Knife Party {Taran}

[Tanith Korakas]

Tanith stepped out of the black Dodge Charger and shut the door, looking up at the decrepit apartment building through eyes shielded by sunglasses. She sighed a little, and was already pulling the phone away from her face to hang up as she said, "Alright, DeMortei, I'll let you know if I need the body bag." There was a wry comment about her brother's body being in the East River, and the click of her phone snapping shut. "Taran, what next?" she said to herself. She took a breath and headed for the building entrance.

Bums outside leered at her, but that NYPD badge clipped to the waistline of her sleek black slacks (comfortable AND practical) deterred them from doing anything further. She thanked God silently that she had the good graces to be a cop and not a delivery woman for UPS or something else, especially not on this side of town. It was beyond her why Taran even took living space in this ratty, rusted-ass apartment building. The rent must have been beyond cheap, but really? Seriously? He did well, that she knew, but always owing people favours must've gotten him to the point where he chose to live comfortably within a mean that could expand or contract like pupils did during a rave.

She made her way up the stairs, refusing to touch the elevator, the inside walls of which were smeared with a gelatinous green liquid that smelled strangely of vomit, and walked to the end of the hall on the twelfth and final floor. It was the 'suite' - Taran nearly had the entire floor to himself. The largest of the apartment spaces available, and with both other rooms on that hall empty. She banged on the door - like the police, but only because she was the police.

"Taran! Open up! And answer your damn phone! And clean your goddamn room!" she called from the hall, letting him know that yes, it was Tanith, and yes, she was annoyed.

[Taran Korakas]

The East River wasn't all that far off, at least, as far as Taran was concerned.  He was leaning at an awkward angle under his kitchen sink, which was actually pretty nasty.  The whole place was nasty, but nobody, and seriously nobody seemed willing to mess with him there.  The people who lived in the apartments downstairs never bothered him, as though they knew he was into something bad.  That, or there was something about him and his 'guests' that did the trick.  Either way, he was almost positive that he could leave his doors unlocked in this area and not have any problems.

That didn't mean he didn't lock them, though.

Having a cop for a sister also didn't mean that he didn't freak out over the 'cop knock' that consisted of someone banging on the door like the...well, the police.  He shot up from what he was doing so fast that he totally brained himself on the pipe he was working on, and he actually didn't even SAY anything for the first full minute.  He just sat there in his own little world of pain and...lack of thought.  Tanith played a nice little percussion set for that world of his, and he secretly hope that she'd felt his forehead smacking into the pipe.  It would serve her right.

"WAT?!" he snapped, and that was EXACTLY how he said it.  Loud, almost like a bird squawking, and extremely indignant as he pulled himself up off of the floor to go answer the door.  He had to have a goose egg forming on his forehead by the time he whipped the door open.  "YOU clean my goddamn room if it bothers you!  I don't mind it!"

He had to add that.  Just for the record.  He didn't even know where his phone was.

[Tanith Korakas]

When Taran did eventually fling the door open, he met Tanith, holding her forehead, a dark expression on her face. "You did that on purpose, you shit!" she roared, reaching forward with a free hand to jab him in the soft spot of his shoulder with her fingertips the way someone tries to instigate a fight. As he inevitably stepped back, she entered his apartment, kicking the door closed behind her. She finally removed her hand from her forehead, which was pounding now, and slung all the locks shut. All twelve of them. She glanced back at him. "This gives 'never talk to strangers' a whole new definition. Taran, are you becoming agoraphobic? Do we need to take you somewhere public right away so I can make sure you're not going to start walling yourself in with tin foil?"

She breezed passed him, offering a small kiss on the cheek as she did so - as was customary. She could be very irritated with him, but he was still her Taran, and nothing more need be explained on the matter. "What is that disgusting smell?" she asked, walking in a circle with her arms folded against herself as though the very air touching her contained some sort of trash contagion that was going to have her sprouting bags and banana peels and leave her with a sudden urge to 'pimp' out a shopping cart with rhinestones and talk to telephone poles like all the other winos did.

