Friday night.

Erich

So Erich is in the Santa Fe Arts District again, and it is in fact Third Friday so the area is swamped with pedestrians and all the art galleries are open but what does a meatheaded Ahroun from Nebraska know about art anyway.

So instead he is at the whimsically named mmm...COFFEE!, which advertises itself as some sort of paleo cafe, which is perhaps not exactly the sort of place one imagines a meatheaded Ahroun to frequent either. But nonetheless there he is: out on the small patio, making that wrought-iron patio set he's occupying seem small with his blond-blue-tanned-muscled-ness, a plate of chicken and a hot chocolate keeping him company.

Also his phone. It is set on the tabletop; he is hunched over it, grinning in that private way people grin when they are terribly amused by whoever it is they are texting, tapping rather nimbly with his fingertips as he neglects his food.

Eva

Something slightly more formal is happening across the street. The occasional town car sleeks up to the door and the occasional grandee slides out in evening or cocktail attire. Some of the patrons spill out the front doors of what otherwise seems to be an unfinished space, and they both stand out from and blend into the Third Fridays crowd. Somehow it looks like the point of confluence of two rivers, one shallow and silty and slow, the other deep, swift-moving, clarified. The punch-and-swirl of it.

--

But Erich does not notice. He's on his phone, grinning, and may be taken by surprise when Eva lets herself in the small metal gate leading to the fenced in patio, and stops at his table, one hand braced on it, leaning over a bit -

"Erich. Do you mind if I join you?"

The briefest pause.

"Just for a moment."

Erich

He is, indeed, taken by surprise -- that sharp animal up-snap of his head, the grin frozen by startlement and then regaining its footing. His eyebrows have climbed halfway to his hairline.

"Whoa," he says, presumably of the dress.

Eva

There is about her a certain patient didacticism. An impassive query in the lilt of her brows.

"I did not mean to startle you, but I cannot tell if that is a yes or a no."

Erich

"Oh!" And he sits up, busies himself with -- tidying up? making the area presentable? In the end all he manages to do is rearrange plate and cup and then extend his foot under the table to kick the other chair out for her. "Yeah, sure. Of course. Sit down."

There are a few surreptitious glances around, as though perhaps he were afraid (or maybe hoping) he might be mistaken for her date. Or maybe he's looking for her actual date. Or maybe he's wondering where her kids are. Perhaps it's the last, because then he asks:

"Where are your kids?"

Eva

"I stashed them in the truck of the limo." She takes the seat with a certain grace and allows her bemusement over his business in the tidying up (?) to show through, but seems almost entirely - straightforward - in the disposition of her children.

"They'll be fine, don't you think? Just for a few hours."

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Erich

Erich. Looks. Horrified.

"Uh," he says -- clearly flailing for the most diplomatic way to say this, "well, at least it's nighttime so it's probably ... not too hot in there? But you might want to go let them out. Like, soon. Like, before they die."

Eva

"Sound advice, Erich." This quick-sliding smile crests her mouth, and is gone as quickly as it came. "Thank you.

"I will see to it as soon as we finish our chat."

Erich

"Wait," all squint-eyed, "they're not really in the trunk, are they. Oh, duh," the penny fairly crashes down, "it's not like you'd go to a black tie party with kids in tow. Man, you're a convincing liar. I guess that's a good thing."

He's practically having the conversation all by himself. He stops; he pushes his plate of half-eaten chicken toward her in instinctive offering. You share your kill with the kin; that is what you do. Even if the 'kill' was recently bought from a paleo cafe.

"How've you been, anyway? I haven't dropped by to get food from your office very much lately."

Eva

Erich tells Eva that she is a really good liar. She does not point out the contrapuntal idea: that he is an especially gullible young man, in part because she does not believe it. The smile that coiled across her mouth settles in again.

No response to his question about how she's been; instead, "Good. You had the support staff in an uproar. Passive-aggressive notes about missing pepperoni sticks and gogurt for weeks. Rhonda Porter started keeping her cheese slices in her desk, but locked them into a file drawer and the smell - "

Poker face.

