Liminal: The Mitchester Arms, episode 8: On Celia's Trail

I did my best to reassure Damian, who was probably supposed to still be in the hospital, and told him to come to the pub. There was a knock on the door almost immediately. Topher let him in and got him a beer. I made him a sandwich. I've got a lot of butter to use up.

Damian told us when he last saw Celia, which was pretty obviously right before she came to see us. Her phone seemed to be off, which hopefully meant she'd followed the advice we gave her. With her presence at the warehouse being the last lead we had on her, Topher volunteered to go with Damian to help search. Fiona was staying home with her giant pile of books. I felt like I should be helping her with them. Then I thought about how I already had an appointment to read a load of old books with Amelia in the morning. Fiona, bless her, told me that the books were in old Slavic or something so I wouldn't be able to read them anyway, and suggested what I really needed was to get out on the wing for bit.

Vanessa is easy enough to spot from the air. I followed the car, but I was also noticing things I'd never noticed before. Signs of the Steamwheel court's presence across the city. Doubtless something to do with my new job. Bloody Firs.

Vanessa came to a stop at the side of a dual carriageway, and Damian immediately legged it across to the other side where there was a crashed car, lying on its side with all the windows smashed. I circled lower for a better look. Damian was having an argument with the police officer guarding the scene. Not getting very far since he's a hotheaded young idiot, but he was providing a distraction. I took the opportunity to get a closer look at the car.

The entire side was buckled. My first thought was that it had been hit by another car, but looking closer, that didn't feel right. Whatever hit it had been smaller and sharper than the side of a car. I stooped, going in through one of the side windows that now faced the sky, and had a poke around while Topher attempted to defuse the argument. The car smelt of loamy soil and decomposition. I'd smelt that before, on a vampire. I spotted an iron nail caught in one of the seat wells. The kind of thing you might carry as a protection charm, and this one smelt of Celia's perfume. As I retrieved it, I spotted something else. Red nail varnish. No, red lacquer. There was only one way that would get left behind. Someone had been in here wearing Louboutins.

Topher had calmed things down and had a friendly chat with the officer. Time to get out of there. I launched myself back into the air, iron nail in my claws, inadvertantly terrifying the officer on the way out, but at least the mundane police don't get funny about unusual looking birds in their crime scenes.

Back at the pub, Fiona seemed to be having some kind of ghost party. I tried to ignore it and went upstairs to get dressed. By the time I got back down, things seemed to be relatively normal so I shared what I'd discovered. The nail, the smell, and the lacquer. It all added up to one thing. Celia being abducted by Caroline Fortunato, mayor's aide and very powerful vampire. I thought we might have to restrain Damian from going after her straight away, but even he was smart enough to realise what a stupid idea that would be. Fortunately he didn't seem to realise the implications.

Fiona shared some of what she'd got out of her book pile. It all seemed to come down to one thing. A primordial fae, imprisoned somehow underneath Bristol. Straight away that reminded me of what the boggarts had said about the sandman.

Damian's phone beeped. Someone called Anton, telling him to lose his number. It sounded like Damian had managed to annoy quite a lot of people in his search for Celia.

We had to get her back. Not just because she's a friend and it's the right thing to do, but also because we all suspected by then that she was going to end up being the new Avonian Sibyl. The old Sibyl had maintained a fragile peace, which was already breaking down without them, and if their replacement ended up getting turned into a vampire, the consequences could be dire.

We needed weapons. None of us were exactly equipped for fighting vampires, and we were going to need silver. Fiona knew a shop in the market that sold silver and esoteric knick-knacks, which seemed like a good place to start. He couldn't help us, but he did know a weapon maker, and told us how to find him and how to respond to his tests, in exchange for Gus's phone number. At least I think that's what happened. I was distracted by his pet raven who was a complete arsehole and said a lot of uncalled-for things. I told him I hoped he got hit by a truck.

We found the weapon maker at the given address. An absolutely huge man, in a place that didn't seem to entirely confirm to the rules of geometry. He asked us to say his name. Fiona and me said it in unison. Wayland.

