that guys can’t be sluts.”

Celia: She gives him a look at that.

GM: “I mean, when did you ever hear of a guy getting shamed for having lots of sex?”

Celia: “Only rapists.”

Jade can’t help but think of Reggie again. He’s definitely on the line there. Maybe that’s why she likes him so much.

GM: “I hope someone rapes me, while I’m like this. That would be so sexy.”

“I think I should win if someone tries to do that, even if I get fewer numbers.”

“Same goes for you.”

Celia: Jade considers him for a moment, looking up from the selection of dresses in front of her.

“Does it count as rape if you want it to happen?”

GM: “Probably not, they just have to think we don’t. Or not bother with consent.”

He follows with clear interest, if not pleasure, but lets her pick.

Celia: “If you want to be raped,” Jade says idly, fingering the dress in her hands, “I could ask my friend to turn you into a real girl for a night. Give you a cute little pussy that someone can take advantage of. Really fuck you like a man fucks a woman.”

GM: “Oh really? That’d be so hot.”

Celia: “Win our bet and I’ll call in a favor.”

She finally offers him the first selection, holding it out for his perusal: long and red, deep V in the front, with two slits up the side all the way to the thighs and long sleeves that will hide his shoulders. It’ll allow for a peek of leg without showing off his male physique. She points out these features to him and sets it aside for his perusal.


The second dress is similarly designed, with a deep V, long sleeves, and a longer hem to hide his legs. Black instead of red, though, with a mesh sort of netting that will cover most of him. There’s also some open skin on the shoulders to show some skin, since it lacks the slits of the first.


She offers a shorter one after that that will hit him mid thigh, charcoal with little sparkles on it, a deep V, and long sleeves to hide the shoulders.


GM: “Wow, those are some really slutty necklines. Perfect for me,” Josua grins. “Let’s go with the third. Full-length dresses would be out of place on the casino floor. And I like the sparkles.”

“I’ve already shaved my legs for tonight.”

“And it’s a deal, too. We’ll call in your friend if I win, to give me a real pussy.”

Celia: The full length dresses hide the legs, which are decidedly masculine despite being shaved, but she’d already pointed that out to him. She simply nods and reaches for a bra, slipping it onto him and hooking it in the back. Josua isn’t the first boy she’s turned into a girl for the night; she’d pre-stuffed the bra to give him a set of tits bigger than her own. He’s larger than her, his frame can handle it. A bit of blending and contour with a brush across his chest makes them look as real as hers, too. No hack-jobs here.

Jade helps him into the dress—it’s not hard to get into a dress, really, but sometimes zippers in the back can be a little challenging—and adjusts it as needed, finally nodding her head.

“I had to guess on your shoe size,” she says, “so I went with a strappy, open toe. Gives more room.”

GM: “Perfect, I was just about to ask what we had,” he smiles, appreciatively squeezing his new breasts once he’s in the dress.

“God, I’m so fuckable.”

Celia: Jade can’t help but laugh. She tells him to hold still while she coats his nails in a quick-drying polish, fingers and toes both with a pop of color that contrasts nicely against the charcoal dress, and once those are dry helps him into the heels and fastens the buckles.

Finally, she offers him a selection of jewelry: necklaces, bracelets, or rings if he is so inclined in a variety of metals and tastes. She lets him pick his own accessories while she dresses herself.

He might think that floor-length dresses don’t have any business being on the casino floor, but Jade knows that the right body, the right attitude, the right woman can pull off a gown even in a place like this. She slips into it, a black number with just as many sparkles as Josua’s chosen number, with a plunging neckline and cutouts across her mid-drift. A slit up either side rise almost to her waist. The dress dances around her legs while she walks, showing off her toned and shapely thighs.


Some dresses wear the women, obscuring them from sight as it steals the stage, but even this dress can’t compete with the body it clings to. She pairs it with nude heels and pulls her hair into a twisting, half up style that leaves a handful of strands free to curl about and frame her face, the rest of it falling in a cascade of dark color down her back. No jewelry save the ever-present sun ring on her left hand.

Formal, but dressed down with the amount of skin it shows. Something that she can wear both on the casino floor and to meet the prince later. Adaptable to any situation. Like her.

“Ready?” she asks.

GM: Josua smiles as she does his nails and fastens his shoes. He spends some time selecting jewelry and goes with a double chain pendant that hangs low down his exposed neck, drawing further attention to his breasts, and some hoop earrings that also detract from the prominence of his shoulders—“Plus hoops have a kind of slutty vibe, don’t you think?” The long sleeves don’t leave much room for bracelets, but he goes goes with a simple gold wedding ring and attached diamond engagement ring, “So I can make jokes about that, and maybe it’ll make guys want to fuck me more, because who doesn’t love stealing something that isn’t theirs?”