[Taran Korakas]

"I did NOT!" he returned when she jabbed him, rubbing his own forehead instead of his shoulder where she'd attacked him.  HE was the one with the bump, so he was the only one who really had any right to be worried about rubbing the spot.  He hoped it didn't give him brain damage, or something.  He didn't like the slack-jawed, drooling look.  It really just didn't work for him.

"Tin foil only works for aliens, Tanith, so you don't have to worry about that one.  The locks are a precaution that the last resident seemed to think was necessary.  There are scratch marks at the bottom of the bedroom door, too.  Looks like a dog, which makes me think that whoever lived here last was a paranoid mess.  I don't even bother to lock the door half the time.  You're not becoming paranoid, I hope," he told her, following her through the place with a friendlier tone after the kiss on the cheek.  Just as she could be irritated with him and still consider him her Taran, he felt the same about her. 

THEN came mention of the smell.  Taran briefly entertained the idea of pretending he had no idea what she was talking about to hopefully make her wonder for a moment if she was insane, but he knew better.  She was too 'logical' for that.  Truth be told, he actually didn't know what the smell was, but he had a good idea.  "I seriously think something died in the wall.  That, or something died, and that last guy HID it in the wall.  Either way, I'm not using the living room until I feel the need to rip the wall down and find it.  That, or until it decomposes to a point where I can't smell it anymore."

As far as he was concerned, both options were perfectly plausible.  In fact, leaving it there was a good way of keeping other shifters out.  Animals, and that included people with an animal half, tended to shy away from areas that smelled of death.  Naturally, it made him uncomfortable to have a room in his HOME smell like that, but he wasn't quite normal, and he didn't really have the capabilities to deal with it currently.

Just watch, he was going to get an eye-twitch and use a crowbar to tear the living room apart looking for whatever was causing the smell.  Then, TANITH would get an eye-twitch and come running to see what the hell was wrong with him.  He'd bet on that one.

[Tanith Korakas]

"We're birds, and flesh-eating ones at that - not to mention I've smelled a dead body before. That doesn't smell like rotting flesh, it smells like..." she trailed off, a hand over her nose as she spoke with a strange, muffled voice. "... you remember that time my boyfriend in highschool was a prick to me so you crammed roast beef into the vents of his car and then peed on it? Yeah.. that's what that smells like." She nearly gagged - damn those shifter senses.

She rushed over to his kitchen to open a window, and stopped in the middle of her footfalls as she nearly collided with a small red toolbox. "Hey!" she cried. "What are you, Mario? Paisano, I don't know if anyone told you, but fixing plumbing isn't as easy as turning a crescent wrench around a few times." She tried to open the window above the sink, but even with her added stamina, the bitch was glued shut. "Probably from the smell," she muttered under her breath, turning as Taran came into the kitchen.

"When's the last time you cleaned out your fridge?" she asked accusingly, unwilling to take even ONE step in the general direction of the device. She was willing to bet his milk looked like gelatin, and there was hair on anything else in there that had once been remotely edible. "You really need to start winning more, Taran," she said, voice breathing into laughter at the world 'really'. "Maybe we can get you out of here and into a... more livable space."

[Taran Korakas]

He hesitated at her description, and for a moment he only looked thoughtful.  It was after the image had really sunk in that he winced.  He remembered what she was talking about, and it didn't make him feel any better.  He'd have preferred a body, quite possibly.

"I'll have you know, I'm actually not bad at plumbing.  I was finishing replacing the pipes down there when you showed up," he told her, ever so slightly indignantly.  There were old, nasty chunks of pipe, complete with calcium deposits and rust, strewn about the floor, and a peek under the sink would reveal shiny new ones.  He wasn't finished, though.  "Just don't turn on the water."

The last thing he needed was for her to turn the sink on and flood his damn kitchen.  The place was already bad enough.

He didn't answer her about the fridge, instead just following her gaze to it.  If he was honest, he'd have to admit that he'd never cleaned it out, and that included when he first showed up.  It was running, but the fact that the stuff inside of it had ALREADY been growing hair and stinking like hell had convinced him to put it off.  He just hadn't STOPPED putting it off.  He really didn't need to hear her talk about him losing, though.