There were some shenanigans involving a hammer and anvil, which we recognised as the test the silversmith had mentioned, and once we'd convinced him that we could handle weapons responsibily, he gave us a shotgun, a crossbow, and a magic ring which he assured me would give my falcon talons a bit of an upgrade.

Damian had done his part while we were out, getting hold of floor plans for Carolina's house. We thought about heading out straight away, but realised that Celia still had time, and our chances of success were a lot better if we were well rested. I made us some dinner. Chicken kievs and garlic mash. Not all vampires have the garlic aversion, but I made damn sure that any who did would not be coming anywhere near us.

We drove to the house shortly before dawn. I went for a scout around in bird form, then reported back by typing into a phone. After I broke a couple of regular smartphones this way, we got a Blackberry with hard keys, and I told them that the top floor was basically deserted, and that there was hardly anything to see on the lower floors, meaning that most of them were going to be in the basement. Five flash looking cars parked around the back meant that Carolina had friends visiting, so we could expect some resistance. Oh, and there was one sentry on the roof, although he was a bit busy. I switched to emojis for that part. 🧛🪑🍆 I hope I made things clear.

ConTingency 2023

I didn't actually plan on going to ConTingency. Having a lot of stuff on the calendar and still being a bit wary about covid, I decided I'd skip this one. And then the real life Call of Cthulhu character and all round bad influence, CJ Romer, told me he had a spare bedroom in his lodge and would I like it?

And I'd had a bit of a rubbish time with Autumn conventions, having to miss two entirely and scale back my participation in two others, and I'd got this brand new winter themed adventure all ready to run...

Prior commitments meant I couldn't be there for the first couple of days, but I was able to book some time off and arrived in Hunstanton at lunchtime on Friday. I had just enough time to get my stuff into the cabin before CJ dragged me off to play a game.

Game 1: The Yellow King

The Yellow King is, as the name suggests, based on the works of Robert Chambers. We were playing in the default setting of Belle Époque Paris. As the last player to arrive I picked up the last available character, a poetess called Anna. We were a group of art students, and as one player rapidly pointed out, we were basically early Eurotrash. We rapidly settled into drunken debauchery, briefly interrupted by actually going to an art class, bur really that just pointed us towards more debauchery as we began digging into a mystery regarding a new dance craze from Argentina known as the Tango.

This game uses the Gumshoe system, but a variant version of it that seemed less focussed on spending points and more on making creative use of your special abilities. I'm really not a fan of Gumshoe as a system, but this variant I found rather better and reasonably well suited to this bizarre game. I might even consider playing it with someone other than CJ.

Around this point I realised that I'd completely forgotten to have lunch, so decided to treat myself to a meal in the venue's restaurant, and also managed to track down Lloyd for a chat. There we were joined by some of Lloyd's friends, whose names I entirely failed to remember. And then it was time for another game.

Game 2: Casting The Runes

Casting The Runes is another goddam Gumshoe game, and not a better variant version either. But I love the ghost stories of M. R. James enough to put up with Gumshoe for a bit. Plus it was CJ running it, who loves those stories just as much as I do.

We were the members of a psychical research society based in Bury St Edmunds, which one of the group quickly named Bury The Dead, a name that stuck around longer than I expected. We went to investigate a haunted pub, but an encounter on the way there soon put us on the road to a much bigger mystery.

If you do like Gumshoe, I thoroughly recommend this game. Both the core game and the adventures are written by people with a real passion for Jamesian ghost stories and it shines through. It's just not for me. And talking of which...

Game 3: Cthulhu Dark

I'm firmly of the opinion that Cthulhu Dark is the right system to run Jamesian ghost stories with. All it needs is to change the name of the game's single stat to Fear.

In December, in a burst of post-covid creativity, I opened up a bunch of old files I hadn't looked at for a while, and found a half-written adventure about a haunting at Christmas. I'd started writing it when Casting The Runes first arrived, but rapidly stalled as I realise Gumshoe and me weren't getting along. Finding it again, I decided to give it a try with Cthulhu Dark instead, and this time everything worked perfectly. My online playtests were great, with good feedback from the players, so I decided to bring it to ConTingency.

