<strong>Afternoon, the Kane Estate outside of Sussex</strong><br/><br/>Reginald Hightower watched the Lady of the house walk with the children after their afternoon of play. She had shown many faces in the last few days since her arrival. She was a blunt sarcastic woman who worked the staff hard but fairly, and worked herself even harder. She was a lovely woman who seemed to care nothing of her appearance but sought to hone her mind to the utmost. She worked dozens of plans at the same time, sending encoded telegrams and ornately sealed letters out at all hours. The maps on the back wall of the study were covered with notes, pictures, and sketches. All focused on one man. Ephraim Waite.<br/><br/>But all faces she shown never prepared him for this. A Lady Kane who was laughing and dancing with the children of the staff. She actually had taken a trio of them through the ornate gardens on the estate, telling them the mundane facts of the things growing on the ground. It was a very confusing picture to him. She was kneeling with them, whispering as she showed them something. They giggled and dashed off as she stood and headed towards him. They waved and called out to her as she walked up the steps to the house, folding something that he couldn't quite make out in the afternoon sun.<br/><br/>"Lovely day isn't it Reginald?" She asked with a smile of all things.<br/><br/>"Yes Miss." He said as she she tucked away the thing she held into the folds of her clothes.<br/><br/>"Tell the cook, that the children are to have anything they want tonight for dinner. They showed me something ..quite rare." She said as she walked in, the smile fading from her face to be replaced by the normal blankness.<br/><br/>"What was it Miss?"<br/><br/>"A moment of pure joy, they should be savored." She said with a sigh as she vanished into the shadows of the house, the clicking of her shoes echoing in the paneled halls. "Best we get to work, Lord Fisk's gala is the day after tomorrow and I've got much to prepare before my arrival there. I'll be in the library, see that I'm not disturbed."<br/><br/>"Of course Miss." He said before hearing the door close, pausing to collect the already large pile of missives to be sent. The stable boy was getting a lot of time on the estate's best hunters, he thought wryly as he checked the list of instructions she left on the table.<br/><br/><strong>Two days later, at Lord Fisk's London Estate.</strong><br/><br/>"Lady Selene Kane-Waite, and escort." The doorman announced as Selene strode into the gala. Only a handful of face turned to look at her. Reginald slid his arm free of hers and leaned in to whisper in her ear.<br/><br/>"Are you sure that you wish to do this alone Miss?" She leaned back over to reply.<br/><br/>"There are exactly six other men in the entire country I trust in this undertaking. Two are currently in London chasing down leads at my instruction and aren't available, one is in Ireland chasing down something that best not wake, and Lord Quartermain was last seen departing for darkest Africa. You, Reginald, are the only other I trust to listen to me and do what you're told. You know the plan, stick with it and all will be well." She slid her arm free as she met his eyes and nodded. He sighed and nodded, stick to the plan. The reckless wild plan that screamed of suicide, but he had to admit she had the skills and tools he didn't to pull it off.<br/><br/>"We'll be waiting Miss." He said as he turned and vanished into the bustle of the Gala. When things had settled down enough, he'd return to the coach that brought them and wait for her signal. He was sure this would go south, but she was the Kane and he was the servant. There was a way to these things.<br/><br/>Selene watched him vanish into the bustle of the crowd as she put on her 'social face'. Lady Kane-Waite smiled, was charming and appealingly witless way. An appalling amount of pounds had been put forth to get a briefing on who to watch, who to speak with and who to avoid. Lord Fisk was luckily 'occupied' she noted, intent on some pretty little waif who had the wit of lukewarm milk.<br/><br/>She watched the flow of the party, looking for a flow of things. Seeing who was there on invitation, and who was there to hunt. It didn't take long to spot the flow of prey and predator. Lord Fisk's influence was in a large part due to his 'shadow world' connections. As a result of that, she had to spend a lot of time preparing her move. A small charm, slipped onto one particularly frumpy dowager, who had harrumphed her disapproval at her being unescorted at the gala, drew interested eyes from her at the right moments. A touch of glamour and illusion, nothing more. Lucky for her that the Lord had minions with little or no willpower of merit. She slipped down one hall and was quickly at his study door. His locked study door.