Veil of Smog, Chapter 1

[Esprit15]

Midnight awakens from her meditation. Sleep was strange for a Hunter. The vast majority of her life could be spent living a mile a minute. She could start her faucet, then get dressed and put on her makeup in the time it took for water to touch her toothbrush if she wanted. But Father Night would not be denied his cut of time, not even from an immortal. And so she long ago learned to enjoy the ancient ritual of waking when Father Day saw fit to illuminate the sky and warm the air. Dawn had always said the ritual was something that kept them human - to take the time to enjoy the feeling of preparing one's self for the day.

And so when Midnight awoke, she breathes in the stagnant air of the apartment and stretches, before taking her time and walking to the kitchen to start the electric kettle. She turns on the faucet and smiles. 1926. That was the first year she lived in a house with a faucet. Her husband then was a stock broker in Spain, and while she had seen them in hotels in the United States the century prior, she never imagined that she would live somewhere where she would own one. And now the act of flipping a tap and water simply flowed into your house was as common as breathing. She carefully fills the kettle and flicks a switch, and the device instantly begins to heat up. Emanuel was also when she first had electricity in her home. She takes a quarter cup measure and fills the hand grinder with coffee beans, taking care to not spin the handle too quickly. She was a cook in the Hungarian army back when the beans were introduced to Europeans. Thought the drink made with the beans was equal parts divine and vile back then, and quickly became hooked on it. She hated electric grinders though. The noise was excruciating, and there seemed to be something lost in the flavor when the beans were crushed with the zeal the mechanical device employed. When the beans were ground, she poured them in the press, and added the steaming water. She then returned to the other side of the apartment to get dressed for the day.

In the office, Sarah Stillwater was the aloof, formal type. In her last life she had accidentally become the office mother, and absolutely refused to be that involved in the personal lives of her short lived coworkers again. It made hunting difficult, and meant being far more open about her life. That meant lies and tracking lies and the whole thing was so much work that she considered killing off Diana after only three years just to get out of the mistake. So Sarah was instead the woman who wore glasses in the office and was totally wearing contacts outside of work and whose style of dress was so in line with dress code that one would think it was based on her. As she looks at the woman in the mirror, for the first time in a while she notices the subtle scars before they disappeared under layers of primer, foundation, blush, and powder. A claw from a werewolf. Blotches from the draining touch of a ghost. The last vestiges of necrosis from the poisoned blade of a friend. A split lip from a wine drunk celebratory brawl that would have made a Roman blush. And in a moment, it's all gone, beneath a physical mask as much as it was behind a mental one. Her messy hair is in a moment carefully arranged as the stylist recommended: "Office professional. Long enough to look feminine, short enough to be practical. Parted to..." blah blah blah blah blah.

Sarah steps out of the bathroom and warms a pan on the stove, carefully placing two slabs of bacon and enjoying the sizzle as they meat hits the hot metal. When a decent pool of grease forms, she removes the meat and cracks two eggs into the pan, and adds more spice than she would have dreamed of adding to food a millennium ago - that is, a typical amount, if slightly less. While the eggs sizzle, she quickly slices the bacon up and then tosses it back into the pan. After a few seconds, she scoops the eggs out of the pan with a spatula and carefully places them on her plate, and sits by the window to continue watching the sun rise over the city. Father Day was quickly chasing his brother's purple cloak across the blue sky. Soon she would be at work, but for now she could still enjoy a morning meal that required neither farming nor hunting nor garden nor servants. People were always surprised when Sarah spoke fondly of her little studio. And while she had lived in bigger and more luxurious, she'd never enjoyed the same combination of luxury and anonymity as she had in the 21st century. It was so... normal for everyone today to live like this, and most had no idea.

Eventually, she reaches into her suit pocket and checks her pocket watch. Hardly necessary - she knew the time of day quite well by the height of the sun and the time of year. But the ritual of checking the time before leaving was something she too found pleasant. She flips open the watch... and her heart skips a beat.

The time was 8:30am. Exactly what she expected.

Not expected was a single, little slip of paper.

Clearly, purposefully affixed to the inner side of the cover.

In a watch that nobody would reasonably pay attention to.

Hidden in a suit pocket.

Hanging in her closet.

Inside her locked apartment.


"Come to the Jackalope Room at The Smoking Pit in three days, at noon. There, you will discover your fate."


In the time it would take a pin to drop, Midnight grabs her bow and quiver, stows them in her backpack, and without bothering to clean up her breakfast leaves the apartment. She only pauses briefly to check that the door lock indeed works.