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[indent][color=silver]Danny Reeves had been coming in on Thursdays for the better part of two years, and in that time had never once ordered anything different.

[color=white]“The usual,”[/color] he stated, which was what he always said, but Sienna had started pouring his bourbon, neat, before he’d finished saying it.

[color=B77B89]“How’s the hand?”[/color] She asked, remembering how last week he’d come in with his knuckles taped and a story she hadn’t entirely believed.

[color=white]“Better.”[/color] Danny replied, which was probably [i]also[/i] not entirely true, but she let it go the way she always did - set his drink in front of him and exchanged a few minutes of pleasantries about nothing in particular. This was the part of the job that looked like hospitality, but was actually the maintenance of a room where people felt known. Danny Reeves felt known. He tipped well because of it and came back week after week because of it, and that, in the end, was how The Velvet Room worked.

She was halfway through refilling the wine glass of the woman two stools down when she felt the shift.

Nothing obvious - it never was, not at first. Just a change in register, two voices dropping out of the ambient texture of the room and into something with more friction. Sienna didn’t look immediately. She finished her pour, set the bottle down with a brief smile, and then let her gaze travel down the bar to where the two men had been sitting for the last hour.

They were standing now.

She had clocked them when they came in - together but not easy with each other, the kind of company that had history written all over it. They’d been civil through the first drink, quieter through the second, and somewhere in the third the civility had started costing one of them more than he was willing to keep paying. She had watched it happen the way she watched most things in this room: without appearing to watch at all.

Now one of them had his hand flat on the other’s chest.

Tossing down the cloth she was holding, she came around the bar, moving with a directness that parted the loose cluster of people between her and them without requiring a word. The brunette didn’t move quickly - quick implied urgency, and urgency implied that the situation had gotten somewhere beyond her, which it never did. By the time the one with his hand on the other’s chest had registered her approach, she was already there.

She looked at neither of them specifically. Just stood.

Then the air around them changed.

There was no visible indication of what she did - no gesture, no flourish, nothing that would have looked like anything to someone across the room. But both men stopped moving at exactly the same moment, with that particular totality of something that had been switched off rather than interrupted. The hand still pressed against the other man’s chest didn’t pull back. It simply ceased to be capable of doing anything else.

They stood there, fixed in place, the full weight of gravity in their immediate vicinity having quietly renegotiated its terms - pressing down through their shoulders, their arms, their feet against the floor, effectively pinning them to the spot.

The one who had started it exhaled a painful groan, and the nearest conversations faltered. Someone two stools down set their glass down slowly.

[color=B77B89]“Gentlemen,”[/color] Sienna declared, not raising her voice. She looked at each of them in turn, taking her time, letting them feel the additional weight of her gaze as much as the other kind.

[color=B77B89]“Not in my bar.”[/color]

A beat. Then another. The one on the left - the culprit - cut his eyes toward her with an unmistakable panic before arriving at something that resembled reason. He emitted another sound, not capable of saying much else with the force closing in around him, one that could be interpreted as agreement.

She held it one moment longer - not out of cruelty, just to be sure the altercation had fully resolved - and then released them. They moved like men who had forgotten how to trust their own legs, a fraction unsteady, neither of them looking at each other or at her as they collected their jackets and made their way toward the door. It swung shut behind them with a sound that was almost nothing at all.

Sienna didn’t hesitate, rounding the bar and returning to her place behind the counter.

[color=B77B89]“Sorry about that,”[/color] She stated at a volume that carried to the nearest few guests without making an announcement of itself. Danny, still firmly planted on his stool, raised his bourbon in a small, wry, acknowledgement. She didn’t sound particularly sorry.

She wasn’t, particularly.

Picking up her own drink and taking a sip, she turned to the register, swiftly closing out their tab and leaving herself a generous tip for the trouble. The room finished absorbing the altercation, which took, as it always did, almost no time at all.

The Pilgrim did not even register their presence. They were no threat, no danger. They were nothing.

Bret made a conscious decision not to involve himself in the matters of the drunken louts several stools down. When he first started doing, whatever it was he was doing, the thing he refused to call vigilantism, he told himself that he would only involve himself in matters that needed his attention. He would only help those in need, those whom the system had failed to help. Those, the many, that needed hope. Dealing with some silly men who couldn’t hold their drink was not something he needed to involve himself with. He saw enough of that nonsense in his local back home in Kendal.

