21

The grinning face of Robert Ward stares up at you, all blocky alabaster teeth filed in perfect rows like tombstones. There's an anger behind those dead eyes, but it's largely subverted by a mirthful quirk of his lips. His shirt is unbuttoned and his crossed arms are laced with sinewy muscle. For the second time in as many days this man has caused you no small amount of difficulty, although, were you given the option, you'd doubtless repeat today's misfortune over the events of the previous night. You massage your temples with your thumb and forefinger as you place the Anarch renegade's file back on your desktop. When mortals prattle on about their vampire myths, they rarely suggest that the undead too might be afflicted with such trite concerns as stress headaches and a sinking stupor of boredom.

From the moment you greeted her in the early hours of the night, your sire had been beside herself with irritation at the botched warehouse raid. It wasn't so much the dressing down that disturbed you, however—it's the fact that she apologized to you in the aftermath. Eden Corliss never apologizes to anyone, let alone a childe who disappointed her. Before she hid herself in her office, she handed you several file folders and instructed you to review their contents. Still recovering from your disbelief, you missed her instructions entirely, and she had to repeat them with a snarl. No further apologies were forthcoming.

Your desk sits to the left of a massive set of double doors leading to Corliss's private office, walls of striped marble rising on either side to an impressive peak. Voices above a hushed whisper have a tendency to echo throughout the chamber at dizzying frequencies which unnerve you as much now as they did when you first set foot here, your naive eyes wide as they took in the opulent splendor.

On a typical visit to Corliss's office, your sire requires little of you aside from the occasional clerical duties she couldn't entrust to her buzzing hive of worker-bees. You often wondered if the dreary tasks were merely her way of asserting dominance over the younger generation, but you have to admit to yourself that the constant stream of reports on Ottawa's Kindred community have been useful to keep an eye on. In modern nights, knowledge can be a deadly weapon. You thumb through the reports. There must be at least one on every important member of Ottawa's Kindred community.

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