Cthulhu Dark is a game that lends itself to on-the-spot character creation. I provided a little initial guidance: the three characters for this scenario are an academic, a doctor and a reverend. Beyond that it was up to the players to fill in the details. For tracking their fear levels we used my box of multicoloured skulls. The three players thoroughly embraced the setting, giving me three delightful characters to work with as they uncovered the mystery taking place at Alderley House.

Then it was time for a trip to Tesco to make sure that I did actually have lunch.

Game 4: Black Code

I'm always up for new cyberpunk and I first played Black Code with its author at ConDensed 2021, so I was pretty excited to find a space in a game. I picked up Aedon, the same character I played last time, a bioframe with a pair of scorpion stingers that she could use for both combat and healing. We picked up a rather complicated job that involved acquiring some additional data in the process of investigation a different data theft. Which might not sound exciting on the surface, but which involved dealing with some big name rappers, not to mention a few terrorists along the way.

Whitt does an incredible job of bringing the setting he's created to life, and there were plentiful moments of comedy mixed in with the darkness of cyberpunk. I really need to get on and actually run this game myself some time, especially since it sounds like there might be a campaign coming.

Game 5: Kult: Divinity Lost

The Kult game was full when I went to sign up, so I put myself down for something else, but half an hour before the game was due to start I had a look at the sheets and saw someone had dropped out. With more people signed up on the reserve list for the other game, I removed myself from that and added myself to Kult.

First challenge: find the game, since it was in a lodge rather than the main rooms. I went via reception to get a map, plus some not entirely helpful directions that I should probably have ignored. After an extremely cold walk in the dark, I found the lodge, right behind the other players who'd had a similiarly difficult time finding it.

Then we all settled in for a game that turned out to be the highlight of the con for me. I don't often play Kult, as I'm usually the one running it, so that was exciting right away. And then the scenario turned out to be full of twists and turns as everybody's secrets gradually came spilling out. It was really everything I could have hoped for, and motivation to keep on upping my game when it comes to Kult GMing.

Game 6: Cthulhu Dark

I knew CJ wanted to play my game, and the Saturday morning game had filled up before he got to the sign up sheet. But I had another sheet with me, and since it doesn't need character sheets it was no issue to run it a second time. A slightly more comedic take this time, partly due to the reverend managing to gain a point of fear even before getting to the bit of the adventure where I start turning up the fear.

I was pretty tired by this time so decided to skip the afternoon session in favour of a shower and a nap. But first came the raffle, in which CJ unexpectedly won a Boba Fett helmet. He'd been talking about getting a present for me to take home for my husband, and I don't think there's anything in that raffle he would have liked more.

Game 7: Casting the Runes

And finally, another game with CJ, with the same character I'd played in the earlier adventure. A trip to Borley Rectory, a notoriously haunted building, tied into one of M. R. James' classic stories. A delightful way to finish the convention.

Reflections

I'm extremely glad I went. It's a lovely convention and I very much hope to attend the whole thing next year. And that's all there is to day really.

Liminal: The Mitchester Arms, episode 7: Going Underground

 I decided to keep concentrating on the one thing I could fix: the state of my kitchen. Not only was everything in the wrong place, but there were also several pounds of butter in the freezer that I definitely didn't order because it wasn't the usual brand. I may not be a diviner but I can see a lot of roux in my future.

Things were pretty much back to normal when I heard a knock at the door. It was Klaus, wearing the standard famous person hat and sunglasses disguise. He had a favour to ask Fiona. Apparently the Order of St Bede have a secret Templar archive hidden under St Mary Redcliffe, possible inside a ghost realm, and he wanted us to recover it. He also wanted to know if there was anywhere in Bristol he could get an authentic goulash. Fiona had a few suggestions. I said I'd give it a shot if he had a recipe.

The fact Klaus was asking us for help rather than just sending in his own people suggested something was up, but Fiona was already practically salivating at the prospect of a Templar archive. She was going to need help. It was going to have to be Topher's help though. I really needed to see Amelia, and after showing Fiona the note, she understood why I had to go. That and she was talking about catacombs, and I'm sure she realised that the mere idea of heading into the caves behind the pub was making me start to freak out.

