De Ulloa-Priest Residence, London, Tuesday Afternoon + Evening
"You're here." Sebastien's voice was flat as he greeted Jack, and he didn't look away from the trinket in his palm. "Go upstairs and put on your ring, please."
Jack came close enough to see the glimmer of a ring in Sebastien's palm. The design -- a cat's eye sapphire in a flat band -- was obvious as a wampyr court ring, marking the bearer as under the protection of someone of the blood. The specific design was unfamiliar. "I don't know whose is that stone," he said, surprised.
"Good," Sebastien said, and frowned at the ring harder.
If he'd said it in a different tone, Jack might have argued. Sebastien had no patience for the traditional roles of blood and courtesan, and demanded only that his court treat him as a friend. He did Jack the dignity of never using that tone of flat command unless it was absolutely necessary. Jack returned the respect with occasional considered obedience.
Now, though ... Jack turned and obediently trotted up the stairs, trying to work out what it meant that there was not just another of the blood in London, but one who obviously knew Sebastien. When he reappeared, he was wearing a silver ring on his wedding finger, a trillion-cut garnet like a drop of blood bezel-set flush with the broad band. "It's been a long time since I wore this," he observed. There'd been no use for it in Fandom: it stayed in his dresser in London. "Are you going to tell me what -- who -- this is about?"
"Epaphras Bull," Sebastien said, glancing from the ring he held to the one on Jack's finger. "He was an Englishman. A Puritan, once upon a time."
Jack waited, but Sebastien did not seem inclined to explain things further. "You said there was a murder when you called me," he finally came out with, to fill the silence. "Any relationship to your Epaphras?"
Sebastien shrugged in a way Jack reckoned meant perhaps. "A young man was found in his flat," he said. "It was a stylish address in Soho. The victim had no visible means of support. It was the second such crime in the last week."
A prostitute, in Sebastien's way of speaking. "And how does that relate to" -- Jack held up his left hand -- "this?"
Sebasten's mouth set in a thin, grim line. "It was gory," he said. "There are ... rumors I heard at a wampyr salon last night. I don't like to think such things of the blood, but if Epaphras comes calling, I want him to know that you're under my protection."
"Getting paranoid in your old age," Jack drawled. "You could have just let me stay in Maryland, you know. Grateful as I am that you didn't."
"Well." Sebastien cleared his throat, a bit embarrassed by his obvious need for the lad. "I didn't."
"No," Jack agreed. "You didn't."
A longer moment of silent intimacy passed. "I'm going to go out to see if I can hear anything more," Sebastien said abruptly. "If a fair young man about your height stops by, don't let him in."
Jack permitted himself the indulgence of rolling his eyes. "I can't have a vampire on our doorstep all night, Sebastien. The neighbors might find reason to complain."
"Then tell him to go to the shed in the yard," Sebastien suggested. The building was little more than a storage space, but it had a bench, and the late spring night was warm. "It'll serve him well enough."
It was really no surprise that, when Sebastien came home, there was a light in the storage shed window and Epaphras -- his child, a former rentboy who Sebastien had saved from a sure death of syphilis centuries before -- was waiting for him.
Epaphras called himself David, now, and the old, borrowed blood in his veins was sweet and familiar in Sebastien's mouth.
Nor should it have been a surprise that inside the house, another protege was making a series of phone calls.
Let Sebastien have his ... whatever he was doing. Jack was going to solve a murder.
[OOC: Establishy. Partially borrowed from "Chatoyant" by Elizabeth Bear.]