"So if you need food, it would be best if you brought me a list.

"Or my assistant, Richard. He is kin as well."

The most minute pause. Then:

"How involved are your plans this evening?"

Erich

"I don't need food," Erich is a tiny bit insulted at the assumption, "I'm a wolf. I can get my own food. It was just fun to go down there and see what you guys were munching on. The gogurt wasn't me though. Or the cheese slices! I only took meat."

Obviously.

"My plans?" He looks bemused. Amused, as well. "Well, I don't really have any. I'm just hanging out here. My one packmate is doing theurge-y stuff and my other is at work. So it's just me. Why?"

Eva

"Then perhaps you were not the source of office strife."

An arch of her brows.

"Your plans?"

Erich

"What, like specifically?" He thinks a moment. "I'm gonna eat my chicken and drink my hot chocolate and then maybe wander around a bit and not understand any of the art they're showing. Then I was gonna go home."

And again, "Why?"

Eva

"There's a man in that gallery I think you should track, and perhaps kill, instead.

"His skin is too hot.

"And where his collar rubs his neck, the skin has come away. A hint of green, beneath.

"If you follow me across the street, I'll go back inside and make sure you know the one I mean."

Erich

"Oh."

And that is the only answer for a while: a simple oh ripe with all the connotations of ohs spoken from Garou to their watchful kin. Erich's fingertips drum on the wrought-iron surface of the cafe table for a second. Then:

"Okay, well, lemme eat my chicken and then we'll go."

--

So that is what happens. He eats his chicken -- quickly, he doesn't dawdle -- and then he drinks his hot chocolate and then he kinda rumples everything up and disposes of the disposables and sets the plates atop the trash can to be collected.

They cross back toward the gallery. Not together; that would look too weird. Eva goes first, and she slips back into that exclusive-looking party of hers, all swooping necklines and bare shoulders and satin lapels and diamond cufflinks. Erich loiters around outside and tries not to look too suspicious, though already the doorman is casting him stink-eyed looks, but he doesn't have to stay long.

Just long enough for Eva to indicate the man,

mark the kill.

--

She does not see her much younger tribesman for quite some time after that. Actually, she does not see him again for the remainder of the party. She doesn't see him when she goes to her car, either, whether it's her everyday car or, in fact, a limousine. She doesn't see the man she pointed out either, the hot-skinned creature whose hide was beginning to split to reveal true horror beneath. In fact, she will never see that man again.

--

She does, however, see him before the night is entirely over. When she has left the party. When she has gone home. Just before she actually enters her house, that is when she sees him, sitting at her curb, keeping a respectful distance away from her front door and the young souls that sleep within. Headlights sweep him out of the darkness. He stands up as her car pulls to the curb, or into the garage.

He looks no worse for the wear. Maybe a little scuffed. Maybe a little -- calmer, is that the word for it? The moon is still so, so close to the full. Calmer is not the word for it. But a little more settled, not quite the crackling, heavy presence of before.

He waves at her. Foolish thing; no subtlety at all.

Eva

He wants to finish his chicken. She favors him with this quietly thoughtful glance as he does, warmer than you might imagine. Something concealed but searching about her eyes as she makes him in that space, that patio, the edge to him; and the youth; and strange and strangely bare simplicity.

Says nothing, though.

There is nothing to say.

--

And: there is no limosine, just a quietly expensive Lexus parked down a quietly expensive sidestreet with a quietly expensive handgun hidden thoughtfully beneath the dash.

After the soirée, Éva is eager to get back to the Lexus and the weapon quietly hidden inside. She is always armed, except when she is dressed as she was tonight,

and then she feels naked.

--

Much, much later, a suburb. Quiet streets. Dark houses. The low hum of the engine, the sweep of the headlights. The shadow of the mountains against the sky.

She sees him, of course.

Cuts him a glance, the edge of it lilting-fine.

One rises above the curved leather of the steering wheel as she makes the turn into the gated drive.

Is she returning the wave?

Perhaps; though he will never know.

She could have just been turning the wheel.