undertaker

Pretorius — Tressa Shaw flesh is a trap but it is a trap we remember.

[garrickc]

Ay, she knows who he is. That's a decent start to their agenda.

"Tressa." Leiry's latest dead'un when it came to newbloods of ancient groups, apparently. He's heard of her through the grapevine as an undertaker of sorts, and then through a gallery lad who dropped her name. She went to the highers too with her sire, and got it all approved like it's some modern century ritual. She looks at home, in her plastics and wrappings. But old blood bristles his nose, long past its due.

They're talking 'cause he wants to figure out what she stands for, and how deeply rooted these new fangs are when it comes to Pret.

Garrick ain't one to mince his words, on a good night. So, he'll be damned if he cares about formalities in a funeral parlour. "You like them stick up their arse lot who went and said you could die, ay?" What a bunch of lily-livered shmucks.

He's following her through the dark corridor, listening to know if there's anyone else in her company beside the corpses that don't talk. If he really wanted to get the attention of the old hag up top, he'd gut this girl and start a civil war in the city.

Be like New York had been, sending bloody messages back and forth like love letters.

"Say someone wanted to bring down the tower and get buildin' a new one, how's you feel about that?"

[tressashaw]

Tressa glances back at him, blinking for a moment while her brain adjusts to his cadence. What's he asking, exactly? "Like is a word. They made me immortal, that's kind of cool. You should see my grocery bill now. Do you know how easy it's been to catch up on my TBR pile? Also super powers. Like, god-damned super powers. So I mean, appreciative - appreciative is maybe the better word." Were there regrets? Certainly. But those weren't her fault.

At his second question, she raises a brow. "Oh - a plot. We're plotting."

She eyes him, searches her memory - no, wracks it - to make sure there isn't a conversation here half-started that she isn't recalling.

"Is this like an ancient animosity thing or are you just bored? I can understand and appreciate both, by the way." She stops in the doorway that leads down into the suite, turning to face him, head tilting. "Just want to know if this is absurd or insane and yes, there is a difference."

[ofgarnett]

The exigency of the exile had forced Cait to resort to means she would not, under more gracious circumstances, have resorted to. The Mausoleum had been left to Tressa (vampire!) Her grimoires, sealed (fuck that!) Her magic, sealed (fuck that!!!) The Catacombs beneath the grounds, sealed (triple fuck that, etc etc) - every door she had ever loved shut and warded with her own name written in a hand only she could read. For the better part of a year she has missed the quotidian: the dull holy rituals of being on a site, the maintenance of graves, the small daily honor of having bones that could sing to you, speak to you, pass along the long whispered struggles of all the lives that had not, in the end, gotten what they wanted. There is a sacred magic to be found in the place called home, Caitlin wants hers back.

In her absence, the Mausoleum has become a lone-standing synecdoche for the ghosts of her past - for the bones she put in the ground herself, for every door she sealed with her own name on it. And as she stalks back toward her home, each step kicking up dirt like an upturned grave, she hears Tressa’s question and the word Allegation without it even being said. Capital A. Italicized. Hovering. Tressa should know. This whole damn town should know. You cannot keep a good woman down. You can hardly keep a bad one down. She - and specifically, she as in Cait - will simply find another floor to stand on. 

She comes to a halt a half-step from where Tressa is standing - a step respectful only in as much as it is the precise distance from which it is rudest to refuse to come any closer - and tips her chin in something that is not, but might pass for, a greeting.

"I've been told," she says, evenly, "that the terms of exile no longer apply." It is the truth and it is not. A vote shifting here, a seat shifting there.  "I have to assume the matter is settled, since I am standing here. Or perhaps I'll be struck down in my sleep tonight." A breath. The dry small flutter of teeth that, on a kinder woman, might pass for a smile. "Which would be, in its way, funny."

She says it dryly, because Cait does not, in any working sense of the word, believe that anything in this town has the spine to strike her down. And if they had tried? Well, she would have pried her way back regardless. Exile is a vote; home is a covenant.

She begins to walk the perimeter without inviting Tressa to follow, though she does not, particularly, forbid it. She's checking on what she's left behind. Eyes on the runes - there, the one she set the night before she left, still holding; there, the older one Brennan laid down a decade before she was born, still humming faintly to itself like an old man whistling. The greenhouse breathes its slow green breath at the western edge, and Cait notes with love that she refuses to call love, that she will sleep beside it tonight. The plants will be glad of her. 