But when Jade finishes with herself, he falls silent.

Silent. Still.

Mesmerized.

Celia: Josua’s chatter becomes the noisy backdrop to the cabin she has turned into a dressing suite. She laughs along with him, agreeing that hoops are slutty and that stolen things taste better, and becomes accustomed to his voice filling the space. It’s only when he stops that she looks up, catching his eye.

What does it for him? Is it the dress, the heels, the makeup? The exposed skin? Or is it Jade herself, the body she has spent countless hours turning into a living embodiment of art?

She aches to know what makes him stop and stare.

“Your future admirers are waiting.” Low, sultry tones, suggesting that she doesn’t care one whit who waits for them.

GM: Perhaps it’s some or all of those things about her. Perhaps it’s himself, as he stares into the wall-length mirror behind her. Perhaps it’s both.

His next words are a whisper.

“My admirers.”

“Your worshipers.”

Josua sinks to his knees, managing a graceful descent despite the heels.

“God creates. That’s the first thing he does, in the Bible. He makes the world. God is the supreme creator.”

The palms of his nailed hands stroke her exposed thighs caressingly, lovingly.

“The goddess creates.”

“Look at us. Just look at us. Just look at what you’ve done to us.”

Josua shivers and wraps his arms around Jade’s leg as though seeking assurance, a pillar to cling to amidst a raging storm. His new breasts press against her smooth skin as he breathes out, his voice at once choked and velvet,

“Long dress on the casino floor. You don’t follow the rules. You define them. You make them. You rise above them, like Aphrodite from the sea, and they all try to mimic you, they all want to capture your spark, your your brilliance, your glory, some mote of your divine light, but they’ll all fail, because you’d never try to be more perfect by being like someone else. The goddess does not mimic her worshipers. They are your worshipers. Everyone out there. That’s so perfect. That’s so fitting. I wear the short dress, the little dress, because that’s what everyone else does, and it really makes me the little bitch, next to you. That’s so fitting. Your dress is your cock and yours is longer than mine, so that double makes me your bitch. It’s such an honor to be your bitch, mistress. Man is less than the goddess. It is natural. It is right.”

He runs his cheek along her leg. He clings her leg like a lifeline as he slowly lowers his head until it rests almost at the floor. He kisses her feet. He kisses her toes. He kisses the nail of her big toe, then laps at the gaps between her toes with his tongue.

“The goddess creates. That’s what she does. You’ve created Joy. You took male and made it female, and just as sexy as before. You made your own world. I am your child, your creation, your heavenly breath. There can be no competition. Every number I get is a number you get. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see me, I see Jade. I see her touch on me. I see her touch on every part of me. I see her care, her knowledge, her taste, her style, her vision. Her presence.”

He works his way up, head still bowed before her in supplication. He kisses the strap of her shoes. He kisses her ankles. He kisses his way up her ankles. Up her legs.

“I feel your presence in the wig on my end. I feel your presence in the silky bra and panties teasing my skin. I feel your presence in the breasts I can’t stop squeezing. I feel your presence in the dress wrapped around me, enveloping me, oh god, mistress, you’re everywhere, you’re everything, I can’t escape you, I owe all I am to you, and I want to just hug myself and scream, it feels so good to have you in me. I can’t walk. I can’t think. I can’t talk, about anything except you. You’ve subsumed me. Oh, I just want to roll around on the floor, hugging myself, hugging you, screaming in ecstasy, in joy, because I am Joy, your creation, your extension, your avatar, and the only reason I’m not, the only reason I’m not rolling around on the floor like I’m possessed, which I am, possessed by Jade, is because I know it would displease you if I mussed up your work and to defy the goddess is unthinkable. I’ve got this beast inside of me, this sublime wellspring of energy. I’ve got you inside of me, all over me, all around me, I don’t think there even is a Josua now, there’s just Joy, there’s just Jade. I want a big strong man to bend me over and fuck me silly. I want him to use me completely while I bow down and worship you, and when he cums I want us both to scream your name as the goddess comes forth, because it’s not me he’s fucking, it’s you, your creation, your Joy.”

He kisses her thigh. He leaves a trail of kisses up her thigh. Adoring kisses. Worshipful kisses. He tastes her flesh as though it is divine mana. He clings to leg like he would cling to a pillar of pure light that could carry him into heaven. He peels back her gown’s slit skirt like a divine revelation lies beneath, and falls upon the flawless skin in rapture, trailing it with worshipful kisses.

“Joy, mistress. Your Joy.”

