Counsel / Council (Attn: all)

[Jacqui]

The brunette's eyes are a very dark brown. They've been highlighted today with liner and the lashes that frame them and drop, briefly, against her cheeks as she feels Kalen sweep past behind her, are curling and long. A lovely creature, by all accounts, Kiara but the manner she cut a brief, bright appraising look Nick's way reads a fair amount into there being far more to her than a charming little heart shaped face and cheeks with a tendency to dimple when she smiled.

(Only honest smiles drew them out, that being said).

"Hello," it's a murmur as much as anything, a hand idling to bury itself in all that dark hair and cup the back of her neck. "Welcome to the party." A notch up of fine dark eyebrows; one wings just slightly higher than the other and while Dan assembles plates of food - the Verbena kicks off from her resting perch and sets herself up with a glass of red wine. Unhooks a glass and pours it out, delivering the rich aroma into the mixture Dan's efforts had already let loose.

"That," a gesture with her glass here, Kiara's rings gleaming, toward the man who had pressed in behind her upon entry. "Is Kalen. Can I interest anyone else?" She sets the bottle down, the Verbena and leans into a counter out of the stream of activity; holding the glass against her body without any particular fuss about sampling it. Her tone is light enough, but beneath the glamor of it (not even magickal, this time, just posturing, just brittle play-acting at some notion of normalcy from the earth-witch) there's a sense of tension; lacing into her shoulders, the set of them. Her fingers curled around the stem a little too forcefully.

"It sounds like the occasion for it."

[jamie]

He is not late. He was invited only by association and his associate such as she is arrived ten minutes ago. Came into the kitchen and started garnering information and he traipsed the periphery of the property smoking a cigarette and having an argument under his breath with himself.

Maybe Nick saw him on the way in. Kiara may have. Kiara is attuned to this land in a way he will never understand. Tried to understand. Kiara may have known Hinata who went by Eloise when she went by anything but that's a story for another time. At this time the Etherite who came as Grace's plus-one is chain smoking.

He is a forensic pathologist. A medical examiner. A doctor. A Scientist. Shouldn't be smoking. Does anyway. That is irrelevant. In time he finishes his cigarette and does whatever it is that Disciples of Matter do with their cigarette butts and lets himself into the Chantry.

A short man. Five-foot-six in his shoes. Came from an inquest this morning so he's wearing a navy blue suit and a white shirt and a conservative tie even though he hates ties at all let alone ones with still patterns he had to comb his hair and trim his beard didn't have to but he chose to and he's wearing black-rimmed glasses and a wedding band on his left hand and soon as the door's shut he's surveying the room intruder that he must think he is.

Everyone is in the kitchen. He calls out as he walks. A deep voice belies a slight frame. Light accent.

"Marco?" He follows the smell of food into the kitchen. Green eyes find Nick and then Grace. Eyebrows flick. Greeting in it and also expectation.

He expects Grace to introduce him since she's the one who ran his background check. He will absolutely take a glass of red wine. Breakfast be damned. He has two apprentices. They won't be joining the congregation. They have work and school and a propensity for freaking out at the slightest hint of impending doom.

[FadedNoel]

Grace has been happy, up to the point where this call went out. Vacation agrees with her, when she's allowed to be somewhere very warm and work on her Work. Right now, though, she looks like she just got punched in the gut. When Kalen's gaze meets hers, she tries to hold on to it, tries to tell him with her eyes that everything will be okay. He's going to be... even less happy. Let us hope that the emotional outcome doesn't lead to doing anything rash. Not that she expects it of him, but still.

She's about to accept Kiara's offer of wine when Dr. Sepúlveda shows up in the entryway to the kitchen. For the life of her, she can't quite grasp that it's her 'job' to do introductions until a few painful seconds have passed. Maybe he has to look at her and cough.

"Oh, yeah. Um. This is Andrés Sepúlveda. Doctor. He's with the Society of Ether. Andrés, everybody. Everybody, Andrés," she says, with sweeping arm gestures in his general direction. Sorry, dude. Your invite to this shindig came courtesy of a Mercurial Elite with only the weakest grasp on what normal human interactions entail when she's on the scent like this.

