Holy Ground is a sprawling space, converted from a old textile factory. Dim, all picture rail RGB strips set to slow-pulse cliché bisexual lighting.
It's where local costumes drink. Not all necessarily white hats.
Margaret neatens her suit jacket cuffs. She hates Holy Ground. She hates the lights and the crowd it attracts and the cocktail menu's pretensions. She hates how many business meetings they have here.
She might hate the business, a little.
"Stop fussing, Vaughn," Patrick says benevolently, and for a second or two Margaret considers hating him, too.
"Whatever you say, boss," she says instead, touches her tie to make sure it's straight. (Habit. Old cover for a nervous touch to the scar under her shirt. The edge of her hand brushes over the keloid texture under her button-down; she doesn't linger on it.)
Patrick is a lawyer. Was. Like Margaret: ejecta from previous lives. Now his little office, his team, do freelance bespoke negotiation work; sit down at tables where angels fear to tread. Talk to villains and deranged super-scientists, go-between them and the authorities. Ferry paperwork. Cut deals. Convey terms.
Well, Patrick and Kennedy do that. Margaret, even with her sharp new business wardrobe, wears combat boots. She is a sufficient amount of physical threat, and the savvy to say nope, not walking in there today, boss, so that ideally she doesn't have to get physical.
She rankles at bodyguard, can't take herself seriously enough to enunciate security specialist. She's a jumped-up mook. Brawn-in-a-box.
Not what she'd have said in reply to where do you see yourself in five years? — before or immediately after three-striking out of her own costume, hanging Mainbrace up for good, and moving cities to get out from under the past's feet.
Today's meeting is with some kind of new player, Azoth, blown in from out of town, reputation vague but preceded by a pilot wave of apprehension. People expect things. Good, bad...hard to say, but definitely things.
Margaret's job is just to be present. She is a worst-case contingency, and a disincentive to kicking one off. She's going to sit at a table, clasped hands resting on it in front of her, say nothing, sip a glass of water, wait while Patrick applies charisma. Easy work, for the money. She barely has to pay attention.
(She does pay attention, mostly. But today she's feeling sick enough of everything that maybe she won't start until they're sitting down, quietly scope out the vibe, check out again if Azoth seems unlikely to get volatile. Just autopilot till then.)
"You good, Vaughn?" Patrick says, as they hit the bar first, for her glass of water and his scotch rocks — more of a prop than anything, to disarm any intrinsic suspicion that clings to lawyer.
"Sure," Margaret says, and he drums his hands on the edge of the bar a little while they wait, looking at her, but he doesn't press it.
She sips the tall glass of water eventually slid in front of her, wishing it was something that would burn all the way down, trails Patrick to a table in the back.
"Azoth? Hi," Patrick is saying, voice smile-smoked, draping his suit jacket over the back of a chair. "Pat Kropotski, we spoke on the phone. This is my associate, Ms. Vaughn—"
Margaret looks up as she grips the back of another chair to pull it out for herself, just as Azoth raises her own helmeted face.
"Vaughn?" Patrick says, somewhere off to the side of Margaret and Azoth looking at each other; or Azoth looking at her, while she looks at the one-way tint of the visor that the costume keeps her face behind.
He sounds, very professionally, like he might be just a little worried.
Margaret shakes herself. Actually physically shakes herself. "It's fine," she says, and peels her hands off the chair back. "Professional opinion? It's fine. She's not going to lay a finger on you. You won't need me. I'll be at the bar."
She peels her eyes off what they're clutching at, too, turns and marches back to the bar, plants herself on a stool, flags down the bartender.
"Vaughn," Patrick says, by her shoulder.
"Go and get on with it," Margaret tells him brusquely.
"You know her?"
"Oh, I don't know any Azoth," Margaret says, gripping her old fashioned slightly too hard.
