seven.

[mnemosyne]

Three unexpected and deeply unpleasant days in the Florida panhandle, which leave her imagining that they must be in some functional mythology somewhere one of the outermost rings of hell. The insularity of small-town, backwater courts. The aggression of the Sheriff and her deputies. The odd dissonance of the swampish town. Three less-than-successful days. The clerk refuses her repeated requests to move up the bail hearing. There's something off about the deputy detective, too. The way he shows his teeth, the whiteness of his knuckles in ordinary conversation. She leaves with apologies for the system, and an admonishment to the locals to look into the detective. There's no knock-and-grab, no wiggling out of this one: it is sometimes harder to defend people who are actively being framed than the guilty.

The local guy will keep her up to date. They have her assistant's direct dial, too. But if they want this to end well, they need to figure out what the hell is going on. Start with that guy, is really all she can tell them, now.

--

Éva's first note that something has happened is the office-wide e-mail sent by her colleague, reminding - no, instructing employees that they are not to work late, alone. That they are to go to the parking garage in pairs, or ask a security guard to walk with them. He is the managing partner, and wrote it himself, and sends the e-mail sent to ALL USERS with the admonishment:

This means you, not just other people.
Which makes her smile as she thumbs past it, pauses, and re-reads while waiting to be called for her turbo-prop commuter flight from Nowheresville to Atlanta, Georgia. Then the flight is called, and she slips the phone away and does not think about it for the rest of the day. And night, and day after.

--

So, it is a half-dozen days later that she calls on Circuit Runner - Jane. Texts her fallen mate's former packmate and asks her if she's interested in lunch.

They order in and eat in the Éva's office, which is not quite a corner office, but still commands a city view a half-dozen floors below the restricted access area of 1999 Broadway. Thai take-out, seated on either side of the small conference table from which files and red-wells have been cleared.

When they get round to discussing It, the discussion is oblique. Éva has no great desire to know the details and does not ask. There were humans sacrificed as well, and she inquires: as to whether they have been identified and whether the Garou of the Sept need fingerprints run down to identify the humans. She knows that Garou have own methods of gathering information. So does she, and these she offers discretely over a handful of sticky rice sweets. After lunch, they the leftovers back into the delivery bag. Jane takes them