Name: Avery Kershaw
Age: 30
Face Claim: Krysten Ritter
Species: Human
Supernatural Standing: No knowledge of the supernatural
Occupation: Writer for Evermore Daily Newspaper

“The woman who does not require validation from anyone is the most feared individual on the planet.” Mohadesa Najumi

The life of high society has always been under a microscope and comes with it’s own set of stresses as everyone watches and waits to see what you’ll do. This was the world Avery Kershaw was born into, her mother a well known designer in New York and her father a media mogul who spent ninety percent of his time working out of London leaving his wife and daughter to care from themselves offering only money in support. The few times a year when her father would visit were Avery’s favor times, though he would bring her countless expensive gifts she looked forward to spending time with him above all else. It was something she treasured since it was such a rarity.

As she grew she began to learn how to present herself to society ever aware of those lurking as they sought the best photo opportunities. There was a lot which her mother expected from her, truly she expected perfection which was an impossibility from a small child and Avery often found herself in a lot of trouble over small things which others would see as nothing. Avery’s childhood was spent at expensive schools for the elite in New York putting her far ahead of many in the public school system and she had mastered the French language by the age of ten moving on to German. In the young girl’s mind she believed if she could prove herself usefully enough she might be able to go live with her father and be out from under her mother’s thumb.  

When you grow up a certain way your friends are already chosen for you and you either loved or hated them but you’re forced to deal with them for the sake of appearances. Rivalries grew and discord was always a constant but you put on a smile and pretended life was good even when you wondered if you could get away with murder. This friendships however are things which define your life and the way it goes. These same friends often getting Avery into trouble as they tested the limits with their parents throughout middle school. They were all smart and they knew it but they were also untouchable in many ways and they used it to their advantage. 

When the group reached high school they all began to focus on getting the best possible grades and extending their extracurricular activities in order to look good to their Ivy League universities of choice. Avery however had her sight set on Oxford, far away from her mother but close to her father so she could finally start to really live her life. During her Freshmen and Sophomore year she got into a lot of trouble with her friends due to underage drinking and getting into drugs. Her mother ended up pulling her out of school not wanting to give the city or world anything more to talk about since her daughter was plastered all over the front of tabloid magazines. Having enough of her daughter’s wild actions her mother sent Avery to London for the summer hoping her father could straighten the teenager out.

Never had a worse suggestion been made but even Avery believed it was a great idea at the time and it was the only thing she had wanted. With as much as she had been acting out she knew the end game was going to stay with her father. A private jet flew her to a private airport in London but her father wasn’t there to pick her up, one of his interns was instead which caused her heart to drop a little in her chest. The intern at least was nice and talkative on the way to her father’s place, his name was James and he had been interning for her father for two months but this was the first task her father himself had given him. Avery insured her new friend she would put in a good word for him as they pulled up to her father’s house. The pair exchanged numbers and light flirtation before she left the vehicle hoping to see her father.

The teenager was left on her own for hours before her father finally came home and in that time she had learned a lot by snooping. What she had learned broke her heart as she threw it in her father’s face when he got home, he wasn’t in London for business, he was having an affair with his secretary and he didn’t even try to hide the evidence in the house. There were pictures of the two of them together in his office and in his bedroom it was obvious he didn’t stay there alone. What hurt the most however, was the fact that there was another room in the house which had caught her attention, one of a young girl with handmade doll houses and more toys than even she had growing up and on the walls were pictures, pictures of what seemed to be a happy family. 

The room and home were all she had ever wanted as a child, not just a building but a safe place full of love, a real home. Damian had tried to talk his daughter down and make her understand but the only thing she understood was that her father was a coward who was too afraid to end one life before starting another. He didn’t care enough for his family to let them go and had just kept stringing her and her mother along. A divorce should have happened so many years ago but she wasn’t that upset about her mother since she was an infuriating woman, she was angry over the fact that her father had another daughter he treated like a princess while barely even calling her.