I sent an entirely innocuous text to Amelia, saying that it was nice to see her the other night and it would be good to meet up again. As soon as I got a positive response I shoved that stupid Merlin signet ring in my pocket and took the bus to the observatory.

I wasn't sure where to go when I got there, but that's when fucking Percy showed up. The last person I wanted to see, but it was inevitable really. He invited me to take a short walk, and while I struggled with some conflicting emotions, he told me that I didn't need the sunglasses. He knew everything, and was genuinely impressed that I taught myself shapeshifting. And it was just gratifying enought to hear one of those smug Council bastards acknowledge that I don't need their lessons that I decided I could put up with him for a little while. For Amelia's sake.

He suggested I put on the signet ring at that point. I asked him why, and I think the disgust was obvious on my face. He didn't answer. He'd got me to let my guard down for a moment, but no, same old fucking Percy as ever.

We walked down to the Coronation Tap. There was some Council minion loitering outside, who might almost have got away with it if he hadn't teamed up his hoodie with a pair of Armani shoes. Even Percy called him out on that, while I just laughed at him. Inside the pub, the barman was practically tugging his forelock at the sight of Percy. I don't think you could pay Fiona enough to make her behave like that.

I wasn't particularly surprised to find myself faced with a hole in the floor much like the one under the Cornubia. Trouble was, this time the hole was a lot tighter, and I didn't have the reassuring presence of Topher and Fiona with me. Just Percy, asking if I was the one who had trouble with this sort of thing. I managed some kind of retort but my heart wasn't in it. I just had to steel myself for it, and stay calm. For Amelia.

Percy went down first. I followed. About halfway down the smell of the place hit me. Bitter ash, worse than I'd ever smelt it before, with undertones of sulphur and vomit. I clung white knuckled to the rope, shut my eyes, and held my breath. I had to do this. For Amelia.

It was crowded down there, but I could see Amelia amongst them, plus some extremely aristocratic woman that I didn't recognise, but who seemed to be important. The vault was full of detailed carvings, but not like the ones under the Cornubia. These ones seemed warped and unsettling. Percy asked if I'd ever seen anything as beautiful, and I automatically responded that I'd seen better. He asked me what I saw. Just like being back in class.

Four figures stood at the cardinal points. A king with antlers and a spear. Facing him, a large shadowy figure of a cyclops. A woman, also wearing antlers, holding a lyre. And a woman in black feathers, covered in gore, with black eyes. I could name them. An-daghai. Balor. Boann. Morrigan. He wanted me to identify the battle depicted in the carvings. I didn't know, so he told me. The battle of the hill. Or possibly the battle in heaven.

Something weird happened then. The posh woman started yelling at some guy, and two others approached him, and for a moment I thought he was going to get a beating. And then they backed off.

I asked Percy why I was there, as clearly it wasn't just for a mythology test. He said he wanted Amelia and me to do some research into the Formori and Tuatha. He also showed me a black sphere in the middle and asked me what I thought. Having seen something quite similar pulled out of the Cornubia vault by Fiona, I had no intention of telling him what I thought, and asked him what he thought it was. A ward. A big one, that was going to make him famous, and he wanted me to investigate it for him.

Yeah, I know that one. Student does the work, professor gets the credit. Except I'm not his student any more. I kept that thought to myself, and he asked Amelia to show me out.

There was an Indian girl outside, who I'd seen before at the pub. She still had the slightly wonky eyes people sometimes get after a run-in with Firs, but now there was something different. She looked cruel. Amelia grabbed me and pulled me into the toilets. She'd seen that look before. It was something that happened to everyone after being down in the vault for a while. I remembered the other vault, and all the people slowing freezing in there. Rather the opposite here. And they stopped being able to smell that awful stench after a while as well.

There was no way I wanted either of us spending any more time down there. We needed an excuse to be elsewhere, and the research we'd been asked to do seemed like a good one. There were no books down there. Amelia suggested using the Merlinian archives. She was surprised I'd actually shown up though. I was confused. She'd sent a note. Of course I showed up. She hugged me then, and as I hugged her back, I realised she might not understand that it was Dee College and the Council I left. Not her. But it wasn't the time for that conversation. We arranged to meet up again in the morning.

