A mission... there's always a mission, or in this case a job. Powerful as they are in the day, vampires have that vulnerability at night that gives me job security. I just didn't know where that would take me.
I went on that date. I accompanied @Roman_Zimojic to the opening of @VikingsHelm and he was what I've come to expect from male vampires - charming, witty, inevitably experienced, and a marvelous conversationalist only... he was ... better at... far better. As in I-felt-myself-dissolving-in-his-gaze better. There are times when you want the world to play fair and times that it doesn't that you don't want it to... and I was experiencing one of them.
I've noticed one of the things that does regrettably happen to many (most) vampires is that they sometimes lose not only sunlight and the ability to affect a thermometer but often their sense of humor over the ages. Maybe they've heard all the jokes? I don't know. Humor has been such a survival mechanism for me that I can't imagine spending eternity not laughing about something, well, someone. Toasters don't pull many one liners.
Imagine my relief - and maybe that's what won me over - to find that Roman Zimojic smiled and laughed as well as he wore a designer suit and therefore... twice over suited me just fine.The opening of @VikingsHelm ? Off without a hitch, a place for human and supe alike to mingle mix, barter, make deals, throw peanuts, and spill their drinks and occasionally their cleavage. I had arranged the security - insisting on a vampire saferoom and the electrification of the fence near the tree line. If humans wanted on the premises with wooden stakes, they'd have to bring their own through the front gate, no snapping them out of the garden walkway.
The other directive on my mind, the birth of the Northman twins. Amazing... they'd managed it. I got to be a witness to the first vampire/human hybrid children in history. World - let's welcome the two most wanted children to come into you.
I understand @SookieStack_SVM can talk to them, or emote, with them on some level. I am already imagining the secret smiles behind @EricNorthmanSVM 's broad back already as they grow. But their birth meant my job was over, the AVL and @NanVFlanaganX had had their cats and kittens, and nothng had come of their dire warnings thankfully. Maybe the world had had enough shocks that one more they tolerated very well and maybe we'd played it well enough to manage the blow. I like to think I helped. What happened next let me assume I did.
The AVL turned that 30 page contract I'd signed before leaving for Russia only to ultimately come back and not need the International title in it over to the Authority at Nan Flanagan's request. I made her show me the paperwork trail because it was coinciding just a bit with the trail of kisses Roman Zimojic was leaving down the goose-bumps on my neck. I don't mind favors that have to do strictly with business moving me up the vampire ladder... but I don't want anyone on the outside thinking they came because someone wanted to see up my skirt.
The Vampire Authority had an office in Shreveport and here I was, blinking and staring at a corner office on the third floor (most of the rest of it was underground) on a wing of the building that gave me a direct line of sight to Roman's evening corner office.Okay... I think he twisted a few arms on the corporate geography but with above ground offices in so little demand - I'll let that one slide. He is THE AUTHORITY afterall.
As for the private sector geography - Well, that has two meanings and feel free to assume. My office has considerations for "human needs" a private bath that includes a black and gold private shower. And with all that warm water already flowing around there - it certainly deserved a proper second christening.
That said I couldn't live there... I moved out of the Northman home to Shreveport, to a luxury hotel with a rooftop pool, maid service provided by the Authority, equipped with secure wi-fi, a vampire safe office and bedroom, and a king-size bed someone else gets to make.
The finest restaurants, his luxury penthouse, even a classic drive-in that had somehow survived the modern age - I still look at them through the eyes of the beat cop that was tossing a hood over my car hood not long ago, trading foul-mouthed threats while I searched them for weapons. Well, since they're not much on dining, at least vampires generally don't give a damn which fork I might have wrongly used.
But it's about more than being the boss's girlfriend who does know what she's doing. Something's going on in Shreveport and bound to be going on elsewhere. The Authority was being surveilled and we caught one of the people involved, only to have him suicide, rudely dribbling his churning, cyanide-laden bodily fluids all over my hand as I dragged him down a wall.
So, where do we start? We have a fake utility company vehicle and a corpse that at least yielded some ID. Our dead perp was a veteran, homeless and recruited from a shelter, via a program funded by an anonymous donor who has since vanished or likes to think they have. Our perp had a brother, in jail now in a town that borders the Mexican border with Texas, run by a pair of rubes who hate vampires but who have a weakness for Fae. What there is of it in my blood wasn't good enough but my secretary - she's a woman of hidden talents.
The Sheriff (HUMAN Sheriff) there fessed up a few things to her that he wouldn't to me - (assuming he wasn't mumbling at some other vampire-loving bitch...) but I want this investigation to take a little bit more of a direct approach. Consulting with Roman, we're sending @AnyaHareston in to get a few more answers. She's going to become a law student researching cases, on a working vacation with her significant other - @OsgarCrane .
The mission is a bit of a test for all of us... Anya's come up with a few surprises of her own that caused a flutter of concern around the Authoriy. She's a Fae, a Dark Fae, and has only come to that realization herself. She's finding out what she's capable of and her loyalty hasn't come into question but the Chancellory is nervous and in the back of my mind ... maybe so am I. It's not so much that I doubt Anya or Osgar themselves but what else might be waiting to surprise her? I know the extent of my Fae nature - a bit of mind-reading and ability to sense the portals that have apparently just been spinning around the world all the time and to open a few of them. What Fae I had in me... well, a witch named Miranda gave it an expected boost, so I know I've hit my limit - about Anya we're going to have to see.
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