What did peak his interest was the woman behind the bar. “Not in my bar.” She had said. That was intriguing. Not only had she somehow built a venue that allowed everyone through its doors and mostly behave themselves but she was also a Gray. Bret had felt the air pressure shift, ever so subtly as the two men went at it. He wasn’t sure if it was the air or the gravity but he noted everything seemed just a little heavier. 

The longer he was in Calder, the less obvious things became. Sometimes he missed the simplicity of home.

[color=#C8E39A]“Decent pint, that.”[/color] He said allowed after taking a sip from his beer. He looked at its color, slightly hazy, a lovely golden hue and a flavour profile that bounced between stone fruit, mango and pineapple. Even the beer in this place was classy. He was pleasantly surprised. Since his move stateside he found getting a decent drink near impossible. Shame he couldn’t afford this place without Cressida’s discretionary fund. Damn the salary of a church volunteer.

He swiped some hair from his face and looked behind the bar, catching the eye of the woman working. Like the beer, she too seemed way beyond his price range. She was gorgeous in every sense. Long flowing hair, big brown eyes and great body that she very obviously looked after. He could tell that every inch of her presence was curated. She dressed appealing enough that people would be enticed to spend more but professional enough to know they never stood a chance. It was clever. She was clever. Which meant one of two things; either she knew about the King’s Blood and was in on it. Or it meant she knew and didn’t care. Tread lightly, Mr. Lowther.

[color=#C8E39A]“Well played.”[/color] He directed a smile at her. It was warm, inviting. It wasn’t charming or arrogant, it was subtle and real. [color=#C8E39A]“Where I come from, when the bar person breaks up a fight, a punter has to buy them a drink. Very English tradition but you’ve always got to bring a little home with you wherever you go, right?”[/color] Bret paused for a moment, never breaking eye contact with her. [color=#C8E39A]“So, can I buy you one, Miss…?”[/color]

She had noticed him before he spoke.

That was not unusual - she noticed most people, it was occupational - but he had warranted a second look when he came in, the kind of quiet, self-contained presence that tended to either mean nothing at all or something worth paying attention to. She had filed him under undecided and left it there while the evening ran its course.

He hadn't moved during the altercation. Hadn't even flinched, hadn't leaned in the way curious people did. Just sat with his beer and let it happen, which told her something. Most people had a reaction. His had been almost imperceptible - a slight stillness, a quality of attention that sharpened without showing. The kind of response that came from discipline rather than indifference.

Interesting.

Sienna let the compliment land without rushing to meet it, finishing the wipe-down of the section of bar in front of her before she looked up fully. The smile he offered was - she catalogued this without particularly meaning to - genuine. Not the smile of someone who had decided she was decorative and was telling her so. Something more considered than that.

[color=B77B89]"An English tradition,"[/color] she repeated, with the measured quality of someone who was deciding whether they found something amusing. She found she did, slightly. [color=B77B89]"I'll admit [i]that's[/i] a new one."[/color]

The corner of her mouth moved - not quite a smile, but the suggestion of one. She reached beneath the bar, poured a measure of The Mercer into a glass - her own, unhurried, the way she did everything - and set it on the counter in front of her rather than in front of him. A small but deliberate geometry. She picked it up, took a sip, and regarded him over the rim.

[color=B77B89]"Sienna,"[/color] she replied, setting the glass down. Her eyes stayed on him a beat longer than was strictly necessary. [color=B77B89]"Sienna Mercer."[/color]

[color=B77B89]"And you are?"[/color]

[color=#C8E39A]“Lowther.”[/color] He raised his pint glass slightly over the pristinely polished bar. [color=#C8E39A]“Bret Lowther.”[/color] 

He didn’t move his eyes from hers. He would like to say it was an old intelligence trick or something he learned in the army but it wasn’t. It was simply something he had picked up from his late mother. Eye contact always made a person feel seen and it was always a sure fire way of making sure that you were seen back. [color=#C8E39A]“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sienna.”[/color] 

Bret pulled the glass to his lips and indulged himself a little more. It really was a damn good pint. Once he had finished his libation, he took only a second to look around the room before returning his gaze to her. [color=#C8E39A]“It’s quite the little gaff you’ve got here. You can tell it’s well loved and judging by the presence you have, you’re the one that loves it.”[/color]

In this instance, there was no game to be played, at least not yet. He genuinely quite liked the look of the Velvet Room, though it definitely wasn’t his natural speed. And the charcoal suit that he wore felt more like a prison than an indulgence of comfort. [color=#C8E39A]“In fact, the place is so nice, I’ll even have another drink. Could I get another pint of whatever this lovely thing is and whatever your best Highland whiskey is. If you’d be so kind, Miss Sienna?”[/color]

Lowther.