“Your. Joy.”

Celia: Aphrodite from the sea. It’s the second time someone has said that to her, that she is Aphrodite from the sea. That she has risen up and taken the sea with her. That she cannot be defined by the ideals of beauty because she, her, she creates them. She defines them. She is them. She is them and they are her, the bar that has been set, the level that others strive for. She is not the dress on the woman; she is not the gown on the rack; she is not even the regalia hanging from the stick-thin frames of the women in Paris and Milan and New York with their slightly stooped posture and their stage makeup.

She is the creator. The divine inspiration.

The goddess.

And, oh, how he worships her.

On his knees, his touch reverent, his words melodious. She basks in it. Revels in it. Rejoices in it. The praise that he lavishes upon her swells the heart within her chest, the head upon her shoulders, every word of it true, true, true.

She did this. Created him. Created her. Created Celia, created Jade, created others—so many others, all of them eye-catching beauties. Elyse has dolls, little bits of porcelain and glass and wood chippings that she glues together and arranges in their fancy little dresses. She has human dolls she molds into chaste beings: perfect wife, perfect mother, perfect woman.

But she—Jade, Celia, whoever she is, whoever she once was—she creates personas. Bodies are naught but clay beneath the tips of her fingers. She molds. Sculpts. Paints. The dolls sit pretty on their little shelves with their vacant eyes; hers walk, talk, breathe, love.

That’s the true art, there.

Inside her chest, her dead heart beats. A flush spreads through her body at his touch and words and adoration. She is an artist. She has created Joy. Created this moment, this passion.

She did this.

The goddess touches the tips of her pristine fingers to Joy’s cheek. Her nails stroke the delicate flesh, a tender gesture that ends at her chin. She lifts, tilting the eyes up to look at her. Green eyes framed in green and gold and black—smoky, nebulous eyes, eyes that shine in ardent desire.

“You are mine.”

Steel wrapped in velvet. Liquid fire. It pours from her lips, acceptance of his place beneath her. No, not acceptance; insistence. This is where he belongs: on his knees in front of her, grateful that she has allowed him even this much.

Her skirt parts for him. She welcomes his touch, the whisper of his breath across her skin as he rises higher, as his tongue teases the delicate folds beneath the fabric of her skirt. She asks for more; she pulls aside the material covering her chest and pierces herself with the point of one nail just above her nipple. Blood wells within the cut, then drips down the exposed flesh of her breast. Ambrosia, the divine nectar of the gods, and she offers him a taste for his steadfast devotion.

Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, tells him to drink from her earthbound sheath.

GM: Josua, Joy, whomever, rises so that he might fall upon the goddess, rapturously licking up the flowing blood. His mouth leaves lipstick prints across the pale breast. He rises further arms encircling her, his breasts pressing against hers. He seems to especially enjoy that sensation of their breasts touching, because he spends several moments doing nothing but rubbing his chest against hers, giggling with delight at the feeling. Then his mouth plants more of those worshipful kisses across her lower neck, stopping shy of her mouth, for he is not worthy to kiss her there. That is where a man kisses a woman, and where a woman kisses a woman.

He may be a woman.

But Jade is so much more.

So he does what all men and women do in the presence of the divine.

He sinks to his knees.

He worships her.

---

Previous, by Narrative: Story Thirteen, Genevieve IV, Sterling IV
Next, by Narrative: Story Thirteen, Celia IX

Previous, by Character: Story Thirteen, Celia VII
Next, by Character: Story Thirteen, Celia IX

“Games are all that’s left of me.”
The Man With The Silver Smile

---

Wednesday night, 15 May 2013, PM

Sterling: The weeks pass. Sometimes he needs her frequently; by his side at the Silver Dollar as his moll, or to pass the early hours with a game, or to walk the streets with her and talk about nothing. Other times he does not call her for days, or occasionally in excess of a week, when his only excuse is that the sight of his conscience should surely make him ill.

Tonight, though, he wants to take her out to dinner. Dinner, and maybe a movie. He likes movies where he can bet on the endings.

He seems tired. His kind don’t seem tired often.

He tells her to take Ash. If she asks about the theaters not allowing the dog, he simply laughs.

Sterling: It’s a long walk. He wears an unusually subdued suit; it’s only grey, unlike his more garish usual patterns. He has the cane with him, but seems almost to lean on it.

“I had cancer,” he says apropos of nothing. “Before I died, I mean. I guess I still do, but it’s not bothering me.”

Genevieve: Ash walks well on a leash. She’d had to train him into the habit, but now he walks next to her as easily as she walks next to Sterling. He stops to sniff occasionally, so the two of them pause while he does so, and Gen keeps her attention on her domitor.

