It had taken Lorena almost a full twenty minutes to get rid of Dante so that she could take a shower and begin to pretend that she still had some shred of dignity left. Fully dressed and almost equally composed, she wandered back into the main suite, expecting to see Salem grieving over the hardwood floor. What she saw instead was...

"Jesus Christ, Damon!"

Not what she expected, to say the very least.

Damon was a tall, pale, and surprisingly bulky. Graying black hair was slicked back into a ponytail, and eyes almost as dark as his hair used to be were fixed on her in a strange variation of amusement. Lorena would never admit it, but she found him to be really unsettling and (in the right context) scary as shit. He said nothing at first, choosing instead to grin at her.

Holy fucking Jesus that made him look so fucking creepy.

"What do you want, Damon?"

It was surprisingly harder to get that particular sentence out than she'd thought. Her voice may have cracked slightly towards the end. If Damon had noticed, he had apparently chosen to ignore it.

"What do I want?" he asked playfully. "Now there's a question."

She heard the chair creak slightly as he rose from his seat.

"There are a great many things that I want, my dear, but precious few things that I need." His grin seemed to widen almost impossibly. "Perhaps that is the better question?"

Oh God, did she hate him.

Rolling her eyes, she sat down in one of the other chairs.

"Fine then- what do you need?" she replied icily (or as best she could, anyway). "I'm not exactly in much of a position to do anything right now."

"Oh, nothing much." He inspected his nails idly. "Just a small favor."

"Nothing's ever 'small' with you."

He briefly looked thoughtful, or rather, made a show of it.

"I suppose that's true."

Lorena sighed and ran a hand through her damp hair.

"It doesn't matter. Look, I just told you I can't really do anything right now."

"On the contrary- I think you're in the exact place I need you to be."

She froze for a split-second and gawked at him.

"Come again?"

"It's hardly a secret that Sparda's begun to have some unfortunate problems with a certain group of humans," said the pale man casually. "With things beginning to escalate there's almost no doubt in my mind that he'd start to look for some form of solution. Any solution."

He looked up at her when he said that, making a point to establish eye-contact to further emphasize his point. Lorena frowned slightly.

"And you'd know about that how?"

He simply shrugged in response, a knowing smirk on his face.

"Right, forget I asked," she said curtly, flopping down onto one of the chairs and pointedly looking up at the ceiling. "So what is this all about?"

She saw him grin again out of the corner of her eye and that overall unsettling feeling hit her stomach like a rock.

"Well, that very same particular group seem to have something of mine. Something I would very much like back."

Lorena stopped gazing at the ceiling long enough to level an incredulous look his way.

"You mean someone was stupid enough to steal from you?" she echoed. "Really?"

"I'm even more surprised they got away with it," he replied, suddenly serious. "And as impressive as that may be, I find it quite concerning."

"Right."

She went back to looking up at the ceiling.

"So what is it you want me to find?"

"A book."

She heard the sound of him beginning to pace, his shoes softly clicking on the floor.

"A book?" she repeated. "Why the hell would they take a book?"

"Knowledge, of course," he said simply.

Lorena heaved a sigh and closed her eyes.

"Of course," she muttered. "Because when I break into a house that's the first thing I'm gonna go for."

Opening her eyes again, she nearly jumped out of her own skin as, instead of the ceiling, a very grim Damon was what she saw. She hadn't even heard him move closer.

"This is no joke, Lorena."

His tone had changed from playful to cold in a heartbeat. A feeling of dread sprang up beside the giant rock in her stomach and Lorena shrank away from the man glaring down at her.

"I want. That. Book. You are going to get it for me."

It was a rare occurrence where Lorena Cain found herself backed so totally and utterly into a corner simply out of fear, but she'd seen what Damon could do. He scared her even more than Sparda did.

Too scared to speak, she could only nod in response.

"Excellent," he said, suddenly chipper again, as he straightened up. "I'll be in touch soon."

Damon walked right around her chair and strode over to the window. By the time he'd reached it, he'd been replaced by a large falcon. It took off into the wind, Lorena watching as he flew away.

Of all the things that could have happened today, she was pretty sure this was maybe the worst.

It can be left up for debate whether or not Dante eavesdropping was completely normal or downright creepy. Regardless of that, there was no doubt in his mind that things had just become much more interesting.

So Lorena had ties to the Coven. Odd that she hadn't used something like that to get out of the deal with his father. However, this either made her a spy or just downright clueless...or there was the smallest possibility that she wasn't even a part of it.

He hadn't considered that.

What was particularly interesting was how adamant Damon was about Lorena getting that book. Dante had to wonder what exactly could be so important that the head of the Coven felt the need to get personally involved- and how he found out about Sparda's intentions.

Yes, things were now very interesting.