After the decision was made, Mercurio quickly sent a requisition and received all the case docs from his people on the inside. Again, Leona was both amazed and frightened by how resourceful he…or Camarilla was. It was like there was nothing they couldn't infiltrate, even high-above governmental departments.

Since right now Leona couldn't just walk away without giving the Regent a proper reason, they decided to split up—she would look at the documents of the case and pick up Alice's track in Los Angeles, while Mercurio would pay a visit to Alice's parents and colleagues in Chicago under the pretence of a federal agent, see what they say.

Leona immediately started it when she got back to her haven—she wouldn't dare to delay for a minute. Mercurio told her that statistically, the possibility of Alice being alive was already close to zero now, but…as far as it's not completely hopeless, she would view it as 100%.

But when she started, Leona began to realize how emotionally painful it was to go through the whole case: there were notes taken for interviews with Alice's families and friends, stating how broken she was about her best friend's disappearance, and her frustrations about the agents being unable to make progress. She moved out of the flat she shared with Leona soon afterwards and went back to live with her parents, losing her focus on work and becoming obsessed with the idea of finding Leona herself, even called people from Leona's orphanage to gather her clues.

The most difficult part, however, was to read her journals—Alice had the habit of writing diaries since she was an elementary school kid, and she never dropped a day. After realizing Leona's missing, Alice began to write them in the format of letters to her, with the contents less and less about herself, but more and more about Leona:

"Dear Leona, today Mark was drunk and cried in front of me, told me he regretted so much that he never told you he'd had this crush on you since college, because you always looked so cold, and he was scared that a ordinary guy like him would be refused brutally…"

"Dear Leona, today I went to St. Louis Children's Charity Centre. Everyone was so sad about your accident, because they've told every kid about you and the children in the orphanage look up to you as an example, but they told me you hadn't been there…"

"Dear Leona, I visited your former psychiatrist. She said she hadn't been able to get in touch with Dr. Garrett Johnson, too. What happened? Did he do something to you…"

"Dear Leona…"

Thinking about how she turned Alice from a girl who could imagine a romance from her one encounter with a nice guy into…this, Leona had to pause and look away from the computer for several times to push down her guilt.

And there she told Garrett she never really belonged, dumping all these people who cared about her behind and became a freaking vampire. What a…selfish bastard she was. Leona hated herself so. But right now her repentance was worthless, the only thing she could do was to think with a composed mind and find out what happened.

Then Leona found something odd, indeed. There was no records of Alice's diary after Thursday, 14th of March, the day before she flied to LA.

If this could be viewed just as a coincidence—that she was busy packing or just too disturbed to write anything, then what came next was even weirder: there was no bank record after she arrived in this city, like she hadn't used any of her cards or withdrawn any cash, and based on the account statement, she didn't seem to prepare the money somehow in advance, too.

So Leona further checked other info in the file, but that was also a dead end: no traffic footage, no eye witness, no log from any hotel registration…nothing, like Alice just got off the plane and vanished. Moreover, the case agents didn't show any suspicion of foul play behind this, just stopped the investigation there and drew the conclusion.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

What?

Leona couldn't believe the case was ended so sloppily, so she called Mercurio to ask him to confirm these findings with the police or agents during his stay in Chicago. With a file like this and stuck in LA, Leona could practically do nothing but rely on him bringing in some valuable intel.

However, Leona didn't want to give up like this. She strolled back and forward in her haven, racking her brain until it was already morning out there, and she fell asleep on her desk. She was woken up by Mercurio's phone call:

"…Yes?"

"Just got back to the city…Now this thing looks serious." Then Mercurio went straight to the point, "Since you mentioned the diary, I actually asked for the original copy of it and guessed what? It's lost, and here's the most funny thing: concerning all those doubts you had, everyone that I asked—everyone that had handled the case said the exact same sentence in their answers: 'We have no other clues, and we have other cases to worry about.' Sounds like something to you?"

Leona narrowed her eyes, growing aware of what he was talking about: "They were hypnotized by Kindred."

There are two common disciplines that could allow vampires to penetrate human minds—Presence and Dominate. Though work in different ways, since the two all fundamentally involve planting psychological suggestions, humans under these effects will subconsciously imitate certain words or moves of the Kindred who "charm" them, and repeat them every time they obey the suggestions.

That could explain why they finished the case in such a hurry, because someone spent lots of efforts…persuading them to. Leona took a deep breath, fearing for Alice's life if she got herself into this vampire mess: "Did you check the archive? Was there anyone appointed to do such thing by CNA?"

Camarilla, North America adopts a more modern approach of management than its European predecessor, where every member's official assignments are documented in a cloud-storage archive system. Should someone within the organization did this, there will usually be records; but if…

"No, no record in the archive. That's the main issue—this is not CNA's doing." Mercurio bewailed, couldn't believe a small, personal favour from Leona ended up something really significant, "Do you want to report this? I mean, this doesn't look good, not something a fledgling and a ghoul can secretly solve, this whoever Kindred…is very good, a professional brainwasher."

Leona hesitated in silence, wavered. She didn't want more Kindred to get in this, for she couldn't guarantee that Alice would be safe if she was…"coped with" by other vampires, but if she didn't report, she wasn't sure if she could do this—and she didn't want to bother Mercurio further.

Just when she was unable to determine her mind, a Tremere apprentice knocked on her front door and shouted: "Leona! There's someone downstairs who got a message for you, from an Isaac Abraham!"

Who was this Abraham? Leona got confused, and couldn't understand why at this contemporary age someone would still use a messenger, unless…it was something secret that couldn't risk being handed onto the information network—where you never knew if someone was watching or tracking.

"Thank you, coming right away!"

Answered the apprentice, Leona set aside her distrusts and went back to answer the phone, and at the both side of this call, they came up with the exact same thing to say:

"Hold on, I got a messenger at the door."

They both paused and were startled, and again asked the same question:

"Was it from Issac Abraham?"

The room went into dead quietness. Leona sat on her computer desk, mulled over the whole thing, then enquired: "You know this guy?"

"Yeah, Baron of Hollywood, a Toreador vampire, very capable, earned quite a fame in his starry domain." Mercurio stopped and shilly-shallied a little, "Well…he is a suave and polished guy, but some will say he is a factual Anarch for his…implicit rebellion against the Prince, so a messenger from him…should make you careful."

"Then I assume we will get the same message…Check in with you later."

Leona hanged up, trying to process all the information in her head to make out the situation—"the key to your survival in Kindred society is to understand by yourself what is going on, instead of blind listening", that was Strauss' advice, but right now…it was really beyond her grasp.

So she decided to listen first. She tidied herself up, came downstairs, saw a muscular ghoul in suit was waiting in the lobby on the ground floor, and to her surprise, Regent Strauss was there, too. On the sight of Leona, the ghoul stood up and walked towards her, whispered in her ear at a volume only she could hear:

"Meet Issac Abraham at the Lalaland jewellery in Hollywood, 8 p.m. tomorrow night."

Then he bowed to the Regent and left, with no redundant act of any kind. Leona stood alone in the living area with Strauss awkwardly, feeling compulsory to explain herself, but he didn't seem to mind, just lowered his head lightly, beckoning his consent to Leona and said:

"Why don't you just…play it out and see what happens?"