Not a lot of people realize there's all kinds of perks to living in the West End. Rent's cheap, there's plenty of housing - lots of really pretty property, too, old brownstones and riverside mansions, abandoned warehouses being gentrified (and squatted in the meantime), mills and factories quickly being converted to tenements and apartment complexes. The West End is the epitome of the Rhydin melting pot, too, with hundreds of different worlds, cultures, and peoples represented in its streets and alleyways. The West End never slept; as the aphorism ran, it merely waited, all too often impatient. At any hour, day or night, you could find a store peddling food, drink, weapons, goods - and if not a brick and mortar shop, there was always a sidewalk vendor or a man on the corner who had just what you needed. The West End lived, breathed, and ate just about everything....including people.

Which of course brought one to the well known down side of living in the West End, namely the all too likely possibility of gettting oneself shot, stabbed, eviscerated, exsanguinated, disemboweled, defenestrated, run over, run down, or just plain disappeared. Dying was a way of life in a lot of places - in the West End, they'd turned it into a pastime. But barring the all too likely possibility of a violent demise, there were other troubles your average Westie put up with as a matter of course. For instance, neither technology nor magic was particularly reliable in the back alleys and courtyards of the district, each subject to mischance or outright failure - engines froze, spells fizzled, and God help the moron with an antimatter rifle or a backpack fusion engine, although nobody had yet managed to obliterate more than a block or two.

Also, there was the fact that the whole West End was, as one wit had put it, a 'no scry zone.' Homing beacon, tracer spell, crystal ball or RFID tag, they all came back subject not found once their intended target crossed the district borders. It made for the number one hiding place in the City, where the hunted could go to ground and wait for the dust to settle. It also made for a brisk trade as bounty hunters, spies, and informants moved to fill the niche - when sigint fails, humint covers the gap.

Of course, in Rhydin, 'human intelligence' didn't always involve humans.

It was, overall, an enigma wrapped in a mystery, coated in poison and studded with spikey bits and 'keep out' signs. The City, by and large, tried to ignore the West End, except when it needed something illegal, immoral, or simply obscene. The Westies took that as a point of pride....when they weren't dodging gang wars, running from supernatural predators, fleeing from plagues, fighting fires, or simply scrambling to get out before the next disaster of the week came along to ruin their lives.

Someone had once tried to create a West End tourism board. The sign still stood outside the burned out ruins, its cheery slogan declaring to passersby "There's nowhere to go but up!" It served as an unofficial motto, still - mainly because most of the things people really said about the West End were unprintable.

Love it, hate it, try to ignore it....one thing the West End could never be called was "boring."

'Morning' is a state of mind.

This is true of any situation in which people live, work, and play around the clock. To the schoolchild whose academic durance vile runs from seven in the morning until two in the afternoon, that is the working day " so the early evening commuter hours, when regular office workers and factory laborers are grinding their way home is the meeting time, the play time, before the parents get home and impose the rule of law once again. To the night watchman or the third shift foreman, noon is midnight " and heaven help the noisy neighbor who absolutely must mow his lawn. Every hour is happy hour, to someone " and the natural converse of this is that every hour is an unhappy hour to someone, too.

Time is a relative. Of course, in Rhydin's West End, reality is often considered a relative.

But so it was that Grey wasn't surprised to stagger out of the narrow stairwell " formerly a servant's stair, in those halcyon days when people living in the West End could afford things like servants " into a roar of music, to find Moonchild Starpower Sunshine McClure cooking eggs. There were all sorts of other words that might apply " horrified, dismayed, even rapt with that sick fascination that causes one to slow down and gawk at traffic accidents and shooting victims " but not surprised. Unless she was restrained, Moonchild " Grey always used her full name in his thoughts because it was the only place he could; she'd kill him if he ever said it aloud " often took her frustrations out on the kitchen. She'd taken the door off its hinges the last time they'd tried to lock her out, so most of their efforts these days focused on either keeping her happy enough that she didn't feel the urge to commit culinary terrorism, or else channeling her energy into less destructive pursuits " music, art ,martial arts. Of course, her approach to each of those hobbies was usually just as catastrophically energetic as her approach to cooking " but, as Sadie had commented more than once at least she was destroying someplace other than the kitchen.

So, as the evidence clearly indicated, Sadie wasn't home and Moonchild was upset. That meant Grey " as always " was stuck dealing with the resulting disaster.

And a disaster it most certainly was. Grey wouldn't call himself much of a cook, not by a long shot, but he was pretty sure he at least had the basics down. Take cooking eggs, for example; you melted some butter in a frying pan, cracked the egg, and heated it about to where you wanted it to be. Flip it over as necessary, applying heat evenly, taking care to make sure the egg didn't burn. Burning was bad.

