!Insolent Whelp

Sheriff's Estate - The Vault

This room covers almost the entire ground floor of this house. The majority is taken up by a stylish reception area; three chunky, white leather couches places in a neat U-shape, with a low table in the centre. Another corner holds a modern, black table, six comfortable chairs placed around it as though for conference. The final feature is a bar, well-equipped behind it and with a pair of chunky fridge-freezers, containing a variety of synthetic blood. In one corner is a staircase, leading upstairs. On the same wall is a door through to the only area on this floor not part of this room, where sits a small bathroom and the route downstairs, a featureless door, metal constructed and lockable from one side only, though plated to fit with the design of the house.
Three walls are white, the fourth covered in ceramic panels to give some colour to the place. The floor is tiled, in a pleasant, neutral shade. Windows at regular intervals stretch from floor to ceiling, concealed blackout blinds above them. One wall bears a huge flatscreen television, and one aware of their surroundings will spot the speakers concealed at various points in the room. The general feel of this area is a clinical style, a blank, neutral canvas for whatever happens to be going on. Those who know Will generally refer to this area as The Vault, for the round pillars that stretch up to the roof.


Characters:
chloe_icon.jpg james_icon.jpg marius_icon.jpg tandb_icon.jpg

The evening is young, but not so much that opportunities for vampires haven't been offered in the form of fangbangers and willing vessels. Once the hour past nightfall is done, the evening begins in earnest.
Papers.
Newspapers. Reports. Memos.
Who'd have thought that serving within the City would mean a great deal of reading? Marius certainly doesn't, if the setting of papers all over the small coffee table and the growing air of annoyance that surrounds him is any indication. A small cellphone sits to the side of the newsprint, a flashing light indicating an incoming message on its front screen, ignored.
He sits on the couch, settled to the edge, a piece of paper in hand and blue eyes attending the words on the page and nothing else.

Where Marius seems to ignore his technology, Chloe keeps hers close at hand these days. Finishing up a call with one of the other aides at the Mayor's office, she snaps it shut as she's coming up the stairs. It's then that she notices the flash on the phone indicating voice mail.

"Josephine?" Giving her head a shake, she sets the phone to her ear and makes a face. "Another urgent message? A mix up?"

Dialing the number and reaching the woman's voicemail she says, "I'll be at the coffee shop around midday. I have business to take care of for the Mayor. We can meet there." Then she's hanging up.

Eyes fall to the paper work and she wrinkles her nose. "Late night at the office?"

James leans not-quite inconspicuously against the doorframe, arms crossed over his barrel chest. A ghost of a smile sits on his bearded lips though it disappears to vampiric neutrality as he hears Chloe's voice emerge from the room below when she approaches up the stairs. Had they been alone, he might have lanced Marius with a mild jibe about appearing to have become Chancellor for the Texan kingdom.
Marius' snits are always amusing.
However, since the human is present, he won't dishonour his brother by belittling him in front of her.
He glances further up the stairs to where his dogs lay flopped across the foyer floor. One of them raises a curious head.
Then, it flops back down.

"I hear you, brother," Marius' voice is flat and neutral, raised enough to carry its meaning. If he whispered it, James would still be able to hear him.. With only a slight motion of his hand that holds the leaf, he encompasses all the papers in the gesture. "This.. this is hell on Earth.. and it is of our making."
His eyes are still on the page, trying to make heads and tails of the writing. It's one thing to read blocked, printed letters. It is something else when it is in another's hand, half script and half printed with, in his mind, no rhyme or reason to the letters. "It is early yet, kind." Marius doesn't bother looking up. "I would have thought you would be used to the hours passage by now. Unless," he pauses, his attention suddenly pulled by something on the paper, presumably, before he continues, "the mayor's office has you doing different chores for them."

"It's a saying," Chloe points out, "I'm well aware of the hour." She wouldn't be here unless it were this time anyhow. Not her style to lounge around too much when Will's not about. Though she'll be mighty thankful once he gets his new manor built and she'll quit running into random vampires.

"I've got a bit of time tonight if you want help sorting through that mess. I can throw it onto Will's laptop even." She'd just have to go and retrieve it.

The sound of the dog is what alerts her to James' presence. She eyes the man warily, then offers a respectful nod. "Apologies. Didn't see you there at first. Bit focused on this," she says, waving the phone before dropping it into a pocket. "Speaking of," she adds, turning to Marius once more. "Josephine thinks there's been a mix up of some kind. Is there anything I should know before talking with her tomorrow?"

James blinks mildly at his brother's comment. Again, were the human not there, he'd probably smirk. Maybe even commiserate. But, he's had more incentive to bone up on his reading than his brother has.
"Oh, I am certain it is a very human hell, brother," he says with absolute, practiced neutrality. Though no vampire would mistake the subtle nuance in his tone. Humanity invented paper, didn't they?
He regards Chloe directly, this time unblinking. "So many are, I've noticed," he says simply, with regard to the phone.

"You will be using that key before long, brother.."
There is little that Marius needs to expand upon with the other vampire. Communication in bursts, or not at all as he sees fit, and there is always the understanding. "Pay your shilling and get your cup, and sit down. We will be out again before long." It is just the paper..
Finally, Marius pulls his gaze from the paper and sets it down onto a pile of seemingly random sheets. "Josephine believed that Valentinus would be handling Hugo's perceived problem, and had told him that .. 'a Mister William Grant' would be attending. I merely told him that he was mistaken as it was me who had been approached with the problem initially." Giving Chloe a blank, dead stare, he continues, though his voice lowers, "There was some question by this Hugo as to whether I was a representative of Mister William Grant."

