Shaper smirked at Mark, then looked at Victor.
"Yeeeah. What he said. I'll sneak off and do naughty things and uhm... I promise not to tell you I went off to do naughty things." Amy giggled.
She drank her wine, but didn't touch her food at all. Shaper on the other hand, ate like a shark in the middle of a feeding frenzy. Well, neater than that, but about as fast. As soon as he'd finished, he started in on Amy's steak.
"Pig," snorted Victor. "You'd think we never fed you." When Shaper looked up to retort, he saw Victor's thin amused smile that meant he was just giving his friend a hard time.
Shaper smirked back. "Oink Oink. I suppose I'll just go wallow in the mud after dinner then... besides, it's not like Amy could eat solid food without my mask on."
Mark raised his brow. "Mud? As lovely as that picture is - I believe I can think of more... elegant things for you to wallow in."
Shaper smirked and sipped his beer. It wasn't anything he'd expected or had before, but it was decent.
"Well, I've been told by a few comely wenches that silk sheets become me... but I'll stop there before Victor makes faces and smacks me for letting him see too many bad images and think too many icky thoughts." To her credit, Amy thwapped him instead.
Shaper sighed. "Meanie." He put on his adorable pout again. "Sooo... Mark... ever wanted to do anything... kinky?"
Mark switched brows.
"Don't you dare answer that!" Davy wailed. "I'm eating!"
Amy thwapped Shaper upside the back of the head hard enough to toss him out of his chair. The look they exchanged was NOT a polite one. They exchanged a hiss as well.
Victor sighed.
"CHILDREN! PLEASE!"
Both guilty parties blushed, and went about finishing their respective meals in silence.
"So, Davy?" Victor said as he finished up his food. "You had questions?"
Davy neatly wiped his face with his napkin and laid it beside his plate. "Yum. Not exactly filling, but it sure tastes good. Let's start with the easy one. Where're you all from again? I've never heard of Neo York."
"Nor I, to be honest," Mark admitted, "And I've been all over the twin worlds, although I haven't been back to Faerie since... it's been a long time."
'Twin worlds huh?' thought Victor one eyebrow hiking and a half smile quirking. "Well, I don't know how much I can tell you. But let's just say it's kind of just another name for New York." He brushed hair out of his eyes. "Shaper however is a country hick ex-hunter-thaumaturge." He grinned as Shaper frowned at him. "And Amy well..." He gave her a quick once over. "She's just Amy. I don't know that much about her." He gave a little smile. "Know all I need to, though." He then turned his murky brown grey eyes on Shaper, ready to give the risen a swift kick, if he revealed too much information on where they'd come from. If these people thought there were only two worlds, and one of them was Faerie, it probably wouldn't be a good thing to clue them in on the multiple realities. Hell, it made his head hurt, and he'd been through them.
Shaper blinked. "Neo York? But... you've seriously NEVER heard of Neo York? Or Vampirum, or Altair?"
Shaper received a swift kick in the shin with a steel-toed boot, and a very warning look from Victor. Shaper yelped, and hopped up and back from his chair, toppling it, and then himself as he grabbed at his sore shin.
"DAMNIT VICTOR! I shouldn't have EVER gotten you a pair of steel-toed boots! ESPECIALLY after I got rid of my metal-plated ones!"
Mark and Davy exchanged looks.
"Vampirum? Something tells me that we're not in Kansas any more..." Davy muttered under his breath.
Mark laughed. "Well I think your new friends are very interesting." He gave his hair a toss, and rose to his feet. "It's been a pleasure, but I really must be going." He gave them all a polite little bow, and upon straightening, he raised an inquiring brow at Shaper. "Shall we?"
Shaper nodded, winced, and put weight on his leg. If he didn't heal so damn fast he'd be black and blue for days. As it was, the bruise would be long gone by the time he and Mark had been alone a full hour.
"Uhm yeah, we shall." Shaper gave Victor his usual withering look, that only made people laugh, then he smiled back at Mark. "So, you never answered my earlier question about kinky stuff..." he said as they headed out the door.
"Guh..." Victor said rolled his eyes. "I have to wonder how much of that... shit he's saying to bother me." He scratched the back of his neck and smiled at Davy. "Look, if it makes you feel any better, I can assure you that you're still firmly in Kansas, as it were. Although, last time I checked," he quirked a smile, "New York is in New York."