Sure, there were advanced techniques " eggs were versatile things, after all. You could poach them, scramble them, fold them into omelettes....and then there was figuring out the difference between 'over easy', 'medium', and 'hard'. He was still working on that one.

He was pretty confident, however, that no matter how advanced your technique or avant-garde your method, should the eggs involved end plastered across the ceiling, He wasn't entirely sure what the rest of the mess up there might have involved, but the two egg yolks staring back at him like the sightless eyes of a corpse were unmistakable.

Glass crunched under his boots as he eased into the kitchen, nearly inaudible under the blast of punk rock, all screaming guitar and incomprehensibly screamed lyrics. Painful experience had taught that Moonchild, when startled, had a tendency to hurl whatever was closest at hand. Maybe that explained the ceiling " although it didn't explain what had happened to the blender, a casserole dish, several plates too splintered to leave an accurate count, a child's sippy cup he didn't recall owning, or, for that matter, why every single pot and pan in the house was scattered across every available surface, plus the floor. More pots and pans than he'd thought they owned, as a matter of fact.

Moonchild saw cooking as an adventure. Everyone else saw it as an ordeal.

The lady in question was leaning against the sink, head down, hands white knuckled on the counter. Even with her back to him, Grey could tell her eyes were closed, her features composed. He let out a relieved sigh; the worst was over with. He made it to the stove in time too rescue the contents of a frying pan from bursting into flames and flipped off the burners " all four were lit, despite only one being in use " while he was there. The pan contents were a goner, to the point where he couldn't describe them as 'food' for fear of insulting edible stuff everywhere. Moonchild brought enthusiasm to the kitchen, but neither skill nor talent. What the hell, one out of three wasn't bad.

The old record player on the table was just about the only thing in the kitchen not splattered, stained, or shattered, and the tempo and volume of the music threatened to shake the poor machine apart. Moonie preferred punk and hard rock, even though the converted phonograph had trouble keeping up with them " considering she was the one who'd converted it in the first place, Grey figured it would only serve her right if she broke it. On the other hand, anything that prevented another cooking spree was probably a positive, so he flipped the volume lever down to merely loud.

Grey dug himself out of the debris and stood up. Roach, who'd somehow managed to sleep through Moonchild's cooking, the blaring music, and Grey's crash landing, finally cracked an eye open under the weight of that disapproving stare. "Oh, hey Grey," he said blearily. Grey wrinkled his nose; Roach stank, not of his usual marijuana effluvium but with the sickly sweet fumes of opium. The boy had picked up a new habit, but Grey didn't think chasing the dragon was gonna get him any closer to heaven than anything else he'd tried. "When did you get home?"

"Hours ago," Grey folded his arms across his chest. "And my apartment was Roach free at the time. Blood and ash man, I told you I was gonna have to start charging you rent if you keep showing up like this."

"Oh, come on!" Roach scrambled up from the couch, a look of real fear in his eyes. Threats to make him pay for something were generally far more effective than physical violence " threatened or enacted " could ever hope to be. Not that it prevented Moonie from indulging in her favorite sport of Roach stomping. She grinned and cracked her knuckles as she advanced out of the kitchen, no doubt eager to put off the chore of cleaning it. The thought gave Grey an idea, and he held up a hand to forestall her.

"Tell ya what, Roach," he said breezily. "Clean up the kitchen for Moonie, and we'll call it even. I'll even buy ya breakfast."

"And if I don't?" Roach looked uneasily at Moonchild. Grey sighed; Roach always had to play the odds, even when they weren't remotely in his favor. Maybe especially when they weren't in his favor.

"Then I guess Moonie has her wicked way with you." Seeing Roach's face still undecided, he added, "And maybe afterwards, she'll make you breakfast." That did it; Roach dashed for the kitchen, sliding deftly past Moonchild before she could make up her mind whether or not she wanted to protest. It had taken longer for Roach to realize the toxicity of Moonie's cooking " Grey suspected that it was the 'special' mushroom omelettes she'd once made, entirely by accident, using his supply of 'shrooms. Hope sprung eternal, especially for Roach. Still, it had finally sunk in. There was a wordless cry of dismay as he discovered just how bad the disaster was, but the promise of breakfast must have been a strong one because Grey didn't hear the front door slam, as he'd half expected. He settled onto the couch with a relieved sigh and closed his eyes. He cracked them open again a half second later when Moonchild cleared her throat.

"Eh, what?"

"Well, seeing how somebody decided to take away my kitchen cleaning project, it looks like I've got nothing to do. So, I guess this looks like the perfect time for somebody to see about that breakfast he promised."

"Oh, come on," Grey protested, unconsciously echoing Roach " to just as much avail. "He'll be about that for hours. There's plenty o' time."