Next on the list was dealing with the deluge of texts and missed calls on my phone. It would be nice to see the boggarts again. I took the bus to Troopers Hill, stopping off for more bread and honey. There was a large sign up in the shop about shoplifters and a very angry looking guy behind the counter. So they were definitely still in the area.

I found their fairy ring under a gorse bush, made my standard speech offering bread and honey in exchange for safe passage both in and out, and was treated to a brief fight between the three of them over who was going to invite me in. Inside the place looked like a goddam palace. They were all sitting on fancy chairs drinking from china teacups. They offered me tea, which I of course declined.

They told me how happy they were that I'd volunteered to be the new seneschal. I had to tell them that I didn't volunteer, which made them so unhappy that one started crying, so I gave him a hug while I asked about the job I'd been dumped into. It seemed it was like being a fae noble, in that you were responsible for helping and protecting members of the court, but the Steamwheel court didn't have any nobles, so you didn't get any of the benefits of fae nobility. The previous seneschal was a bit of a bastard, they told me. I asked who it was, and they didn't want to say, although honestly at this point I didn't need to ask. I suggested they draw him instead, and they drew me a picture of Firs. I agreed that he was a bastard. How did he manage to stick me with this job without me agreeing to it? Apparently giving him my phone number, and him carving it into his arm, was enough.

I took a few moments to think about all the things I would like to do to Firs.

One of the boggarts was acting a bit strange, being more aggressive than usual in wanting to be the one to show me around their home, so I nudged another and asked what was up. He insisted his brother was fine, but then escorted me back out of their realm and explained that he'd been affected by the Sandman who sleeps under the city. He was the one who'd been making their old burrow hot, and now the other two boggarts were afraid he was doing something to their brother. I made some non-committal expressions as you don't go promising things to the fae lightly, but I really did want to help. One of them actually gave back the purse he'd stolen without me having to ask for it. Something was really wrong.

I checked my phone again, and I now had multiple voicemails from Denis the troll, and given how much he seemed to want to eat people, I had to check that one out. I got the bus back into town, running through everything I knew about trolls on the way there, and paid him a visit under his bridge. He didn't seem to be engaging in the traditional troll role of maintaining the bridge in exchange for tribute, since the city council were handling that, but it seemed best not to mention that.

Denis was understandably upset that people were throwing things into the river, and showed me some assorted rubbish. He also mentioned liquids, and I'm very grateful that he couldn't fish them out of the river again. His proposed solution was to eat someone so that people would be scared and not do it again. I know humans well enough to know that as well as being an unacceptable solution, this wouldn't actually stop people throwing things in the river. We came up with a solution though. When people threw things in, he should return them to them. This was only right and proper. I shook his enormous hand and went back to the pub.

The trip into the caves had clearly been a success, as Fiona had a huge stack of books with her, but both of them smelt of grave dirt. They'd obviously had a bit of an adventure. But before they could properly fill me in on all of that, there came another phone call. This time it was Damien. Celia was missing.

Liminal: The Mitchester Arms, episode 6: A Little Light Kidnapping

Topher drove us out of the city, dodging police cars and ANPR cameras as he went, until we reached an abandoned warehouse in an old industrial estate. For all her good qualities, Vanessa is a very distinctive vehicle, and while they hadn't brought the helicopters out yet, we needed to get her out of sight. Topher tried to force the door open, overdid it a bit and broke the door. But we were in, and could get Vanessa under cover.

We weren't alone. Celia was there, not looking at all pleased to see us. Understandable, under the circumstances. She had worked for the Sibyl, after all. And now her visions were getting worse - full on prophet type stuff - and seemed to involve us. There was a house we needed to visit after dark, along with Roberts. She was clearly holding something back though, and after some prodding, she described how there was a black bird sitting on Fiona's shoulder, wearing the death mask of a child.

Naturally we were concerned for Celia's safety. None of us said it out loud, but it was obvious we were all thinking the same thing. With the Sibyl dead, someone might have to take their place, and it was looking a lot like that someone was going to be Celia. She told us not to worry about her, but even if we were all wrong about her becoming the Sibyl, it still seemed like a dangerous time to be a diviner, particularly one who'd just unexpectedly got a lot better at it. As she was leaving I told her that I was still going to worry about her. That wasn't negotiable. She gave me a hug.