She turned the name over briefly, the way she did with most things people handed her across this bar - not visibly, just in the space behind her eyes where she kept the things worth keeping. He held her gaze the way confident people did, but without the performance that usually accompanied it. No angle to it. She found she didn't mind that.

[color=B77B89]"Bret Lowther,"[/color] she said, trying it once, as though confirming something to herself rather than to him. [color=B77B89]"The pleasure's mine."[/color]

She let the compliment about the room land without deflecting it, which was not something she did for everyone. Most people who commented on The Velvet Room were really commenting on themselves - on their own taste for having chosen it, on the story it told about them to be seen here. Mr. Lowther, she suspected, meant exactly what he said and nothing more complicated than that. It was, she was finding, quietly refreshing.

[color=B77B89]"Loved is definitely the right word,"[/color] she said, glancing briefly across the room with the easy proprietary sweep of someone who had memorised every inch of a place without meaning to. [color=B77B89]"Most people say impressive. I like loved better."[/color]

She pulled his empty glass, placed it beneath the tap, and let the pour run slow and clean before setting it in front of him. The whisky took a moment longer - she turned to the backlit shelving, considered briefly, and selected something from the upper tier without hesitating. Twelve year Dalmore, neat. She put it beside the pint with the quiet certainty of someone who had made the right call and knew it, and the almost-smile that had been threatening since he mentioned English traditions finally made a proper appearance.

[color=B77B89]"Most people who end up in Calder City are here looking for something,"[/color] she said, her eyes staying on him a beat longer than necessary. [color=B77B89]"And you don't strike me as a tourist."[/color]

She left the rest of the sentence unfinished, which was its own kind of question.

[color=#C8E39A]“Not a tourist, no.”[/color] 

Bret admired her beautiful pour of his drinks. It was a skill that to most, wasn’t a skill at all. Anyone can pull a tap and let the liquid fall into it without a second thought. The way Sienna did it, slowing the whole thing down to the point the golden beer ran like a ribbon of liquid amber catching the glow of the evening light into the glass. The perfect sized ivory foam head, the depth of a fingernail was a nice detail. And her assumption that he’d like his whiskey neat, she was very good. Very good, indeed.

[color=#C8E39A]“Thank you.”[/color] He wrapped his fingers around the base of his pint glass and took a long, savoured mouthful before continuing to speak. [color=#C8E39A]“My Dad was from here. Thought I’d come check the place out. Living in Wicklow at the minute. Nothing like this place there.”[/color]

Wicklow might well have been a world way, yet in reality, it was literally the next door neighbourhood to the Lantern District where the Velvet Room was situated. It was not a pretty place but it also wasn’t one of the worse off areas of the city. It was an old part of Calder though, one of its earliest boroughs during the founding. In lieu of skyscrapers, it had gothic limestone buildings. Instead of neon signs, it had predatory gargoyles watching your every move. And instead of a superhero HQ, it had Saint Brigid’s.

[color=#C8E39A]“But you’re right. I get the feeling you often are.”[/color] The Pilgrim remained silent. There was no danger. At least not yet. He was on the right path it seemed. [color=#C8E39A]“I am looking for something.”[/color] Bret reached into his coat pocket and took out the small clear vial with the black crown engraved in it. He placed it gently in front of his whiskey, the Dalmore obscuring it from the view of prying eyes that didn’t belong to Sienna Mercer. [color=#C8E39A]“This is being sold at your club. I need to find out by who.”[/color]

He didn’t change his tone or his posture. Bret still spoke with the soft, almost jovial nuance that he had been at the start of their conversation. [color=#C8E39A]“I’m not the police and I don’t really care about what else is going on here. But if you know, maybe you can help me.”[/color]

She looked at the vial for a moment without touching it. Just looked, the way she looked at most things that landed uninvited on her bar - with the calm assessment of someone who had seen stranger things set down in front of her and had learned not to let her face do anything interesting about it. Then she picked it up, turned it once between her fingers, and set it back down on his side of the bar. Gently. Precisely. The black crown caught the amber light for just a moment before it settled.