Her gaze drifts - briefly, almost incidentally - to the line of light along Tressa's jaw, the soft inappropriate daylight she should not, by all the older rules, be standing in. "Strange winter, isn't it," she says, mildly. "Rules getting loose all over town."

[tressashaw]

Caitlin's explanation is succinct, stark, and so quickly to the point that Tressa can't help but be at least a little enamored at the certitude of it. She had done what painfully little she could, condemned to the sidelines of Pretorius in the wake of her own maker's disappearance. The clan of vampires she'd opted into hadn't exactly held onto its strangelhold of power in the wake of the seismic shifts caused by the Conclave. In a lot of ways, it had been a great equalizer.

So she shrugs. If Caitlin's absolved, she's absolved. If she isn't, what exactly is anybody to do? Tattle?

The Warlock begins meandering, and Tressa follows after a bit. At the mention of spines, she can't help but quietly scoff - perhaps for the same reason Caitlin's tone comes across so cold and stark. There are many people- herself included despite their thin, thin mutual interest in amiability and shared interest in death- who could benefit from causing her death. She wonders if she could do it. She arrives at no, mostly because a vampire is an apex predator only so long as:

- A) they have the element of surprise. Tressa lurches at Caitlin's neck, hungry for the feather in her cap that taking down the world's first Warlock would land her with. Caitlin, having seen this a mile ahead, plants a sliver of rosewood in her chest, and Tressa passes from this world like the refrain on a Kansas track. - B) Magic is not in play. Tressa blinks behind Caitlin at a speed no mortal could hope to track, hissing at the witch - well, Warlock, apparently - before promptly being exploded into a mist of red fog, landing Caitlin with little more than an terse conversation with a breathtakingly anxious drycleaner. - C) They have a good reason to want to be. Tressa, standing triumphant over Caitlin's body answers the text, smiling when she sees Estela's beautiful face smiling back from its icon. The resulting text, along with the breakup text that immediately follows it, sees her lighting a cigarette for the first and last time in her life as she watches the sun come up the next morning and she bursts into flames.

All of these scenarios play out in her mind's eyes while she watches Caitlin appraise her surroundings, reminded of her own homecoming earlier in the year, wrestling her father's business back from unappreciative vampires of a different sort.

The note in her voice at commentary on the season stops her briefly in her tracks though. Does she know what's happening? Tressa can't put it past her, but she's not about to press the issue by asking. "Seems so. Hope you were planning on really digging in here when you came back, because it seems like we're all stuck here. Not that most people seem to care."

Caitlin won't care either, soon enough. "Maybe rules aren't really all they're chalked up to be - surely you out of everybody appreciate that."

Tressa reachs over to pull a clod of June snow from a bit of stone work, crushing it compact in her hand. "For what it's worth, though, welcome back. Planning anything?"

[judegrigsby]

"You're plenty mean." He teases, nodding at her inquiry. "I'm me - don't know who this guy is or how he died or why I look like him yet. But I'm gonna try and figure it out. Just.. human. I think."

His hand does go to the finger bone around his neck, though, fiddling with it. "I have this, I think it's a magic thing, from the people I was staying with for a while. But I don't know what it does or if I can use it or anything." He also doesn't wanna take it off. It feels important.

Her hands are all over his face and he lets it happen, trying to keep speaking through it, though its garbled and muffled in different ways. "Tressa - Tress! Come on, I'm good. Fully healthy human, I'm pretty sure." Stretching his jaw, he rubs at it after she stops. "Wanna run some tests?"

[tressashaw]

Tressa shakes her head. "What? I'm never not nice."

She leers at him - this... not Jude Jude, and appraises his everything. His expressions His fidgets. The thrum of his heart. The way his body has the imperceptible shiver that can only be described as the innate frailty of the living. It's strange how much he is Jude without actually being Jude.

Tressa leans in to peer at the necklace' pendulum. "Is that a carpal bone?" Curiouser and curiouser.

She doesn't touch it though - doesn't dare touch it, actually. That's how they get you. Its more interesting to pinch and pull at his weird new face. Until he pulls away anyways, and she regards him and his offer with a judicious glare. "Sure."

She stands, leads the way out of the office and to the stairs that lead down into the suite. "After you, dead-boy." A smirk as she holds the door.

[bainesalthea]

Althea jumps when Tressa moves right behind her and tries not to flinch towards the gun in her back pocket, instead focusing on pulling out the the tapes and putting them on the top of the desk.

She doesn't get far in trying to go through the organization that Heron laid out - nor figuring out the names, dates, and numbers that are scrawled on the label - because Tressa picks up a necklace and a photo. Frowning, she turns her head from where she's still crouched on her knees.