"I'm hungry now," Moonie smirked. "I'm thinking Java Hell, espresso and beignets. C'mon, laddy buck, mush." She made 'crack the whip' gesture at him, and with a reluctant groan, he pulled himself from the comforting embrace of the couch. He didn't think she really had a whip, but the fact of the matter was, you could never quite tell with Moonchild. He'd barely stood when she took his place, losing herself in the couch with a happy sigh. He gave her a flat look, and she waved him off dismissively. "Alexis knows how I like my coffee. Just make sure it's still hot when you get back!"

"I've got something hot for you," he muttered " but under his breath, and with a smile. Better a bossy Moonie lounging on the couch than a sad and angry one breeding strife in the ktchen. He'd forgotten about her hearing though " she had ears like a bat, astounding given her penchant for listening to hard rock at earthshaking volumes.

"If you'd rather, you could spend the time cleaning up in here-? she started to say. He responded by sprinting full tilt for the door, and she grinned when its slam cut her off before she'd half finished her sentence.

Smog and soot stained the sky above the West End a permanent dingy color, like the nicotine colored walls of a smoker's apartment. The air still carried the last of the summer heat, thick with the smells of the slums " smoke and chemical fumes, garbage left laying on the curb too long, the pungent stench of decaying meat with underlying hints of something even fouler, exhaled from a nearby storm drain. Grey stood on the brownstone's porch and looked around the neighborhood, a benevolent King surveying his demesne. Cobbled streets here, a cul de sac lined with brownstonesonce identical, now heavily redecorated and redesigned by their inhabitants, with a serviceable fountain in the middle. The water was clean and clear, something of a miracle in the West End. One of the neighbors was using it to do laundry. Grey took a deep breath of the early afternoon air, coughed, and dug his cigarettes out of his pocket. Trailing a thin column of smoke behind him like a locomotive at full steam, he started on his way.

The barricade barring vehicle access to their court wasn't manned today; unless one of the local gangs was causing trouble or an actual riot was underway, it usually stood abandoned, its solid presence " junked cars, a few ripped up couches, a solid oak door ripped off a home over in the next street during one of said riots " sufficing to keep traffic out of the neighborhood. None of the residents drove, or wanted much to do with those who did, although Grey often thought of getting a motorcycle. The last time he'd brought the matter up, Sadie had simply said that it wouldn't be practical. Moonie had sighed and pointed out that Grey wasn't particularly practical, either, but that hadn't stopped them from taking him in.

He was still trying to figure out if getting a bike would prove her right or not, with the sneaking suspicion that it probably would. He still wanted one, though.

One of the mixed blessings of living in the West End is that, lacking much in the way of a central civic authority, the task of naming streets fell largely to those people who lived there. This was a positive because, frankly, nobody really wanted to live on "Happy Valley Lane," or a court named for some long-dead financial contributor; a negative because the names changed almost daily, everyone wanted to live on 'Bad A*s Road,' '8 Mile,' or 'Soho,' and it's not like the mail ever got delivered, anyway.

The long and short of it was that traditional addresses were useless when it came to navigating your way around the End, so most people relied on dead reckoning and landmarks. Grey, a lifelong resident, wholeheartedly subscribed to this philosophy when he bothered to think about it; he generally got around in a sort of Zen trance, focused more on what was around him than where he was. Failure to do so often ended in a fairly permanent state of 'dead'. When he did take notice of, say, the route to Java Hell, he didn't think of it as: take a left out of 'Knight's Court' onto 'Allison Road', going down three blocks, hang a right onto 'Soho' " one of at least six that he knew of, or maybe they could all be considered the same street, just in six different parts of town " ignore the dead end sign on 'Nowhere Alley' and emerge onto another 'Soho,' right next to the rear entrance of Our Lady of Perpetual Misery and thus, just around the building and across the plaza from Java Hell. No, instead he took a left once outside the barricade, went down until he saw the burned out hovertank " relic of some war or another, it had been little more than a death trap waiting to happen in the technology-hostile streets of the West End, and remained because it was simply too heavy to haul away for scrap " to take a right. Down further until he spotted the familiar alley " sometimes it liked to hide itself, as though shy, and then you had to watch for the cats. The alley cats were never fooled by the tricks the West End insisted on playing, and watching them walk back and forth through apparently solid walls was just one of the many things that often drive newcomers to the zone into hysterical breakdowns. Over the fence " sometimes chain link, sometimes board, sometimes yellowed bone and overgrown with razorvine " and there's Perp Miz, probably the longest lasting and most famous landmark in the West End, although nobody's memory really ran that long.

Westies tended to die young, after all.

