another warmoot-y thing! [attn: ALL]

[mnemosyne]

"Ms." The Shadow Lord corrects Javed thoughtlessly. There is no evident sense of grievance in her tone, but neither is the correction leavened by even the smallest feminine smile of apology. Her attention is brief and steady, with a certain wry light in her eyes that does not track to her mouth. Listen, she wears her years in the lines around like commas around her crisp mouth. Framing her dark eyes, etched between her rather expressive brows. Whether or not she wears a ring on the ring finger of her left hand - none is evident now, but on occasion she sports one that looks like a wedding band - humans never mistake a woman like her for a Miss anything.

All too often they default to Missus.

Don't worry. She corrects them too.

--

A brief and sharp breath in when Keisha speaks up, makes clear that - oh yes - the murders themselves, elaborated as they are, are the ritual. "I do not know," to Keisha, when it is her turn again to speak, " - whether we have complete blueprints or either site. In any case, I would not trust those available through the public record, given what we now know. I will make what I have available to you, though.

"And," a brief and wintry smile, "I would expect the Warder to have the most complete blueprints of 1999 Broadway. He requires assistance on all fronts now, I believe. He can hardly turn down your requests." A beat. "Our requests. I would suggest that one of the representatives to the meeting with the Warder be a crescent moon. And that the reconnaissance team include a competent spiritualist as well. Given recent events, and the discoveries we have made, I find the spiritual dangers more troubling than potential physical dangers beneath the Sept."

It is, after all, one thing to die.
And another thing altogether, to be possessed by a force powerful enough to -

--

"Perhaps," to Lola and Reese, " - the common thread is not the architect himself in any case. Some underling; some design associate. Some contractor. Some contact. Some common thread between the projects. We'll review the police data to see if there are similar threads of crime and disappearances in and around any of his more recent projects. Try not to get arrested.

"But if you do, tell them you want to speak to your lawyer, and call my office. My practice is criminal defense. If there is a way to get you off - " - or sacrifice you on the bureaucratic altar of someone-has-to-pay and for-the-greater-good - "I will."