<span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">10:30 pm<br/>Location: O'Shea Mansion</span></span><br/><br/><hr/><div class="floatleft">(http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/l640/doteli/stories/satin%20coffin/satin_min_yu.png)</div>Tonight was going to be interesting.<em>Very interesting</em>, Min Yu thought as he deleted the text message he had received and clicked the button on the top of his smartphone to turn the display black. It had taken a full month of back and forth deliberations over on the date and time for the meeting, the location for it, and who was allowed to be there – but the Ashwood Crew and the Collins family had finally come to an agreement. It was only the starting point, however. The two groups hadn’t even started negotiations on what had brought them together for the meeting in the first place. Min Yu wasn’t invited to the meeting, of course, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to show up. He’d been waiting with bated breath on how this was going to turn out.<br/><br/>Min Yu grinned as he stretched out across his bed and stared up at the dark screen of his phone, catching his reflection in it as he held it up towards the ceiling. Ashwood and Collins had been butting heads for the past year, a few confrontations but nothing major. No deaths, no serious injuries; just a lot of threats and bravado. Ashwood were the golden boys and girls of New Arklow’s downtown eastern commercial center. They kept the shops and the nearby neighborhood safe. With Ashwood Crew members patrolling the streets and alleys at night it wasn’t good hunting ground for vampires searching for a late night meal, not unless they were willing to get their skull busted. The Ashwood boys and girls might have kept the area free of vampires, but they’d also introduced a new, and some would even saw more deadly, sort of danger. The goodie two shoes were pushing dope in the area. Hunting vampires didn’t pay well, Min Yu knew that well enough, and so Ashwood had taken to dipping their hands into the city’s drug trade to support their hunting.<br/><br/>Min Yu could see the entire affair laid out like a map in his mind, all of the players and their connections, the minor and major events that when combined had created this current drama. He tossed his phone into the air and caught it, spun it around in his palm before he tossed it up again. Names, dates, and other bits of information spun around in his head. Min Yu had been playing at this little side game for a long time. Poking his nose into the shady business of humans and vampires. Hunting vampires still occupied his time, as did dealing with his sire, but Min Yu had craved something - more.<br/><br/>He found that more placing himself in the very middle of the schemes of New Arklow's elite and top dogs. Ashwood had started off selling weed and no one had minded that, but then they had gotten greedy and started selling heroin in their area too. And that pissed a lot of vampires off. The Ashwood Crew’s turf might have been off limits as a feeding ground, but vampires had been pushing product there. Min Yu thought it was a little ridiculous that so much of city’s big time crime was run by vampires instead of humans, but he supposed it was a convenient way for fangs to build their fortunes. The Collins family was an offshoot of the prestigious and respectable O’Callaghan vampire clan. But even old money and good pedigree clans like O’Callaghan needed new sources of income on occasion to support all those charities and lavish lifestyles.<br/><br/>As his cellphone fell Min Yu caught it for a final time and rolled off the bed. His socked feet hit the floor and he rolled his shoulders as he stood up and unlocked the door to his room. Had he been acting like a<em>proper</em>fledgling ought to he would have never accepted a bedroom of his own. Min Yu had been a grumpy, but otherwise perfect fledgling in the first few months that followed his turning. He had followed Frederick’s orders and stuck close to him, latching onto his side from dusk until dawn, reliant and trusting of his sire to find them a safe spot until the threat of the sun was gone and replaced with the safety of nighttime. But that hadn’t lasted long. The first sign of Min Yu’s abnormality as a fledging had been when he started leaving the satin of Fredrick’s bed in the middle of the day and finding a spot to sleep alone. It’d been an erratic occurrence in the beginning, but now almost five years later Min Yu hadn’t stayed or even shown up in Frederick’s bed for the past two weeks. And some days he didn’t even return home at all, hiding from the sun in hotel rooms.<br/><br/>Min Yu been going and staying out more frequently, since Frederick had gone off on his<em>bond with me</em>kick. It just seemed like they couldn’t be in the same room for longer than twenty minutes without his sire doing some kind of prodding in the direction of it. Min Yu closed his bedroom down behind him and walked down the hallway towards the master bedroom. Even if Frederick had permitted Min Yu a bedroom of his own he sure hadn’t let Min Yu pick it. If he had gotten a voice he would have picked the guest room furthest from Frederick’s. But Frederick had given him the closest bedroom. Their rooms were only a short walk down the hall from each other. His approach was silent as he made his way to Frederick’s bedroom, the door already open. Min Yu didn’t try to surprise Frederick – he had learned it was nearly impossible. His sire seemed to be able to pinpoint him, probably one of those weird sire and fledgling so-called ‘benefits’. Min Yu just called it annoying.<br/><br/>He made sure all traces of amusement and grin were clean from his face as he stopped in the length of the doorway. Min Yu didn’t want Frederick to know he was planning on doing anything tonight. So far he looked like he didn’t have any intentions of leaving to explore the city that night. He was still dressed in the clothes he had worn last night, a pair of black slacks and a maroon colored cashmere sweater. Min Yu disliked a lot of things about Frederick, but one aspect of his new life Min Yu had accepted without much hesitation had been the generous access he had to Frederick’s fortune. Hardly a day went by that Min Yu didn’t use one of Frederick’s credit cards to order some new clothes or camera equipment or music. His room was a stockpile of stuff ordered from the internet. Min Yu hadn't even bothered to open most of the packages.<br/><br/>Min Yu rested his forehead along the frame of the door as the older watcher adjusted his tie. Frederick was always well dressed, a true blue gentlemen, but that night he looked exceptionally done up. Min Yu recognized that tie and those cufflinks. They were the type Frederick wore when he went to the opera or the ballet. Or a charity dinner. Those were so boring. Min Yu weaseled out of them whenever possible, and failing that did his absolute best to embarrass Frederick so his sire would send him home early. This was good though. If Frederick already had plans then Min Yu wouldn’t need to worry about Frederick wandering after him when he slipped out to go mess with the Ashwood and Collins meeting. Min Yu had every intention of turning it into a brilliant disaster and he didn't want Frederick interfering. For the most part he was good at keeping all his schemes and manipulations to a hush, but New Arklow was Frederick's city. Min Yu couldn't completely keep his sire in the dark about his activities.<br/><br/>“You're looking fancy. Where are you going?” Min Yu asked. He didn’t bother giving his sire any polite or warm greeting. No good evening or smile. Just an impassive look and a flat tone, as if Min Yu didn’t even care for an answer to his question; he crossed his arms and stared at Frederick from underneath his dark eyelashes. He turned his eyebrows a bit, as if he were trying to remember something. He didn't think Fredrick had ordered him to go somewhere or do somewhere for tonight. "I'm not supposed to go, am I?"<br/><br/>"I can't," Min Yu said quickly. His lips quirked into a dark smile as he raised a hand and tapped the side of his skull with a pale, slim finger. He pulled his lips down into a little pathetic frown, as if what he said next actually had the possibility of being true. "I have a headache."