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Anthony doesn't spend a lot of time in his office at the Bellevue except by appointment, but appointments with him aren't hard to make, particularly when there are young kindred like Phaedra involved. He always seems ready to make time, when it's requested of him.
His office is where he is now, waiting for his scheduled appointment, sitting behind a laptop at his desk with his fingers flying over keys.
Phaedra did make an appointment--though she's not arriving alone. She's dressed in jeans and a peasant blouse, her hair in a loose braid tonight, a small purse at her side, and she waits a little ways down the hall from the office for her comrade.
Exiting the lift to the Kindred section of the hotel, Eyrgjafa approaches the Mekhet with a smile. She's also dressed in jeans, but with a plain red teeshirt instead of a peasant blouse. "Evening, Phaedra. Shall we?"
"We shall." She offers her arm in a friendly manner, a definite little smile on her lips. "You've been well?"
"I have, thank you. Yourself?" Eyrgjafa takes Phaedra's arm, more than willing to play escort for the younger woman.
"Quiet. Your sister agrees with me, though. About tarot cards." There's a quiet playful little blep, before she knocks on the office door.
Anthony stops what he's doing in the office, gets up, and heads over to the door, none of which can be heard because a really good job of soundproofing was done on these offices. A few seconds later the door swings open to reveal Anthony himself, dressed in a grey t-shirt, blue jeans, and boots. "Oh, shit," he says as his gaze moves between the two women, and then his hands come up to touch his chest. "Hey, sorry." He spreads his hands. "I totally forgot about this meeting. I had something else come up."
"Oh, well, if Rhea agrees with you, who am I to argue?" Eyrgjafa's tone is equally playful, before she sobers as the door opens. "It happens. Is the something else a thing you're able to tell us about?"
"Or something we can be helpful with, even?" She turns her big blue spooky-ooky eyes on Anthony, her smile lingering.
Anthony pauses like he's thinking this through, then suddenly cracks a grin. "Naw, I'm just fucking with you," he says as he steps away from the door and waves them to come in. "Unless Phaedra's here to roast me like she did to Banan you're welcome to come in. Make yourselves comfortable. Tell me what's on your minds."
Eyrgjafa nods, leading the way over to the more comfortable seating area, taking one end of the couch, sitting with her knees tucked into the backrest and feet dangling over the edge.
She makes a pout as she comes in and sits on the other end of the couch, kicking off her sandals to pull her feet up pretzel-style. "Well, if you're not going deserve it like Banan did...no hypocrisy here, yes?"
"If I'm being honest, I'm pretty sure if I'd been blushing when someone told me what you said, I'd have been crying from how hard it made me laugh. Must've been ten minutes." Anthony sits in one of the armchairs, more perched on the edge of it than relaxing back, and leans so his elbows are resting on his knees. "I try to avoid hypocrisy, so if you see some, why don't you help me out and just point it out to me. Anyway, what can I do for you?"
Eyrgjafa glances to Phaedra, then, as the one whose idea the meeting had been.
"I'm certain by now, you've heard word of the Nereids that attacked Keeper Powers, but they're looking for a thing and things that come into the city often come through the port, especially if no one's supposed to know about the thing, so I wanted to ask you if you'd heard of a thing coming in. It'd be dark glass or crystal, but not completely black--translucent. And I don't know what it's shaped like at all."
This comes out as a merry little ramble, all at once.
"Ah, fuck. Yeah. Poor bastard, Clay." Anthony blows out a breath. "Wish I had some idea how the fuck that dude managed to get himself mermanned." He stops. "Neither here nor there, as it pertains to answering your question. You want to know if I heard of something coming into the city? How big a thing are we talking about? Are you asking me to look for a needle in a haystack or, like... a fucking claymore?"
Phaedra gestures a size that is nebulous between chihuahua and guitar-sized, before shaking her head. "He got mermanned in the line of his duty, he was trying to stop one of the Nereids from feeding at the roadside near the house and it attacked him."