“I’d heard the change sends things like that into remission.” There’s a pause as she surveys him. “Your real voice, the smoker’s voice?”

He changes it often enough that she isn’t sure.

Sterling: “Yes,” he says, in that smoke-scarred rasp. “Once upon a time. I guess it’s my first voice, really.”

“Now,” he says in the almost feminine, supercilious voice he favors for social settings and witticism, “I suppose it’s just another.” He winks, like a magician explaining a trick.

“I was dying. I had a son, but I was going to be dead before he was grown anyways. I had a wife, but she would have wanted me to get help. And I didn’t want help. I wanted to keep my hair, my mind. My body.”

“Had family, too. And I loved them. But I didn’t want to tell them, either.”

Genevieve: “You told your wife about the Embrace but not your cancer?”

Sterling: He smiles briefly, and his silver teeth seem to grate against their bone neighbors. “It’s a long story. Suffice it to say there wasn’t a tremendous amount of rationality applied to either revelation.”

He points at the street. “You know this used to be called the Rue de Craps? They changed it because of all the churches. Bible-thumpers.”

He likes to change the subject when he’s uncomfortable. Even when he’s the one who started it.

Genevieve: Gen knows that he brought it up for a reason, though. She presses on. She can’t be afraid of him or she’d be a bad conscience.

“You miss them?”

Sterling: “Hmm. Not as much as I should. I should miss them more. My life should be woefully incomplete without them, my lady love and my baby boy. And maybe it is. But I’m too wretched of a bastard to notice.”

His voice turns real, for that last sentence.

Genevieve: “You notice. That’s why you bring it up.”

“That’s why you mentioned it to me, before.”

“And why you buy him things.”

“You’re wondering if you’re doing enough.”

Sterling: He is silent, for a while. They pass street performers, gay bars, nightclubs. Drunkards and tourists and the politer society of vagrants that police haven’t banished. It’s still early enough that the night feels safe, promising, rather than something with teeth that hides monsters in its shadows.

But monsters still walk. He still walks, leaning on a cane she’s pretty sure he doesn’t need. She notices the grey at the corners of his hair, the bags under his eyes that must have been there the night he died.

“Enough, like what? I wasn’t built for child-rearing, even before I became what I am. The kindest thing my kind can do is stay away. You know that better than anyone, I expect.”

Genevieve: “Then doesn’t that answer your question? That you’re doing enough. You’re staying away. Doing what you can for them from afar.”

She looks at him out of the corner of her eye. She had dressed for dinner and a movie as if this were a normal date, and her heels click along the ground. She takes his arm in her hand, leaning on him like she would any mortal.

“How long as it been since you have seen them?”

Sterling: He accepts her arm, accepts her proximity. She knows how she must smell to him. Intoxicating. Willing.

They get to the restaurant. It’s a nice place. French. The maitre d’ is very confused, but oddly non-argumentative, when Sterling tells him dogs are, in fact, allowed. He orders a drink he sips intermittently. She should get whatever she likes.

Genevieve: She doesn’t press him. She orders what’s on special, Coq a vin, and a drink as well. Chocolate soufflé for dessert, though they haven’t reached that yet. A glass of wine. Maybe two. Actually, she says to the waiter, a third. Keep them coming. She likes the taste. It makes her head as bubbly as the liquid in the glass.

Ash gets a meal as well, some sort of duck. Gen doesn’t press for details about it, just makes sure there’s no garlic or onions that can mess up his tiny tummy. Though she thinks Sterling could fix it, if the dog were to get sick. Still, she enjoys feeding him pieces of charred duck beneath the table. It’s greasy. Clings to her fingers. Other people stare, but she pays them no mind.

She only has eyes for her domitor. She waits, silently, for him to speak. He’d had a point.

Sterling: “Her, it’s not so hard to visit,” he says. “She hates me. She looks forward to my visits, I think, and we play chinese checkers. But she hates me. I can live with that. I see her a few times a year.”

Genevieve: “And him?” Gen prompts.

Sterling: “Him, I visit. Birthdays. Summers. Sometimes. When I trust myself.”

Genevieve: “Then why do I feel like you’re beating yourself up, Sterling?”

Sterling: “You’re my conscience. You’re supposed to beat me up. I try not to do your work for you.”

Genevieve: “Then I sense something is bothering you, but I can’t fulfill my duties unless you tell me what it is.”

She sips at the wine. It’s good. Expensive, but that’s not why she likes it. A dry white. Like her.

“…are you getting rid of me?”

Sterling: He blinks, actually surprised. “Why would you think that?”