"Are you finished attacking my pride yet?  This is a slump, and I'll get out of it," he told her, the indignation getting more pronounced, and perhaps that was because of her laughter.  Usually, he didn't care if she laughed at him, but he was already pissed at himself for losing as he'd been lately.  "Besides, this place isn't un-livable, it's huge, and it puts me in better contact with the people you want information from.  As long as you stop with your 'cop knock', they might talk to me."

Nobody was going to talk to him if they knew he was being visited by the cops all the time.

"How's your partner been?  Working on any fun cases lately?" he asked, honestly curious and more than willing to get the attention off of his crappy apartment, and onto her.

[Tanith Korakas]

He'd told her not to turn on the water just as she'd been reaching for the faucet. She looked at him menacingly, but decided against it at the last moment. She generally used better judgment than Taran, and that behaviour would have been more flattering of him than of herself, so she left it alone. For now. One false move and she'd sink his kitchen. Lulz pun!

She winced a little as he bit into her about attacking his ego, and shrugged. "Sorry, Taran. And you are correct about this place being a magnet for the contacts you supply for me. I suppose if you lived in a sweet penthouse on the upper East side, they'd be slightly more reluctant to believe you were hard up for cash." She was almost positive he wasn't really that broke, anyways. Ravens liked shiny things, and that included shiny green hundred dollar bills (now that they were using that weird Monopoly style money, anyways). She was more than willing to bet he had a fat bank account in the Cayman islands or something equally movie-star villain and absurd.

"DeMortei? Oh, he's - you know, the usual. Gruff, dark, cynical. Just the way I like 'em," she chirped. "I couldn't have gotten stuck with a better choice. They call us the 'dastardly duo' now because we're both such bastards to everyone else. At least we're good at what we do," she said with a smile. Had she any idea about London's family situation, and vampire situation, she'd have sang a completely different tune. London was safer with his partner in the dark about those details, though.

[Taran Korakas]

Pun or no, sinking his kitchen would just plain be mean.  He really didn't need her working against him when it came to him trying to get this nasty apartment in living condition, and flooding the kitchen would effectively ruin the carpet in the living room.  Come to think of it, that was probably going to need to be removed, anyway.  There were a load of 'mystery stains', and he had some rather suspicious ideas about some of them.  Others just looked like the last owner had owned a dog, and he already thought that because of the scratches on the bedroom doors.

If he didn't have paranoid fits occasionally, he'd seriously consider just removing the doors entirely, rather than replacing them.  He'd have to see.  Maybe he could get Tanith to help.

Actually, he was sure he could get her to help.  She was his twin sister.  Of COURSE she'd help.

"You know, this place wouldn't look half-bad if I had some help putting it together.  I might keep that first room you walk into when you come in the front door looking nasty, but I can block off the rest of the place and actually fix it up.  You should spend a weekend here and see what we can get done," he suggested, smirking at her.  She might refuse, but he wasn't going to drop it now that he'd seriously considered that one.  Hey, if she helped, she had a say in what his home looked like, including cleanliness.

She'd like that.

As for DeMortei, her description didn't surprise him in the least.  That man, besides being a big and scary form of shifter, was creepy on his own.  Taran didn't know what it was that he didn't like about the guy, but Tanith seemed to like him, so he didn't really say anything about it to her.  He didn't like Detective DeMortei, however, and he didn't even realize he had plenty of reason.  Perhaps it was Taran recognizing someone of his ilk, a criminal with a 'pretty face', but he knew better than to trust London.  That man felt like high-class crime to him, and he couldn't put his finger on what exactly was wrong with the jaguar.  Thus, he kept his mouth shut, and fully intended to watch Tanith's back.

If anything happened to her, he'd kill DeMortei first, just in CASE he had something to do with it. 

"What are you talking about, people should believe I'm hard up for cash!  I'm living in this shitty apartment building for a reason," he told her, though he was far less indignant than before.  That might have meant that he was over the whole situation that had him being pissy just a moment earlier, or it might have meant that he really did have a bank account in the Caymans and didn't feel like lying to her too well.  With Taran, it was sometimes difficult to tell.  Tanith would probably never know for sure unless the shit hit the fan, which he'd do everything to keep from happening.

