Verity Alice Price

Dominic left the roof and Verity stood there blinking after him for far longer than she really would have liked. She was in a daze, a thousand thoughts crashing through her brain at once while her brain tried to sort through the options she had besides 'panic.' It felt like she was moving in slow motion as she walked across the rooftop to where she'd dropped her bag. Her cell phone was tucked safely into the front pocket. It took her three tries to make the zipper work, and another five tries before she could successfully access her contact list and call ( the one number that had a prayer of helping her find her emotional footing: Liam. )

Liam was right; keeping Dominic close was a better idea than cutting him loose. Only one small problem with that: Dominic didn't pick up when Verity called his cell phone. She didn't have his home number, assuming he even had one; she'd never seen the place where he lived. He could have been emulating Sarah, and just moving from hotel to hotel, keeping a roof over his head without tying himself to a permanent address. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like she'd been deluding herself all along. There was no way he'd ever really trusted her.

Still, she needed to put that aside, at least for right now, and figure out how she was going to deal with the very real threat of a Covenant purge. Verity broke into a run, pushing her phone deep into the front pocket of her jeans, building to a full-out sprint. She needed to find Dominic. She needed to start warning people. And there was nothing saying she couldn't combine the two.

Gravity took over once she stepped off the edge of the roof, and she was able to push other concerns aside in favor of the pressing need to keep herself from splashing on the pavement. That was one of the nice things about free-running; it was very distracting when she needed it to be. She was focused enough on her surroundings that she could usually avoid things that present an actual danger, like pissed-off cryptids or booby-traps (like snares, for example), but she didn't need to think about her faltering dance career, or the fact that the man she'd been starting to think about as maybe being a real friend wasn't really real friend material, or the upcoming Covenant purge. All she had to think about was the run.

Her first destination was a little café called Gingerbread Pudding. Going there wouldn't help her find Dominic, but it would help her begin the process of warning the city's cryptids that they needed to keep their heads down and maybe consider taking that California vacation they'd been dreaming about. She'd been telling the truth when she'd told Dominic that there was no way she could evacuate the entire city. That didn't mean she had to leave the people she considered friends unprepared for what was coming.

Letting go of the last rooftop between her and her destination, ( she dropped down, into the dark beyond. )

[And thus we continue! Taken from Chapters 4 and 5 of Seanan McGuire's Midnight, Blue-Light Special and preplayed (and coded by) genuine lifesaver firstofitskind. NFI/NFB. Previous post. Next post.]

JGOB was good, but Verity had woken up with a craving for frosted Madhura-baked gingerbread, even though it meant heading all the way into Baltimore for breakfast. Still, the chance to catch up with Piyusha, maybe convince her to head out of town until the snake cult that was chasing virgins was stopped, and score some delicious gingerbread was too much temptation to bear, so after her morning shower, Verity headed for the Causeway and the city beyond.

It took her the better part of an hour to reach the small bakery and she was very surprised to find it closed when she arrived. According to the hours in the window, Gingerbread Pudding was open from seven AM to nine PM every day. According to her watch, it was almost ten. ( So why were the doors still locked? )

[Adapted from Chapter 17 of Seanan McGuire's Discount Armageddon with wonderful coding help from the A++++ firstofitskind. First post is here, comes after this post and goes directly to this one. NFI, NFB, OOC is love]