“I won’t be rid of you for as long as I can help it. You’re too vexing, and therefore too exciting.”

“And fun to fluster, of course. Maybe I’ll play with you during the movie, just to see if you can keep quiet.”

It takes her a moment to realize he’s kidding.

Unless he isn’t.

Genevieve: She squirms in her seat. Her chest is tight; she drops her eyes to the plates in front of her. Her fault for wearing a dress, easy access and all that.

He’s kidding though. He has to be. The alternative is… she won’t think about it.

“I found some names for you,” she says abruptly, changing the subject. “If you still wanted me to… pursue that in with any of them.”

Sterling: He chuckles delightedly at her reaction. “Tell me why you thought I might be done with you. And what names? Regale me.”

It doesn’t escape her notice that he’s manipulated her into changing the subject.

Again.

Genevieve: “You brought me out, you brought the dog out, you were talking about death in a roundabout way. One last good night before you cut me loose, in… whatever way that means to you.”

She doesn’t give him the names yet. She watches him instead, waiting.

He’ll tell her. Eventually.

Sterling: His eyes twinkle. “No, no, Gen. This is just a quiet night with my Conscience. A last good night with you will be far grander than this.”

He spears a piece of food on his unused fork and offers it to her like she does to Ash.

“The year I died,” he says finally, after she bites, chews, “I lived like it. At least for those last few months. I was sober. Hadn’t been inside a casino for… four years. Maybe five. I had beat it. But then they told me I was gonna die. And all I could think about was how little time I had left to play.”

Genevieve: “Instead of telling them,” she says after she swallows the offered food, “you disappeared. Back to the casinos. Smoked more. Gambled more. Left the both of them to their own things.”

It’s a guess, but she thinks it’s a good one. She takes a drink of the wine.

“Left your wife at home with a newborn.”

Sterling: “Hmm,” he says. “I visited. But yes.”

“I was going to die. At the time, I thought, better they remember me as a bastard. Or some such reasoning. It wasn’t going to be my problem, in a few months.”

Genevieve: “And then you became… this.”

She sweeps over him with her eyes. Dead, but still around.

Sterling: “I died,” he agrees, “but not the way I’d expected. And suddenly I couldn’t make things right, but I couldn’t put off caring about it, either.”

He looks morose. “Do you think they’d be happier if I just died, instead of finding a way to survive?”

Genevieve: “I think,” she says slowly, “that death is very final. That if you want to fix things, it isn’t too late. That, more than yachts and Ferraris, your son wants a father, your wife a husband.”

Sterling: “The man who might have been either died last century,” he says. “How would I play father, now?”

Genevieve: “He’s young yet. You start by apologizing for the wasted time. By showing him what he needs to know to survive in this world. With your distance and his mother in a hospital, he needs someone steady. It’ll take patience. But if that’s the man you want to be… then that’s who you become.”

Sterling: “You make it sound so simple.”

Genevieve: “Isn’t it?”

“Put the games down with him.”

Sterling: “Games are all that’s left of me.”

Genevieve: “That’s a lie you tell yourself. A mask you hide behind to avoid anything real.”

Sterling: He giggles. “You haven’t met my old man yet, or you would know the importance of masks.”

Genevieve: “You’re deflecting.”

Sterling: “Of course. Change is tiresome. It’s work. I’ve always disliked work.”

Genevieve: Gen looses a sigh. She sits back in her seat, pushing food around on her plate with her fork. The other hand drops to rub the top of Ash’s head.

“Why ask, then?”

Sterling: “So you can nag me, obviously, and so I can articulate to myself the many reasons not to change until you find one that stymies me. I’m very, very good at being bad, Gen.”

Genevieve: “You want a reason to change?” She leans forward. “If you aren’t there for your son he’ll turn into you.”

Sterling: His face goes flat.

Genevieve: Maybe that was too far. She leans back again. Looks anywhere but at him.

Sterling: “Good conscience,” he says finally, in his real voice. “Good, good conscience. You bitch.”

He finishes a drink that must taste of ashes.

“I can always count on you, Gen.”

Genevieve: It doesn’t feel like praise. She downs the glass of wine.

Better her mind be cloudy for whatever happens next.

---

Wednesday night, 15 May 2013, PM

Sterling: They finish, and pay. Ash takes a piss on the street outside. Some of it gets on Sterling’s shoes. He doesn’t seem to notice.

He walks her, arm around her waist, occasionally on her stomach, to the theater.

Again, a red-shirted attendant tells them they can’t have dogs in here. This time Sterling simply shoves several pictures of Ben Franklin into his pocket and walks past him as he stammers.

“You choose the movie,” he whispers in her ear, the way he sometimes will without moving his lips or bending to her.

