2019-10-31 - Pre-Wedding Jitters

Alexander has let himself in with the key. He doesn't do that often, even when he knows she's there, but this time he doesn't hesitate. He's dressed in his 'city hall' clothes, which mostly are the same ugly sweaters and jeans, but ones that fit a little bit better. A little bit. He prowls restlessly through the house, checking his phone for new messages and sending out another to her. When it's unread, he curses under his breath. He returns to the thesis pile, and lays a hand on it. His Glimmer flares a bit, and he reaches out to the desk, trying to get a sense of when she was last here. For the first time, he regrets the constrained range on his abilities.

Even worried, as he is, Alexander smiles to see the ghost of Isabella, moving unobserved through her home. It's a wistful expression, touched with worry. Especially when he realizes that she hadn't deliberately put the pendant down somewhere. Now he reaches out with his mind again; he knows she has enough of his abilities that they can talk, if she wants to. And so now he asks - almost begs - his eyes closed and his mind searching and searching for the feel of hers, that bright and tempestuous storm of emotion and ferocity. <<Isabella. Isabella can you hear me?>>

His head rocks back like he just took a slap to the face. It takes his breath away, and Alexander's immediate urge would be to reach out, to force his way into the woman's brain. But he can't. He tries, even though he knows he can't, but he tries anyway, reaching out to the edges of his new limits. He rages against them with his mind - and with his body. He growls, grabs the books closest to him, and throws them with a sudden, vicious spurt of temper and frustration at the walls.

Then? He turns and leaves, slamming the door on the way out. It's not exactly a short walk to St. Mary's, but he's hoofing it just as fast as he can manage to go.

(TXT to Byron) Alexander: Are you free? I could use a ride to St. Mary's. Something's wrong. With Isabella.

(TXT to Alexander) Byron: Why St. Mary's...?

(TXT to Byron) Alexander: Because that's where she IS, Byron. I'm walking from the houseboat.

(TXT to Alexander) Byron: Did she say what was wrong? Alright, I'm heading over there.

Alexander has just emerged from the houseboat, and has his phone out, head down as he reads over texts, and tries (again) to text Isabella: Isabella, answer me. He's dressed in his usual way, all ugly sweater and faded jeans. He looks tired, and right now, noticeably stressed out. His legs work, walking at the fastest pace he can sustainably manage.

A black Mercedes Benz pulls into the parking lot of the harbor. If someone were watching the lot, they probably would have seen it enter. Out steps Byron, but rather than wearing the full costume from the evening of the festival kick off, he's wearing a dark emerald green tuxedo complete with black bow tie. He was driving, so he's not donning the golden lion mask. That was seated on the passenger seat of his vehicle, something which he automatically reaches for right before exiting.

He's supposed to be promoting the festivities and that means costumes and masks full time. However, rather than slipping the mask over his face just yet, he looks both ways before quickly crossing over to the actual docks to meet up with Alexander. Yes, he's taking in the man's shabby attire, but since something is wrong with Isabella, he won't question it. "So tell me exactly what is going on."

Alexander glances up when he hears the smooth rumble of the approaching engine. As soon as he sees the car, he alters his trajectory to head in that direction. Eyes flick up and down the man, taking in the tuxedo. "You should be traveling with protection, Byron." The chiding is brief, but sincere. "Isabella and I were supposed to meet for a meal. I got a text from her saying she'd lost her pendant. Then that she'd found it. Then..." as he gets close enough, he holds out his phone so that Byron can take a brief look at a series of texts he received:

Nothing gold can stay. It's repeated multiple times. Then, despite repeated texts from Alexander, no further response.

He slows down so Byron can look, but he doesn't stop walking. He's heading directly to the passenger side of the car, still talking. "I came here. She wasn't here. I tried to reach her with my mind. And something's wrong. She's using all of her abilities at full power. And there's nothing...it's like she's nothing BUT power. We need to go." He's reaching for the door handle, and if it's unlocked, will throw himself gracelessly into the passenger side. And wait. With visible impatience.

"I have security tailing me." Byron informs Clayton, his own attention drawn back out towards the entrance of the parking area where another black car pulls up with two individuals that definitely look like the security at the Bayside Apartments. One of them probably should ride with him, but he's a very busy man. He seems content by their presence, and even Alexander starts towards his car, his gaze is drawn to the line of parked houseboats, already picking out The Surprise from where he stands despite the fog. In fact, the heavy fog makes the creaking sound all more the unsettling as the ripples of water push the boats to and fro against the dock.

Tilting his head to the side to read the text when its presented to him, there's a lift of his brow. "Nothing gold can stay, what does that even mean?" But it seems like Clayton is on the move, so he'll follow. There are no Suicide Doors on this car, something Byron is used to by now, so opening and shutting doors on a normal vehicle always feels weird. Sliding into the driver's seat, then leaning back to toss the gold lion mask onto one of the seats in the back, he starts the car's engine. "St. Mary's then?" He then asks aloud, "What could she be doing over there?"