"What?"

Fang-bang..? Her nose wrinkles as she realizes what Tressa means, "Fuck no. She hated all of you guys." But Tressa laughs, and that makes Althea get up to see the photo in question and her cheeks color red - not in embarrassment, but shame and anger. How long..? What is a means to an end or..?

She scoffs and spits down by her boot. "Fucking hell, that's a daylight thing - isn't it?"

[tressashaw]

"Oh yeah, hated us so much she was taking boudoir shots from the passenger side of a California king,"

She leaves her to ponder over the picture as she eyes the necklace, and nods when Althea asks. "Yeah. I don't know much about it, just that it takes a witch and a lot of blood."

"That's Lucia.... something. You know your politics? Kanemaru vampire. She went missing kind of figured she just... got her sun back an ran off. Guess baddie here must have gotten her. Maybe to get a hold of one of these?" She clicks her tongue. "Doesn't really help us with why she was a werewolf though," she says. "You got anything there" The question comes as she prepares to stash the necklace- no way in hell she's going to let a hunter get ahold of one of these.

[tressashaw]

@ofgarnett

The Siltshore Mausoleum has had a long and storied past in the city. It's also stood as a strange landmark in her career; Tressa remembers her first year at the Morgue, picking up bodies from a shooting that had taken place in and amongst all this old stone. Funny to think how little she knew then versus just how much she knows now.

She's seen, albeit briefly, what lurks on the other side of the grave. Insider experience she'd never imagined she'd get to live to tell about.

Her grandmother's buried here. She finds that funny, that she has so many connections to this place. That people important to her have the same kinds of deep connections here. God, she misses Estela.

What she doesn't miss though, is the profile of a woman who - to Tressa - needs little introduction. Caitlin Siltshore may need no introduction, but she does require explanation.

How does one casually approach a Caitlin Siltshore. The Allegations surrounding this woman are... well, big.

Still, she feels this six-degrees-of-separation feeling. Like she's meeting Goth Witch Madonna in the flesh. "Aren't you like, barred from existing within a bajillion miles of this place?" She says it as if she herself isn't technically supposed to be banned from being out in broad daylight, though with the strange winter settled over town, freezing those stuck here into their odd complacency, even vampires without blood-red stones get to come out under the cloud-covered sun. So maybe rules just didn't matter anymore. True horror.

[tressashaw]

Tressa says nothing, but her thoughts whirr in her head; Or he'll think, there are other tippers who don't shit on me as a person and tack another minute of ignoring you on for every time you have a petulant crashout. She shrugs instead, taking a sip of her drink before going back to her people watching, but only for a moment.

Tressa's brows crease inwards, and she eyes the hand. Her features bunch up. "I don't tend to answer microaggressions with a handshake." A tight lipped smile is all Zoe gets. "Oh, Van Brunt. Werewolf family. House burned down a year ago. The spoiled rich kid thing makes sense now."

She plays in this girl's face now - churlish and well aware that they're on neutral ground - supernatural kayfabe is in effect. "I'm Shaw. And no, I can't taste it. But I'm not here to taste it, I'm here to find dinner."

[vanbruntz]

The other is quiet and Zoë wonders briefly if she is going to ignore her now too, at the response that finally comes the blonde's fingers curl inward in a fist, eyes flashing gold in a sign that her ire is rising at the goading. She leans in slightly, all teeth and aggression. "You're really lucky about our location. A corpse can only move for so long." She bites out before pulling away again, shifting to turn back to the bar.

"If you know my family, I'm sure you're aware of what we are capable of." Her fist comes down hard on the bar top, hard enough to garner attention. She can't crash out here, not with so many people who could get caught in the cross hairs of it all. The bartender gives a glance over to her, his coworker leaning in to whisper something in his ear as they have a near silent exchange for a moment seemingly arguing over who is coming over.

When one of them finally does she gives her order, another bottle to the VIP booth towards the back, top shelf, clearly a display for the money fueled power she holds in this situation. She offers a tight lipped smile and then glances at the vampire a final time, upper lip near pulled into a snarl. "Enjoy your night, leech." She bites out before heading back towards the swirl of bodies.

[tressashaw]

Tressa simply sits at the bar and babysits her drink with a shrug while the girl has her little crash and burn. She has a few choice replies in mind, most of them involving implied inbreeding or buying their way out of criminal charges, but she lets those sit and simmer, because she doesn't really need the heat if this werewolf decides to fly off the handle, professionally or otherwise.