"I could use some wine," she says to Kiara, and then seems to change her mind immediately. "No. Actually, no." She puts her thumb knuckles up to her eyes and leans on the counter like she's got the biggest headache. "I don't need to do everything that needs doing while drunk..."

[tithe]

Pen did arrive with Nick!

And then she was quiet, because there is a reason she is nursing a very strong cup of coffee as if the coffee'll have enough edge to scrape her into brightness. Quiet is relative. Chain-smoking Andrés got a what's up outside. Grace also got a what's up, probably coupled with big concerned eyes given how worn the Mercurial Elite looks. Pen's a softie. Serafíne and Dan, two Good Mornings, an incisive little this is really early isn't it? look for the former, but of course it is because 'meetings' like these are never good news you see that doesn't change one city from the other. Nick didn't get a what's up. Kalen got a wiggle of fingers, a half-smile.

There's a certain wistfulness to her regard of the wine, wine's as red as rubies in a fairy tale or it's the color of a gown the color of stars, but wine and coffee don't go together, do they? Then again, dare not!

Anybody she doesn't know gets the (semi-full) introduction, Penelope Sylvia Mercury Mars bani Flambeau ordo Hermes. There don't seem to be too many of those. Neat.

Pen is: mistress of languid aplomb, at least right now. Asks Dan if he needs help, chopping or any such thing, carrying plates into the dining room, c'mon people give her some busy work.

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ooc: sorry i took so long to post in! >.> forumsceneseek.

[mnemosyne]

Dan wasn't really cooking for a (the) crowd, so the spread laid out in the dining room, or maybe the living room, is modest. He just wanted to get some solid food, some carbohydrates and potassium, some liquid other-than-booze, back into Sera's body as she is coming-down from whatever-it-is she uses to fuel her magick. The ciabatta, though, that's a good sized loaf, not exactly loaves-and-fishes but it's not exactly a loaves-and-fishes crowd.

It's Dan who starts,

"Alexander hadn't responded to a couple of voice mails or texts. Sera was concerned he might've gotten hurt while hiking or something, so last night she decided to scry him out. But she couldn't find him anywhere."

They're sitting close to each other, though at the moment Sera is not inviting touch the way she is often wont to do. No, something about her scrubbed-raw senses has her in want of: space, boundaries, singularity. Feels so strange to be one, when sometimes you can be: all, every, any.

"So I looked back," this is Sera, and if she looks as if she has not slept for quite some time, well: she has not slept. The edges of the room have a sort of brilliant smearinenss to them and everything from her temples to her fingertips aches. She doesn't mind the ache. In fact, she invites it. "Searched out the last time I <i>could</i> find him.

"Several weeks ago, Alex was approached at the police," a slight handwave. Unlike the rest of the western world, Sera has never watched a Law and Order marathon. She doesn't have a ready lexicon of crime-show language, " - thingy by a guy who said he was an FBI Agent named Paul Mason. Wanted to have a chat with Alexander.

"Took Alex into a room inside the place and started asking him about a 'case' he was investigating. Showed Alex a picture of Leah. Mason said he was investigating Leah for the murder of twelve people, and asked if Alex had seen her.

"Alex was pretty clever. He managed to answer without lying, without really answering, but Mason was not taken in. He kept questioning Alex, pushing him to give her up - or, well," this narrow hitch of the creature's spare shoulders. The movement framed with an elegant simplicity. "testing him, right? Weston asked Alex another direct question. Alex tried to leave.

"But Mason shot him with something: a tranquilizer, maybe. Alex tried to run, but the guy came after him and the drug he'd used was pretty fast-acting. Alex started to shout, and he went for his gun but they were grappling over it and he couldn't really get it out of the holster. He still managed to get a shot off that went into the floor before he passed out.