Depending on traffic, weather, and city conditions " riots, block parties, fires, floods, invasions and insurrections were all more or less par for the course in the West End, and were at times hard to distinguish from each other " the trip from Grey's flop to Java Hell usually ran less than half an hour, even as short as ten minutes if he felt motivated to run. Today's distraction was a mugging.

Not his, of course. Reputations got around, and most Westies recognized Grey as someone with just enough connections to be problematic without being wealthy enough to be worth the trouble. No, some poor clueless sod from uptown had made the mistake of coming down to the slums to see what the fuss was about, and now got to learn firsthand that desperate people make for violent ends. Grey was about to pass on when he got a glimpse of the mark through the curtain of bodies backing her against a wall.

Hey, she's pretty cute. Sir Grey, Knight of the Post, to the rescue.

"'allo, 'allo, 'allo," he said cheerfully, coming to a stop a sensible distance away from the pack. "What 'ave we 'ere, now?" The muggers turned and looked him up and down. In unison, they gave him a contemptuous look and turned back to their prey. They must have practiced that, Grey thought, amused. The girl gave him a desperate look, her eyes wide and panicked. She wasn't much older than him, and he thought her blouse and skirt might be what was passing for trendy among the college kids uptown these days. He never really bothered with fashion, but they looked expensive enough " or had, at least. Their artful tears and smudges had been accented with some real ones now, and the growing bruise and fear on her face did little to mar her beauty. Grey looked the men up and down " uniformly taller than he was, thick with muscles that looked sculpted by weight machines and exercise rooms. Four of them, clad in near identical 'gangsta' hip clothing, baggy pants and sports jerseys, trendy label names that purported to be the fashion of the streets and were too expensive for anyone actually living on the streets to afford " he had to sigh and shake his head.

"You boys ain't from around here, are you?"

That got their attention, and the one he guessed was the leader turned around while two of his buddies grabbed the girl, ignoring her frantic slaps and kicks. "What's it to you, piker?" Grey held up his hands with an easy smile.

"Hey, it's nothin' but a giggle to me, man. Just thinkin' of your safety an' all, you know" I mean, this is Mako turf. They don't much like a bunch of uptown punks steppin', know what I mean?"

"Who you calling a punk?" The leader took a threatening step forward, and Grey gave ground easily. "How about I bust your face in, you little sh*t?"

"Here's how I see it. Y'all decided to come on down to the West End, see if it was just as bad as everyone was always saying it was. And then you see a bit of tasty on the streets and you think, hey, this West End ain't all that bad, I mean, nobody's shot us yet, so why don't we just grab what we like and pretend we're King High Muckety Muck down here?" He slid back and to the side as the uptown punk grabbed at him, easily avoiding the larger man's clumsy swipe. "Well, I'd hate for y'all to go away disappointed and stuff, so..." The pistol came out from behind his back and barked once, twice, barely audible. Someone watching from an upstairs window hooted and clapped as the punk dropped, screaming, clutching at his suddenly useless legs. Grey brought the pistol back up before the other three could react.

"Well, there's your bullets, boys. How about you hobble along back uptown before someone bigger and nastier than me decides to give you a couple more" That's fine, just leave the lady, I'll keep her company. Toodle on, now." They grabbed their friend and hurried up the street, pausing at what they evidently thought was a safe distance to hurl threats and insults back at him. He responded with a couple more shots, peppering them with dust and cobblestone shrapnel until they broke and ran. "Ah, another pleasant day in the West End. You look like hell, darlin'." He looked the girl up and down as she sniffled and hugged herself. Her terrified look made it plain that she wasn't sure if this was a rescue or if she'd merely stepped out of the frying pan and into something a lot hotter. "Cheer up, you're still alive, you've got your clothes and virtue mostly intact, and here's a handsome young fellow to buy you a cup of coffee and show you the way back to the Market. What could be better?" He rubbed the runes inscribed in the barrel, secretly relieved that once again, the weapon hadn't failed him. It took some pretty expensive enchantments, constant maintenance, and a lot of luck to keep an automatic pistol working in the West End. He dropped the magazine, popped in a fresh one, and slid the weapon back behind his shirt " taking a quick glance around to make sure he wouldn't need it again.

"That's a fence?" the girl sounded doubtful, and Grey blinked, looked, and had to sigh. The West End was up to its usual tricks again; today, the barricade across Nowhere Alley was a hedge all of a foot high, little more than a dividing line. He shrugged.

"Well, it could be worse," he mused philosophically. "Last time I was through here, it was a ten foot high slab of steel with automated turrets on top of it. Lucky for me they were just shooting paintballs." He could feel her staring at him, obviously wondering if he was joking. He gave her a charming smile and a hand over the hedge.

