Well-Suited

1 - Ash

She held the silk robe tight against her chest, the sea breeze floating through the open window, the night as still as the figure clad in black by the doorway to her bedroom.

It was nice, she considered, that he bothered to show up at all before he disappeared into the night. He peeled the leather gloves off his fingers and she tore her eyes from him to return to the vanity mirror.

"Everything alright?" She said, a measured air of nonchalance. If he didn't care, neither did she. There would not be a repeat of this afternoon's argument.

While it was still her debt to collect – in exchange for her favor given, after all, she could have the same steel-eyed gaze as Erik, who was staring absently at the mahogany bedposts. He was harder to read with the porcelain mask affixed firmly to his face.

So, he was still going out. And she would not be going with him.

"Too dangerous," he murmured as if reading her thoughts. It was as if he was goading her to scream at him again, demanding the heels of her palms thud against the immobile marble of his chest.

"Mm," She said, carefully drawing the thin line of her Cupid's bow with a deep red, though she would not be joining him. Her hand shook with the effort.

"Besides," he continued, stepping across the threshold, the uninvited vampire. She sighed, watched him in the reflection of the mirror, and waited for whatever reason he had come up with since they last spoke. He wore one of his more subtly expensive waistcoats, inlaid with gold embroidery, the buttons onyx and glimmering in the gaslight. The phrase, "dressed to kill," floated through her mind and she shivered.

"St. Barts does not allow women," he settled the pair of gloves on the side table next to her vanity, his fingers absently running over the horsehair brush, the hand mirror. Silver; they were a matching set, one of the early gifts in their tenure in Coney Island. A beautiful thing for a – well, Erik was nothing if not a man with a collector's eye. She chafed against the burn of his eyes.

"Not very progressive of them," she snapped back, losing a bit of her relaxed tone in the delivery. She placed the compact lip tint back on the vanity table, chose a mascara brush to dip into a small glass of water. A production for an unproductive evening.

The seediest bars of Coney Island had nothing on St. Barts, an inappropriately named gambling hall on the Upper East Side. It was crowded, very exclusive, and full of Irishmen- including one who had reneged on a deal with them. Neither Meg nor Erik had much patience to be toyed with, not anymore, not after everything they had put into the burgeoning boardwalk they hoped to make an empire from. They had a reputation to protect.

She sighed. "Can't the boys take care of it?" She asked, referencing the eclectic collection of young men Erik had acquired to do his bidding for him.

"No." His tone was final; she did not ask how they messed up this time. Better to do it himself, he always said.

She brushed the tips of her blonde lashes with the brush, trying her best not to look at the figure behind her. So gingerly as to barely be felt, her robe was placed back from where it had slipped from her shoulder, his fingertips lingering there a second too long.

"It's mine to claim –" She hissed. She grew tired of the game he was playing by being here at all. "Surely, we can find him somewhere else, somewhere I can help –"

"This needs to be public," he repeated the argument she knew by heart. "They can't get away with it," he was fully behind her, now, hands on either side of the chair back, peering at her through the large, oval mirror. "It has to be tonight."