Genevieve: Every time he does that she thinks she is used to it, but it still sends a shiver down her spine. So does his arm around her waist. He’s not as cool as the others of his kind, but she still recognizes what he is, what she is to him.

There’s a moment, looking at the board, when she thinks to pick something cute and funny. Something animated. But his threat lingers in her mind, and she doesn’t think it appropriate to be fondled in a kids movie. She picks at random instead, the one with the short haired girl on the poster in a white jumpsuit.

This late, there aren’t many others around. They have their pick of seats. Gen leads him up the stairs to the last row.

She keeps the dog on her lap once they’re seated, as if that will protect her from Sterling’s wandering hands.

Sterling: They watch the trailers and make fun of them together. Or at least, Sterling does. He likes guessing things about the trailers.

His hands don’t wander. When the theater darkens and the curtains press in, though, he leans over, looks her in the eyes, and says, “This is a true story.”

Then he sits back and enjoys the… is it a documentary?

Genevieve: Gen giggles when he makes the comments about the trailers. It’s the first time she’s done so around him; it’s a sweet sound, so different than her dry laugh. Makes her ordinarily stern face seem pretty. Striking instead of alien. Young, even. Like she hadn’t spent years being abused by Sabbat packs.

Then he leans in and tells her the horror she’s about to witness is real.

He couldn’t have picked a better movie for it. It’s already shot in documentary style, with the events of the movie punctuated by interviews. Lower thirds are in all the right places.

She’s silent as she watches the events play out, watches the doctors run tests on an unsuspecting girl, watches the military come in to seize control of the facility, watches them electrocute the poor woman with the demon inside of her. It’s set in a mental institution.

Like the one he took her to. To play pretend. Even the props are real. Her body had jerked like that too. They don’t show the girl wetting herself from prolonged exposure to electrical shock, though. Must have edited it out.

Her eyes are wide. At some point Ash whines when she squeezes him too tightly. After that she buries her face in his fur.

It’s too real.

Sterling: He glances over at some point, sees her buried face. Maybe he reads her mind. Maybe that explains the tone of voice. “Shit. Shit, shit.”

He’s pulling her up. “Come on, we’re leaving. Shush, Ash.”

They’re outside. He sits her on a bench some way from the theater.

“Shh, Gen. Shh. It wasn’t real. I’m sorry. It wasn’t real.”

He doesn’t change his voice. It’s burned and cracked.

Genevieve: It is real, though. Even if the movie wasn’t, what’s inside of her head is very, very real.

She moves along with him, subservient as always, and keeps her eyes on the ground. She nods at her toes, as if they can see. She’d painted them a pretty shade of red for this evening. Red looks good on her, he used to say. She hates him, but he’s right. She’d even felt pretty after they were painted.

“Okay,” she says, voice small.

Sterling: “I didn’t mean to hurt you. It was supposed to be a joke. A bad joke, maybe, but a joke. Not a punishment. I can make you forget. Let me make you forget.”

Genevieve: She doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“You can’t make me forget what he did.”

Sterling: He’s silent, for a moment.

“I didn’t know.”

Genevieve: “It’s okay.”

She’s shaken. It’s easy to see with how quickly she forgives him. The remnants of her former slave driver, perhaps: submit or be punished. She clutches the dog to her chest. His warm body feels nice.

Sterling: “It isn’t,” he says simply. “I can make you forget what you saw. Would you like that?”

Genevieve: “How big is my blooper reel?”

She’d heard someone say that once, about the memories they took away.

Sterling: “Short. For now. This will grow it.”

Genevieve: “It’s okay,” she says again.

She isn’t sure that she believes him. He could make her do anything over the course of a night and then take it all away. Or implant fake memories. Were her vacations fake, too?

Sterling: “I won’t, then. And no, they weren’t.”

He takes a moment to realize what he’s just said, and he says again, “Sorry.”

He hails a cab and soon they’re back at her apartment, him walking her through the door and holding Ash’s lead in the other hand.

“Take a seat. Do you have those, whatchamacallits, the TV libraries everybody has now?”

Genevieve: “…Webflix?”

She does, though. She hands him the remote.

Sterling: “Yes! That.”

He takes it and after a few moments navigates it to the ‘KIDS’ section.

They’re watching a movie with talking animals, now, and bright colors. He tosses a blanket over her, and goes to pour her something. A drink, if she has anything decent. Water, if she doesn’t. He turns out the lights so the high-definition TV illuminates the dark apartment. Then he joins her on the couch, scoops her onto him. She’s never noticed how scrawny he is, before. How thin.

He strokes her hair and makes soothing noises without changing his voice.