Left alone, we sat the unconscious Roberts on an old chair, and Topher went out to check on the perimeter. Shortly afterwards we heard the sound of him running. Then I heard a voice talking about how fast Topher was, and complaining about him not being able to understand. I'd heard voices like that before. Animal communication doesn't quite work the same way as talking, but my brain still interprets it the same way. It seemed only polite to go out and have a chat with the fox that had just apparently been racing Topher.

He seemed a friendly sort, obviously impressed with Topher's physical prowess. He was also hungry, unsurprisingly, so I asked Topher if he could find us anything to eat. With Topher out of the way, the fox lowered his voice - hardly necessary given that Topher couldn't understand him anyway - and told me that Topher was one of Them, and that he was basically a ticking time bomb who could turn on me at any moment. Which was pretty damn unsettling, but I wasn't entirely convinced. Topher seemed as distressed by the knowledge of who his father was as any of us. Anyway, Topher came back then with a stale pasty he'd found in Vanessa, which we shared between the three of us, although I couldn't help noticing the fox didn't touch his share until he'd seen me eating mine.

The fox went on his way, and I went back into the warehouse. Topher wanted to know about the conversation, but I just told him the fox was being a drama queen, which was probably the truth. It was quiet in there. Too quiet. Somewhere like this I'd expect to hear the sounds of animals and birds, particularly the kind of thing that triggers all my predator instincts, but there was nothing. I lit a fire, but found myself shivering in spite of it.

Eventually the dickhead woke up. With several hours before we needed to follow Celia's guidance, we figured we might as well talk to him, and took the tape off his mouth. Topher tried to wind him up, but that just resulted in a long string of insults that could have come straight from a 1970s cop show. Eventually Topher gave up, got out a book of philosophy, and started reading it to him, which didn't seem to improve his mood.

With Topher having taken a rather unorthodox approach to playing bad cop, I thought I'd have a shot at being good cop. Unfortunately I couldn't think of much to talk to him about other than his car. I really tried. I didn't actually mention that we'd set fire to his Tesla, only that I'd heard they caught fire a lot, but he leapt to conclusions. I pointed out that a lot of things had been on fire when we left, and things like that happened when you had a djinn in your house. That got a response, even if it was mostly him laughing at us for having missed something, and a bit more prodding from Topher got him to tell us that the djinn aren't fairies, but angels, or gods.

He did have a point in that the thing in his house had been shapeshifted but neither Topher nor me had noticed that, which is definitely out of the ordinary. We were all pretty sick of him by this point though, and Topher asked if anyone had a feather he could use to tickle Roberts' feet with.

I always have a feather.

Between the three of us, we were definitely getting to him. I suggested that the more he talked, the less annoying we would be, and that got a little more out of him - that he wanted his talisman back, and that he could heal himself with it. And that the goal had been to get both the Sibyl and us out of the way, so they could move into the endgame.

At last, darkness was approaching. We taped up Roberts' mouth again, and rolled him in a carpet, pointing out that he'd brought all of this on himself. Topher drove us to the address Celia gave us. A random middle class suburban house? It matched the picture. There had been an attempt to plant roses in the front garden. I felt a strong urge to redo it properly, but all the same, I appreciated the attempt.

Stealth was kind of pointless at this point. Either we had to drive our large, conspicuous car up to the house, or walk down the street carrying a man wrapped in a carpet, and the former seemed less likely to get people immediately calling the police. The front door was answered by DCI Myers. Obviously she wanted to call her colleagues immediately, when faced with three accused murderers, but I told her if she wanted to know what her boss had been up to, she needed to hear us out.

She understandably didn't want the smelly old carpet we'd brought with us in the house, so Topher put it, and Roberts, in the garage while Fiona and me went into the house. It was about as thoroughly middle of the road as Myers herself. I noticed the photos on the wall were all of her. Which made sense for the graduation photo, but otherwise seemed odd. I couldn't place what was bothering me though.