"Where does this alley go?" Kyrie asked. He wondered if she was always this full of questions, or just became filled with them when she was out of her depth, as though compensating for the pressure differential. Feeling magnanimous, he didn't mind the never ending rain of queries; it was, he imagined, something like taking a niece or nephew out for a walk in the park, having to field a rain of 'whys' and 'whats'. Not that he had a niece or nephew; his little sister, last time he'd talked to her, hadn't gotten around to squeezing out any kids yet. Fifteen wasn't too young to start a family in the West End, but Shina had gotten the hell out of the West End as soon as she could, moving in with a wealthy family in the East End to work as a maid. She and Grey didn't talk much, their worlds being just about as different as they could be while still residing on the same planet.

"Soho," he said instead, cutting off that line of thought before he could wander too far down it and risk becoming morose.

"Weren't we just on Soho?"

"Different Soho. Street names don't mean a lot around here." He shrugged, then grinned at the expression on her face. "You're thinking too much. Just roll with it. The good news is, we're just about at Java Hell. That big wall in front of you is the rear of Our Lady of Perpetual Misery. Now, a lot of people say that it's the only church in the West End, but that's just not true. Sure, it's the biggest one, but there's lots of little temples and churches scattered around, if you know where to look for them. Thing is, most of the them aren't the kinds of places decent people want to deal with."

"Decent people and the West End don't seem to go hand in hand," she muttered.

"Hey now," He stopped and grabbed her arm lightly, turning her to look at him. She flinched back in fear, but he ignored it. "There's lots of decent people in the West End, just trying to make a living. They may be poor, but they've got morals and ethics just as straight and narrow as any muckety muck in the Market or Old Town. Just because they live here doesn't matter a whit; hell, look at me, taking you under my wing and all."

"You're only helping me because you think I'm cute!" she protested. He shrugged, letting go of her arm.

"So' I'm still helping you. I don't take a tour in your neighborhood and crap on the streets, so do me a favor and don't crap on mine, okay?" He started off down the alley again, and after a second, could hear her hurry to catch up to him again. "Anyway, like I was saying, Our Lady of Perpetual Misery is the biggest church in the West End, the best known, and probably most important, it doesn't move around."

"Move around?"

He sighed. "Pay attention, dear. The deeper you get into the West End, the less constant things are. Le Miz here is on the outskirts of the End, so that she stays put." He patted the thick wall as they passed by it, circling around the church. As usual, there were a host of kids running about the front steps, playing and laughing. He shot a sidelong glance at Kyrie; she seemed fascinated to find joy and laughter here. He didn't have the heart to tell her that half of those kids would either be dead or have killed someone by the time they were her age. One of them, marked by his bright red duffel bag, caught his eye and he raised a hand in greeting. The boy nodded back gravely, but made no move to come over and talk. Grey was cool with that; the duffel meant that Corey was working, and it best for his neutral status not to be seen associating with a known lowlife like Grey. "That constancy makes Perp Miz a fine landmark for navigating from, and makes this one of the more valued areas as far as commerce goes. That also means that they get more than usual protection from the Watch; this is damn near the only place in the West End where you can reliably find a Guardsman, other than maybe under their beds at their chapterhouse. The gangs treat this as neutral ground, too, so it's one of the few places you'll find everyone mingling and chatting."

Kyrie looked around the plaza skeptically. Grey held up a finger. "This is also the easiest way to get back to the prettier parts of the city. You just head up the street there-" he pointed. "-and across the bridge, and you're back safe and sound. But first, coffee!" He started off across the plaza, pigeons fluttering before him like a raising curtain. "Java Hell's the best coffee in the West End, which isn't saying much," he said as he opened the door for her " a hidden bell ringing merrily. He bowed her in ahead of him. "But it's also the best coffee in the city, and the beignets are pretty fine to boot." She paused in the entrance, looking around the coffee shop with the same skepticism she'd shown the plaza, at first, soon replaced by a look of surprised delight. Java Hell was always filled with the rich smell of brewing espresso and baking pastries, spiced with the scent of cloves from Alex's cigarettes. She was the only one permitted to smoke in the building, an unusual policy for the West End, but one universally respected for fear of being banished from the premises.

"Beignets?" Kyrie tried out the unfamiliar word, and looked to him for explanation.

"Little pastries," Grey held his fingers a few inches apart. "Like donut holes, covered with powdered sugar. They're delicious, but if you eat too many of them your ass is gonna get hu-" A paper coffee cup, fortunately empty, bounced off his head and he grinned. "Why, Alex! Good morning, my dear, I didn't notice you there."

The slim, pretty black woman behind the counter folded her arms across her chest and fixed him with a stare that was pointedly not amused. "Girly, is this boy-" she emphasized the word. "-bothering you? Grey, are you kidnapping uptowners off the streets again?" Grey held his hands up in wounded innocence while Kyrie sputtered, trying to defend him.

