Time flied in the Tremere Chantry for Leona, because her life here was pretty much arranged in a scientifically busy fashion—regular, fruitful, and just enough time for her to rest and get back in the game without being too indolent. She liked it, somewhat reminded her of the tough, book-wormy time in college, and it kept her away from thinking about those deep, scary subjects that would give people…like Garrett said, "existential crisis".
The first impression Leona got about her clan was only a small, competitive elitist group, but after two months in here it wasn't as harsh as she expected—yes, it was definitely a clan of elitism, but also of academia, so everybody here was mainly concerned with knowledge of all types, among which Thaumaturgy was the general priority.
While Strauss was usually taking care of "administrative" matters, the rest of them in the Chantry formed up into a very autonomous study group, where they answered each other's confusions, consulted the books in the huge library underground, and practiced in a professional shooting range that was specialized for Thaumaturgy at the bottom of the basement—so no strange explosion sounds would come up and disturb the pedestrians.
Though Tremeres used "Pyramid" to name their organizational structure, Leona didn't particularly feel "classified", at least not in this Chantry, not even the slightest hubris from seniority, for "none of them was worthy in front of Strauss", as one apprentice put it, and probably also because this group of people was just too tiny to be the foundation of any status or pride: Even taking the Kindred that were strong enough to live independently into account , the number of Tremeres in LA was less than 20, and in Chantry there were only 8. Leona once questioned Strauss why this bitty population, and his answer was:
"We are a clan that survives and prospers on secrets only we know, and secrets are obviously better kept when people who know them are as few as possible."
But she was not convinced: "Still, I think minority is always a huge disadvantage, both in Kindred and human society, if we are not strong enough, people will take away this secrecy by force…"
And Strauss laughed: "Trust me, we are strong enough. We make sure of that."
Putting learning aside, Leona also needed to work to provide herself, and in that area, Mercurio helped a great deal, connected the contacts she ought to have and smoothed her way in. Right now she worked mainly as a freelancer, picking up a request for this and that, mostly small-time stuff and greatly varied depended on the situations, but they all had the exact same purpose—to uphold the First Tradition: Masquerade.
She had broken into the homes of several geeky humans who suspected too much about the "LaCroix Terrorist Attack", erased their memories using one discipline called Dominate and took away all related information, material or electrical; Sometimes it was to attend negotiations with human individuals or companies about property purchases made by Camarilla; For once, she actually helped to stage the death of one new-born Kindred's human identity, made it look like a car crash.
How would they stage her disappearance? After that, Leona couldn't stop wondering. It was a dangerous notion, Strauss warned her long before that, trying to poke around her former life, but sometimes when she was finally alone in her room after a night's work, she would go incognito to check all the social medium, looking for the remaining traces about her—which were hard to find, considering her embrace was already months ago.
Fortunately, thanks to the state-of-the-art tech support from one Camarilla clan named Nosferatu, she was able to browse everything on the internet on Kindred devices without leaving any footprints. This function was intended only for work or hunt, of course, but nobody put on any hard limits of what she should do with it.
So she finally found it: an old report on local newspaper, titled "Asian-female management consultant from Uchicago went missing on trip to LA". There was nothing exciting about it, just another daily tragedy happening all over the world, only people from her university and company were offering condolences.
Leona didn't know how she should feel. When she was human, she couldn't even care enough to click into this type of news reports…and now, she was the heroin of one. At least for those who actually died, they wouldn't have to see this, but she had to, to witness how…trivial her human life was under the wheel of time.
Ah, but from Camarilla's point of view, it was absolutely a good thing. Wearing a t-shirt and cap, Leona sat on the driver's seat of a blood van on one side of the road, trying to settle this down with herself. Besides, fame wasn't really a good thing—she was quite a celebrity in Kindred society, and all she got from that was just…an invisible pressure.
It was already 3 a.m. in the morning, her colleague closed the back door of the vehicle and got onto the seat beside her, signaling business closed. Driving blood van was now one of her most frequent choices of job—it was petty work, of course, but by doing this, she got to know where all her blood bags came from, and that was somehow…reassuring: Camarilla had vans like this parking on night streets all over America, paid desperate humans cash to get their blood. It was certainly immoral, but at least immoral in a…human way.
Though Strauss was strongly against it. He wanted Leona to take part in real battles to practice her Thaumaturgy and raise her status, for based on his observation, her so-called talent in Thaumaturgy came from the "untamable heat" in her Strings of Curse, and she must pay extra efforts to learn control of it.
