When Zoheret left the Luminary building, the black Jaguar she had arrived in was parked in the closest parking space out front, waiting for her. Her driver stepped out of the front seat with the beginnings of sleep in his beautiful amber eyes and circled around the outside of the car obediently.
"Jesús, darling, I need a drink," she told him with the slightest twinge of exhaustion breaking into her voice, massaging her temples with one finger from each hand.
"Anywhere in particular, Madam?" She caught a glimmer of his concern for her as his professional expression wavered. Any other night it would have bothered her to see a falter in such decorum and she would have considered saying something nasty to him about it. He opened the back door to the car for her and extended his hand for her to use should she need it upon stepping in. Instead of meeting him with scorn, she placed her hand in his proffered one and cast a last annoyed glance back at the building, her thoughts on the conversation with Ben.
She turned her attention back to the human and smiled wanly at his care. "Somewhere these vampires won't bother me for the rest of the night." Zoheret tucked herself into the backseat of the car, putting her bag on the leather next to her. She pulled out her phone, turned the ringer back on and began flicking through emails and messages that had come in during the meeting.
Typically she scheduled work for herself right up until about ten or eleven in the evening, knowing that the creatures who slept the day away in the Northwest needed access to her as well. One of the perks of being the Dark Angel Oligarch had been that her kind was prone to sleeping like humans, and so she could keep business hours at a more approachable time. Now that her constituents were all of different species to herself, she attempted to make herself more available to them all while still maintaining something resembling a normal sleep schedule. When she looked at the time, she noted that only a couple of hours had passed since she had first arrived at the building, her meeting with Ben taking less than twenty minutes as she expected it to. At almost twenty to ten, she considered her job done for the night. No doubt the staff at Attica Villa would be preparing their bags and filing the last of their reports before she arrived, ready for the night to be done.
"Just drive for now," she bade Jesús, locking her phone and leaning against the tinted window, her elbow on the top of the moulded panel where it met the glass, supporting her hand against her temple. A tension headache pulsed dully beneath her fingers, the muscles needlessly knotted despite how she rubbed at them.
The city passed darkly before her, the street lamps of Central pooling yellowly upon ugly gray buildings, graffitied brick, crumbling concrete walkways. She closed her eyes and thought about both meetings that had taken place with a renewed sense of frustration.
Ben Samson had started that joke of a meeting barring his soul and expecting them, the District Leaders, to follow him like they had once followed Kerr Galvin as the Luminary. He was demanding, emotional, and hasty in the pursuit of his goals and had come into the room hot, instructing them of their jobs and the topics they needed to discuss. While Zoheret had been expecting the young vampire to bring up the election, she had not expected such a bombardment of demands and expectations as Ben had proposed. And as if it had effected the air in the room, Saraekiel made an absolute fool of himself in front of all the others while McCloud had actually played his hand decently well. Sabrina had been the only one to act even semi-predictably and that was mostly because she was so unfamiliar with the witch that she had no idea what to expect besides some distasteful peacekeeping. Charon had even proved that he was not immune to the ridiculousness of that meeting, snatching McCloud's phone and crushing it. The message had been clear to her anyway; that McCloud had burned yet another potential ally. The Oligarchy had been much easier and she regretted its dissolution immensely, which only added to her bitterness. And then she had to go and coddle Ben Samson's hurt feelings, fueled by the the thought of Jake McCloud retaining his position as Central District Leader. She rolled her eyes at the memory of it all.
Her shoulders were heavy but her mind raced. She was could feel her goals slipping through her fingers, a sensation that too resembled the fall of the Oligarchy and the scrabbling land grab in the whirlpool of chaos accompanied it. This election was going to be a nightmare.
She remembered sitting in Chtahzus'aak's office discussing this very occurrence with masked disdain. Now that it had come to pass, she wondered vaguely what he actually thought about the whole event. He had spoken three sentences, choosing the smartest option of sitting and watching them all. She had noted his silence next to her - and was thankful it was between McCloud and herself the entire night - and meant to inquire about it before the idea of meeting with Ben had occurred to her.
So instead she picked up her cell phone and dialed the number for the Block. Surely, a shadow demon could travel quicker than a car at night, and he was already back in his fortress surrounded by his demon army. After two rings, the receptionist that had scheduled her prior appointment picked up, offering a canned greeting on Zeus' behalf.
"I'd like to talk directly with Chtahzus'aak, please."
"And who may I ask is calling?"
She smiled. "Zoheret."
"Oh." At her name there was an audible change in the girl's voice as she said, "Just one moment, please. I'll see if he's in."
As she waited on hold, she looked down at her nail polish, noticing a minute chip in the aubergine pigment of her index finger on her left hand. She frowned and examined it closer. Just one more disappointment for the night.
