self_inflictedexhile | nysm / tvd } { if you will, please move in closer

nysm / tvd } { if you will, please move in closer

In another lifetime, Dylan Rhodes never existed. In another lifetime, he didn't need to, because Lionel Shrike never drown in the Hudson River, Dylan Rhodes stayed Jacob Shrike, and his life went in a very different direction.

At age fifteen, his father started teaching him the tricks of the trade: sleight of hand, how to build a rig, how to do a little bit of actual magic, despite the fact that probably wasn't something he should be sharing, just yet. Shortly after that, Jacob met a young Alma Dray, tagging along with her grandfather, a friend of his father's, stopping by to check up on him. They grew up together, life continued on, and Jacob eventually went to college for Theatre Design and Stagecraft. At twenty-two, just after graduation, Jacob was chosen to join the Eye, his test to help the LVPD clear the name of another magician, despite all the evidence in the world making him seem guilty as sin. There, Jacob met Michael Fuller, his partner a lifetime away, and the two became friends as they managed, despite all odds, to pull off what had been asked of Jacob by the Eye. He continued on into a career as a stage magician in the Eye, eventually married Alma, and continued to occasionally work with Fuller as a consultant, when time allowed.

Over the course of the next few decades, Jacob and Alma tried to have children and failed, and eventually adopted one Jack Wilder, age 10. Using Eye resources, he helped Merritt McKinney get a good lawyer and clear his name after his brother screwed him over. He followed the rising stars that were J. Daniel Atlas and Henley Reeves, and when they decided to call it quits, pulled the both of them back together, forcing Daniel to give Henley a more active role in the show. And eventually, yes, he called the four of them together, not for revenge but something similar, to get them into the Eye. And somewhere along the way, Jacob and Alma tried for children again, and this time managed, giving Jack a brother, Lio, Lionel, named after his grandfather.

Basically, this is the best possible timeline.

And now, it's just after dinner, Jacob off to his nightly rehearsal at 5Pointz, that his space, now, like his father before him. He takes a detour tonight, though, to grab a cup of coffee, beforehand, a little bit of magic pulled around him, to make himself not completely invisible, but at least a little less noticeable. Normally, he doesn't mind showing off or signing autographs, when a fan approaches, and fans do often approach, his notoriety somewhere up there with Penn and Teller, Seigfried and Roy, but -- not tonight. He's not feeling it tonight, a little tired for whatever reason, hence the coffee, so magic it is. And now he's sitting at a table, idly people-watching as he leans into his cup. Have at him, if you can still see him (or, maybe, in certain party's cases, sense him) despite his best efforts.

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Galaxy Diner, at 7pm?

There are usually enough people there, he thinks, without risking having their conversation overheard. And while his fame might be an issue, with that many people around -- well, she's already seen how he usually deals with that. She can just follow the pull of his magic to find him, when she gets there.

See you there.

And five minutes early, Jose makes her way into the diner and glances around for any sign of Dylan, both magically and visually. When she doesn't see him, she finds a booth to slide into to wait, anxiously drumming her finger against the table.

Dylan, meanwhile, enters a few minutes later. He, too, pauses in the lobby, looking around, seemingly unnoticed by the waitstaff, and -- well, he doesn't take him long to spot her. He heads in her direction then, sliding into the opposite side of the booth as he reaches it.

After a heartbeat's worth of time taken to settle, he prompts, "So?"

He can tell she's probably not in the mood for pleasantries or small talk.

"So."

Let's talk about monsters.

"A Croatoan is a creature summoned by a witch that's designed ferret out secrets. The problem is, once you summon it, it doesn't care who you are - if you have a secret, it will kill you. More specifically ..."

She pauses long enough to bring up a picture on her phone and passes it over to him.

"It turns you into goop. We never really figured out why. It might just be the way it feeds."

Taking the phone from her, Dylan examines the picture, his expression caught somewhere between horror and disgust. He shakes his head, trying to dismiss the feelings as he passes her phone back to her.

"Alright, so ... I'm guessing that means the witch is probably goo, somewhere." If the thing doesn't care who it kills, it seems likely that it would have turned on its summoner, first. "Which rules out trying to find them and get them to take it back or whatever."

Through force or threat of it or otherwise.

"Possibly, yeah. Alternatively, if their secrets were pretty minimal, he might have passed them up for someone juicier."

It depends on how many secerts the witch in question was keeping. When it was in Mystic Falls, it made a beeline for Hope because she happened to be keeping a massive secret, and Josie was able to dissuade it from eating Hope and her sister by exposing that secret big time.

"Or ... it is a three hundred year-old spell and they found a way to modify it to protect themselves. Either way, we need to find who the witch is, because even if the witch isn't still alive, we can use a token from them to dispel it."

Which is a lot of information, so she's going to give him a minute to take that in, just in case monster hunting isn't as old hat for him as it is for her. At the ripe old age of twenty.

It is what it is.

So, they do need to find the witch. Okay, he can work with that. Monster hunting may not be old hat for him, but he can't let something he could have stopped hurt people -- and he has resources that might be able to help, between the Eye and the FBI-via-Fuller.

"You hot any idea where to start?"

"Well. You know the witch community here better than I do."

They could just track the piles of slop back to the source, because the Croatoan fed as it moved from point A to point B, but there might be a faster, less gross option.

"Do you know if there's anyone that's been yelling at hypocrisy lately?"

