Sins Alive
23st of January 2007 A.D.
The old red brick condo had seen better days, probably in first half of the last century, but from the look of things its corners had only been metaphorically cut —called a
squircle according to Olivia, though it does take a Google search to convince you that is not the name of a a new kind of Pokemon— otherwise squatting solidly between its neighbors, with naught but bad parking to complain about. Contrary to Black Rider's feelings that is not a sign of malice nor ill wishing.
"Olivia, you wanna...?" You kind of nock a finger in the direction of the condo.
"What shoot him, we don't even know he's the bad guy," she jokes and just for a moment you and Lydia freeze. She knows death as well as she knows her own shadow, but you had seen people die too, people you were close to, who you couldn't help. For Olivia this is all just a little unreal, for all the power she now bore.
"I meant scout out, get the lay of the land," you offer instead.
A moment later she is out of the car and out of sight. Even though you know you could force yourself to see her it's still a little unnerving how your memory flinches at remembering she had been in the car moments before, almost as though you are trying to remember the physics of a dream or the melody of a lullaby all-but-lost in childhood.
"Do you think she's gonna be OK?" Lydia asks after a moment.
"She's tougher than she looks," you answer, trying not to sound stung. You would not have brought her along otherwise. Truth be told she was tougher than Harry.
"I didn't mean physically," the younger girl speaks slowly, obviously struggling for words. "She wants to make the world fair, fairer for people like her or like she used to be, but she thinks there are bad guys she can just 'deal with' and I'm just remembering Katherine. Even in the courts of the Old Gods there are those who don't deserve to pass from the world. If Olivia's gonna make the kind of change she hopes for, it is going to cost a lot of people more than their fair share, but she doesn't see that yet."
"None of us see all ends either," you reminder. "Let's just take this one step at a time." Despite your words you go out to help.
Weirdly enough you find nothing, not just nothing suspicious, nothing at all, no wards, no sign of vampires or the little folk, the most magical thing in that building is technically thresholds and Olivia reports the same. So the only thing that is left you get out of the pipes, up to the third floor though you do not quite knock, one of the things you hald learned in your watery wanderings is that Karl has dogs, and that he likes to walk them in the evening, so you wait while the excited barking gets louder until finally, with the suddenness of someone trying to prevent canine pandemonium the door smashes open. A guy around your age sporting plan black framed glasses, his personal interpretation of Jim Carrey hair and an awkward smile tries to hang on to the least of one Labrador, one Husky and one German Shepherd.
What is your greatest sin, your power reaches out and plucks the answer from the ether.
It is the smell of bleach and disinfectant, it is the sound of a monitor beeping. A man white haired, but not yet frail with age lies on a hospital bed, Karl's grandfather. He knows and hence you know that he might be able to brew something to help him fight the infection, something stronger than the doctors can give him, something... more. But fear grips his heart, what if he kills him instead. Karl had never given his 'special cocktails' to anyone who wasn't in the peak of health, and anyway they barely seemed to work for other people, the doctors would handle it.
John Bennett had died three days later.
Lost 2 Essence -> Now at 10/14 (NWS and Empathy Excelency)
You lurch from the vision with a oof, like something had hit you in the chest.
Wish I had not seen that, you say to yourself and to the demon in your brain, though for once he does not answer. It's not like you need his advice to understand what had happened anyway, the 'sin' was all of one piece, you could not have stopped yourself from seeing all of it anymore than a computer could have stopped at reading half a one or a quarter of a zero.
And still you were no closer to knowing how he knew about the Well.
What do you do?
[] Approach him as a member of Cauldron, talk to him about being a minor practitioner, sure he is going to be suspicious, but at least in this guise he couldn't read your aura
[] Imply, but do not say that you are investigating the follow up of the spontenous combustion incidents in September on behalf of the White Council, see how that makes him react
[] Write in
OOC: Unfortunetly you hit one of the limitations of your investigative charms, what the subject thinks of as his greatest sin is not necesarily something Molly and company will care about.