Genevieve: She’s dead weight in his arms. She doesn’t touch the drink he poured—wine, she has nice wine, she’d brought back a bottle from Paris (if that was even real, she thinks)—though it isn’t for lack of want. Her head rests on his shoulder, eyes focused on nothing. For all the times he’d ‘diddled her’—his words—she’d never actually been comfortable on his lap. She’d wanted this for a long time, though. It’s easy to relax against him. To let him soothe her with his touch and voice, to let the musical numbers from the show wash over her and make her, if not forget, then ignore.

It’s almost nice.

Sterling: It is, isn’t it?

When it’s over, he whispers in her ear. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake, tonight.”

Genevieve: “Don’t go,” she says to him. She tucks her face against his neck, breathing him in. She’s not so stiff as she was before. Relaxed, almost.

Sterling: His stubble tickles her forehead.

“Okay.”

He stays with her, warming her. “I don’t like hurting you, Gen. Not like that. I’ll be smarter next time.”

He runs a hand under her blouse, over her bare back. “You’ll be better tended. Like a good conscience is.”

“Such a good conscience.”

“Nearly always right.”

Genevieve: “Nearly?” she asks. “When did I get it wrong? I’ll do better.”

Sterling: He chuckles. “Shush, sweet. What would you like me to do to you, tonight?”

Genevieve: She just wants to stay like this. On his lap. His arms around her. She’d never liked being touched before, not by his kind. It made her skin crawl.

This, though, she can enjoy. She can forget that he was the one who turned her into this quivering mess of nerves this evening, that he triggered the memories that had nearly broken her.

“We could play a game,” she offers. He likes games.

Sterling: “Hmm? A game? And you won’t cheat?”

Genevieve: “I might cheat.”

Sterling: His arm flickers around her, traces a breast with a finger.

“My, my. Daring.”

“I’ll have to watch you carefully.”

Genevieve: His touch sends shivers down her spine. Her nipples stiffen beneath her clothing.

“You already do.”

Sterling: “You’re a pleasure to see. I like beautiful women, and lucky things. And you’re the luckiest ghoul in New Orleans, if I have anything to say about it.”

“What game shall we play? Something with cards, or a board? Something with fingers?”

Genevieve: “Fingers?”

Sterling: “Fingers,” he repeats. He takes one of her hands in his and waggles them.

“These.”

Genevieve: “…do you have to cut them off to play?”

Sterling: “Not at all.” He adjusts her fingers, shows her his.

“Like this.”

“What shall we play for?”

Genevieve: She can think of a number of things. Secrets, stories, clothing, favors. None of it seems right though. He always wins, too, so it has to be something she doesn’t mind giving up.

She lifts one shoulder in a shrugging movement.

Sterling: “So uncertain?” he chides.

“Why don’t we play for a kiss? If I win, you have to kiss me. And if I lose, I have to kiss you. That seems fair, doesn’t it?”

His fingers move. Glide over her arms, her stomach.

“Of course, I could cheat too. You’re very vulnerable, Genevieve. A very tender conscience.”

Genevieve: “You’re very distracting,” she points out. Her skin pebbles in the wake of his fingertips. Her breath is a little shaky, too. She presses her lips together, as if that will control it.

Sterling: “Distracting? How? Surely my statue doesn’t mind me running my hands along her?”

His hands are up her skirt, then, pinching her bottom before sliding down her thighs, then wrapping around her waist, pulling her against him.

“Hmm. You should find yourself a boyfriend, Gen. Then I won’t have to give you so many… treats. Are we playing, or are you too distracted?”

Genevieve: Her attention lingers on the word boyfriend. She lets her mind wander down that road. That dangerous, dangerous road. What would it be like to date again? To be taken out by someone who won’t mess with her head, or at least not in a supernatural way? Maybe, if things got ugly, Sterling could take that from her too.

“You want me to date?”

How clumsy would their touch be compared to his? What would it even feel like to be with someone again, to do more than just… fingers?

Her cheeks heat. She’s picturing Sterling beneath her, not some faceless guy.

Can he see that?

Oh no.

Sterling: He chuckles. “Is that what you’d like, Gen? Maybe if you win, I’ll let myself be yours for a night.”

His hands stop teasing and adjusting her. They float in front of hers.

“Maybe if you lose, I’ll choose your boyfriend for you. A man should look after his conscience. Or maybe I’ll just play with you for a night, and you won’t be able to tell me how wicked I’m being. I’ll be considerate, in any case. I still feel bad, you know.”

Genevieve: “I thought your kind couldn’t have sex.”

She touches a finger to the back of his hand, then looks back at him.