I thought a direct approach was our best shot at getting Myers to listen, so I came straight out with it. Her boss was in league with an evil god and was framing us for murder. And she did listen. I guess you don't make it to the head of P Division without an understanding of crime, and she noted that while there had been an abundance of DNA evidence, we didn't actually have any motive. It did look like a stitch-up, but maybe it looked a bit too much like a stitch-up? Why should she trust us? I pointed out how unlikely it was for us to have committed a crime like this. After all, we're just three people who run a pub.

Not just three people who run a pub, she countered, given Topher's strength, Fiona's magic, and my abilities which she described as 'miraculous'. But I reminded her that while what I can do might be impressive, it's not exactly murder skills. Not unless there's a rabbit you particularly don't like.

That got a smile, and then things got much weirder when her accent suddenly changed and she spoke a few words into a glass paperweight, and a few moments later, Klaus came down the stairs. Why was it, everywhere he went, he ran into us? Probably the geomantic node, Fiona suggested. Myers was wiping off her makeup. Underneath it her skin was darker, and she bore a resemblance to Klaus. "Call me Jules," she told us. So she was the third leader of Clan Kielsyn that Damian had told us about.

Turns out wolves are as bad as foxes when it comes to being drama queens, because once again it was 'oh no, Topher is half djinn, he's totally going to turn on us at any moment.' Fiona reminding them that changelings don't have to take after their parents didn't seem to carry any weight. I'd had enough of it. I told them that I trusted Topher, despite having thought that he was a dhampir until yesterday, and it's not like I exactly had a good track record with dhampirs. How much of my shameful past Klaus actually knew I don't know, but that made him laugh.

Just having Myers - Jules - won over wasn't going to be enough to get the police off our backs though. We needed some actual solid evidence of Roberts framing us, and given that we still had him tied up in the garage, it was worth trying to get a confession on record. Jules gave me her glass paperweight and assured us they'd be able to hear everything.

Roberts was a gloater, we knew that, so letting him think he was winning would probably get him to talk. Fiona, being the most convincing liar, went in with a story about someone having got to our contact. I tried to add a little extra plausibility by hanging back, looking distressed, and talking about how I couldn't go to prison. Not exactly a difficult act, given that I'd spent the last twenty-four hours or so with that thought hanging over my head.

It took a while, but he talked. And then in came Myers/Jules, and she arrested him for so many different things I lost track. She assured us that in a few hours they'd have everything sorted and we'd be free. That's when my tears stopped being an act and started flowing for real.

The others gave me some space and after a couple of hours of sleep on the floor of some unfurnished rooms in the house, Jules woke us up to let us know it was over, and we could go home. Topher drove us back to the Mitchester Arms. The police had ransacked the place, and the smell of bitter ash was everywhere, but I was home.

There was a parcel in my room, which as I hoped, contained my clothes and shoes that I'd worn to the restaurant. My only good pair of shoes, so I was glad to get them back. It also contained my phone, and a ring box. I already knew what I was going to find in the ring box but opened it up anyway to glare at the cursed thing. Except there was something else in there too.  A slip of paper.

OBSRVTRY COMPRMSD//P.-PRT=/=SOURCE//SOS DAISY!!

The observatory - and presumably the vault they'd found under it - was compromised. Percy was involved, if not responsible. And worst of all, Amelia was in trouble. I reached for my phone. Over twenty missed calls, as many text messages, and one voicemail. Well, whatever Lucien wanted it was going to have to wait. I needed a shower and to sleep in my own bed.

The next morning there was a sign on Topher's door making it clear he had no intention of waking up any time soon. That meant I'd be making my own breakfast, so I headed for the kitchen. Everything was in the wrong place after the police had been through it, but that didn't bother me too much. Putting everything back where it belonged was a nice normal mundane problem to fix. I started putting things away and was about to play the voicemail on my phone when I realised that I probably shouldn't be holding anything breakable while it was playing.

It wasn't Lucien. It was some kind of river fae asking for help with something. I picked the phone up and started looking through the texts. Nothing from Lucien. Just a lot more fae all wanting help. One of them was actually from the boggarts, saying that they didn't know that I was so nice, and they'd like me to come and visit them now I was the new fae nanny.

Fuck Firs. Fuck that slimy dickhead bastard fae.