But Zack told her to keep a low profile, and unluckily for Strauss, this Sabbat had a higher authority than him to Leona.
She was content, for now.
Drove the van back to one of those Camarilla blood banks, Leona returned to the Chantry, greeted the others, and went back to her haven. She lied on her bed, lighted up her cell, and saw the interface of one social media app she was looking at before. She scoffed at herself, and was ready to close it and uninstall it—
Until she saw a new update in one of her former colleague's accounts:
"OMG…First Leona and now it's Alice. Don't know what's wrong with this world."
Felt like all her nerves on edge, Leona sat up, quickly started scanning for any other information, and the more she read, the heavier her heart was. Lots of people in that consultant firm had talked about how weird it was that Alice hadn't been to work for three days since the weekend, and nobody could contact her in any way, which was even more unusual in Alice's case: she was one of the most social people who updated her status online several times every day.
What happened…no, nothing could happen to a normal, harmless girl like her. Nothing. Please. Leona tapped into Alice Turner's account, while praying in her heart so, and she stopped just at the latest update Alice posted five days ago. It said:
"They were doing NOTHING to find Leo."
Leona dropped her phone on the floor. A horrifying possibility surfaced in her mind, and she immediately panicked. Stupid, stupid Alice, she didn't…she didn't do this, did she? Leona tried to put away the worst scenario and calm herself down first, as she excursed around and around in her room. Maybe it had nothing to do with her, maybe Alice was just pulling a terrible prank, that was something she would do…
As if to prove herself right, Leona picked up the phone again and read the rest of the contents in Alice's page, but unfortunately, it seemed that Alice hadn't been in the mood for making jokes ever since Leona was gone: at first, she was posting search notices everywhere, but after her efforts ended up in vain, there was nothing at all—except that one complaint about the law enforcement.
What was she supposed to do? Leona collapsed on the carpet. Could she ask for help? But she shouldn't ever know anything about this in the first place, so no one would be willing to clean up her own mess, and she could in no way do it on her own…Besides, to be honest, nobody would blame her to just stand by and watch—after all, technically, she was already dead to humans, what she was doing now was just…a ghost peeping at the life of the living.
For her own sake, Leona found lots of excuses not to step in. But just one reason was enough to overthrow all of them: that Alice could die because of her, and she couldn't bear that thought.
So Leona phoned the only one she might have a chance to get on her side.
"Hello, van driver, need to grease your wheels or something?"
Right at the moment that someone picked up her call, he started to joke about Leona's poor choice of career.
"Hey, Mercurio, I…I need your help. I will talk to you tomorrow night, and…I know it will sound weird, but don't tell anyone about this, OK? Thanks."
Leona was so messed up that she hanged up before Mercurio could even reply. She took a shower and got into bed, worrying about how to convince this ghoul to help her, and fell asleep. She was hoping that she could find Garrett in her head again, but he didn't show up to give her any advice—just another dark, dreamless slumber.
The next evening, she took a leave and headed for Mercurio's place. He was expecting her, heard her out with a worried expression on his face, and buried himself in thoughts for quite some time.
"You knew it was against the rules, right? Like…against the rules in every possible way." He sighed, deeply troubled by this capricious request, "And it will risk yourself breaking the Masquerade."
And Leona just kept trying: "I just wanted to know what happened to her, not to take any more actions on it…Besides, there is a chance that she actually found something on us, then taking care of her is just doing my job, right?"
"But you just cannot. It's too personal…"
"I don't need to be involved unless it's necessary, and you don't need to leave here or anything. Just…I don't know, like call someone you know in Chicago who know things, that will do. I just need a closure."
And so Mercurio did. He went to the study room, ringed one of his buddies in local PD, then called someone again in the Bureau—apparently, both Leona and Alice's cases were under federal jurisdiction. At first Mercurio didn't seem surprised by the response given by his friend, but as he kept on listening, his face grew dark and his eyebrows were locked tightly together, giving Leona an ominous sign.
"You are right." He put down his phone, and said to Leona, "Your friend was investigating on her own about your disappearance. I will help you and keep it in the dark for now, but I won't promise anything if it gets too big."
Didn't know she should be relived or alarmed, Leona replied with a complex of emotions on her mind:
"Thank you, I owe you this."
What she didn't know was Mercurio didn't say yes simply out of his good heart and his concern for Masquerade. It was also a good opportunity for him to dig something up, too—He hadn't forgotten the task Prince LaCroix assigned him.