Elder vampire uses a telephone for the first time

Waking up, and after having breakfast in bed, Lottie makes a round of phone calls. Val didn't have any strange dreams, but he'll go Auspex Frankie to see if he's now glowing gold too. Frankie recounts the Greek creation myth to Julius over the phone (the Elder vampire's first ever phone call! We're so proud of him!), and it seems both Tartarus and Eros were missing. Seb reports more innocent shop keepers have been arrested.

Frankie also makes a phone call - Benny reports the cane is still on schedule and Angela was pleased about the flower delivery. Val shows up, confirms Frankie has a bright golden aura, and drops him off in Red Hook before heading off to speak to his cop contacts. In Coffey Park, Theo gives Frankie a history lesson. Frankie points out that the Sabbat attack is being led by Ekaterina, which makes Theo realise things are perhaps slightly higher priority than he previously thought - insert facepalm here.

Lottie and Julius go to a secret lab in Queens and meet up with Aisling the Tremere. She recoils having seen Jeanine's thin blood, especially as she finds out where it's from. She does a few experiments on it, and says it's similar to the thaumaturgic Path of Blood, but somehow inverted? It's like Entropy of the Blood, "Chaos undoing Creation", an Unravelling of the Generation. They also discover that it isn't a directed spell, or whatever, meaning it might have been directed at someone else and then spreading up the generation line. It spreads from Childe to Sire? Frankie is absolutely fine, but the Prince got a hold of Jeanine's other Childe - Maslowe. Coincidence?

Perhaps they do actually need to tell Aisling everything that's been going on, so Julius tells her everything. She may or may not thank him for this later.

Maybe you should consider a Path?

In Staten Island, Adelaide says she Sees spiders all over Jeanine, digging into her and eating her regret. (WHY IS DOES IT ALWAYS HAVE TO BE SPIDERS?!) Lottie "convinces" Jeanine to put some of her blood into a thermos flask. Looking at the thin blood in the flask, Adelaide freaks out, saying it's "cold, so cold". She doesn't mean temperature-wise.

After Jeanine puts the lid on the flask, it's put into some oven gloves for an extra layer of protection. Lottie and Julius strategise what to do with Jeanine, and they decide to leave her there for now, and make their way back to Brooklyn. She asks him about his first Childe, who appears to be missing, presumed dead, after angering some werewolves.

Meanwhile in Brooklyn, Frankie and Benny are thinking ahead. If you're in a Prohibition setting, your character is a bootlegger, his ghoul is a bartender in a speakeasy, you and your cousins are planning to open a blood donation clinic, and the house rules say you can mix alcohol with blood to make it fine to drink, it would be rude not to combine these factors, right? If one was to find out which types of blood goes best with which types of alcohol, there's a whole new market to tap into right there.

In the end, the two cousins finally meet up again, at "Angela's", where Frankie was considering heading anyway, after a brief phone conversation. Frankie starts telling his cousin and her Sire his side of what's happened while they were away, and the two Malkavians are not exactly thrilled about his and Theo's raids on the Giovanni affiliated speaks in Little Italy ... If only they knew it was (sort of) Frankie's idea ...

We'll all be Malkavian by the time this is done

In the basement of a little cottage in Staten Island, AltLottie and Julius have a frank discussion. Turns out Lottie is actually the third person Julius has sired, gasp. AltLottie tells him a few home truths about Lottie's and his relationship - he needs to shape up or ship out, basically - which has the desired effect, as he really does want the relationship on offer. AltLottie switches back to Lottie, and to save time Julius gives her a memory dump of everything that's happened, and the interrogation of Jeanine continues.

Jeanine hands over the key to her house (well, she won't be needing it ...) and reveals that, unsurprisingly, Maslowe was going to be her heir, but she didn't have a chance to formalise it yet. For a short while she had considered Frankie, but she kinda went off him because he's very stubborn when it comes to having ethics. Lottie gets her two write two back-dated letters, one that names Frankie her heir, one that signs over the ghouls to Julius. Just in case.