"C'mon, Alex," he wheedled. "You know I quit that when they stopped paying the ransoms. I mean, seriously, have you seen how much they eat' I was spending more to keep them than they were worth, even when I tried putting them out on the street." The two Westies shared a laugh while Kyrie lapsed into a shocked silence, obviously trying to figure out if they were joking.

"Don't let Grey bother you, lady," Alex said with a smile, resting her arms on the counter. "I wouldn't call him 'harmless', but he means well. Except when he's trying to get in your pants, then he's relentless."

"I wouldn't say relentless," Grey said modestly. "More like, 'not easily dissuaded.'"

"There's 'not easily dissuaded,' Grey, and then there's 'interprets being maced as being flirtatious behavior.'" Alex said dryly. "Now, which one were you again?"

"So, coffee!" Grey changed the subject and turned to Kyrie. "Do you drink coffee regularly' I would recommend Alex's cappuccino, it's truly wonderful stuff."

"Flatterer," Alex smirked and started setting up the espresso machine. "Usual for you, Grey?"

"Don't worry about it," Grey patted her on the shoulder. "You couldn't have known."

"But....how can you do that' Selling drugs is like slave trading - you're dealing in human misery! I know you said you get what people want, but-" Kyrie was flustered, to say the least, and her hands traced intricate patterns in the air. Grey bit back the urge to laugh at her - barely.

"And that's exactly what I do. Look, everyone's got their own way of feeling good. What the hell difference does it make if it comes from a bottle, or from a pill" People are always chasing after happiness, and at least if they get it from me they know it's going to be clean, and it's going to be quality. I provide a service, nothing less, nothing more."

"Funny how often that service gets people killed, isn't it?" The machine whistled and expelled more steam, and Alex lined up a row of Java Hell branded cups and went down them, deftly measuring off shots of espresso into each, not bothering to look up as she spoke.

"Hey, like that Guardsman you used to hang around with always said - everyone goes to Hell their own way. At least my way means I get a cut off from theirs, and that keeps me alive, whole, able to buy delicious baked goods and caffeinated beverages, and thus support my friendly local businesses."

"You really are a disgusting little man, Grey." Alexis capped the drinks and set them next to the stacked boxes of beignets.

"And yet you still take my filthy money, Alexis, even though it's bought with blood, death, misery, and all sorts of other icky stuff." He set a small stack of coins on the counter, and tossed a couple more into the tip jar. "Just like you deal with all the rest of us disgusting vermin that live down here in the West End, even though your coffee's the best in the city and you could make three times as much if your store was in the Marketplace. So, really, which of us is worse" Me, for making a living here as best I can - or you, for choosing to slum down here with us" Speaking of," he glanced at Kyrie. "If you step out of the shop and take a right, you can see the Marketplace bridge. Look me up if you decided to come slumming again, I'll be happy to show you another sparking good time." He winked at her and filled his arms with coffee and pastries, easily juggling them into place on his way to the door.

"Grey!"

"Until next time, dear Alex." He turned and half-bowed, mocking.

"Grey, I saw Sadie this morning." She said in a rush. He paused with his hand on the door, and looked back over his shoulder at her.

"So?" He raised an eyebrow.

"She stopped by a couple hours ago and bought coffee. For all three of you." Alex folded her arms across her chest, looking uncomfortable. Grey let his hand slide off the door.

"Really' Moonie didn't say anything about that." He frowned, trying to remember if he'd seen fresh Java Hell cups in the kitchen. It was hard to tell if they would even have been visible in the disaster area Moonie had made of it, but he was pretty sure she would have said something before sending him out for coffee, even if it was only a mocking comment about how they'd split his while he overslept.

"Yeah, well, you know Sadie. Maybe she got distracted on the way home, or maybe she decided to share it with the bums in Doolan Park or something." Alex shrugged, and Grey mirrored it, trying to ignore the twinge in the back of his mind.

"Thanks, Alex." He rested his weight against the door and pushed it open. "Nice meeting you, Kyrie. Stay out of trouble, hey?"

"Right....nice meeting you, too." The girl looked uneasy, clutching her coffee cup between her hands as though it were a lifeline. He flashed her a quick grin.

"Really, lady, you're safe now. Well, as safe as you are anywhere in Rhydin, anyway. Ta!" The door bell made his departure sound merry, but his thoughts were anything but.

Grey felt his heart skip a beat.

It wasn't unusual to leave your door open in the West End, at least during the day - after all, it wasn't like one could rely on air conditioning or cooling charms. In the summer, people often slept on the roofs to escape the heat, after taking the necessary precautions to ensure they'd wake up safe the next morning. This usually meant, at a minimum, an armed guard throughout the night; in a city that counted vampires among its largest minorities, one couldn't be too careful.