"Josephine needs to learn when to keep her mouth shut," Chloe mutters, a quiet curse following after it. "Would that you lot could glamour her because she honestly knows far too much." There is a tap to the side of the telepath's head to indicate that Jo is much like she is. "She contacted Will about the issue, he asked me to handle it, so I did. Since he was out of town, and it made more sense to contact someone already involved…" Shrug.

Chloe moves to sit on the couch opposite, crossing one leg over the other. She doesn't touch the papers.

"I wasn't normally so attached to my phone. The new job though, it's one call after another. Running across the city, getting dry cleaning, needing to talk to the PR people. I never knew conversation could be so… exhausting."

"Anytime you wish, brother," James replies to Marius, tone still neutral — nuance still a casual smirk. He has no problem facing his brother in the arena.
Chloe's problems, however, don't phase him in the least. More, he doesn't really know Chloe's true nature, either. No one's told him.
He pushes off the doorframe, now, and pads further into the room, settling with easy grace onto one of the couches, across the way from Marius and his stack of paperwork.

"I will glamour her when this is done.. as well as her brother." The last thing Marius wants is a line of connection. "I told him just that.. as I had been involved in the beginning, you had contacted me rather than bother another, and that he was mistaken."
Delicate lines… and if things are not done properly..
"What do you mean 'she honestly knows far too much'? What is it she believes she knows?" Glamouring may come sooner rather than later.
The little cellphone that Marius set on the table gives off a little *beep* due to inattention when something obviously urgent is flickering on its screen. Still, it is ignored.
If Chloe wasn't in the room, there would be many a retort that would come in turn.. but far be it from him to even make it seem there could be something 'off'.. particularly when there isn't. Nuances, to a breather, simply can't be picked up.
"Sit then and take your ease. We will be gone before long."
Marius' attention returns to the King's Own, and there's a completely blank expression; empty.. dead.. and his tones only add to the lack of anything resembling life and humanity. "Now you understand how we perceive the incessant bleating."

"Marius, you can't glamour her." Chloe bites her lip, worrying her teeth over it. "She's a telepath. You're free to try of course, but so far as I know, it doesn't work. Will's tried with me."

There is consideration and then a frown. "She's a journalist. She was present when Will was freed from Kegan's clutches. She… assumes he's a vampire of great power, because he offered her a pretty hefty compensation for her part in it all." There is a thought there that she shouldn't be saying this if Will's not told him.

A fire flashes in her eyes as her work is equated to bleating. She rolls her eyes and doesn't say a word, until, "You have far more expressions than Marius does." This randomly pointed out to James.

And there's James' confirmation, now. ~Telepath. So that's why the King keeps her around.~ That makes so much more sense.
However, at Chloe's words, he lets his face fall into an absolute mirror of his brother's expressionless deathmask. "Only when I choose," he says simply.

Perhaps Chloe didn't mean to bring something down on Marius' experience level, but she'd done so, and brought the point home quickly and easily to his medieval mind. The larger the ransom, the more important the personage… and with Valentinus offering a 'hefty compensation', there would be no doubt in his mind, anyway, as to the value of the man.
As for his ability to glamour a telepath.. telepath? Rather than ask what exactly those are, he remains silent and takes what information he can glean. "I see. I will try, however. Perhaps it will be different with this one."
Marius doesn't seem the least bit fazed with Chloe's pique at her words and voice being referred to as 'bleating', but at least it wasn't 'shrill bleating'? Maybe next time.
As for her words to James, well.. obviously his Child can respond well, and he certainly doesn't disappoint. "He can look very human at times, too. Quite uncanny, that."

"It may be? I don't know. Our minds don't work like normal humans, and to be honest… vampires are pretty much the only…" Creatures? People? Chloe's not sure which word to use that wouldn't be insulting. "… ones I've come across who's minds aren't full of incessant chatter. Will's helped me embrace this ability instead of shy away from it, but there's still a lot I don't know."

Beat.

"Josephine asked once if glamouring would work on us and I told her no." Now that she thinks of it, she wishes she'd asked more about that situation.

"You can all look very human at times, but he reminds me of Will. The quick flirtation with the emotions. I'm surprised some fangbanger hasn't tried to follow you home yet," she teases.

James has had occasion, in the past, to very, very closely resemble humans. And, really, he's much better at it than his brother.
However, he now maintains the deathmask. He feels no compunction whatsoever to make friends with Chloe, just yet. He hasn't entirely decided what to make of her. But, it does occur to him that a 'telepath' — ~I should explain that one to Marius, I expect.~ — as a vampire may or may not be a good thing. It could go either way, once she's turned…
"I have all I require," he notes neutrally.
It's none of her business how he feeds.

"Fangbangers by their very nature will follow those who do not resemble humans. It is the thrill of the 'otherness'." Even Marius has had his offers, some of whom he's even taken up.. much to their later chagrin. Glamouring does have its uses. That and the ability to hide a body afterwards should things go .. in different, and in his case, 'normal' directions. That doesn't happen often within Texas…
Rising to his feet, Marius has reached the end of his rope when dealing with papers, and words.. and.. and..
The cellphone is reached for, and his hand stops briefly before he resumes and pockets the bit of technology without looking at it's continued message that he's received a missive.. or five.. or ten. "James, have you yet met the two-natureds?" Guess where his first stop for the evening out will be? "They are remarkable little creatures.. wolf and lamb all rolled into one. Prey and predator."
To Chloe, he'll give a final instruction, "I will return to these papers. They will be left here until then."

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