“If you choose my boyfriend for me, are you going to find someone who doesn’t make you jealous?”

There’s a small smile pulling at the corners of her lips. Maybe she has forgiven him.

Sterling: “Who would make me jealous?”

His hand moves. She feels herself bared from the waist down, her skirt and underthings on her one second, the next draped over the television.

“Is there somebody else you would pick I would disapprove of?” he ponders. “Somebody who could make you their conscience, instead of mine?”

“And believe me,” he says, his rough voice amused. “We can perform, if properly motivated.”

One hand awaits hers to play. The other traces her ass from her belly-button.

Genevieve: “Someone you—”

The rest of the words go unsaid. She covers herself with both hands, thighs pressing together around her arms. As if that will stop him.

“D-don’t tease, Sterling, that’s not. Not nice.”

Sterling: He laughs. “So earnest. Finish your sentence before you tell me about teasing.”

He pinches her again, his irregular breaths tickling her neck.

Genevieve: “Someone younger.”

She jumps when he pinches her, swatting at his hand. Then she realizes she is no longer covering herself and does so again. She scowls at him.

Sterling: He bites her, drinks for a moment. When he licks her wound clean, he’s practically purring.

“I like how you taste when you’re a little wound up. A little indignant. You need both hands to play, you know.”

“Someone younger? Do you think I’m an old man?”

Genevieve: “Yes.”

But she’s grinning, either from the teasing or the way he’d just drawn from her. She has to take a breath before she moves her hands away from herself, holding them out to play. One finger extended from one hand, she thinks that’s how he said to start.

Sterling: “Well, you know what they say about playing old men.”

They play.

He wins, like he so often does. But she has him for a moment. More than a moment, even. Maybe because he’s enjoying the expression on her face too much.

“You’re good, when you don’t worry about silly things. If I’m to pick a boyfriend for you, you’ll have to get over this shyness. But I hope you don’t. It’s very charming.” He spanks her, lightly. “What makes you think I’m old? Is it my touch?”

Genevieve: Silly things, like being half naked on his lap. She’s going to tell him, one day, that he should play naked. She doesn’t think it will bother him though.

Still, when he wins she can’t help but pout, then yelp as his hand connects to her. She shoots him a wounded look, though it’s all for show.

“No. You called it a TV library.”

She almost giggles again. He can see it start, but it’s not the same as it was in the theater.

“Are you? Going to pick someone for me, I mean.”

“I went… um. I went on a few dates.”

“There’s an app for that.”

Sterling: “I heard,” he says wryly. “And I died at the turn of the century. It was a time of cable. Were they good dates? Were they good enough for you? I suppose you aren’t so pliant for them as you are for me.”

“I’d almost think you like me, Genevieve. Wouldn’t you like a boyfriend? To distract you?”

His hand wanders. Feels the shape of her.

Genevieve: I do like you, she almost tells him.

Almost. It’s there, on the tip of her tongue, there in her thoughts. The thoughts that he so carelessly reads. The mind that he breaks into on a whim.

The body he touches without a care for how it makes her feel.

He’d never hurt her. Not like that. And though she could not stand the touch of these things, though she had once said she would rather cut her wrists than ever be subject to that torture, she doesn’t pull away. She leans in instead. Her thighs part. She’s his. She wants him. And it’s a shameful thing, that wanting. It makes her feel… wanton.

“No,” she tells him, finally, “they were terrible.”

Sterling: “And what was so terrible about them? Were they handsy?”

He plays with her, as if to demonstrate.

Wanton, maybe. But so happy, too.

Genevieve: She shakes her head at him, though it’s a brief movement lest he think it due to his hands.

“No.” Her voice is breathy, panting. “They were just awful people. One of them asked if I’m white all over. Before drinks even arrived.”

Sterling: “Oh, how crass. And what did you tell him?”

Genevieve: “I smiled coyly and waited until the drink arrived so I could pour it on him.”

Sterling: Sterling laughs, a real laugh. “You make me proud.”

His fingers speed up, pass like lightning over her, as if to emphasize his point.

“So much more fun to pamper than to punish, my little Conscience.”

“I’ll find you a good lover. One who treats you right.”

Genevieve: It could be him. But he has a paramour, she knows, and for all his talk of being able to perform with the right motivation she doesn’t think he actually enjoys the act of sex itself. So she’ll take his fingers, his mouth, whatever else he wants to share with her, and she’ll be grateful for it, and she’ll show him how grateful she is with the noises that she makes, the way her back arches, the way her eyes close as she comes apart in his arms, on his lap, her head thrown back to expose the long, pale line of her throat.

Sterling: "Good Genevieve. Very good… "

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