It was, however, unusual for Moonie to leave the door open when Grey wasn't there. It was even more unusual for her to leave the door open, but the windows shut - it usually worked the other way around, if she was trying to air out the house, for example. There was no point inviting trouble when you lived in a neighborhood that had plenty to spare.

Most damning, it wasn't a particularly hot day out; barely 70, and unlikely to climb too much higher this time of year.

Grey took the front steps nimbly and nudged the door open with his foot, wishing he had a spare hand so that he could rest it on a weapon. There was probably no cause for alarm - or so he kept telling himself. The thought didn't do a damned thing to alleviate the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

The front hall was empty, offering a clear view to the living room. No movement, nothing out of place. "Hey," he called, trying to keep his voice jovial. "Breakfast's ready! Someone wanna give me a hand?" The house was still and quiet, an oasis of calm. He strained his ears, listening, but only the normal din of the city came back at him; people chattering, shouts and laughter, the grumble of engines, spellboxes, and animal-drawn wagons and carriages lumbering over cobbled streets. "Moonie" Sadie" ...Roach?" He stepped cautiously through the door, instinctively slipping into a half-crouched shuffle, like a man gingerly crossing a darkened room - ready to spring or flee at the first provocation. To the left, the stairs to the second floor were littered with the usual debris; shoes and jackets, stacks of mail carefully filed away to be ignored, all the daily minutiae that no doubt had better places to be, if only someone could think of where. At least once a week, one of them would nearly break their neck tripping over something on the stairs, and then they would all make noises about cleaning off the steps. Sometimes, they even did. It never lasted.

The kitchen, to the right, gave him pause. It was clean. He spared a moment's goggle-eyed stare, bewildered by the change. He'd only been gone a half-hour; forty, forty-five minutes at the longest. He'd expected to come back and find the job not even begun yet, maybe even be treated to the sight of Moonie venting her frustrations on Roach - or trying to. Moonie had a mean right hook, but Roach had a lifetime's experience in ducking and dodging. Then they would eat beignets and drink coffee while watching Roach putter around the kitchen until - inevitably - the mooch made some excuse and vanished.

Grey set the boxes of pastries and the tray of drinks down on the kitchen table, noting in passing that even the ceiling eggs had been cleaned off. The place wasn't exactly gleaming, but it was almost back to Sadie's impeccable standards - and of course, worlds better than it had been that morning. Even the sink of dishes had been done, and the unbroken plates were resting in the drying rack, waiting to be shelved.

"Guys?" He slipped his pistol out, thumbing the engraved runes on the butt nervously. He felt a little ridiculous at the temerity that prompted him to draw it, but wasn't quite willing to put it away yet, either. "Anybody home" Where could they be? Moonie hadn't said anything about going out, had she" And it wasn't like Roach to disappear when there was food in the offering. "Everybody's lost but me," he muttered, moving down the hall to the living room. At least the mysterious cleaning plague hadn't spread this far - the place was still a wreck. He tried to compare its current state with how he remembered it, gave up. He rested one hand on the couch cushions, trying to tell if someone had been laying there recently. They felt warm - or maybe he was imagining it. His lips quirked involuntarily. Who the hell are you supposed to be, Grey - CSI" Detective Inspector Holmes? Elementary my dear faceless assistant; I can tell from the grooves in this couch cushion that, until we arrived, it was graced with the lovely arse of a natural blonde, perhaps six foot two, less than a hundred pounds....Bull. He looked around the room again, chewed at his lower lip. He could tell from here that nobody was in the downstairs half-bath, and the closets were too full of miscellaneous crap for anyone to fit into - you'd have to pull out a metric ton of board games, coats, shoes, boxes, defunct appliances, and other clutter to fit a dismembered body in there, and all of that would show. He glanced at the living room mess suspiciously, then shrugged. Yeah, even in here, it would show.

That left upstairs.

Sadie's room was clean and squared away. She lived minimally - a surplus Army cot with neatly pressed sheets and gray wool blankets liberated from a civil defense bunker somewhere, a handful of battered, well-loved stuffed animals and horse figurines the only touches of character allowed. A low bookcase, the tomes bending its plywood shelves carefully alphabetized by subject. Grey didn't have to open the closet to know the inside would be more of the same - rigorous order, the juxtaposition of which with Sadie's preferred attire of Gypsy skirts and colorful blouses would no doubt make Grey's head hurt. He moved on towards Moonie's bedroom, pausing to glance into the bathroom. Despite being as much common territory as the living room was, the upstairs bathroom was painfully, neurotically clean. It was kept that way by liberal applications of cleaning fluids so caustic they were kept in glass bottles, and Sadie employed several fairly elaborate protective charms to keep them from melting their way through even that.

