This follows An Old Memory in the Met and An Old Memory in the Met, Part II
Milos stood at the suite entrance. The 1600 on the door stared at him insultingly, daring him to knock.
Of course the witch knew. One moment, he was hating himself for lacking the courage to knock, and the next he standing on a coffee table, surrounded by the very people he had asked to meet and talk about this whole lark.
Everyone lightly clapped from the couches at his appearance. Liz announced with the flair of a ring leader, “On display, I have a study in Neurotic Vampirism, titled “Greek Sucker”. Artist unknown, date circa 600 B.C.”
“It has been revised to BCE, Before Common Era, Liz.” Al grinned, although his bushy beard hid most of it.
“Really? Modernity… What a ruse.” Liz scoffed. “Welcome to the party, Milos. Now can you get the fuck off the table?”
Milos remained in place. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t move. The agoraphobia was so severe, he could nearly taste it. Like a metallic tang, a zing of sucking on a house key… and if he could sweat, there would be buckets of it streaming down his body. The pressure to count all the right angles in the room assailed him like hurricane force winds.
“Liz?” Shirin prompted. “You know he can’t.”
“Oh fine. Ruin all my fun,” Liz stood from the couch and put out a hand, her voice shifting from a pout to sarcasm. “Milos, you are cordially invited to GET THE FUCK OF THE TABLE… and enter my residence.”
Relief washed over Milos and as if had not been on the verge of imploding from the trauma, he lightly stepped to the carpeted floor with a grim smile. “That. was. mean.”
Liz rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am a big meanie. It was only a simple translocation from the hallway. Payback, remember?”
Shirin stood from her position on the couch, and Milos finally realized he was seeing the real Ifrit, and not a host being worn like a new outfit. She grinned, “Come give me a hug, love.”
“It has been a long time since I have seen you be you, Shirin.” Milos smiled in return, his eye teeth glinting lightly behind his upper lip.
“Liz was gracious enough to provide a domain for me.”
Milos glanced around the room, looking for something obvious. Ifrit were plane-bound demons, so they required a focal point for their binding. They had many names in many cultural traditions, such as Ifrit, Imp, Oni, Dybbuk, or Jinn. And like the proverbial genie from the stories, the binding object, aka the Lamp, was a cruel punishment. Their kind were forbidden to touch their own binding object, their domain, and if they attempted to, they would be unbound entirely. So the Ifrit needed their domain to survive, but could not move it or change the location without intervention from someone else. Being unbound was a heavy cost for trying to move your own home… a human would call it death, but it was worse than death. There is no soul to move onwards from an Ifrit, as they are entirely composed of soul. Being unbound is releasing the energies that make them back to the cosmos, shattering them into a billions stray strings, a confetti of myriad energies never to recoalesce into their former selves. Human souls had that choice, out of many, at the Gates. Ifrit and other demons had no choice beyond either survival or oblivion.
“Must be a good one,” Milos said. “Hopefully it came without any fine print.”
Shirin shrugged, one of her fiery eyes winking admittedly. “Let’s me be myself and the cost was minor. Liz did me a favor.”
“Yay me,” Liz clapped once with impatience. “The Met.”
“The Met,” Milos agreed.
“It’s under the Accords,” Al grumbled. “Fucking Accords.”
“I know. I have that covered.” Milos said.
“Its neutral ground and it is consecrated, Milos,” Al continued unphased. “Honestly, I am shocked your feet don’t burn when you tread the halls.”
“I… assure you, I have it covered.” Milos said emphatically.
“Come on Milos. You have to give us something, or we are not going to be in on this, no matter what we stand to get out of it.” Shirin smiled kindly. “I don’t want to speak for Al, but we have to hear the details. Completely. Before we agree to any madness. Going against the Accords…”
“Since I had my realization, I have performed the… ah… due diligence before reaching out to each of you.” Milos said.
“When did you have ‘your’ realization?” Al asked, his hands mimicking air quotes on either side of his head. Notably, his overly long fingers were much more pronounced when producing said air quotes.
“Eighteen months ago… the day that I knew I was going to take what was mine. And it was eighteen months ago when I immediately realized I was going to need help. And until yesterday, I knew that was going to be the hardest part,” Milos waved at the room.
“Thanks. I had NO idea apologizing was that hard for you, Milos,” Liz sardonically raised one of her thinly shaped eyebrows. “Shocking, I tell you.”
“The Met was founded in 1870, but it was moved in 1880 to its current location,” Milos lead in, ignoring Liz. “Where it was erected, and most of the original structure has been covered, hidden, or replaced with expansions since. But the very original building was designed by two architects, one named Jacob Mould and another named Calvert Vaux.”
“So two privileged white blokes designed the building. Big deal.” Liz waved it away. “All the buildings in New York were designed by the same.”
“Calvert Vaux carried debts, and he happened to be the gentleman that designed orphanages, missions, and… Central Park.” Milos let the statement hang in the air for a moment.
Al was the first to make the connection. “He was the one that had been indebted to the Fair Folk, wasn’t hs? I remember that story… it is the reason Central Park even exists… the eldest daughter of Queen Méabh, what was her name?”
Liz lifted two fingers and blew a raspberry. “Fucking Cainnear Dearg. Sacrificed on a spear, but the cunt lived and I believe is living it up on Martha’s fucking Vineyard. How she managed to name it after her own fucking mother without anyone realizing… absolute bollix on that one.”