"Byeeeee!" Tressa says, her pinky curling in a facetious wave.

[garrickc]

For: @tressashaw

Whoever named Embrace ain't ever died.

Front door's locked, an' he can see that red beeping camera device like a mechanical eye, staring at him from above his head; it's probably warning him he's about to set off every alarm if he pushes the door through.

Fire exit, it is.

He ain't sure if Tressa's around every night, working down in the gully of the death house, but if she is. She'll have to have heard a fist thump in quick succession on the metal door, a good heads up for what he's prepared to do, if he has to. Saint Cormac's said the girl's a shmuck recruit, and he's for the people enough, still, to warn them that he's got plans to tear down the tower, brick by brick.

Give the lass a chance to dip, or choose another side.

All them newblooded dead don't care about traditions, anyhow. Ain't nobody getting permission these days to blood another, over putting boots on necks and saying they're gonna do it regardless. Ain't no need for old, ancient customs that are only for a lil more control of the people in their clutches. Status, not protection. Ain't none of them gonna stick their neck out for the other, not really.

They ain't lived as long as they have doing that. Just eat coin, and stick their finger in another damn pie.

If Garrick's gonna rewrite the branch of the dead, he's tearing it from the fuckin' roots.

After a few moments, Garrick batters the exit door a second time, until the metal creaks uncomfortably under his strength. He glances up to check for any other cameras that might catch that in the shadowed alley. But then, he listens for movements on the other side of it; he swears he hears a door squeaking, deep within.

[tressashaw]

Embrace is the kind of place that, under normal circumstances, would be quiet, somber, and ready to accept - at any hour of the day - anyone in need of a tiny light in the darkest moments of their life.

That was before Port Leiry had gone upside down.

Now, one must call before one comes to call, because the open door policy is suspended while werewolves are extra crazy and hunters are spinning donuts in the streets like it's open season on anything without a pulse.

Also apparently the dead are coming back, if Jude 'Now I have a Chiseled Jawline' Grigsby is anything to go by.

But the dead - the actual dead - they don't really ever stop being born, and so while the policy's different, the all hours nature of the business isn't. That's why Tressa Shaw nearly misses the the alert on her phone that somebody's banging on the doors. That and the trap metal blasting in the basement while she carefully siphons organs with rhythmic bobs of her head.

When the back door opens, she's only half-kitted; gloves removed, goggles perched atop her head, hair pulled up. She stares at a face that's familiar only in the academic sense - in that she knows he exists and she knows they are, nominally, batting for the same coach.

"Garrick." She smiles, and then steps to turn sideways, inviting him in.

What she says next, it's not bitchy - or at least it's not meant to be - it's just they've never interacted once for this long, and with the silence from Pret leadership since the post-Conclave shakeups, she's not quite sure she has a terribly well-founded guess of her own.

"Why are we talking?"

[vanbruntz]

Her eyes map out her face, fingers flex at the edge of the bar top. She wants to tell this vampire that, that isn't the case. In her world niceties get you nowhere. Being nice meant being ignored, meant someone else held the power, it could earn you an early grave. But what would the other know about that, Zoë reminds herself, because to this world, this city, she's never existed.

This Port belonged to Felicity in some weird way that only made sense in her head. Sure there were other wolves, packs, hierarchy. But in the world of the Van Brunt's, Felicity had staked claim. This was her territory and Zoë has been encroaching on it. Maybe if she felt spiteful enough she'd up heave her older sister and take it for her own. She shakes her head, the fog of drugs easing away to make her think clearer.

"People don't always respond to a please or thank you. They do respond to cash, and if that guy has half a brain, he'll come running for it." Of course her card is on an open tab, shiny and black, and waiting on the back counter to be charged. She blows out a puff of air, glancing down at the drink in the other woman's hand.

"Can you even taste that? Seems kind of like a waste." She questions it for a second before holding out a hand that peels from the bar, "Zoë Van Brunt. Who is giving me words of wisdom tonight, and what will those words cost me?"

[tressashaw]

Tressa says nothing, but her thoughts whirr in her head; Or he'll think, there are other tippers who don't shit on me as a person and tack another minute of ignoring you on for every time you have a petulant crashout. She shrugs instead, taking a sip of her drink before going back to her people watching, but only for a moment.

Tressa's brows crease inwards, and she eyes the hand. Her features bunch up. "I don't tend to answer microaggressions with a handshake." A tight lipped smile is all Zoe gets. "Oh, Van Brunt. Werewolf family. House burned down a year ago. The spoiled rich kid thing makes sense now."

