Are things as they seem to be? [Active/Open]

[gift_girl]

Characters: Justine and whoever else runs into her.
Time: Late afternoon (later than the previous arrival!)
Location: Millennium Park's magical bean of summoning.
Content: Justine's arrival
Format: Starting with prose, but whatever is fine if you want!
Warnings: None at the moment.

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[theblackstaff]

After his meeting with the mafia boy, Ebenezar had continued tracking down the rumours of demons. Nothing concrete or reliable, just a lot of guesswork. Strange though, that the gangsters and the 1950s housewives who barely batted an eye at the sight of some of Chicago's new residents would become aware four-eyed demons.

He didn't like what it meant.

But, fruitless search or not, Ebenezar was on his way back to the Blackstone Hotel, cutting across Millennium Park again, when he stopped short at the sight of the young woman he found underneath Cloud Gate.

Lara Raith's personal assistant. Which, combined with the rumour that Raith was around, spelled trouble. It might mean that Raith was laying groundwork for a long seige. Or it might mean the girl was just as unlucky as the rest of them to have been pulled to Chicago. He tried to ignore the voice that reminded him that the woman wasn't just a thrall of the White Court, that she had once been, still was, if Maggie's other son was anything like Hoss, someone important to Thomas Raith'

[gift_girl]

Justine started, head whipping around to the source of the question, eyebrows rising up for a moment, fingers almost done with putting the battery into the phone and closing the lid.

"That's a complicated question. I know exactly where I am, geographically. But it's not where I was a couple of minutes ago, nor where I'm supposed to be, nor," she gestured around, "is it supposed to be deserted like this at this hour of the day, so... I suppose I might be." And adding, out of habit and the strength of the older man's presence, "sir."

Whether or not she'd had personal interactions with Ebenezar before, she was very, very much attuned to authority, and he practically radiated that, in his way.

[theblackstaff]

If anybody had told Ebenezar that he radiated authority, he probably would have laughed. In his own mind, he was the least authoritative of any wizard, the one who wanted power least and, because of it, was given the most. The Blackstaff was a burden he shouldered, but it was a damned ironic one.

But, on the other hand, Justine had called him sir, unlike the ten-year-olds who had gone with 'gramps', 'grandpa', and 'hey you old man', which soothed his sensibilities. "So you came here under this fool sculpture?" he asked, gesturing to the reflective dome above them with his staff. "And not with anybody else?"

It seemed best, for the moment, to avoid mentioning Raith's daughter.

[gift_girl]

That would be because most mortals haven't spent most of their conscious life among the court of vampires who value subtlety and nuances, and whose authority takes so many different shapes - and the immortals who do are not at all the kind to share their observations.

Then again, neither did Justine, about this particular thing.

She frowned, but answered without hesitation with the pure truth. "I was walking out of a building halfway across downtown and between one step and the other, I found myself here. And yes, just me. You're the first person I've seen since that."

A look back at the bean, then again at the weathered man. And then back at it, and around. Then she tilted her chin up. "I'm not in the same Chicago where I woke up this morning, am I."

It was a logical conclusion, sort of. For somebody who'd been, among other things, through the Nevernever...