[Tanith Korakas]

Tanith narrowed her eyes as Taran said the magic words to rope her into decorating his apartment. "Taran, can't I just hire someone to decorate for you? I mean, my own apartment isn't even decorated, for Christ's sake. You know, you've seen it! I have like, a couch, a chair, and some random shit laying around, and then that's it until you get to the bedroom." She shrugged a little at the thought, and after a moment of pause, she sighed. "Give me a few days to think about it," she groaned. She'd been obsessed with those 'Home and Garden' magazines when she went to the bookstore. She could make his apartment look like one of those things people show off in the mags, and then take pictures and send them to her mother victoriously.

She just decided to drop the whole money thing at the thought of her mother, and sat down on the arm of his couch, balancing precariously between a suspicious stain and the remnants of a bowl of salsa and chips that had been there for... long enough to have dust on it. "Have you talked to mom lately? She left dad," she said casually - not that it was. Tanith and the subject of her father was nothing casual, but all of that police training taught her to bottle it up and release it somewhere else, like in defense class.

[Taran Korakas]

Hire someone to decorate for him?  Why would he want some stranger roaming around his home?  They could set bugs, or something!  Not to mention, that was expensive.  "Tanith, it is so much cheaper to get help from my amazing, kind sister," he 'reminded' her, giving her a look that was both mock adoration and real amusement.  Flattery might not get him everything, but it certainly helped.  Tanith didn't tend to fall for it, but she fell for his shit for other reasons.  Like the fact that they'd practically been joined at the hip since they were born.  That could do it.  "AND, I know I can trust her not to overcharge me, or plant unwelcome listening devices in my home.  I just have to worry about what color she tries to paint my walls."

He could just SEE her choosing pink for his bedroom, or something.  He'd be watching very carefully for things like that.

Really, when she went on, he wished she'd continued giving him hell over his finances.  It was better than thinking about their parents, though that was good news.  He tended to be rather pessimistic about such things, but if it worked out, it was for the best.

"No, I was avoiding calling her because she wants to see this place, and that's the last thing I need," he told her, his mood souring.  Their mother had asked once, and he didn't want her seeing his home.  She'd give him hell about moving in with her until he could afford something nicer, and he didn't want to.  Of course, if Dad was gone, then maybe it wouldn't be so bad.  Even so, he was too old to be living with his mother.  "It's about fucking time.  I bet he'll find a way to talk her out of it, though." 

Every time he'd tried to talk her INTO getting rid of their father, she'd gotten mad at him, so he didn't know what had inspired this change of tune, but he wasn't willing to bet that it'd last.  He knew how those situations went, and they NEVER lasted.  She'd let the asshole back.

[Tanith Korakas]

"Of course, dear brother. I'll stick to silvers and grays. At least we have the same colour preferences..." she trailed off, wondering how she could say she accidentally bought 'Springtime Lavender' instead of 'Stormy Sea' and had uncontrollably painted his entire bathroom in the pastel hue. She was positive she'd come up with a good excuse between now and the purchase date. She plotted silently as he spoke.

"Maybe," she said, her tone still so... aloof. "She sounded pretty finalized, but you never know. I just thought I'd tell you, since I'm the only one that still talks to her. I can't blame you, though. She's always trying to find a way to get me to 'surprise' you with a visit from her by giving her your address. I tell her that I haven't talked to you, or that you're out of town, or any other number of things, but... I don't know how much longer I can stave her off. Maybe after we decorate, you can humour her?" she asked, her tone only with a subtle plea in it to get their mother off of her back.

She leaned against Taran and turned on the TV, sitting silent and content for a few moments. The twins had always been close, and sitting there together in the living room made them look almost eerie, their appearances so striking and similar, their very gestures and mannerisms of speech entwined in eachother. It was fortunate for the world that one was good and one was evil, in the loose sense of the words, because a balance was necessary.