She plays in this girl's face now - churlish and well aware that they're on neutral ground - supernatural kayfabe is in effect. "I'm Shaw. And no, I can't taste it. But I'm not here to taste it, I'm here to find dinner."

[bainesalthea]

Althea stews in the car ride over - understanding what Tressa says, but still feeling completely off kilter and uneasy at the idea that she has to work with a vampire to find anything out. But she's been a good help, with what little information she can provide, so she doesn't say anything - just bundles up and shivers as they go.

Inside, she stares at what's left of the office. She'd not cleaned it up. It's the first time she'd been in here since she died - and it's only Tressa's voice that kicks her into action from her frozen state. There's a lot of stuff to dig through, but Althea knew where Heron kept her information - she'd gotten her whole note taking system from her.

She finds the folders and notebooks full of case notes to dig through, and winces at the screeching noise of Tressa ruining the safe. Pausing, she looks over and laughs. "Yeah. Well-stocked." Case notes in hand, she wanders over and plucks a bolt off of the wall, touching the tip with her hand. "Careful touching the sharps and looking in vials and shit - she liked to keep souvenirs. Venom, teeth, you know. But I found these." She holds the notes out for Tressa. "I've gotta find her recordings, but these are both regular human shit and hunt shit, we'll have to sort."

Setting them down back on her desk, she crouches down to feel along the drawers and edges and finds the hidden lever, which unlocks a hidden compartment. Inside, she finds a veritable ton of tapes. "Bingo."

[tressashaw]

A studied hand in forensics, Tressa already knows to affect care and be gentle with whatever she finds in what appears to be a huntress' weapons locker. Death doesn't come easy to a vampire, but it can come quick. Still, given this rascal-girl's trepidations around her, the concern is almost touching."Will do," she acknowledges, before turning to take the sheaf of notes, flipping through them.

"Wow, I recognize some of these names," she says as she cards through. A few memorable cases from her first year working as a medical examiner in town involved a few of these people, either directly or indirectly - she snorts, because it only fortifies the notion that she was only ever a step away from connecting the dots - something that frustrates her for prideful reasons.

The little grunge girl's wandered off though, and she looks in the direction of the universal eureka that is Bingo. She sets the notes down and closes the gap between them, arching over Althea's shoulder. "Nice."

She lets Althea pull the cart of tapes out. "Okay. So this is gonna take a lot of time to go through. I say we split the load."

What she actually prefers is for this girl to butt out and leave it to her, but she has a deep inkling that won't happen... and then she sees something behind Althea, at the bottom of the now mostly empty door.

It's a single glossy photo - two women, one taking the photo, and the other an older woman, smiling and shying away from the camera. Atop it rests a neckles, the pendant of which bears a singular red jewel. Tressa reaches for it, picking it up in her gloved hand and eying it before she scoops the picture up too - the woman's in the same necklace, absent the big, fat red jewel present in the one in her hand. "Was homegirl a fang banger?" There's an almost callous laugh there as her composure breaks, reflexive and full of uncontrolled contempt.

[judegrigsby]

She moves around the room just like he remembered, clinical and calculating. He'd forgotten how much he loved her in all the chaos right before he'd been killed. Even though what she's saying makes him feel a little sick, he can't help but the tiniest of smiles at his lips. "I'm glad it was you who took care of me."

And he is. Couldn't have asked for a better best friend, even though it probably tore her up. That part he doesn't enjoy thinking about and isn't glad for. "And I'm glad it wasn't you, but I figured - that was probably hard for you to not do." If he had to chance a guess, he'd figure that whoever was left in Cerberus did it.

"Meru's here?" His smile widens a bit. "Sorry, uh - another cool thing, you can probably smell it - not a wolf anymore. Dunno how long that'll last cause I kinda liked it."

He's pacing as he speaks, "Sorry, uh - don't really know what I'm doing. First time coming back from the dead and all. Don't even have cool fangs to show for it."

[tressashaw]

"Well, anybody else would have messed up," she says, short- almost clipped. It's not true - autopsies and mortuary prep is routine and anybody can do it with training. But it seems like the right thing to say, so she says it.

"I thought about it. I thought about killing everyone I could link to it. I didn't though. Figured meaner, worse people than I would get them eventually."

Tressa tosses the blood bag in a trash-bin with a conspicuous orange liner. It goes into the special trash; the straw hangs out of her mouth. "Yeah. She's good. A good kitty."

