Dr. Who? (AST CL4P-TP)

He closed his eyes and cursed the universe as a whole.... Yeah, this was going to hurt.

She tilted her head.

"Found a couple of dead things leaving the Campus?"

She stepped out of the car. No reason to put Ethan in danger more than he already was. She leaned against the side of her car and crossed her arms over her chest.

"It's not really my area."

He bit his tongue, figuratively, looking calm and attentive to the conversation... sooo many smartass comments were cropping up in his brain only to be slapped down like a red-headed Caitiff.

Her brows rose. Questions filled her mind, but she said nothing of them. She just nodded.

"Thanks for the warning."

Ethan simply blinked once and spoke in a calm but emotionless tone. "I know enough about your types to know that I'd rather not be on your bad side. As such, perhaps I could get a contact number so that I can call before entering the campus or any other area you consider your territory so as not to upset you or have cause for confrontation?"

She stood there for a moment. Then she opened the door to the SUV and slid back behind the wheel. She leaned forward, resting her forehead against the steering wheel.

"Well, now, wasn't that fun?"

She muttered it under her breath as she sat back up to put the vehicle in gear once again.

Ethan rested his head back on the headrest, looking at the roof. "We survived with all our physical and mental faculties intact... I'm putting a check in the 'win' column and moving on."

She snorted a laugh. She actually found it almost amazing that she even had a laugh in her.

"Surviving is a good thing. Deserves a check in the 'win' column. But, I'm well aware that I'm not qualified to deal with mages. It's why I decided to G-T-F-O back there. Now I'm weighing the pros and cons of actually letting the Domain as a whole know to stay away from there. On the one hand, not telling anyone means that there could be accidental screw-ups by the vampires and pissing off mages. On the other, there's some people in this Domain, like Victor Morton, who I think would go off half-cocked to intentionally piss off the mages. Not that I'd complain much. Natural selection and all that. But if mage chickie-poo is right and we need to work together, letting people go off and piss them off seems like a really bad idea."

She lifted her head a few inches from the steering wheel and let it fall back against it. The proverbial head-banging that usually accompanies annoyance or extreme frustration.

"I hate my fucking job."

His head still laying against the headrest, he glanced over at her. "Half the domain are a bunch of 4 year olds. If you tell them the stove is hot, they won't believe it until they touch it and burn themselves. Telling anyone but Jamie and McKay about this would likely be folly. If the other members of the domain traipse onto the campus, they can sink or swim on their own."

He looked back to the roof. "At this point, the less people that know about the mages, the less chance they are going to blow up in our faces... literally." It was hard to tell whether he meant the kindred or the mages in that last.

She hadn't even lifted her head to look over at him.

"Okay, Jamie I get. McKay, I don't. I barely know the guy, and he's kind-of got his hands full with idiotic clanmates."

Ethan shrugged; more to himself than to anyone else. "McKay had a good head on his shoulders and I would trust him to have my back in a fight... that's more than I can say for ninety plus percent of our domain. Though, I haven't really talked to him much since the memorial, so he could've lost some of his sense since then... I dunno."

She sighed.

"Okay. That makes sense. I just... he's been different since Gri... since it happened. Or so I'm told."

Ethan closed his eyes, remembering her face and said softly, "I don't blame him...."

She still hadn't looked at him.

"Okay. Off to the Prince we go, then."