Milos continued, “This Vaux thought he was clever, wily enough to trick the ones that invented trickery itself. Vaux had a hand in the drafting of the Accords and ultimately paid the last of his owed debts through his drowning at Gravesend. But before that he gave them the green places, the hallowed places of power. Then he gave them children. Then he gave them the lost and the forgotten. And while he was drafting the Accords on their behalf…”
“He blocked them from human sacred spaces, all because of Hallowed Ground,” Al finished, eyes wide. “Wow.”
“Exactly. He takes that and he designs the Met to be be wholly Consecrated. And I am fairly certain that final stubborn act is the reason that he and his descendants paid as they did. The Fair Folk knew Vaux had tricked them. The Sidhe, indeed. Withdrawn from the world, not through their choice, but by men like Vaux. And that my friends, that is why the drowned him. Insults”
Liz rolled her eyes and scoffed loudly. “My god, you fucks. I am still human! Let’s avoid playing the monsters-were-the-humans-all-along card. Its trite and plainly reductive, if not outright offensive. This world has always been about survival of the fucking fittest, and it will always be about that. The great God above, the fucking petty tyrant, made it that way from the start. That is why folks like me are here. Folks like Shirin are here. Folks like Alkiwenzii are here. And if I must remind you, Nightwalker, that is why you are here. Red in tooth and claw.”
“Fine, I won’t pick at it, but the Met is not only consecrated ground due to the Accords, it is sacred ground because it was designed to be.” Milos frowned. “He put the protections in to create a building that could hoard the very thing that the Fair Folk desired. Right in plain sight. Right there.”
“Oh fuck. That’s why you need me, finally, you get to the point.” Liz laughed. “You want me to break the sigils.”
“Not break… flex them gently.”
“Come again?” Liz stopped dead.
“You break the sigils, and every single troublesome thing will descend on Fifth Avenue, and we will have bigger problems on our hands. Including the enforcers of the signatories on the Accords. The Met is tied up in the leylines like a Gordian Knot. It is connected. Deep and wide. Vaux really stuck it to his debtors.”
Al smirked maniacally. “Worth it. New York would turn into a battlefield and I would eat like a king.”
Shirin frowned, “And the Accords would have to be maintained. That means an Act. Millions, Al, that means millions of dead.”
“Alright, so I would eat better than a king.”
“Including you,” Shirin added. “You know that.”
Al lifted his lip and snorted. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Flexing the Sigils… I could inflect, no, subversion,” Liz whispered, talking to herself more than anyone in the room. “I could create a bind. And double the existing ones up? Could temporarily invert them…”
Shirin hugged herself, leaning back against the cushions deep in her own thoughts. Liz finally looked up and admitted, “I need to study this more.”
“I know. But you are the best.” Milos said.
“Don’t butter me up, I am in. This is… new.” Liz smiled so wide her cheeks nearly touched her ears. “Something fucking new! Alright. Milos. Fucking hell. Got me all revved up, you Greek cunt, this is better than sex.”
Al flexed his fingers, his fingernails looking more like talons than they usually did. “So we assume that Liz figures that out. Where does Shirin and I fit in?”
“The Met has multiple protections, Al. Liz would handle the Sigils, but we need to handle the more, ah, human protections. They have multiple layers of security systems, with a staff that monitors and manages the cameras, key fobs, and the sensors. Some of the team is onsite… and some is handled by a third party security company. Shirin obviously can handle the systems and body hop as needed. I bet she can shift through the staff in a matter of minutes without causing any harm. But-“
“But we need an accident to take out the connections to the outside,” Al finished.
“Exactly. Getting in is nearly trivial? But the outside connections are handled by, um, others.” Milos frowned.
Liz’s eyes brightened. “Oh. Oh! My god, this is like Christmas. The third party security company… it’s ran by the Family.”
Al did a doubletake between Liz and Milos. His eyes going wider by the millisecond. “No.”
Milos remained silent. He splayed his hands in demure admission.
Liz laughed raucously. “Ond o’s ffycin ots!? I mean I am already fucking with Sigils, why not go against your ffycin Family! As our chances of success plummet to near zero, we say fuck yeah and stick two fingers in the Vampire Family’s eyes.”
“Your brethren, Milos. If they find out its you, they will rebuke you. Milos. Ferals don’t survive long in this world, months at best,” Shirin said, uncertainty flooding her voice. “Are you sure?”
“And this is why we have Al,” Milos waved grandiosely. “What are Wendigos great at?”
“Eating.” Shirin and Liz replied in unison.
“Besides that.” Milos shook his head lightly.
Al leaned back, his brow furrowed in thought. “We are skinwalkers. And when we doppel, nothing can perceive the change. In our shifted state, my kind are absences to the senses, doubly so for folks that can see more or sense more. Since Vampires can observe more than most…”
“You can go among them and they would never know.” Shirin took the turn to finish. “I can hop, but the Vampires would see me. You can intervene and they wouldn’t understand… because they can’t. You would be invisible.”
“Among the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” Milos finished.
“Fucking brilliant,” Liz grinned. “This is a lot of ifs, Milos. If I find a way around the Sigils, if Shear can find everything she needs, if Al can walk amongst the Family and turn off the Met, and if… if… well, shit, what are you doing during all of this?”
Milos put his hands on his head and sighed with a smile on his face. “What else would I be doing? I will be robbing the ever living fuck out of the Met.”