A nod, and then she leans with her knuckles on her desk while he chatters - matter of factly, like he's not the first recorded case of Zombie she's ever seen. "So you're you, but in somebody else's body."

She turns, and in a blink is close to him - deeply invading his personal space, pulling his lips back, his eyelids, looking him over, batting away any protesting hands. "Not a werewolf, but nothing else? No craving blood? No uh, I don't know, spicy thoughts making things burst into flame?"

[bainesalthea]

There should be a mark, Althea wants to say - but she knows magic makes things tricky. She'd not really been around a lot of witches to know the ins and outs of what exactly they can do, so any protest she has will fall flat. Tressa potentially knows more - definitely about bodies.

She doesn't interrupt, doing her own thinking. There might be something in the office. Althea'd just been too overtaken with fucking grief, of all things, to even try and go there.

Looking up, her expression shifts from contemplation to glowering. "I.. can. Yes. I need you to tell me what you're thinking while we go."

[tressashaw]

It's not really enough to fill the full car-ride over to the dark, quiet office, a small space wedged into a row of shops and offices in a quarter of town she doesn't think she's ever really been in. She tells it simply - without a scar on the outside or evidence of damage on the insides, there's little else they're going to be able to tell from a months old corpse riddled with decomposition and corpse-wax. Althea seemed to think it was a recent development, and so it stands to reason something might be amiss at frequent haunts. It's a hunch, or a lead - nothing concrete. She suggest to Baines that she ought to temper expectations before they get there; this might be the literal definition of a cold case.

YEARWOOD INVESTIGATIONS, the door announces quietly as the Hunter keys them in. The air's stale, and the space is cold as it is dark. Orderly, too - pictures of various adventures line the walls.

"Uh, look for logs, or you know. Records. Tapes, videos, journals, whatever she might have talked about stuff in."

She peers through the dark, unaffected by the dour, dim place. There's a locker at one end of a small nook that connects to the office. She tugs on the door; locked. "Heads up, loud noise."

Metal screeches in protest as she pulls the thing open with brute strength, the door whining as it hands on warped hinges. Tressa's eyes peer over a miniature arsenal; crowsbows, stakes, firearms, bandoliers of silver and wooden ammo. "Good grief."

[judegrigsby]

He starts to open his mouth to explain more, but from behind Tressa he hears a familiar voice from an open laptop.

'You what?'

Unable to help himself, Jude laughs at hearing Estela's voice after all this time. He should have known that Tressa would, at least, be the most sane about this. Most of his worry comes from knowing just how badly everyone else he needs to talk to will take it.

There's a brief moment where he debates on what to say or do next, but before he can realize what he's doing - he's crossing the room and pulling Tressa into a tight hug. "I had, like, so much shit prepared about when we were kids." The hug doesn't last long - he knows his friend

When he pulls back, he shoves his hands into his pockets and looks down at his feet. "I don't know who did it or if it was on purpose or - You know? I just.. one second I was gone, the next I was clawing through dirt and stuff."

[tressashaw]

"Call you later," she says, slapping the laptop shut before turning back to a random man rushing forward to wrap his arms around her. The proximity, sudden and warm, coupled with the internal racing of her thoughts battering at the little cage she's put them in, makes his heartbeat thunder in her ears, and the realization that she hasn't fed in a day or so makes her fangs itch in her gums, but Jude - or Theoretical Jude as her mind's now labeled him - pulls back. Whether out of foreknowledge or reading of the room, the jury's out.

He doesn't know what happened. "Makes two of us," she interjects.

Jude explains further. No, she doesn't know.

Well, kind of.

"Yeah, dying. Been there."

She moves to a cooler in the corner of the room, and unlocks it with a key before pulling out a bag of blood. She punctures it with a steel straw like some sort of demented Capris Sun. "There is no precedence for this -" Tressa doesn't want to gush, because to gush is to feel things and she'd tried very hard not to do that in these last few months - so instead she exposition-dumps. "I autopsied you and paid for you and covered your funeral and fully detached - I don't know what to say. Your cat's upstairs terrorizing my rats. Guy that killed you's dead too." A hand raises between pulls of rich AB-Neg. "I didn't do it - as you requested."

[bainesalthea]

She does not want to be here, working with a vampire. The very idea of being in close proximity to one makes her whole nervous system feel like its being lit on fire. Althea wants to do what she does best: run as far away and as fast she can.

