Halcyon Halls

Who: Sasha and Mircea
Where: Isle of Bacalao Hotel
When: Late Afternoon
What: Tea, talk, and a spot of blackmail business.


To Sasha’s delight the Bacalao Hotel not only had a tearoom, they had a wonderful one. It was elegant without being excessively lavish, neat without being dull, well-lit and surprisingly spacious. There was none of the beribboned stuffiness that covered similar specimens like a bad case of mange.

Sasha’s requested table near a window and got it without trouble. The waiter pulled out a chair without hesitation; Sasha made a note to leave a good tip. She liked having doors opened for her—in more ways than one. It’s a tough world, Tori used to say. Enjoy whatever few courtesies survive it. Besides a window table offered an extra bit of privacy.

And Sasha’s upcoming conversation with “Mircea Grey” was not a public matter.

Unless he doesn’t come, hissed the cynical gremlin-voice in her mind. She ignored it. He’d come if only for curiosity’s sake. The universe had yet to invent a better bait than human curiosity. Except who said he was human…

Oh, whatever. He’d come.

Not interested in giving her doubts time to flourish, Sasha signaled the waiter. Ordering a pot before her guest’s arrival would be rude—even if she could empty it solo—but a cup of the day’s special, Orchid Oolong, would suffice till then. Ordering food posed a similar crisis of manners; Sasha’s stomach and manners warred briefly before compromising on Devonshire cream and hearty scones. It’d be like spitting in a canyon as far as Sasha’s ogre appetite was concerned, but, hey, at least it’d put something between her teeth. The waiter also didn’t blink at being asked to fetch water for Dreizen, which earned the man another juicy brownie point on Sasha’s meter.

(She remembered the time they tried baring Dizzy, then still a clumsy puppy, from the Savoy’s tea room. She’d staged hysterics until Josiah had words with the manager. In the end, both puppy and girl got in. there’d even been a placating “donation” of complimentary apricot tartlets.

Sasha was never one to waste a tantrum.)

Sipping tea, her posture uncompromised and her face calm, Sasha made a pretty picture in the afternoon light...as was the point. The 40’s style dress and 30’s pumps were modest yet posh, matching the discreet garnet twinkle in her ears, the gold watch and bare fingers. Her hair was loose, her makeup simple. She looked, Sasha knew, like someone’s pampered niece, small and young and flush. Well-heeled, as Josiah would say in his ever-so charminlgy out-of-date way.

Josiah would have nothing charming to say about his runaway protégée meeting with a man of Jack Ransom’s repute—good thing we’re not on speaking terms then, eh, Hatter?—but it was Ransom’s reputation that Sasha was counting on. Supposedly, the man turned a tidy profit during his time. Whatever his motives (and oh how Sasha’s own curiosity itched to know that) Ransom was familiar with the business, the spider web of connections and hazards that Josiah once taught Sasha to navigate. The world she lost connection to without him. The world she needed now.

All good things to those with will, Sasha recited silently. Slathering cream on her scone, she settled in to wait.

He’d come.