I had some plans for things to do with my return to the Greater North-East. A bunch of them had to do with the tabletop gaming I was planning on doing with my late friend Mike Satran.
One of them was the return to the game of Eiko Takashima. Click to continue reading.
The capitol of Andoran was bright, warm, and had a great and open plaza called the Field of Concord. Mostly used for mercantile pursuits, it also had a number of places where performers would play, some prepaid and some professional buskers.
Juliette d’Aubigniy was one of the latter. Her instrument case lay before her as she played her fiddle, sang, and danced (sometimes one, sometimes two, and a few times all three at once). She had gathered a rather decent crowd, her auburn locks swinging about as she performed, and she was pleased with the amount of money she had made.
Boston, MA
The call had come on Marishka’s phone, and so there she was at the Model Cafe again. The place was mostly empty, even the usual drunks gone. Anatoly didn’t seem that angry, just nodded to her as she walked in, and gestured towards the back.
11 PM on a Friday night in November in Boston was typically cold. Today, however, was unusually warm for the time of year, and The Night found herself glad she no longer sported a full-head hood. Good for secrecy; not so good for the heat.
Sophia Rothman looked up at the production assistant. “I’m trying to get this pyro working, Jen. The shoot starts in half an hour, and if this doesn’t go off, friggin’ ponytail-boy’s going to have his ass in a major bind.”
“I know, I know, but this guy says he knows you from a long time ago. And, uh, he’s kinda sounds like he’s part of a Family, yanno?” Jen was born-and-bred New Yorker, and if she said that? There was one guy it could be, and she tried not to let the fact her heart felt like it had turned to ice in her chest show on her face.
I slipped in the window, which had been left open for me. The crime scene had been processed; the coroner’s on-site prelim completed. The only person in the room besides me was Detective Sergeant Patrick Mulligan. I knew Mulligan – he was an honest cop who admitted that sometimes, a costume could handle things a uniform couldn’t. At the same time, I was not on the Boston PD’s list of approved people to call in, which meant that he wasn’t sure the PD could handle it. Or there was another reason. A call on the way over to my contact in the coroner’s office confirmed it for me.
I looked out over the city. Dark and full of history, and full of darkness under it. The birthplace of liberty and revolution… and the Irish Mob.
Boston. Home.
(This story is actually the first of the cycle, preceding other published stories.)
The trip from the bus was short. This morning she’d gotten off the ship at the Port of Newark. A walk, a bus to Newark, then Greyhound to New York. An hour got her something American to eat (she’d learned to like Filipino food, but man, that first hot dog…), then to the next bus, to Boston. She walked to Downtown Crossing, then caught the Orange Line to Haymarket, then another bus to where she’d lived. She’d had enough money to afford the trip.
The pay for a dockhand had been okay, especially since it was mostly off the books, and the captain would be annoyed at her desertion, but also pleased to have “{tooltip}Lilamata{end-text}Purple-Eyes{end-tooltip}” (as he’d called her) off his ship, getting rid of the woman and the bad luck superstitious sailors thought women brought on board. Click to continue reading.
James Donobran stepped out into the rain, locking the door of his brownstone behind him. He muttered two short incantations: one summoned a small dome of force above him, and the other cloaked it to make it invisible. He flipped the collar of his coat up to keep the wind off, and stepped off into the streets. His goal was a couple blocks away. Should be simple, a quick errand.
Allston, MA
10:22 PM
Mellisa Flanagan, or more accurately with how she dressed and with her clip-on hair extensions on, Marishka Petrovskaya, walked down the block, a few blocks from the club she’d kidnapped a mob boss’s son from a few weeks before, hands in her pockets and head down. She was going to her favorite (not favorite) dive to talk to someone she could get information from. The weather was cool, and a little rainy, and she wasn’t enjoying it. She would have preferred to be up there, above the streets, running across the rooftops and launching herself with her swingline, the wind in her face.
So intent in her grumpiness was she that she nearly was surprised by the three large men in t-shirts, jeans, leather jackers, and boots, all with the particular hairstyle popular with the not-quite-made-men associated with the Patriarca crime family’s street muscle. One of them sported a bandage across the front of his somewhat crooked nose.