Most of the people Dylan associates with are good people, so he wouldn't have thought to start with someone in the community here. He can't think of anyone, at all, actually, for how careful the Eye is in vetting its members. No one who gets in would up and start killing people, he thinks, and that in mind, he starts to shake his head.

He stops when it occurs to him that not everyone gets into the Eye, and they have had recent failed applicants.

"Not hypocrisy, exactly," he answers instead, that in mind, "but we had someone who wanted in on what we do, who we turned down. He wasn't exactly happy."

Josie's eyebrows go up, because yep, that would do it. How better to get back at a secret society than to create a monster that hunts secrets. That certainly would be the right place to start.

"Do you know if he's still in the city?"

Because that is what they in the business call a lead.

"I don't," Dylan answers, making a face. Despite that, though, after a moment, he amends, "But it probably wouldn't be hard to find out. And if he's not, we can at least snoop around where he was staying."

One way or another, they might come back with something, through all of that.

"Lemme make a couple of calls?" he finishes, already reaching for his pocket, for his phone.

She nods, before reaching for one of the menus. "We should probably eat anyway." Monster hunting is generally best done with full energy reserves. While he's touching base with his contacts, she'll order the food, if he tells her what he wants.

Multitasking, a college student's best friend.

"Probably, yeah," Dylan allows, scooting back out of the booth. He figures he'll get up and go back out to the lobby, to make his calls, so he's not trying to shout over her, the waitstaff, and the rest of the people here just eating dinner. Plus, without him hanging around, their waiter might actually come around in the first place.

"Beyond Burger, side of fries, bottle of root beer," he asks, almost apologetically.

"You got it."

Josie doesn't mind. She's going to spend the time he's gone texting Hope to see if there were any other spells that helped fend off a Croatoan. Hope will be Rightly Concerned, but Josie is fine! Totally fine! They already have a lead on the perpetrator.

Hope demands that Josie check in when it's done and if she doesn't hear from her in twenty-four hours she's calling her brother Marcel.

When Dylan returns, Josie is likely rolling her eyes as she munches on some fries.

"Everything alright?" he asks as he slides back into the booth. He can recognize something like frustration in that eyerolling, but he's not sure what the source of it is. He'll move onto what he found out, once he's sure nothing is immediately on fire, here.

"Oh, fine. Just a concerned best friend."

Because that's really what Hope is, even after all the bouncing back and forth they've done over the years.

"She was one of the people who fought the Croatoan last time, and I was seeing if she had any tips."

"Does she? 'Cause I might have a lead."

And if they're actually going to encounter this thing or its creator tonight, he'd like to know what to expect, what works -- that kind of thing. He's pretty sure the both of them have plenty of people who would be very put out, if they didn't come back.

"It essentially amounts to hitting it hard or revealing a super huge secret, so finding the witch is still our best bet." She shifts to face him a little more, intent an learning what this lead is. "What have you got?"

"Last known address," Dylan answers, shifting a little to reach for his pocket. Rather than come up with his phone again, as one might expect, however, he pushes a napkin with an address written on it across the table, instead. "Nobody I talked to seemed to know if the guy was still there, but even if he's not, he might've left something behind we can use."

Josie takes the address and trades it for his food, that was sitting there waiting for him to eat. It's the caretaker in her - that plus it would be a waste of food. While he eats, she will search the address on her phone to see how far they have to go.

"Doesn't look like it's too far from here. We can probably make it on foot." And by on foot she means not needing to hop on the subway to get there.

"Yeah, it looked pretty close." Dylan may not have know where it was exactly, but he's lived in New York all his life. He probably narrowed it down to a neighborhood, as soon as his contact with the Eye gave him the address.

Either way, belatedly he murmurs a thanks as he takes his food, and then, after a handful of bites, he asks, "You thinking you wanna get into this tonight?"

It's probably better that they deal with it sooner rather than later, but either way, they're going to need to formulate a plan before they go charging in. Working out the timetable seems like the first step, particularly when he has a wife and kids at home who, unless he tells them otherwise, will be expecting him home tonight.

"I think we should at least check it out. See if they're still there."

But Josie is also aware of his wife and family, and she doesn't want to keep him away or put him in any unnecessary danger. She can handle this. Probably. Maybe.

"If you want, I can go and scope it out myself. Or I can call my friend back. She has family in the city who can back me up."

Marcel won't mind. Probably. If Josie actually calls him.

"Huh-uh," Dylan says immediately, making a face. "Like hell you're going on your own."

And yeah, okay, she mentioned having friends she could call, but no. No, he's not going to point her in the direction of her maybe-death and then not go along with her, family or not.

"I'll call my wife, let her know I'm gonna be late." He's already reaching for his phone.

Josie is very touched. Not that she doesn't think that she really could handle a little recon on her own. But she also appreciates the big dad energy. Especially when she happens to be missing her own dad.

"Okay. If you're sure."

"Yeah, I'm sure," he tells her, nodding seriously. His dad energy is the biggest. "Gimme a second."

And then he's turning sideways in the booth, trying to buy himself some privacy and not read as rude, both, as he calls home. He lets Alma know not to wait up (though, he knows she probably will, nevertheless), that something came up at work (yes, that work) that may keep him out all night, and that he loves her, then hangs up. The phone goes back into his pocket and he turns back to her and the remains of his fries.

"Alright, we're good." A beat. "I'm gonna need to sleep, sometime tonight, but ... " But now they have time to at least check out the apartment, if nothing else.

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