Nod.

He goes back into town and paces.

Karen arrives at Zeke's crypt and politely knocks on the door. It's been - man, at least a couple weeks, and the last time she saw him they really didn't talk much.

"Hey Karen, what's up?"

"Hi! Really weird thing happened at the Bronze just now, and I thought maybe you might possibly know a thing? There were like seven vampires and they attacked the place in force, including having one of them stand onstage and give an evil monologue with a spotlight on him. It was all very above the radar. Vamps are usually subtler."

"...Wow, what the fuck? Uh... was the evil monologue guy kinda obnoxious and self-important? All like," he puts on a pretty decent impression of the guy's Speechifyin' Voice, accent and all, "'I was at the Crucifixion, you know' and 'Children, I haven't lost a fight since before you were turned' and stuff? I think his name's Luke. He's with some kinda cult. They've been making noise about doing something interesting but not, you know, any more than most people who never actually get around to doing anything interesting. I stay out of their way, I don't want Luke noticing I can't stand him and deciding to beat me up about it."

"Yeah, that sounds like him." She pulls herself up to sit on one of the stone boxy thingies that's supposed to hold a body. "Know anything about the cult? Also why Luke had that weird symbol on his face? Obviously this is super off the record."

Is that how you use the phrase 'off the record'? She should really look up at some point what you're allowed to do with things that are off the record.

"I dunno, he didn't have a weird symbol on his face last time I saw him. Did you fight him? Are you okay? He seemed pretty scary."

"Yeah, I'm OK." She doesn't look a hundred percent OK, though she doesn't appear to be meaningfully injured. "I had to kill a bunch of them. It just - happened really fast. I think one of them was a kid from school, before - I guess stuff happened to him."

"Oh, yikes. That doesn't sound like fun at all."

"It wasn't. I don't... I don't like killing people. But I don't like watching people die, either."

"Yeah, that must suck."

"It does. Thank you for the affirming platitudes, they help for some reason." She sighs. "Are you sure you don't know where the cult people live? One of classmate's friends is gone too and I don't know that they've killed her yet."

"Uhh..." He tries to think if he's forgetting anything relevant. "...I can tell you what graveyards I've seen them hang out in but that might not mean anything. Sorry. It's mostly that one that's like two streets down from the Bronze and that's a pretty busy graveyard."

She pulls out a notebook. "Go ahead and tell me anyway, I gotta at least try to find her before they kill her. ...and thanks."

"Hey, what are friends for, right?"

He names the graveyard in question and the street it's on.

"You're a good friend. OK, I have to go now - can't cry about killing people until after I find Willow, gotta schedule things like that these days. Thanks again!"

"See you! Good luck rescuing people!"

"Thanks!" And she's off.

Doesn't actually remember where she's supposed to meet Alex, so -

Paging Alex? I don't know if the telepathy works this way but I guess if you can hear this do the telepathy thing? We should really go over the specific limits of this at some point.

I got you. I can hear people I know from a couple miles. I’m not listening most of the time, though, which is why you want to specifically direct it at me, that’s harder to tune out.

I can hear Michael about a thousand miles away but we’ve known each other awhile.

On my way.

Oh. Cool. That seems good.

She's standing on a random park bench because it occurred to her that going directly to the graveyard could plausibly be a bad idea. She gives him her notebook. "Got a likely graveyard in terms of hideout location, plus some very vague information about the vampire cult in question. Spotlight guy was named Luke, doesn't usually have a symbol on his head, does go in for dramatics. They've been 'making noise about doing something interesting' but I do not have specifics. Sorry."

You say sorry a lot. Combat communications is definitely something where practice actually matters and you'll get better at it over time so I guess I can parse 'sorry' there as 'I noticed a new thing I need to learn' but having spotty intel is just life, it's super not in 'sorry' territory.

"OK. I guess." Now she kind of feels sorry for being sorry but also feels like apologizing for it would be pretty absurd. "Do we sweep the graveyard or wait for the other one to wake up? There could be more of them and we don't want them to get hungry, I think."

Yeah, I agree, let's keep moving while we're waiting for the other one to wake up.

So she heads for the graveyard. 

There are a lot of graves; there is a somewhat more reasonable number of crypts. Some of the crypts have tunnels under them. A few of them lead down to a whole connected tunnel system, which seems to also break into the sewers in several places.