<br/><br/>She smiled as she pulled a small clockwork from her dress, only one of a dozen items she had secreted about her. The dress had cost her at least five times what it should, and was the product of a particularly specialized seamstress from Paris. Normally she designed and made dresses for a clientele of 'negotiable virtues'. Highly paid women that were discrete and .. flexible. Her gown looked suitably normal and didn't stand out too much, but had all sorts of extras that would have had a normal dressmaker screaming at her in fury. Several twists and she slid it home in the lock where it clicked and whirred quietly.<br/><br/>She leaned against the door and waited with one ear tuned for those who might take umbrage to her intruding the Lord's sanctum. She opened the door as the clockwork clicked itself off and unlocked the door, she pulled it free and tucked it away before opening the door and sliding into the room. She gestured as she closed the door, and a witchlight flared into life over her shoulder.<br/><br/>"Time to get to work Selene." She muttered to herself as she started scanning the room for the book in question. The glamour wouldn't last long and if one of Lord Fisk's 'exceptional' friends could easily pop it like a soap bubble. Then all manners of trouble would come about. She sighed as she leaned on her 'parasol' and looked at the locked desk in front of her.<br/><br/>"Looking for something Lady Kane-Waite?" A voice asked as her clockwork cracked the lock open. She looked up to see the massive bear-like frame of Lord Fisk and pair of men at the door. "I was curious, the Kane family I've dealt with on and off for the better part of two hundred years. Annoying nosy folk for the most part." He said as he walked into the room, leaving the guards at the door while he opened a cabinet and poured a pair of drinks. "But I don't know of any Waite family of note in .. why at least two centuries. There was a small group of Waites in Cornwall, but as I recall the Roundheads killed them off. In fact, if I'm not wrong.. Solomon Kane himself killed the last of the ones in England did he not?"<br/><br/>"The Waites are a New England family, scholars who owned massive fishing interests near Ismouth in Massachusetts." She stood up and picked up her parasol as she smiled to the Lord as she took the offered drink. "Sadly, the family line has.. fallen on bad times. Thank you."<br/><br/>"Oh? What happened?" Fisk asked as he looked her over.<br/><br/>"Me." Selene said firmly as she looked at him, all civility draining from her face. "I did. There are exactly two Waites of that line left. At least for now. I need Unaussprechlichen Kulten by Friedrich von Junzt, the copy your library contains has a provenance that goes back to a particular location. Give it to me and we can go our separate ways in relative peace. That, Lord Fisk, is an offer that Solomon Kane wouldn't have made."<br/><br/>"Indeed, he was quite.. forthright and direct, like a cannon shell." Fisk said with a smirk. "But why should I simply give up a prize like that at your request. However blunt and direct it might be."<br/><br/>"Simply this Lord Fisk." She said as she stood, banishing the seeming to show what she was carrying wasn't a woman's parasol but a walking stick of some age. The cat's head and beset with hieroglyphics down it's length added to an unspoken menance, the wood seemed to drink up the fitful light of her witchlight and gave little back. Her other hand slid a massive knife set in silver out from her dress that she drove point first into the desk. "I will burn your little fiefdom down, chase down every one of your blood besotted drones and put them to the knife. I will buy the ruins of this nice little house and turn it into something nice and pure, and bind your dark soul to it forever. I can do that, I know a nice rite that can keep you here forever, just beyond the veil. Unable to touch, taste, or feel anything that feeds your kind. I'll find your entire bloodline and kill them all. Scatter their dust over the ocean. Undo all your plots, plans and machinations."<br/><br/>Lord Adam Fisk, the first and only Lord Mountover, opened his mouth and bared his fangs to the woman barely two thirds his size.<br/><br/>"I'd like to see you try girl." He said to her with a smirk.<br/><br/>"Careful what you wish for vampire." Selene growled as she stepped out from behind the desk and pulled a small pouch out of her dress. "You might get what you wish."<br/>