Who: Cecil and Sadie What: A second run-in, and the heart-attack that follows Where: Sadie's apartment building When: A few days after their first meeting Rating: Medium?
Anyone who knew Sadie would've noticed the 'off-ness' by now. For days, she'd been quieter, less visible, and easily spooked. She only went out to go to work and back, and sucked down at least half a pack of smokes a shift. It was a replay of her earlier behavior, less than a month after being brought into the Haze, when she first started to emerge from the Lodge.
She wouldn't tell anybody why, either. She was just sleeping poorly. She was PMSing. She had a bad dream. Whatever would get people off her back and not stoke her paranoia.
Because that was what it was, right? After the thin man with the last name very known to her came through her section, the former vampire had forced herself to think that it had to be a very awful coincidence. Sharpes didn't just wander around, they moved on business; but she wasn't business to them. It didn't make sense for her to be so on edge. Yet, she was. Old survival instincts twisted into paranoias just didn't die that easily.
Which is exactly why she nearly had a heart attack when she opened the apartment door to head out for another shift at Drakes, and saw Mr. Cecil Sharpe wandering right past her door, looking down at a One-Sheet for one of the tenements.
No no no nononononoNo-! Those were the words in her head, also a momentary paralysis that kept her stuck in the middle of the hallway.