That knife of hers? It was used in some rituals. It also went missing, and she did not in fact carve that J into the guest bed at Val's ... She also gives background on the ghouls. Where they come from, how she tracked them down, and so on. Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned, and she might've been better off taking up a different hobby.

Lottie and Julius blood bond right in front of their torture victim (with Tommy the Fool cowering in the corner), because bare cell with a drain in the floor is just so romantic, ya know? (They were in a similar room the first time it happened. Is this going to be a thing now?) They follow this up by going full Malkavian mindshredding on her, which, true to form, makes them super horny again.

In Manhattan on the way back to Charlotte's apartment, Theo divulges his rivals for the Brujah Primogency. Out of the other three, Frankie has only met one: Delilah, from Elysium! When asked if Charlotte can be trusted, Theo says "to a point". The two of them have a sort of off-and-on thing going on. It's currently on. Frankie admits that when it comes to himself, “it’s complicated”, because saying he has the hots for his cousin's ghoul seems like a thing best kept to himself at this stage.

Don Cerro, the Brujah Primogen, is waiting for them back at Charlotte's. He agrees the Brujah had to make a show of strength, but geez, Theo (and Frankie) couldn't have been a bit more subtle about it? Turns out a Setite doing garbage disposal in Harlem and the Bronx has had a lot of business in Little Italy recently. The Giovanni wanted rid of dead bodies (!) and agreed to a one-off slave trade with the Setites, who wanted some live bodies. Not that this means anything in particular at this stage?

Charlotte spoke with the Toreador to get more information about the Giovanni ghouls and found out her Primogen and some guy called Tamoszius are planning to nominate Frankie for Scourge (!), which is of course completely ridiculous considering he's a baby in vampire terms - it hasn't even been two weeks! He clearly won't say yes, and saying no would hurt future career prospects, except what fucking career prospects does a non-political 13th Gen have anyway, even before taking into account that he narrowly avoided being declared Caitiff after being publicly disowned by his Sire? So is that really such a loss? Theo finally suggests they beat the Toreador at their own game: have the Brujah put that Tamoszius guy forward for Scourge first. Having him turn it down would hurt his social standing wayyyyy more than it would Frankie, and the Toreador couldn’t counter-nominate Frankie without it looking like sour grapes.

Let's go find a victim!

The cousins went to Harlem to pick up Valenti from Ellie, who wanted an introduction to the Camarilla court in return? Julius said he'll mention her name, but he never said anything about the introduction being friendly. Having bagged Valenti, he now needed to be delivered to the Prince somehow.

We heard back from our contact in the city planning office and discover that the Brooklyn Bridge was entirely shut for vehicle traffic the same night the cousins were Embraced. Coincidence?

Lottie was shown by Julius how to hunt, as she hadn't actually had to hunt by herself before. It was, uh, memorable, and both of them seemed more interested in snacking on the other than on Kine ...

While the two of them were away, a weirdly expressionless and non-descript guy introducing himself as "John Smith" from the CHOMBRA Corporation came by to do a "transaction". It was not the Prince in disguise, but some aura-less part automaton. He was bundled into the boot as a bonus present for the Prince, who was very pleased. He commended the cousins on being so quick on giving him Valenti. John Smith, upon seeing the Prince, finally had a facial expression: abject terror. Which is fair.

At the Met, Theo introduced Frankie to some welcoming Brujah, and then took Lottie up on her offer of having his disgust lowered for the evening.

Val greeted his sire with a bouquet of roses, so it looked like they were planning on meeting up all along, even though she hadn't invited him to Elysium (but at least she'd been asking about him, so there is that).

Lottie and Julius spotted Jeanine on her own, looking like she was waiting for someone - and that someone obviously not being Frankie. She didn't seem too bothered about basically everyone else snubbing her (something that has been known to reduce a Harpy to tears) and she seemed ... excited?