[color=B77B89]"King's Blood,"[/color] Her voice dropped just enough to belong to the two of them and no one else, and the almost-smile disappeared and was replaced with something more level. [color=B77B89]"I know it's moved through here."[/color]

[color=B77B89]“But what I don't do,"[/color] she continued, [color=B77B89]"is keep a log of who orders what or who passes things under my tables. That's not the business I'm in."[/color] She held his gaze steadily, no apology in it. [color=B77B89]"The Velvet Room works because people trust that what happens here stays here. The moment I start talking about my guests, I don't have any."[/color]

[color=B77B89]"You seem like a reasonable man, Mr. Lowther,"[/color] Sienna’s tone was neither warm nor cool, landing somewhere more considered than either. [color=B77B89]"So I'll be straight with you. I don't love that it's here. But what I know and what I'm willing to hand across this bar are two different things."[/color]

Her eyes dropped to the vial once more, briefly, then back to his. She picked up her glass again and took a long drink, a smirk gracing her lips.

[color=B77B89]"Lucky for you, I make a point of being very good company to the people I can't help."[/color]

Bret clicked his tongue, not in frustration but with a sort of respect. He couldn’t say he was surprised that Sienna wasn’t going to give him any information. He had figured that out pretty quickly. The Velvet Room’s reputation as a sort of Switzerland for all creeds and factions in Calder City had become legendary. The fact that Directorate Nine, is once and former employers had eyes on the place meant that its reputation was even crossing borders. 

He pocketed the vial again. He now had to think of a new route to take. He had promised So-Mi that he would find Tae. That had to be his goal. The King’s Blood, its distribution, this El Jefe character. None of that was a business he needed to be mixed up in, not yet. At the very least, if he learned anything he could kick it up to Cressida and D9 and let them deal with it.

[color=#C8E39A]“Oh you’re helping me just fine, Miss Sienna.”[/color] He offered her another smile like a donation of good faith. He did not hold any ill will, quite the opposite really. Even though he was there trying to figure out this whole King’s Blood mess, he truly was enjoying his time at the Velvet Room. [color=#C8E39A]“You’re pouring me good drinks, which are the best I’ve had since I’ve been in Calder City. The ambience here is lovely and if you’ll indulge me, I must agree that the company is far, far superior than anywhere else.”[/color]

Bret turned away for a moment to drink in the sight of the room. There were so many people doing so many different things and socialising with those they probably never would in their day to day lives. The place was an achievement in every sense of the word. When he returned to lose himself for a moment in Sienna’s eyes once more, something occurred to him. Even after all this time, he still was never fully sure if it was him having the idea or if it was the Pilgrim opening up another path.

[color=#C8E39A]“Tell me, Miss Sienna. If you don’t feel compelled to help me here…”[/color] He reached for the whiskey glass, tracing his fingers over the rim. [color=#C8E39A]“…do you think you could help me elsewhere?”[/color]

The brunette set her glass down and leaned forward against the counter, closing the distance between them by a fraction - just enough to be intentional. When she spoke, her voice carried the same leisurely quality it always did, but with something warmer underneath it now, something that hadn't been there before the vial disappeared back into his pocket.

[color=B77B89]"Elsewhere,"[/color] she said, turning the word over with the same consideration she'd given his name when he first offered it, [color=B77B89]"can mean a lot of things, Mr. Lowther."[/color]

She held his gaze, a smile settling comfortably in place.

[color=B77B89]"What did you have in mind?"[/color]

[color=#C8E39A]“Well, how’s your poker face?”[/color] For the first time since they began conversing, Bret’s smile lifted slightly, showing his teeth. It had been a good long while since someone had made him work this hard just whilst talking. It seemed that he had gotten so used to being punched, kicked, gouged and shot at that he had forgotten what a joy it was just to chat. Though even as much as he was enjoying himself, the work it seemed, never ended.

[color=#C8E39A]“You see, you said you can’t help me here. I respect that. Which means I have to find another way to get what I need.”[/color] He lifted the whiskey glass to his lips but then dropped it ever so slightly, his icy blue eyes giving nothing away to his sentiment. [color=#C8E39A]“There’s a poker game, information is the currency. What I would like is for you to come with me, looking fabulous and so that when you walk up behind me and kiss me on the neck, the other players are so distracted by your neckline that I can take them for everything that they’ve got.”[/color]

His smile disappeared between the rims of the glass as he imbibed the Dalmore. Sienna had made an excellent choice. [color=#C8E39A]“Then afterwards, maybe I can help you. I feel like that’s a fair trade.”[/color]

She looked at him for a long moment, something shifting quietly behind her eyes.

