A camera pans along, following a plane, there's a zoom in on the window, where a lovely, tall, thin blonde sits. Our heroine, Miss Ruby Mitchell, has her nose buried in a book, These 13, by Faulkner. She glances out the window, wistfully, shutting her book neatly with a bookmark as the airplane speakers play the slightly audible noise of the captains voice telling the passengers to prepare to land, the camera follows her gaze out the window, swooping downward to a college girls terrified face. As she screams. Credits start, placed around the scene of Ruby getting off the plane with her rolling luggage, looking kind but focused.

 

---

Mr. Avery Avenue, a short dark haired man whistles, twirling a long necklace chain with a rounded locket on the end. He owns a remote bed and breakfast on an island, we follow him walking down a dock, to meet up with an approaching boat. Ruby steps off a boat, the sun is golden, bright, and high in the sky. Ruby squints and the camera settles on her face, she puts a hand up above her eyes to shade them.

RUBY: What a lovely place you have here Mr. Avenue!

AVERY: It 'tis indeed Miss. Mitchell. And with your arrival, we're graced with a wonderful addition to the atmosphere around here. Allow me to show you to my hotel.

RUBY: It would be my pleasure!

 

–

Possible roles for Charlotte? Avenue's sister? A tourist?

Channery, psychiatrist hired by the family for Avenue?

 

----

 

 

I've arrived at Mr. Lane's mansion. He's prepared the windows nicely, so daylight shouldn't give me too much trouble. A note to self, he has some rather nasty machines in one of those lower rooms that I'd best avoid. Mr. Lane employs a couple of servants, which is lovely. One of them seems like fun. He notices when I move things. I'll have to see how subtle I can be.

 

There's a lot of equipment around here, computers and things. Even the DVD player is giving me trouble, which is a shame, because I thought I had at least kept up with that. I might need to ask for more lessons when I have some free time. Pity me, this technology nonsense never slows down! It seems like just yesterday I got a DVD player and now all the TVs are flat and the DVD players and remotes have far too many buttons, and it just plum looks like something out of Twilight Zone.

 

At current, Mr. Lane has put us in a very inconvenient position and gotten himself kidnapped. Or for his sake I hope that's what happened, because I don't like him putting me on a wild goose chase to train his new recruits. Speaking of them, it seems he was showing the ropes to some newly Embraced, or... Awoken? I think that's what Mages call it. I don't actually know how that all works for the Genius types. They seem to have very little society at all. Even the animals, and by that I mean the werebeasts, keep in their little packs and have clubs and alliances and things. Genius' are as bad and humans as far as I can see. All out for themselves with not a sense of decorum and honor in their behavior.

 

On the bright side though, it seems they're about as strong as humans too. As long as they haven't got some gadget on them at least. One of them, Miss Channery, has one in her head that the Genius' seem particularly interested in. That's good, if worse comes to worst, I can always make some leverage with it. It's already been helpful finding clues for Mr. Lane's whereabouts. We're in London as it stands, and as much as I'd rather avoid the Court since I'm only going to be here a few more hours, a helpful Mehket, Mr. Clover, that I met earlier seems to be insisting. I'm none too keen to find out if Mr. Lane made some poor choices and his put me on the London Prince's bad side just because our family is backing his enterprise. But as I said before, vampires can solve things in a civil fashion. As long as his Highness isn't in a foul mood, nothing should go wrong.

 

Instead of visiting the court, I'd really rather get the job done, find the man, and test out this watch that Mr. Lane assures me works to keep me from taking damage from sunlight. I'm tentative to give it a try until I've seen it in action. It seems a bit too good to be true. And even with the damage averted, the haze of fear isn't so easily overcome. If I could find a way to fight my natural aversion to the entire concept I might even try it myself, but it's not an option until we're out of this mess.

 

I'm trying to picture what the sun feels like other than searing pain. It might be nice to feel warm again. It's been 150 years other than accidents and fights with fire... with those sneaky werewolves. You wouldn't catch me using silver on them, it's unsportsmanlike. And in all that time, I haven't felt warm. It would be a bit of a thrill to try it. Just for a moment or two.