With Isabella being 'missing' or placed in what is already a suspicious situation, his own mind goes back to the one person who hasn't been returning his texts as well, but he'll drive rather than bring it up.

Alexander's fingers drum rapidly on his thighs. He does turn and look back at the car, and grunts. His look towards Thorne suggests that he's also aware that someone should be closer, but he's not going to harass the man further about it. Right now. "It's from a poem by Frost," he says. "About the inevitable end of all beautiful things. It's not a reassuring poem." He frowns at the last question, shakes his head. "I don't know. We've never discussed anything about the church that stood out as unusual. I was actually sort of hoping you might know, if it was something from her childhood." A crooked sort of smile thing in Byron's direction. "Guess not?" A pause. "Have you recovered? No more dizziness, confusion?" Another pause. "You were going to look for Ms. Winslow. Did you find her?"

Byron, despite his namesake, is not so much of a poet nor does his interest fall into poetry, but once Alexander starts explaining to him about this quote in particular, he vaguely recalls it. "Right." The car starts up and pulls on out of the lot with the security vehicle trailing them. The mist is thick, so while he drives like a man needing to reach his destination in a timely manner, he drives with some care. "The fog is heavy this time of year. Rarely this thick though. Hopefully, it dissipates at some point, though if I'm being honest, this does help with the mystique of the Masquerade." It's all idle talk really as he thinks.

The poem may not be all that familiar to him, but there's something about the Church. "We used to play there as kids. Running around the pews, it almost felt like some kind of scavenger hunt. Only because," He tries to think further, "I think we were looking for something, but this was a long time ago." A really long time.

"After some rest and getting the rest of the drug out of my system, I feel much better." A pause, one knows that he hates to say this, especially when it comes to Alexander, "Thanks." Again. "But you know that I don't want anyone else involved in that particular matter." To the inquiry on Lilith, he lets out a frustrated breath, "I checked Hank's trailer, the shop. She's not around." He focuses intently on the road, "I even tried to get a read on her. Nothing turned up."

"The Masquerade is certainly mysterious," Alexander says, his voice very dry. He doesn't urge Byron to speed up, even though he's practically vibrating in his seat, a spring twisted tight enough that it may snap. His eyes remain on the road, searching the best he can through the dense fog.

His fingers still for just a moment as he considers the new information. "Was it the three of you? You, Isabella, and her brother? I'm not familiar with the church. The layout, and so forth. Hopefully whatever she might have gone looking for, or been drawn to, we can find."

A shake of his head at the thinks. The follow up does draw his eyes from the road, to look at Byron with a flat, dark stare. "Thorne, if I have to pick between you pissed and you dead, then I'll live with you being pissed." He looks back at the road immediately after. "I made a tactical decision. I had no idea how many people were helping the house, or what their capabilities were. I still don't. I don't know if the things we hit were living humans, some sort of Veil creature, or illusions. You should contact the Captain about pressing charges on Amelia, so that he can keep her on lock for the duration."

The news about Lilith draws a grimace. "All of you? Really? What the fuck. Okay. We'll deal with that. Maybe she's just lost. Sometimes you can get lost for a while before you come back." And sometimes you never come back, but if he's not a tactful man, he has enough sense not to point that out.

It can be very unnerving to dark shadows looming just a distance ahead of you, even if they do linger at the side of the road. Some of these costumes are intricate and complex lending to a rather ominous silhouette when coupled with the heavy fog. They pass by a few of these, but on their way to the church a large and dark shape can be seen in the far distance. Perhaps where Firefly Forest is. It was like a dinosaur in height, walking on all fours. Perhaps the ground trembles or that could be their imagination. Byron will chalk it up to that for now, even if he nervously peers out the side window to get a side-eyed better view of it. It seems to fade from view over time.

"It was the three of us, yes, but we hung out with a lot of kids. Or Sid did." Byron as well! "So sometimes it would be a large group." He's kicking himself now for not remembering what it was they were looking for back then.

Alexander's mention of death-- no, Byron's being dead, has the man tense in his seat, his hands squeezing at the steering wheel as he continues to navigate them through the mist. "I'll speak to him if only to cut down on the numbers, even if we don't know what or who any of the others are."

With Lilith being missing, it's hard for Thorne to concentrate on the festival, dressing up in full Masquerade regalia. This doesn't mean that he's stopped looking, but after searching high and low, besides the dream world or the Veil, he has no other ideas on where else to look. The entire town felt like a dream. "I've been trying to reach her and I'll keep trying."