[color=B77B89]"A [i]poker game[/i],"[/color] she mused, with the tone of someone turning a proposition over to check it from all angles. Not dismissive. Not convinced either. Somewhere in the middle, which was, she suspected, exactly where he wanted her.

Then she laughed - not loudly, not the performance of amusement but the real thing, brief and genuine, the kind that arrived before she'd decided to let it. It had been a while since someone had surprised her twice in the same conversation. Bret Lowther, she was finding, had a talent for it. 

[color=B77B89]"Let me get this straight. You walk into a bar you’ve never been to in a brand new suit,”[/color] she began, [color=B77B89]"order a pint, buy me a drink for breaking up a fight, ask me what I know about King’s Blood - "[/color] She tilted her head slightly. [color=B77B89]"And now you want me to be your eye candy?”[/color]

She picked up her glass and took a slow sip, drawing out the silence that stretched between them.

[color=B77B89]"What makes you think I'm the kind of woman who leaves [i]her[/i] bar with a man she's just met?"[/color] A beat. [color=B77B89]"And what is it that you think you could help me with?"[/color]

Bret sat silently, listening to her review of the situation. To her credit, she wasn’t wrong. Under any normal circumstances, this would seem like a terrifyingly strange scenario. A random man comes in, asks odd questions and then tries to steal you away into the night. That’s a horror movie right there. [color=#C8E39A]“Well firstly, thank you for noticing this is a new suit. I appreciate that.”[/color]

He leaned back in his chair, he now felt infinitely more comfortable than he had previously. It took Bret a minute to acclimatise himself to new surroundings but once he had, then he was in his element. The Velvet Room, the people in it, including the lovely owner, all transformed into new terrain to be mapped, new avenues and pathways for him to follow. The thing about his power, he never really knew the outcome of what would happen, it didn’t work that way. All he knew was that something was telling him that Sienna was a key to where he needed to go. The question that he was ignoring, as single minded a man as Bret is, was if she was the key to the right path or something else entirely.

[color=#C8E39A]“Let me just be straight with you, Miss Sienna. I’m looking for a young man, he’s seventeen. Still basically a kid and he’s got himself mixed up in business he ought not to be mixed up in.”[/color] He paused for a moment, thinking about the empty vial in his pocket and the dangers it posed. [color=#C8E39A]“His sister wants him home safe and I said I’d help. This led me to you, which I’m very thankful for, by the way.”[/color] 

Bret polished off his whiskey straight and slid the empty glass back towards her. [color=#C8E39A]“You want to know what makes me think you’re the kind of woman to help me? It’s the look in your eye. A little glimmer. I can tell you understand the…gravity…of the situation but you also have a business to run. So there’s nothing you can do here but if you come with me, not only do you get to do some good, well…”[/color]

There it was again, that pregnant pause that had lingered between them from the moment their eyes first met across the bar. [color=#C8E39A]“…it’s exciting isn’t it? I’m asking you to take a chance, be part of something interesting, breaking the monotony of the day. And as far as what I can help you with? I’m sure we can figure something out over breakfast.”[/color]

Sienna listened to all of it without interrupting, which was not something she did for everyone. The gravity comment she filed away without reacting to. He knew, or suspected, and he had chosen to let her know he knew in the most understated way possible. She respected that more than she intended to.

But it was the seventeen year old that did it.

She didn't let it show - just a fractional shift in her expression, something that moved through her eyes and was gone before it fully arrived. A kid. She thought briefly of the vial of King’s Blood sitting in Bret’s pocket and what it meant for a boy that age to be anywhere near it, and something in her that had been weighing the evening's proposition quietly made its decision.

The brunette took her glass in her hand and tipped back the remaining liquid in one fell swoop.

[color=B77B89]"You’re lucky you look good in a suit.”[/color] She teased. [color=B77B89]“Give me ten minutes."[/color]

She pushed off the counter and caught Marcus's eye across the bar - one look, the kind that needed no explanation after two years of working the same room together. He gave a small nod in return, already moving into her place behind the counter as though the handoff had been planned all along. 

[color=B77B89]“And Bret?”[/color] She was already moving toward the door that led to her loft. [color=B77B89]"Try not to charm anyone else while I'm gone."[/color]

Bret smiled the widest he had all night. [color=#C8E39A]“Yes ma’am.”[/color]

The path just opened up wider and the destination was becoming that much more unclear.[/color][/indent]
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