Three weeks had gone by since Manny had dropped the weight from her world and into David's. The boys had gone about their lives as they always had although now they were always keeping a sharper eye out for things that didn't belong. But for those three weeks they also stayed out of each other's way. The usual playful banter ensued but it wasn't as it once was. Laughter still followed, jeers and jabs, insults and dirty jokes were said but it was tame. They were acting their age.

Max was pleased.

"Any word from the underground? It's been far too quiet lately."

Manny looked up from the corner she had come to reside in while in his presence, not out of fear or discomfort but for the exact opposite. It was within the shadows that she stepped in and out of their plane and into her own. How she crossed over so easily and appeared from place of place without a legit mode of transportation.

"It's the calm before the storm."

Max nodded in silence before his gaze came up from the papers he had currently been signing, bronze fountain pen catching the light of the lamp he was reading the fine print by. "Complete upheaval?"

It was Manny's turn to nod in silence before she pushed herself up off the wall and ventured forward to let herself be seen completely, clad in the same buisness attire from the night she had had her meeting with the Boys. Streaked hair swayed as she sunk into one of the patent leather seats along the opposite side of the majestic desk in silence.

Max pulled off his glasses to rub at the bridge of his nose with a light pinch as he kept his gaze trained on her. His soft eyes showing kindness and understanding and an underlying threat if crossed. "Something on your mind, Emmanuelle?"

He was one of the few people that actually used her whole name to address her.

"If 'something' means 'a lot'? Then yes." She reclined into the seat as one leg crossed over the other smoothly, hands in her lap. "Do you believe your boys are ready for this?"

"Don't you?" Max had slipped his glasses back on and was staring at her questioningly as the pen was poised perfectly in his hand and hovering over the stack of papers he had left to go through. Something having to do with the newly purchased video store.

Manny chuckled and canted her head from left to right sharply to release the tension that had settled between her shoulders with a loud pop of her neck. "Yes. But they're going to learn a lot in a short span of time. I'm warning you of the repercussions that will come from this ahead of time."

That had caught the older vampire's attention and once again his hand halted in the smooth movement of his signature, a brow quirked over the black frame of his Buddy Holly styled glasses. "What do you mean?"

"They may be obedient now but they won't always be so."

Max smirked and then chuckled as he leaned back into his seat, letting the pen lay atop the papers as he steepled his fingers and she realized where it was David had picked up the gesture. "The boys, my boys, are nothing but and will always continue to be. They kn-"

"They know better?" Manny quirked her head with a smile that he wasn't sure how to interpret.

"Yes. Yes, exactly."

"It won't always be so, Max. Power corrupts." She leaned forward slowly with only a slight shimmer in her wake at where she had been only a moment before. "Be ready." With that she then stood, Max doing the same in a gentlemanly gesture as he rested his fingers along the edge of his desk.

"Are you saying they'll betray me, Emmanuelle? Is that it?"

She continued to the corner she had appeared in and looked to him one last time as she turned her back to the wall, the shadows creeping over the edges of her frame and pulling her back. "No." Her voice reverberated softly as she disappeared completely. Leaving Max alone to contemplate what the demon had said.