"Wow." Alexander, despite his palpable tension, can't help but crane his head to look at that large, dark shape. He follows it with a turn of his head, and whistles long and low under his breath. "That is definitely gonna eat someone," he mutters. Slightly louder, he adds, "At the garden event, apparently some folks turned into animals and had to run from evil hunters." A deep breath, and a sigh.

"Okay. So, probably nothing that was super secret or personal, or they wouldn't have invited a whole bunch. Maybe some sort of rumor or legend?" He hums to himself, drumming again on his thighs. "And that's good. It'll at least whittle down on the potential threat vectors. And if I can help you find Ms. Winslow, I will." A pause, and a hint of dark humor slips into his voice. "And afterwards, I'm going to strongly suggest all of you getting tracking chips implanted so that there's some options the next time someone gets lost, kidnapped, or stops answering their goddamned phone." His voice cracks on that last, rage and worry both slipping out before he manages to rein it back in. He takes another breath.

"I was hoping that you'd say something more along the lines of 'That's some cloud formation!'" Byron mutters in response, "I mean, the mist is so thick that it could be anything or nothing at all. Let's pray that it's nothing at all or else that means we're in a Dream right now." Or the Veil... He is in no way turning his car around to drive off towards where that towering behemoth was walking.

"Animals? That's interesting. I barely remember a time that I was changed into something other than myself... aside from dreams where you return to your childhood again. That's rare, but it's happened before." When more questions are asked about their childhood antics at the church, he really has to think on it. What comes out easier is his response to when Alexander brings up placing trackers in people, "So do you believe that all of this, the dreams, being lost, is all a conspiracy crafted by the government?" There's this well-practiced semi-serious look that he gives Alexander for the time being, before quickly returning his attention to the road, "Or worse, the Illuminati. To get us all chipped."

For a while now, they could hear the church bells ringing, which is what kept Byron on track through the fog. However, when he expects them to have reached the church by now, those bells continue to sound so distant. "This has turned into a really long road or we're driving on a treadmill. Take your pick." Turning to the side, he begins to steer his car in that direction, "I'm pulling over." He says, readjusting his rearview mirror to see if his security team was following. It's hard to see anything sometimes.

"Or this fog is somehow letting things from Over There slip over to the real world in some fashion," Alexander adds another horrible possibility to the pile. "Like your goblins, maybe. If that's what they did." He frowns, thoughtfully. "There's so much that we don't know about how all this works."

"And, yeah," he nods in quiet agreement. "Same here. About not changing. But the more I get caught up in other people's dreams, or the big groups where it doesn't seem to 'belong' to any one person, the more I recognize that things are...different, for everyone. Some people even have happy Dreams, on occasion, the lucky bastards." His lips twitch upwards, despite everything, when Byron actually asks him about conspiracies. Solemnly, he replies, "It's a conspiracy, but not by the government. I mean, the government always tries to do things on the cheap, and have you seen these special effects? No, it's the Hollywood-alien alliance, softening us up for the invasion, testing how we react to extraterrestrial images and beings so that they know how to best overcome our resistance. The entire town is actually one big studio, and everyone who doesn't stand out is an extra paid by big Hollywood studios to make us feel like we live in a real place, and of course, to maintain the illusion that these things aren't actually happening." His voice is rapid and precise, with little indication that he doesn't believe everything he's saying.

Except for the sidelong look he throws the other man, to see Byron's reaction to the stream of crazy. Which Byron might even miss, if he's prepared to just think of Alexander as Crazy Clayton.

The levity fades, though, when the investigator realizes the situation. He nods, grimly. "I guess we're hoofing it from here."

"There was no fog in the building's lobby at the time. Though something killed all the lights." Byron goes to explain about the incident that happened at the Bayside Apartments regarding these imps. "I mean, it could be the darkness, but the town is full of dark spaces." The Thorne House among them.

When he'd asked Alexander about his conspiracy theory, it was more of wry joke than anything else. So now he find himself sitting here, driving along a stretch of road that seems to go on for an eternity and listening to Clayton talk to him about all sorts of crazy theories regarding special effects and Hollywood studios. He's sorry he'd asked. He even looks sorry, or at least, unamused, when Alexander looks at him next.

Seeing the trickery from within his rear view mirror, he actually starts the car up again, to see if anything's changed. His dark eyes watching the mirror with a wary intensity. However, he has a feeling that if he started driving again, they'd just get nowhere, so whatever he sees in that window, he stops the car once more and finally steps out with one hand reaching into his pocket for his phone just so he can message Frank and the others.

His pace is slow as he's tapping out a quick message. "Looks like it's just you and me." Yeah, maybe he should've had part of his security detail riding along with him. Once the message is sent, he sticks both hands deeply within his pockets and starts to head in the direction of that joyous bell tone. He has doubts that there's going to much to celebrate.