Parlor Games

Chapter 2 of Shadows and Loss

<- One Quiet Evening | Thread and Chains ->

The Unfortunate Mr Rosetti

After clearing up the gym as best they could, Franco and Jayden took the remains of their victims and of Megan Blaine to the pickup under the cover of night. They drove the lot to a forgettable alley in the Montgomery Projects where Jayden could get a good look at the bodies and see what answers he could uncover from Ms. Blaine. Her body was fresh, no more than a day dead, the soft tissues were entirely missing without any disturbance of the skin save for two large wounds that resembled deep knife wounds and smelled most strongly of the acrid scent Franco had noticed. The three suits had nothing in their pockets save rolls of small-denomination bills and a single playing card – a Jack of the same style as the one in Ms Blaine’s purse. No leads, but at least it went a little way toward funds for repairing the gym. They set the pickup and bodies alight and walked into the night to seek further leads.

Without any other ideas, they tried the number on the card again. A landline. Who used a landline these days? But that meant they could look him up in phone records, so they did and found a Gregor Rosetti and the number listed with an address for a small apartment in the backstreets of Fallon Heights. The scoped out the area and Jayden headed to the front door while Franco scaled the fire escape and lurked near the windows in Urhan form to better sniff out what was going on.

Jayden was able to talk his way in by claiming Megan was a client of his and he was concerned because he had not heard from her in several days. Rosetti, a wiry nervous wreck of a young man, was happy to be able to speak up, concerned as he was about her. With only a little prompting from Jayden, he talked about the Ladybird Room, his own experience of losing money and having to work as a dealer to make it back, with a side hustle of giving people cards to get them in. He was sure something unpleasant was going on, organised crime or something similar, but “Mr G” had made it clear he had not had a choice.

All was going so well until he caught sight of the huge wolf watching from the fire escape, one paw scrabbling at the window to open enough of a gap to catch the scents of the room. Rosetti stammered, stumbled and collapsed as fear-fuelled adrenaline accelerated the effects of the venom that Franco smelled in his veins. The same smell that had been in Blaine’s body and on the fangs of the suits. Only Jayden’s quick thinking and an unconventional application of Essence manipulation saved Rosetti’s life and the two slipped away while he was still unconscious, taking with them several Ladybird Room playing cards from the set on Rosetti’s kitchen counter.

At the Ladybird Room

The Ladybird Room turned out to be a nondescript door in a forgettable alley on the northern edge of Fallon Heights. The goon on the door had long hair but otherwise dressed identically to the three suits who had attacked the guys in the gym earlier that evening, but a flash of one of the cards from Rosetti’s deck opened the door without him taking a second look at the wolves in human clothing.

Inside the door was a study in old money written in shades of red and black. Two dozen people were gathered about antique tables, crimson-backed cards and crumpled dollar bills splayed out on worn black leather and of age-stained mahogany. Several more of the suited men stood at the fringes of the room, one serving drinks from behind a long hardwood bar while his comrades leaned by doors or against the curtains of burgundy velvet that lined the walls. Soft classical music wafts through air thick with tobacco smoke, old beer and the stink of desperation. A few heads turned as the door opened but most were too invested in their games to pay it any heed.

Jayden and Franco split up, found seats at games and started to play to lose, hoping to attract Mr G’s attention and be offered the same deal as Rosetti. An hour of ‘terrible luck’ later and one of the suits rested a meaty hand on Jayden’s shoulder, inviting him into the back room to speak to the boss. Mr G. turned out to be a beetle-eyed old man so corpulent that he barely fitted behind the heavy desk that dominated the back room, and he offered Jayden a chance to work off the extensive debt he owed the house, starting in two weeks time when the Ladybird Room would next open.

They discussed the plan over a drink afterward and decided that twoweeks was too long to leave things, so instead would come back the next morning and get the drop on whoever might be there, when there were less of the Herd present to see things they should not.

The next morning, it took several minutes of knocking to get attention of one of the suits inside. In a moment of low cunning, he invited Franco in to look for the mobile phone he said he had misplaced the night before, inviting him to join them for ‘breakfast’. Any intention of taking advantage of this poor lost intruder quickly disappeared as Franco unleashed the wolf and tore the door open for Jayden to join him inside. And all was chaos and destruction. The suits dogpiling Jayden only succeeded in provoking him into rage and the end of those who attacked him, while the others assaulted Franco with silver blades and cut burning wounds into his flesh, only for him to dive headlong into kuruth.

Even armed with silver, the suits were naught to the power of two enraged uratha and the room was soon quiet save for Mr G in the next room, watching and fuming. He cursed them in English and the First Tongue before exploding out of his skin into an immense nightmare of chitin, claws and hissing chelicerae. Blood, pain and vengeance filled the air. The thing that had been Mr G crushed Jayden in an immense claw, shearing bone and flesh like paper before tossing him the length of the room, before gutting Franco with a misshapen collection of secondary limbs. In fury, Franco tore the offending claws from G’s thorax, but before they hit the ground they had been caught by Jayden and driven deep into the spider-thing’s body, smashing his chitinous carapace apart and shattering into a thousand fragmentary spider things. The rage destroyed it all, room and spiders and all.

People Appearing

• Franco Larsen – solved problems in the most direct way possible.
• Jayden Clearwater – talked his way to the Ladybird Room, and to talk to its boss.
• Gregor Rosetti (First Identifed) – terrified that poor Megan had got into trouble, afraid for his own skin, dying.
• Several men with spiders in their heads.
• Gamblers and dealers in the Ladybird Room
• Mr G. – Had more than just a spider in his head.

Locations

• A dead-end alley in Montgomery Projects.
• An apartment in Fallon Heights.
• The Ladybird Room.