Her hands clasp at her elbows, holding her arms tighter to her chest as she waits for Tressa to do her examination here, more fully. "Our tats are magic, yeah, but I'm not B-hood." Does she know what that means? "I'm a fellow, which means we ain't that organized 'n shit. I get my magic where I can take it, sometimes that means cutting deals or forcing it. Haven't had a re-up since that fucking conclave. Deal I was making fell through, witch skipped town."

She'd also been way too fucking busy to think about anything other than making sure the reason's Heron's on her table and not fighting this freak-ass snowstorm gets their comeuppance.

"Uh. Yeah, I inherited her office." She hasn't touched it, either.

It's sitting there like a shrine to what once was. She should probably fix it up. "She might have logs or journals."

[tressashaw]

"Probably look there," Tressa says. "I've seen dead werewolves - there's always some sorta mark - a scar or chipped bone or something, if they get turned like that." She supposes if a bite was superficial enough to break skin without going deep, it'd be an exception, but werewolves aren't scalpels - they're hammers.

Tressa leans back, knuckle to her lip as she ponders, and her eyes land on the shrouded corpse. She moves over, lifting the sheet up again, eying the rigors of decay.

"What is your secret," she asks out loud.

Althea's answers linger, and Tressa scoffs. "You know, maybe if you all stopped trying to kill us out of hand you wouldn't have to scrounge for magic. You guys are like... the PETA of the monster world, it's insane. Like, yeah, animal cruelty's bad but so is running a kill-shelter for abandoned pets, it's like you make your own p..."

She stops, like a lightbulb's turned on over her head. "Can you take me to that office?"

[judegrigsby]

closed starter for: @tressashaw

He's a little taller than he remembers being. It's.. odd. He looks over the tops of things he knows he doesn't remember. But he's Jude. There are memories he holds dear that no one else could have implanted, no one else could have known. But he's hesitated long enough in the foyer here, taking in the stale air of the funeral home.

Making the familiar walk back, he wanders into the back room - Tressa is at work, as ever. Emotion wells up, threatens to spill over. In that forest, he thought he'd never see her again. "Hey." He starts, clearing his throat. "I know this is gonna sound.. weird." His voice is a little too deep, more than he knows it was before. There's an accent, too, and that weirds him out some - but it's very slight. It's not Port Leiry native.

"It's -- I'm.." How does one even..? "Fuck. I'm Jude. I know I don't look -- I know I shouldn't be. But I am. It's me."

[tressashaw]

Tressa should hire somebody. Should, but doesn't. Embrace has carved out its niche in the year or so she's been behind the wheel. Business isn't booming, but it doesn't need to be, so she functions simply; take them as they call, treat them as they need. She has employees at the city morgue, and they're all annoying. Why introduce them here? She doesn't need sleep, after all, and she does enjoy paperwork - it's a special kind of headspace she descends into when she's filing permits or filling out obits or completing orders.

The vampire's well aware whenever anybody enters, even without the warning from her single employee, a desk girl who works the daylight hours. But they do need sleep, and so on these evenings, the doors stay unlocked - most night-time clients are emergency phone-calls, but an open door policy is part of what makes Embrace what it is - accessible.

She's about to move from the office to the front when she realizes whoever it is isn't waiting, and when an unfamiliar shape darkens her doorway Tressa hears a beating heart's nervous flutter. Standing, she regards him briefly. "Sorry," she responds, "we usually ask people to wait up-"

He doesn't really let her finish, Tressa's eyebrows creep upwards, as if to say try me. "Alright," she says.

He's just killed somebody. Or he's brought a body with him. He's a detective following up on something. He's a true crime podcaster.

None of that's right, and when he finally says it, her expression goes from piqued curiosity to indignant disbelief - but perhaps most frustratingly, it isn't this strange face in front of her that she's incredulous about as her brain lights on fire. "Oh my god, I hate magic so much."

[vanbruntz]

She's getting more irritated the longer the bartender seems to be ignoring her. Already on edge, toxins running through her making her feel less inhibited by a clear mine to behave. The loss of rational thought making the natural short temper spike. She's tired of being ignored. Has half the mind to make her way around the bar and make good on her threat. What could they do? Throw her out?

Fuck that, she could buy this club with barely the bat of an eye. With Felicity's departure from the home, with her own growing distaste for a family she'd once treasured the youngest Van Brunt is growing bolder. Spending as she pleases. No longer hiding. If Casper wanted to show up and bark orders she'd tell him to fuck off too. She lets out a long excel from her nose, nostrils flaring, and then suddenly her attention is broken from the whole situation by an unexpected question.

