Dark Waters

Lee looked at Jack, knowing exactly how to get under Michael's skin. He flashed her a look, intentionally baiting Michael now.

"You know, I really do get along with all kinds of people, but he's really not my type. After all, 24/7 with an old codger like him? I don't know if I could stand it," Lee teased.

"Oh, you're funny, you are," Michael shook his head.

"But, back to business," Lee said, looking back at Jack. "You wanna contact James Blood? Alright. Let's do that. We have no idea where his den is, but there is one thing he is apparently interested in, no matter what. It doesn't look like he can resist it. He wants Khaat? Let's give him..."

"No," Michael said quickly. "Are you out of your mind!"

Lee looked at him, determined. His voice was calm, but he wasn't yielding. He was accustomed to making tough judgement calls, and it was one of the things he was called here to do.

"And that's why I'm here," Lee said. "You don't get to make that call. I do."  He saw Michael turn around, fuming, ready to start pacing.  He refocused on Jack.  "Blood is apparently close enough to Khaat's usual routes off and on, trying to catch her.  He's told her he hones in on her by scent, not just her body chemistry but her exact shampoo and her perfume.  Do you think its worth a try to bait him into a spot near one of her usual routes, perhaps with something with her scent on it? Does that have a chance of helping you contact him?"

Jack looked between the two men - this was more akin the politics she had grown to know and avoid. Politics full of the hard choices that no one wanted to make, people on either sides of the issue, often looking her to divide the problem down the middle and do what she could with it. Somehow, she was often the deciding factor. Perhaps it was because she was often the one with the least to lose, the one who could look at it and properly judge the weight of the means versus the need for the end. Jack wouldn't be lying if she said she was used to the role.

She did not want to upset Michael, but she also saw Lee's point. So, she decided to think aloud. "Here's what needs to happen. I need to meet with Blood, but it cannot be by means of trickery. He cannot feel like I've trapped him into a communication. And he is going to need something in return. I figured I'd bring his pack a hearty supply of Wolfsbane and some meat. For the wild wolves, full moon recoveries are best done with steak, I've found."

She paused. "Do you think he would find a letter with her perfume on it, if we left it in an alley in Knockturn? It wouldn't be a trick - it could be a coincidence that she and I have the same perfume."

Jack was responding well under the pressure in the room from Michael's momentary pushback. Lee was pleased to see her hold her cool. He knew it wasn't an easy position for her to be in, in the middle between a long time friend and a superior she didn't know.

"Its your plan, you run it," Lee said, nodding, liking her thoughts. "Its a good thought. You want steaks and wolfbane? You'll have it.

"James knows Khaat's routine," Lee said, "and he knows how she's altered it since he's been stalking her. She goes out rarely, and its only to a few very select places since she was hurt.

"One of the most likely places for her to go is Sparks--between four and six am--through the back kitchen door at time. Either that or the alley outside the emergency entrance of St. Mungo's. If he really wants her, he'll be either watching the alleys himself or he'll have them patrolled at that hour. I'm guessing if you put the scent in one of the alleys, he'll show up. If you think its worth a try, then let's do it."

((Do you want to have a thread of him finding the letter? Or just beginning at the rendezvous point? I can post with Jack getting to the spot early with steaks and Wolfsbane.))

Jack did not often get met with such easy manners when it came to these sorts of plans. She was more used to arguments of how This Way Is Better or What Give You The Right or I Bet I Could Do It Better. She had to remind herself that she was not dealing with tight lipped bureaucrats or fresh graduates with these two. She was dealing with men who had been putting out fires for a very long time and enjoyed the result more than the bickering it  took to get to one. She had to say, as unfamiliar as she was with all of this, she enjoyed it.

Jack nodded. "I'll draft a letter and send it you, Michael, so you could douse it in perfume and leave it on the route. I'm thinking a meeting in the Forbidden Forest or the wilderness behind Hogsmeade. Somewhere he and his pack feel as though they are in familiar territory. I'll take my Gytrash with me, for insurance. If anything happens, I don't anticipate it but I'd be a fool to not consider it, he can alert you. He's very clever."

It was really happening.

OOC: Either way is fine. Just let me know what you decide so James can show up.

Michael nodded. "That's fine, and I'll send it back to you," he said.

"I was going to offer to back you up at a distance so the pack wouldn't smell me," Lee laughed. "But I can hardly compete with a Gytrash. That's a far better back up.

"My first choice is that you would use Hogsmeade. Its a more controllable area, and he's proven he's not afraid to go there," Lee said. "I can make a temporary base that night either upstairs over The Library. Or, I can invite myself to Michael's. Hopefully you won't run into trouble and need us, but James has proven he doesn't need to justify why he kills. He just does. I don't run into that many magical creatures bent on world domination, so he does come up a bit higher on my radar."

"Now--is there anything else you need from me?"

((Will do!))

Jack smiled at Lee's words. Elliot would love the chance to get out - the poor guy was no an idle spirit, but both he and Jack had been forced into the painful process of domestication lately. It was crazy how much adding a kid to a household changed everything.

"Hogsmeade," Jack repeated, adding a "Roger, roger," for good measure. She did not mind that. She was sure there would have been more casualties if Blood had been frequenting the Forbidden Forest, so the Hogsmeade wilderness was probably more likely to be an area frequented by him and his pack. "Hopefully it won't come to that, but it's always good to have an escape route."

She paused. She had no more questions about Blood really. But what else was she to do? "When I'm done with Blood, what do I do? Do I just start showing up to the Ministry, sifting through files of collected data and follow the leads I think may pan out?"