Leaving the house in an angry flurry she had no idea where she was headed since she knew nothing of the city so she called James and he picked her up. Avery promised to never tell her father about his hand in all this as long as he got her out there, which he quickly did seeing the unshed tears in her eyes of a broken hearted woman. The two went to a small pub and with enough of a bribe it was overlooked that she was underage, after a few drinks she explained everything she had found to James who wasn’t surprised. Apparently everyone in her father’s company knew but none of them knew what to do or say in fear of losing their job or being blacklisted. Most of that night was a blur and the only constant which kept her level was James. The next morning she woke on his couch with a terrible hangover and not remembering much from the night before. 

James explained to her the fact that she had called her father’s biggest competitor in London and told him everything she knew. This morning the two powerful entities were going head to head but it was likely that her father would be forced to give up his company. As it all set in she realized the disastrous events she set into motion and she was numb to it since her father had taken away any hope she had of getting what she wanted in life so she was taking something from him as well. It was childish and cruel but deep down it really did make her feel better. That same day she flew back to the States her mother meeting her at the airport with a stern slap across the face for appearance sake but she could tell her mother was secretly happy about what she had done. 

After returning back to New York her mother allowed her a little more freedom since her father was bigger news than Avery could ever be at this point. It was easier not to act out so much and she changed her focus from Oxford to Yale for journalism and her mother paid to get her back into her prestigious prep school to ensure Yale would have to take her. It was strange to be able to focus on herself and what she wanted but what she had found with her father was that deep down she enjoyed bringing people’s most important secrets to light and watching the fall out of it all was addictive.

Soon she found herself starting an anonymous blog where she outed people’s biggest secrets some without truth or validation and she realized that was what she wanted to do. At least she thought it was until she ended up inadvertently posting something with no proof which ended up really hurting one of her friends. That wasn’t what she wanted so she closed down the blog and realized she had to validate things before she wrote them that was a big part of being any sort of journalist. With that newfound knowledge she became serious about her future and what she wanted in it. Being accepted into Yale was the happiest day of her life and she was glad for the fact that she could finally have her own life and be out from under her mother’s roof even if it was only a two hour distance. 

For a woman used to the finer things in life living in the Yale dorms was not one of those finer things. Living in this way helped her to meet new people and see another way of life though, one her mother seemed to think was slumming it but Avery found it to be a form of freedom. Few tabloids tried to follow her around and for a short time she had a normal life or what most would classify as one. 

Leaving one of the bars not far from campus one night she was drunk and not in a state to be alone or attempt to find her way but she was stubborn. Half way back to the dorms the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end like they do when you think you’re being watched. Glancing over her shoulder she didn’t see anyone but adrenaline coursed through her body and she began to run. One of her heels broke and she quickly kicked her shoes away before continuing to run. A man seemed to come out of nowhere and attacked her, the memories of exactly what happened always seemed to be out of her reach but she was found in an alley by a drunk college student who called 9-1-1. 

After spending two days in the hospital due to severe blood loss she began to have bad nightmares about what may have happened that night. A feeling of paranoia began to set in and she would jump at every sound almost stabbing her roommate when she came in late one night high. Due to the risk she posed herself and others her mother took it upon herself to check Avery into a mental health hospital using the cover that her daughter had been pulled out of school to go to rehab after falling into old habits. The medication they gave her seemed to help with the nightmares but the most she tried to talk in counseling sessions about the night of the attack, the less she could seem to remember.  

It was almost a year before she realized that in order to be released she had to pretend nothing was wrong and she was the person her mother wanted her to be. The nightmares had began to subside but sometimes they came back with a vengeance but during the day she acted as any high society woman would and finally demanded to be released. Her mother decided that things had returned to normal and whatever had happened no longer had a hold of her daughter so she signed off on her being released. One of the stipulations was that she return to live with her mother which given the fact that Yale was unlikely to take her back, Avery had little choice.

Taking online journalism classes at Ashford University Avery worked on getting her degree while attending all the stupid socialite events that she had always hated. To believe you were above others was a twisted way to think but it was the only way to keep her mother from being suspicious of her activities so she played along and she played the part well. It was easy to slip into the role and give back handed compliments with a smile on your face while making it clear you were better than they were. It was clear her mother couldn’t be more proud but Avery really didn’t care, once she had her degree in hand she had every intention of disappearing. 

