ATTN: ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE. [seven-related!]

[mnemosyne]

After speaking up the first time, Charlotte and whoever she carries with her are both quiet. Charlotte listens, looking a little bit eldrich and a little bit odd and does not speak up to defend Cold Crescent as a Place or a Thing of importance because in truth it feels wrong to her; and alien and strange and she belongs to the sleeping earth and the dreaming sky rather than the gleaming things that interrupt the sky but:

Erich is down with checking out the place where they found Champion of Honor.

The Glass Walker asks if Erich has people to go with him, and Charlotte, who remains close to Erich but closer to Melantha in this gathering, gives him a sideglance. A curl of a shoulder. A look or a Look that curls like a leaf into this slip of a shy (yes shy) glance. "You should come with us. If you want."

--

And, Éva has remained for much of the meeting as well. Standing against the wall, in her dark suit, her leather handbag still over one shoulder. Other than the questions she asked early in the meeting, she does not interrupt. And does not contribute. Does not participate in the discussion, though she follows it, oh she follows it with a subtle flicker of her dark eyes.

Near the end, she has dipped to retrieve the briefcase. Checked the watch that drifts around her left wrist, all gold links and gleaming dial. Fixes Thomas with a steady look that does not quite (never quite) meets his eyes. It is a constant calibration, to slip between the worlds of men and wolves, but see how finely she shifts gears.

He would like to look more into Cold Crescent's past.

"I've started making inquiries," once more, her voice is pitched to carry through the room, but low enough to require a certain degree of engagement, of concentration, "in the human world."

This subtle twist of her mouth, which looks wry but is nothing like it. Part of a mask drawn over - grief, yes grief, and an anger that feels depthless and unbounded when she is alone, and unobserved, and it is dark, and the house is still, and her children are sleeping in their beds, and there is moonlight through the windows and that well manicured xeroscaped lawn around the well manicured, bound and gated home and beyond that the high plains, full of a vast and shifting darkness and she allows her chest to open up around it and tries not to picture the -

the -

oh, Jane.

- but here, call it measured. Call it, steady. Call it, unbending.

"Research into the property records, titles, deeds. The construction, the church. The history of the land. Et cetera. It will take some time, but I'll share what I learn."

There are, after all, histories and histories. Éva is marooned on this side of the gauntlet. Half the simmering world closed to her, deaf and dumb and blind to all but the immediate, the physical, the almost-human.
information.

"If you are willing to do likewise," So she offers him a business card, with her contact information. And turns to take her leave.