"I presume you mean when we've either caught or killed Blood and caught his pack?" Lee asked. "Because I think you're dedicated enough that you're not just going to want to meet with him, hand off a few T-bones, get his plans to take over the world and then run back to the office to do filing. I just don't see you ever being happy with that.

"Nor would I be happy seeing you do that," Lee smiled. "I want you to stay on the Blood situation, in as safe a way as you know how. Just keep me updated. It keeps everybody safer. I'm not going to interfere in how you handle it, but if you need backup, don't think you have to prove yourself and do it by yourself.

"When you're not chasing Blood, then, yes, I want you at the Ministry. But I only want you working in your cover department enough to establish your presence there. Michael, how does she use the Department of Mysteries as a cover...."

"Probably the same way the rest of us do," Michael said. "Say that she's studying the way love or space or time or some earthly element affects magic, and make some sort of half-assed, absent minded reference to the clerk in the records department. Such as: Mrs. Dewhurst, wasn't it Harvey Haversham who found a way to double the concentration in a love potion by adding the hair of the desired woman to the potion....' Mrs. Dewhurst will have cut you off long before you get to that point because there's too many inaccuracies in your statement, and she'll be running off to prove you wrong, along with getting the substantiating paperwork.

"Now, either that's really what you want from her, or you don't mind sending her on a wild goose chase for a couple of hours so you can get access to the records you want. And--if you can do a thespian level performance of looking significantly chagrinned when she not just proves you wrong but seems to be rubbing your incompetence in her mile high proofs."

"And I don't gather either one of those has been a problem for you, Michael," Lee said.

"Not in the slightest," Michael said. "This November, I found what I wanted and just left. When I came back a day or so later, I merely told her how deeply overwhelmed I was by her brilliance and that she had humbled me...."

"I'm having some difficulty with the visual on that," Lee frowned.

"Keep that sense of humor if it helps you," Michael said. "But she apparently liked me well enough to send me a large tin of her homebaked cookies at Christmas this year."

"Oh, is she going to be mad when she meets the new Mrs. Tremaine," Lee laughed.

"I don't know, I liked Jack's idea of choosing you. It defeats their whole purpose in it," Michael laughed. He looked at Jack. "Seriously, you will find a great deal of research in the records to be helpful. Property records, births, deaths, marriages, school records, employment and tax records, any legal charges, the whole thing can, in this case, get you a better look at any witch or wizard that's ever been recorded. If you want to track someone in the Ministry, that might be the place to start. That and some actual surveillance.

"Start with anyone you think might have a connection to the marriage law," Lee said. "Track it forwards and back. Who had the law before it actually was a law. These things always cost money too. Follow the money and see where its going. Who is benefiting, and of those people, which has the most. It should shorten the list, and if you work together to some extent, you should be able to speed it up and keep from reduplicating the work.

"But I doubt I've said a single thing you don't both already know. We need to manage both missions as simultaneously as we can until we can free up more Unspeakables to join these missions. And I'm working on that.

"But make sure you're taking good care of yourselves and not living for the mission--either of you. I need you for the long haul, not just a few big tasks. I don't want to have to repeat myself on that. That's the one and only thing I'm a bit of a stickler on. So, if we're clear, then I think I'm good to be going and leave you both to your work. What do you think? Anymore questions for me?"

((Link to the thread for James Blood))

Jack nodded. "Of course. I just mean after this particular task." She knew, no matter what happened at the meeting with Blood, that there would be a lot of waiting in this dance with wolves. It would take patience. She could not appear to be hunting the pack in the least, and that meant persistently contacting them, else it inspire the hunters in them to make it reciprocal. It would be a lot of patience and waiting. She wanted to know what facade would hold the time between.

Between Lee and Michael, her answers were answered. Again, their banter inspired an amused smile on her face.

She could enjoy this work, she was pretty certain.

"Sounds reasonable," she said in response to the heaps of information she had been given. She held out a hand for Lee, ready to make everything official with a handshake. "I'm ready."

((Sorry it's so short, falling asleep))

"Well," Lee frowned, "it would be considerably easier if he had a way to contact you, and if we found out what need he has, besides the obvious, to encourage him to recontact you. I can't see him giving up that information easily. Off the top of my head, if he wants domination, he's going to have to grow his pack and fast. And I only can think of two ways of doing that. He can continue to attack and turn people. Or he can reproduce as fast as he can manage to get the females to have children--I presume he'd think of them as cubs.

"He's eventually going to need other food besides meat for babies. The mothers would be able to feed them for awhile, until they can't be satisfied with milk anymore, but he can't give them meat straight out. He's going to have to work them up to that.

"I'm having trouble seeing him going to the market for cereal and diapers. I'm sure his female would be doing that. I'm wondering if its worth your while to find a way to get close to her. But that might be harder than finding James."

"But, yes. I think you are ready." He shook hands with her. "Good luck."

Jack nodded. "I'll make sure that I stress that this is the formation of a line of communication, not a one time meeting." Lee continued on, postulating about the potential routes Blood was considering taking. This was all giving her memories of her last year of Hogwarts, when she found herself wound into the complicated web of Greyback politics - all simply because she had befriended their heir. She knew how the pack system worked, and how strange and unwelcoming it could be.

Furthermore, she knew how territorial werewolves could be about their chosen mates. After all, she had been claimed as one. "I'll look into it."

She shook his hand, feeling as though they had come to a good place. A place where they could actually begin making things work. Jack was back in the game.