[Taran Korakas]

It was true that they had the same color preferences, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to pull a fast one on him.  He knew a thing or two about 'sleight of hand' and it's more practical uses outside of card or magic tricks, and he knew better than to trust her not to change up what she'd just said.  He would be paying close attention to what she was doing.

Oh man, bring on the guilt trip!  "I still talk to her!  I just....haven't recently.  I told you why!"  Well, she'd said she didn't blame him.  He was DEFINITELY appreciative of the fact that she hadn't yet 'slipped' his address to their mother, since a surprise visit would surely end with him being talked into moving back in with her, and then he'd end up running away to Tanith's again.  His sister had a streak of self-preservation in there, obviously.

"Maybe.  Maybe," he told her, giving her an unpleasant look right up until she moved to lean on him, and then it was over in favor of putting his arm around her.  He wasn't so sure that bringing his mother here would be a good idea, even if they fixed it up.  The outside and halls would still be a wreck, and it was still a bad neighborhood.  She wouldn't approve. 

Tanith smelled of cat.  He could pretty much guess that it meant she'd been in DeMortei's car recently, but he still didn't like it.  Of course, he NEVER liked other men being around her, and it wasn't even a creepy twincest sort of reason.  He remembered all too well the way their father threw her around when they were younger, and he just didn't like men other than himself anywhere near her.  If he EVER got wind of a man touching her the wrong way, he was going to kill the guy.  Slowly, and he would enjoy it VERY much.

Almost as though his thoughts needed a physical manifestation, he squeezed her arm a little, smiling at her.  "You don't come around often enough.  Work busy?"

[Tanith Korakas]

The irony was that if either one of them actually knew what DeMortei was about, Taran would be a lot more vocal about the man's presence near Tanith, although London had clearly never put his partner in danger. One could only hope he continued not to, and Taran wouldn't be forced to kill him slowly and painfully. Tanith smiled, though, blissfully unaware of all these things. "Work's been busy in general. Although, we're all starting to look alike," she said with a laugh. Not two days prior, she, Sullivan, LeCroix and DeMortei had all been pulled into the Chief's office for one thing or another, and he accused them of being related. Glances had been exchanged between each of them in stunned silence as the lion, panther, crow and vampire held back laughter at their own expense.

"I do have something funny to show you, though," she said. She reached over to the end table for his laptop and turned it on, ignoring all of the porn pop-ups. She really needed to take his computer to that tech guy she knew and have it cleaned out. "Look at what one of the guys in the department linked me to yesterday when we were sitting around waiting to go home," she said. She cruised over to youtube and typed in 'What Am I'.

Hilarity ensued.

[Taran Korakas]

Hilarity did indeed ensue, though Taran was torn between laughing his ass off and wondering what the HELL was going on.  That was too damn funny, though.  He'd have to avoid quoting it at inopportune times, but Tanith was going to regret showing it to him.  Ravens could be annoying enough with their sometimes repetitive sounds, but if he could figure out how to make a sound like 'Hand'? 

Win.

"Wow, that's awesome, but it's great to see that the city's police force is hard at work.  No wonder you guys ask me for information all the time," he snorted, though he naturally wasn't all that serious.  The police were sharp enough to have nearly caught him at different things plenty of times, and he wasn't stupid or sloppy, usually.  Tanith's help was invaluable in that area.

He thought quickly to decide if there was anything HE'D seen on the internet to show her, but it didn't take more than 30 seconds for him to decide that he'd already emailed her links to anything he thought was funny, and anything else he looked at, she didn't want to see.

Heh, she really didn't, with some of it, as both a female and sister.  Other things, just because she was a cop.  He was talented that way.

[Tanith Korakas]

"Hey, we work!" she snapped. "We need stuff like this to keep us sane. And anyways, we've got plenty to keep us busy. Most of the crap I find out about there is because one of us found it and e-mailed it to everyone from home." She laughed a little.

"What have you got going on today, anyways? Expecting anyone that I need to not be around for? You know, I still haven't figured out how the people you deal with don't know that I'm your sister. We look almost exactly alike, Taran. Don't you think it's about time someone figured it out? Granted, the people you deal with are fairly unintelligent creatures, but every once in a while we have a big bust."