Grey privately suspected that they were asking for trouble, keeping something so dangerous around in the fickle antimagic, but having some of the things evolving in barroom privies in Rhydin proper - much less the strange, twisting ways of the West End - he raised no objections. It was the closest thing to taking off and nuking the site from orbit they could accomplish and still be able to kick back with a beer downstairs after.

Last door in the hall. Moonie's room.

He felt a tremor of apprehension unrelated to the one that had him creeping around, gun drawn, like some kind of action movie hero. Moonie's room was off limits, hallowed ground - she demanded privacy, some little piece of territory that was solely hers, and defended it the way a mother bear protected her cubs. Maybe it was a lingering hangup left over from a childhood where everything was share and share alike. Whatever her reasoning, Moonie had accepted the smallest room in the house and the trade off was that nobody violated it. Ever.

Grey rubbed his thumb over the gun's carved runes and gnawed his lip nervously. Just to be on the safe side, he tried calling out again. The house kept up its unbroken streak of silence; there was no response. Well aware that he was breaking taboo, he rapped on the door lightly - still more than loud enough to wake Moonie, who rarely more than dozed - and then tried the knob, teeth gritted in anticipation of the heavenly blow that would surely strike him down for this.

The gods withheld their wrath. There wasn't even the tingle of a warding charm or the resistance of a lock or bolt to slow the quiet, easy swing of the oiled hinges, opening welcomingly into the forbidden territory. The room was empty of importance; no Moonie, no Sadie, no Roach. Nobody home. Having never seen the secret sanctum of Moonchild McClure before, Grey couldn't tell if anything was out of place. There could be a thousand clues in the scattered clothing heaps, in the piles of dirty dishes, in the posters of rock bands hailed as "classics" when Moonie's parents had been teenagers. With a sigh, Grey shut the door closed again.

"Everybody's lost but me," he mourned quietly.

A noise set the hair on the back of his neck upright, sent a rush of cold up and down his spine. A strange, moist sound, like distant breathing. Grey spun, cat light on his feet. Someone was at the end of the hall.

Someone with a gun in their hand.

"Hey, where is Moonie?" Gray followed the mooch into the kitchen, his empty stomach and jangled nerves reminding him that they could use a little caffeine and sugar-induced bliss, as well. Roach already had the top off his coffee and most of a beignet stuffed in his mouth, powdered sugar covering the lower half of his face like a stock broker on a six-figure bender.

"Dunno," he managed around a mouthful of fried dough. "She got a call, said it was important. Stepped outside a few minutes before I took the trash out."

Gray blinked. "Moonie has a cell phone?" That was a new development.

"Evidently so," Roach said in a tone that, from anyone else, Gray would have described as dry. Coming from Roach, he dismissed it as pastry crumb induced distortion.

"She say who it was?" He regretted it even before Roach gave him the trademark West End "bitch, you crazy" stare. "Yeah, okay, stupid question. Fair cop." Roach nodded in agreement and stuffed another beignet in his mouth. Gray popped the top off his coffee and sipped, lost in thought as he looked around the kitchen.

More questions come begging for answers. Cell phones weren't cheap or common in the West End - or anywhere else in Rhydin, for that matter. Easier to find a molecular de-atomizer or a World War II issue flammenwerfer than a working mobile, mostly because there was more call to light someone on fire - or disassemble them on an atomic level - than to ring them up for a friendly chat. The necessary infrastructure to support a cell network was mostly lacking, as well; even in the more stable parts of the city, the landscape could change on an almost daily basis, and many of the residents had somewhat - loose - definitions regarding the lifespan of a structure they weren't, personally, making use of. More than one budding entrepeneur had woken up to find his cell towers beginning their new life as girders, or rebar. And then, as cannot be repeated too often, there was the West End - a neighborhood which gave whole new meanings to the phrase "dead zone."

Gray had one, the latest and greatest - fresh off the back of a truck run by a sweaty, tentacled thing from another dimension who was peddling them for a fare home and swore up and down that they could withstand damn near anything and go anywhere; fire, water, the absolute chill of space, even, all without loss of signal or service. Thus far, the West End seemed to be winning; he could count on both hands the number of calls successfully completed without being interrupted by static, weird voices, bizarre noises, or just plain disconnected. In typical Gray fashion, he had it mostly so he could ignore it - having a contact number and a voice mail box (which he usually checked from a number of discrete barroom pay phones around the city) drastically cut down on the number of customers hammering down his door at midnight in search of a late-night hookup.

But why would Moonie have one" He opened his mouth to speculate out loud, only to discover Roach had disappeared again, taking his breakfast with him. He quirked his lips - typical Roach! - and then groaned aloud as he realized this meant the responsibility of tweezering bits of broken bong out of the upstairs carpet devolved to him.