"Uh... right." Davy chuckled. "Okay, okay... I'll lay off the questions. Getting a straight answer out of you is like trying to pull dragon's teeth." He was silent for a moment, and than practically exploded with, "Okay, one more! What do you do exactly? Are you a collector? You say you're looking for something, and it's fairly obvious that you guys are magically inclined - if you guys are in the habit of tracking down nifty artifacts, then hey, that's great, 'cause we could actually use more people like you. Interested?"
"Nah..." Victor said absently. "There's less flaming screaming death in getting straight answers out of me. Well, normally."
The waiter glided back up to the table. "How was your meal? Is there anything else you require, sir?"
"Nope. We're all set." Davy handed him a credit card.
They left the restaurant, and Victor stretched before lighting a clove. "Would you like one?" he offered.
Davy smiled, and shook his head. "Nope. I get my daily dose of smoke flying in and out of town every morning." He gestured up at the haze that nearly obscured the lights of the taller skyscrapers. "The air's been so shitty up there lately, you have to chew it before you can breathe it."
"Now about the collector thing, no, not really. Oh I got some odds and ends, and could use selling them. But I'm more of a..." He thought about it for a moment. "I haven't said this in ages, I'm an investigator. I poke my nose into supernatural business." He scratched his chin and exhaled a thin plume of smoke. "Been spending so much time just trying to keep out of trouble since I met Shaper, I forgot that I used to make money doing that."
"Supernatural investigator, huh? Cool." Davy automatically tossed some spare change in the cup of a homeless guy that tugged on his wing as they passed by. "I'm a COO of a tech support and consulting company. Our big thing is that we're mostly fae owned and operated." He handed Victor a card, with his name and title neatly typed under some bold print, which read, 'ZauberCorp' and in smaller letters underneath. '...solutions, just like magic.' "It's a bit hard to explain," Davy continued, "but what we do is offer magic as a feasible option for companies that are looking for a level of performance that technology alone can't offer." He shrugged. "I guess it sounds a little far-fetched, but business has been really good so far."
"Not as far fetched as you'd think," Victor said, shrugging comfortably. "The maintenance must be murder though." He blew out a plume of smoke. He grinned. "So you're the mother of all fae affirmative action, huh?"
Davy blushed self consciously. "Oh, hells no... all things being equal, I'd just as soon go to work, do my job, keep the place from blowing up, and go home again. The real reason why we 'came out of the closet' was 'cause we had to. Most of the fae can get by pretty easily, 'cause nobody knows they're not human, as long as they're cloaked by their glamour. I can't hide my appearance, 'cause I don't have any glamour, so it's not like I had any real choice. And anybody that's any where near me, well they can forget it - I negate their glamour and their cover's blown too. So anybody that works with us has to be okay with that, and the ones that are okay with that tend to be the real gung-ho 'fight for inhuman rights' types. But I'm not a crusader, really. I just do what I have to do to get by." He shrugged. "But I'd sooner deal with a little human bigotry than have to go back to Faerie. At least nobody's trying to kill me here."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to give you a hard time," Victor said. He looked thoughtfully along the street. "As for the nobody trying to kill you... that's very nice. Treasure that."
"Believe me," Davy sighed. "I do." He gave Victor and Amy a curious look. "So I assume that you're on a case now. Can you tell me about it, or is that privileged info or something?"
"On a case..." Victor thought about it for a moment. "I suppose you could say that. It's definitely along the same lines as other cases I've been on." He strolled in silence for a few moments. "So it's not that I couldn't tell you what I'm doing, it would just complicate your life unnecessarily. So I won't give you details. Let's just say I'm going to be taking on a corrupt organization that has gone too far, and so I'm charging the ambush. The reason I'm here, is to get supplies for doing that." He pursed his lips and blew a stream of smoke into the air, improving the odor, if not the texture of the air around them. "Yeah, that's detailed and vague enough."
Davy laughed. "You can say that again." He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "So now what?"
Victor shrugged and put an arm around Amy's shoulders. "Not sure. I was going to go looking for a pawn or curio shop, sell a few things for funds, then Shaper and I were going to find a bar, maybe get into a fight with things that can't bite our faces off." He sighed and rolled his eyes. "Of course, Shaper decided to go and play with something that could possibly bite his face off."
interlude with the vampire...
Shaper sighed. It was nice not to have to walk everywhere. "Funny thing, where I come from, there's not many cars... just lots of cheap horses. And Damyew... Victor's horse, hates me... so I end up doing a LOT of walking. This is a most pleasant change," he said, half-snuggling up to Mark as they headed down the road.