"Yeah? Shit, that sounds like Clay. Thanks for letting me know." Anthony then sort of imitates the gesture. "Is it an accordion?" he asks, shifting the gesture to look like someone playing one. "That's not very specific, but really, I haven't heard of anything like that. This might be related to that jackass Rihat that crashed into Bala Cynwyd too, right?"
"Yeah. I've been meaning to talk to Shiri, see if they have more details about Nineveh's fall, but the human they dominated mentioned having been on her way to the Mermaid Inn before it happened." She glances at Phaedra again. "You saw someone you're fairly sure is him cutting into a sea creature, too, right?"
She nod-nods. "In a dream vision. Finley said it sounded like an autopsy. I almost wondered about, like, a heart of glass or crystal, but hearts don't work that way, do they? They need to like...heart." She mimes a heartbeat with a hand squeezing into a fist and releasing.
"Also, I'm still not convinced by Rihat, no matter what he says."
"Shiri? You know something I don't about them and Nineveh?" Anthony shrug. "Wouldn't be tough, admittedly. That part of history's not exactly my forte. Neither are aquatic autopsies, for that matter. That said, things coming in and out of the city is, but a single thing the size of who fuck knows? That's not much to go on. I've been asking myself a different question, though, about how a different arrival may have happened. You know which one I'm wondering about?"
"Oh, Phaedra said something about there being sea creatures involved in the biblical story of its fall, but neither of us are Sanctimonious, so." Eyrgjafa shrugs slightly. "Shiri's Jewish, though, so they likely have access to older versions of the story, with less distortion from being translated." Anthony's question gets a blank look. "No? Enlighten us, do."
"Jonah and the whale." She waves a hand in the air a little, as if moving that thought aside. "What're you wondering?"
"Oh." Anthony is clearly giving that some brief consideration. "I guess they might be able to tell you something. I suppose you don't have much interest in going to ask Banan about that either." He smiles at Phaedra, all white teeth, and then answers the questions. "I'm wondering how Rihat got here. If he was already here in America he could have just driven into town, but international flights are iffy things where we're concerned. Especially for people who aren't calling on a covenant's resources. A lot can go wrong. The Invictus set up whole networks and have people dedicated just to making international less hazardous a proposition."
Eyrgjafa nods. "I came to America by ship, but flight wasn't an option then, of course." She glances between the other two. "If he did come in via the port, how likely would it be that useful records exist of his arrival?"
"Mmm. I suppose this isn't the sort of thing we throw into the cacophony to ask him, huh? 'Hey, Person-calling-themself-Rihat! How'd you get here?' Actually here's a fun question, what's the range on possession? Do we actually know-know that he's here-here?" She wrinkles her nose. "Still a shame about the girl."
"A lot of us still show up that way," Anthony tells Eyrgjafa. "Especially for those who can't afford charter flights with enough money thrown at the problem that they'll put up with not asking questions." He sits back and rubs a hand down his beard. "I can have some people ask around about anything that was suspicious in the way a vampire arrival might be. Instructions to only unload something at night, that kind of thing. I won't even ask for anything in return, since you let me know what happened to Clay."
"Assuming his catspaw didn't have her memory altered, he's been in Philadelphia, at some point. Whether he actually still is is another question." Beat. "Then again, if he really does want Adelgrief's library for something, and that isn't a red herring, he can't be too far away."
"His catspaw became fishfood, I'm pretty sure, did I mention?" She bites her lower lip lightly, then looks up at Anthony. "I have more information, in general, on the Nereids, as a thing. If you want it. Though Atalo says he didn't spot them again down by the river lately."
"Hit me with it, if you've got info." Anthony gestures for Phaedra to bring it on. "It's a shame if people couldn't deal with the girl in a way that didn't result in her being dead. Bodies lead to questions, and so do disappearances. Unless you think Rihat finished her off later?"