" — What?" Eclipsed blue locks in on the other, head swiveling with the words. "Yeah, actually back to my admirers." She bites out, though it holds less sting and more curiosity. Even through her intoxication she can smell it faintly, a pungent scent of sweetness. Death. Rot. Vampire. She's suddenly on alert. Shifting here would be stupid, and the process to long to be any help. She's her most vulnerable to this woman in this state. In this false skin. Her jaw tenses and flexes, head slowly starting to sober as chemicals rush and flush her system. "Have a problem with that?" She asks, as if she isn't affected by the other's presence.

[tressashaw]

Her face pulls at the reaction, dimples showing in her wide, ivory smile, but her brows cinch in, expression as a whole wrapping into something that's equal parts bemused and charmed. She hadn't really clocked it talking to her friend, the way these people can be so... reactive.

She's about to repeat herself when it becomes apparent that the question was rhetorical and preceded further snark, which only elicits a further scoff.

Tressa almost laughs, but keeps it to a quiet, bewildered grin. "Oh, no, no problem at all, but... you know - always pays to be kind to the people pouring the drinks."

She has to remind herself, especially now - not everybody has forever, and she's not antagonistic enough to go picking a fight here. "Just, you know - food for thought."

[vanbruntz]

Who : Open to all Location : Infamy

Drunk. She's sure she is currently drunk. And maybe high, some tab of unnamed drug coursing through her system. It makes her feel light, weightless, thoughtless. No Felicity. No mother. No Casper. Murdered father be damned, hell he is gone too. She missed this feeling. Nights in Europe, sweaty and pinned together in undulating bodies and music that pumped through your very soul.

She knows everything will burn through much faster than the humans that surround her, but another shady deal in the corner full of shadows will remedy that. She has cash, they have product. It is all that matters. She slinks her way out between bodies. Pretty girls with glossy lips and blown pupils same as her own. Forgotten responsibilities all the same. In the club everyone was nameless, sometimes you remained that way even when you took them home. And other times they had names of your choosing and knew when to get the fuck out of your face.

Heading towards the bar, she pays no mind as she leans heavily on the person next to her, hovering over the counter as she snaps her fingers expectantly. "Hey, it doesn't take all night to pour a drink. Do I need to come show you how?" She calls to the bartender with very little care on how she sounds or looks. She's a Van Brunt. She demands attention and speedy service. She has money to spend, and anyone could be bought for the right sum.

[tressashaw]

Tressa sits, and stirs a plastic straw in a drink that tastes little like melonfruit and wood-aged whisky and more like the caustic bite of alcohol and air. Liquor has never been a particular draw for her, even in her college-partying days.

It's a convenient front though. She hasn't ordered dinner yet.

Then somebody comes crashing into the bar a few seats down, barking. Almost immediately she picks it up, under the bratty demands and stink of perfume; she doesn't have a word for it yet, the way some subtle note of old magic makes her hair stand on end and become suddenly wary, but in the sea of humanity that Infamy usually serves, Princess here stands out.

"Somewhere to be?" She asks, wrapping her mouth around the straw and idly pulling a sip of tasteless spirits.

[bainesalthea]

Althea's grateful for the break, and heads over to the funeral home as instructed. She'd taken the long way around, so she could dissociate and grieve in peace before having to prepare herself to deal with a vampire again. But she arrives ready to get this over with and deal with the hand that's been dealt to her.

Back at the table, she crosses her arms over her chest and looks down at her former mentor. It's fuckin' weird, seeing her like this. "Nah, we've hunted together on full moons. Far as I know, there's no way around that."

She chews on her thumbnail while she thinks. "No bite, but she turned. Some sort of witch shit? Doesn't seem like an easy answer." She bites down hard into the flesh of her thumb. "You don't happen to know anything about magic, d'you?"

[tressashaw]

It's a bit more... well, not pleasant, but bearable here. Filtered air, quite cool - the rot of nature isn't really mixing so roughly with the rot of humanity. Still, dead stuff stinks - Tressa's just used to it.

"So I've heard," she chirps as she leans in, still convinced she'll find a bite mark somewhere.

At first Althea's musing is background noise, but then the hunter, she hisses in her head at the thought, asks a pertinent question. Tressa stands, leaning back and folding her arms. "Only that 'witch shit' and 'magic' make things frustratingly broad."

Her brow peaks. "I have somebody I could get ahold of, but she's not always reachable, so I don't know how long that would take." She looks at Althea then. "Those tattoos are magic aren't they? Don't you guys have witches we could pull on?"

Then she turns more fully. "Actually, she's you're sensei, right? You know where she was staying? Could find something there."