Queen of the Fasionably Damned

Protect yourself, protect your friends if you had any. The only rule Grace ever really unlived by. And the government fucks knew who Deanna was. How they knew was anyone's guess, but the Council had always had long arms. Look at her, forty years dead, and they could still reach out and touch her. Maybe she should look into that.

She took the elevator up to the redhead's floor, the card Agent Rimes had given her burning a hole in her shirt pocket. Not good, not good, not good, this feeling like she was being followed, even if she wasn't. Made her itch.

Her knuckles made sharp contact with the wooden surface of the closed door, and she tried not to think about surveillance cameras and wire-taps while she waited. She'd walked into fucking Watergate, apparently. Hopefully she could walk out unscathed.

Where Grace was fueled with paranoia, Deanna was dead calm. A certainty had overtaken her sometime in the last three days, a conviction she adopted every several decades. It came with the introduction of the steam engine; the first flight by two brothers from Kittyhawk; a computer that could beat its maker from chess.

Change.

The redhead stayed one step ahead by sensing which way the wind blew and learning to adapt. Someone brought a knife to a fight, you brought a gun. (They just didn't make great films like The Untouchables any longer. It was all Miley Cyrus concerts and loosely-based 'ideas' from countless reality shows.)

So when the government decided they were interested in you, you took interest as well. Not that the vampire wasn't wary of the meaning behind the business card, but this Purvis person was a recruiter. If the government wanted her in a cage, they would've sent a platoon of Navy Seals without advanced word.

The knock against wood caught her attention and she casually strolled to the hotel room door, fully expecting a sweaty fat man in black.

( Not exactly the Man from G.L.A.D., are you? )