"No, the Nereids did. I had a dream that she put on mermaid fins and scales, and then went to serve drinks. That's...yeah." She does the background-five points-warning about scrying the FUCKING ABYSS run-down she's gotten down to a science by now, for Anthony.
Eyrgjafa fills in the bits that Phaedra doesn't, when the younger woman finishes.
"Shiiit," Anthony says when the infodump is over. "You go hard, girl." He laughs. "I'd tell you that was probably a bad idea, but it seems like you worked that out for yourself." He drags his hand down over his beard again. "It sounds like we're in a holding pattern until the Nereids do something, we find Adelgrief's library, we find Rihat, or he makes another move we can respond to. The library predates me, though. I'll have to ask Sakima what she knows."
"Will you tell us what she tells you? It's either that or I try to get to Rihat to talk, and that might be almost as silly a bad idea as scrying the deep-presence thing, kind of." She tilts her head to one side. "Probably."
"It predates me, too." Eyrgjafa nods, before glancing at Phaedra as she suggests trying to get to Rihat. "Please don't. I'd miss you, for one thing, and I'm sure your fellow Acolytes would too."
"Sure, I can do that. I'll try to get the word out through the 76 about all this too, plus see if anyone has anything interesting to say about recent shipments." He glances at his watch. "I've got a little more time, but not much, before I've got somewhere to be. Is there anything else?"
"Um...what would I have to do, to join the 76?" She leans in, voice a little quieter. "Clara thinks it's a good idea for me, but I haven't really gotten the proper details and sales pitch."
"Nothing I can think of," Eyrgjafa shrugs. "If something comes up I can contact you again, though."
"Well, step one, be a neonate." Anthony considers Phaedra. "I think you've got that one down, so kudos." He steeples his fingers. "I can get you info on the union policies and regulations, and you can look over it and tell me if you think you can abide by them. If you can, and you want to, then you're in the union. If you join and can't follow the rules, we'll kick your ass out. If you do follow them, then we look out for you, and put our voices together on behalf of the interest of the city's neonates." He gives Eyr a nod and says, "sounds good."
She nods quietly. "I...think I can probably follow the rules. Unless there's a no-roasting one."
Eyrgjafa hesitates for a moment. "Could I get a copy of that info, Anthony? Not for myself, of course, I was too old even when you formed it, but I know some people who might be good fits."
At that, Anthony breaks into laughter. "Hell no," he says. "Are you kidding me? They'd have kicked my ass to the curb decades ago if we had a problem with people telling it like it is." He smiles at Eyrgjafa and says, "sure can." He gets up then, goes over to his desk, pulls out a drawer to rummage a little, and then takes out a stack of presentation folders with paperwork tucked inside. He drops the stack on his desk. "How many copies do you need?" he asks Eyr.
"I only need the one, I think. Maybe...another for Finley? Zhe might be worth trying to drag in with me."
"Just two for now, I think." She glances at Phaedra. "Zhe's one of the people I was thinking of, so."
Anthony looks between the two and says, "you're fucking killing me. Is that three total? Four?"
"Two for me, however many Eyrgjafa needs. Do you need help with the math?" This is offered innocently.
"I'll just take one, then, if you're going to talk to Finley about it, Phaedra."
He takes three folders, tosses the rest in the drawer, and brings them to offer the stack. "I'm a god damned Gangrel and you want me to do fucking calculus to figure how how many folders you need?" With the hand that's not holding the folders he gestures toward the door, but while trying to hold back a smile. "Just take them and get out of here already. Do I need help with the fucking math."
She giggles, as she takes the folders. "Thanks for talking with us!"
"You know they have these things called calculators now, right?" Eyrgjafa deadpans, taking the remaining folder as she rises. "Be safe, Anthony." She pauses as her phone beeps at her, rolling her eyes and sending a reply quickly, before returning it to her pocket. "Do you want a lift to wherever you're going, Phaedra?"
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