"These other cops came running. Mason convinced them that Alex had gone nuts while they were talking, that Alex started talking to someone who wasn't there and was going for his weapon and that Weston had to do tackle Alex to stop him from hurting himself, then Alex passed out. Mind magick, yeah? The cops believed Mason.

"They called an ambulance.

"The paramedics - two women - started toward the hospital, but changed course halfway there. Drove East instead, toward Aurora. Kept going until they ended up in one of those boring-ass looking developments with the low bland buildings and the sod and the fake ponds and shit. Dan says it sounds like a research park, and we put it together to be close to the UC Denver schools of public health and dentistry. That's where I lost track of him. The vision closed-off and I couldn't find him anytime, after."

[FadedNoel]

After Sera's spiel, Grace chimes in, perhaps sooner than the impact of all that has really hit. She's been waiting to get a few things off her chest, although she's still speaking to the kitchen counter.

"So this means, if you knew Alex, you're in danger. He also knew where the Chantry is, and he had Ginger, so chances are they know we're having this meeting right now."

She doesn't stop to explain Ginger to those who don't have it. Priorities and all.

Her head comes up, and her eyes flit to people, but seem to pierce through them, until she settles on something non-living -- non-emoting.

"I know a guy. Mercurial Elite who has been watching the Technocrats in the area. I'm going to find out what he knows. And then I'm going to hack their shit to within an inch of it's life if I can. We'll find out what we need to get him back."

She says these things with conviction, like she is going to do them, and if anyone had any ideas about stopping her, they have another thing coming.

[jamie]

Sepúlveda did in fact stare at Grace and give a bit of an open-armed You gonna introduce me or what? gesture when she didn't do so within about five seconds. File that one away under the Virtual Adept living up to her name.

He's silent during Dan-and-Sera's explanation and the clearing of things off Grace's chest. Keeps one hand in his pocket if he has been offered a glass of wine. Keeps both hands in his pockets and fails the Don't Make Music with the Random Coins and Other Jangly Junk test.

"So..." A hand leaves Sepúlveda's pocket to scratch at his beard before he goes on. He's a hand-talker. "If they know about all this, the Chantry and the Ginger and all that, how are you so sure they aren't expecting you to try to 'hack their shit'?"

[FadedNoel]

It was a long drive to the Chantry with the doctor in tow. Grace has the feeling it's going to be even longer on the way back.

"By that logic, they're expecting everything, so we should do nothing. But I'm open to other ideas if you have them."

[jamie]

He points at her.

"I'm going to ignore your unsound accusation of logical fallacy for the moment. We can discuss that later." Yes, Grace. Yes it is going to be a long ride back. "Other ideas!" He indicates their fellows with a sweep of an arm. "You have a room full of associates who I'm sure are very bright and more than capable of gathering data and contributing to a plan that's a little more nuanced than 'Go in the back door and hope they don't notice or do anything about it.' Like, where's your support? What are you gonna do if it does go wrong, and you don't find out shit, and now we gotta go after you and Alex? Where's this building they took him to? Can we use, eh, what do you call it, social hacking to get additional information? What about a two-pronged approach? Divide and conquer, eh? That's how they get new members, they pick off the ones who want to be cowboys."

[Andrew]

Nick listens to the long explanation Sera offers, largely without expression: no surprise, and no fear.  He is still digesting when she finishes, and when Sepúlveda and Grace begin their back-and-forth.  He does not know Alex.  Nicholas knows of Alex, but due to his and Pen's habit of rarely Naming those they run into even when they discuss - well, he doesn't know that yet.

"I think it's clear that this meeting was called because we have no intention of leaving a man to die," Nick says, and this is perhaps directed mostly to Grace.  He did not miss her defiance of them, the lifted chin: and it's true, in many chantries there would be discussion of whether or not, in fact, they ought to retrieve Alex.  "So I'm glad to skip ahead with you to planning."  A pause.  "It sounds like first we need to find out where he is.  How much do we know about their operations in the area?  Has anyone met or seen any of their operatives?"