Playing the role of the perfect socialite daughter began to get harder and harder especially when her mother began to speak of potential husbands. Only the best of the best would do and Avery made it her goal to botch every single date her mother put her on until she was once more faced with James, the intern she had met in London, who was actually the bastard son of the man who took over her father’s company. She couldn’t deny their chemistry but she had no intention of settling down with anyone and he knew that which made him the perfect fake boyfriend and then fiance. The two working together to create a plan to get Avery away from her mother without the younger woman being sent back to the mental hospital.

The wedding was planned and everything was beautiful and went according to plan, her mother was thrilled and the guests had a fine time. The following day the newlyweds left on their honeymoon or at least that was what everyone thought. The truth was more complicated than that, the marriage certificate had never been filed and Avery and James did leave New York but he got off the plan in Florida telling Avery to take the jet wherever she wanted to go. There was no place that said freedom to Avery more than Colorado, it was liberal and those that went there to live very rarely left. Jame has given her some money but it wouldn’t last her long so she found a crappy, cheap motel in Fort Collins and slowly began to build her life on her terms rarely thinking of her mother or the life she had before. 

Working as a waitress in a bar she was able to hear a lot because people felt comfortable talking to her despite her blunt and sarcastic nature. One night a man approached her about a job, he ran a private investigation firm and thought she could do well with her people skills. With how blunt she was no one would suspect she was following them or gaining information from them, so he paid for her training and employed her. There was a lot to learn but she was able to pick it up quickly and was soon not only helping but closing her own cases and making good money doing it. Her years of pretending to be someone she didn’t want to be really paying off. For three years she held her job with the private investigation firm until while on surveillance her boss was killed in a brutal fashion. The police thought it was because of a case he was working but it seemed more personal to Avery than that.

The business was ironically enough left to her along with all his file and in them she found some crazy things. In the files her boss claimed to see things he couldn’t explain, things which weren’t of this world. She was reading over those files when someone broke into the office and attacked, there wasn’t a lot of physical training that went into being a private investigator and her only saving grace had been the gun under the desk. After firing three rounds she blacked out.

Waking up in the hospital she felt vulnerable and weak which were two things she had promised herself she would never be after the attack on the Yale campus. She gave the police her statement and they told her that whoever had attacked her and she thought she shot wasn’t found. When she returned to the office all of the files she had been going through were gone, everything having quickly and thoroughly been cleaned out. After trying to scrub the blood stains from the floor she came to the realization she couldn’t stay in the building or run the business, she didn’t have the skills so once it was officially in her name, she sold it.

Using the money she move from Fort Collins to the only place she remembered from the file she had been reading, Evermore, Colorado. For once she actually put her degree to work and began applying at the local papers and when she did research on Lena Carmichal-Davies, the CEO of Evermore Daily she knew that was where she wanted to work. If there was anyone who could understand her past it was Lena and despite the woman’s cold exterior in the interview they both seemed to recognize something within the other. That was how Avery got her first journalism job using her private investigation skills to learn some of the juiciest gossip which could be proven and helping to keep Evermore Daily relevant and on the map. 

With her savings she also bought a run down building in the older section of the city and began restoring it to it’s former glory. At first she had no idea what she was going to do with it, but slowly the idea came to her, she needed to learn how to better defend herself and she was sure there were many out there who believed the same. So she create a self-defense studio hiring people with mixed backgrounds and who were skilled in different fighting styles. Mainly the studio was targeted towards women in the beginning but after the first year she realized there were a lot of people in the city who didn’t feel safe which made her wonder why. 

Despite Lena being rather demanding with her needs and wanting Avery to put her job at the paper first she seems to understand Avery’s determination and devotion to the studio. And the more Avery works with Lena, the more she seems to sense her boss is hiding something, she doesn’t know what but she's made it her goal to one day find out. 

+Astute, self-reliant, spontaneous, inquisitive

-Sarcastic, vengeful, emotionally distant, blunt