I was dead to the world, and feeling dead in general. Nathaniel walked in sometime during the night, but I was too damn tired to care. At around 9:00, Renee came into the living room, and the others who had stayed the night started to stir.
It turns out that Nathaniel and Eric had tried to find their way back to Mr. Forteau's the night before to pick up Eric's car, but since neither of them was from the area, they got horribly lost. Somehow they ran into a werewolf at a rest stop near Burlington and barely escaped - from the description, it sounded like Reality gave Eric a nasty kick in the teeth. I've been pretty fortunate in avoiding that, so far. Anyway, they finally found Mr. Forteau's place and Nathaniel left to return to Renee's as Eric went back to his room at "some hotel that begins with an M." Daedelus made Nathaniel empty his pockets, and sure enough, there was a slip of paper in the midst of the mess that said, "Marriott Hotel - Room 203." By all that's sacred, I swear Nathaniel's brain is only loosely attached to his body.
Breakfast was a leisurely affair. The young girl, Crystal, somehow attached herself to me emotionally - she doesn't want to be far from me. I was concerned that John, the were, would be put out by this, but everything seems to be fine. Apparently, he found her in New York City after her entire family had been wiped out by vampires. Following instructions to, "take her to her own kind," he somehow wound up at Mr. Forteau's. John says the girl hasn't said a word since he first met her.
After some coaxing, I got her to eat some scrambled eggs. She seemed to be awed by the electric lights in Renee's apartment. I don't know enough about John to know the truth behind his story, but I'm thinking there's far more to this little girl than meets the eye.
At about 10:30 there was a knock on the door - it was a rather ditzy young lady for Renee, inviting her to a Halloween party to "bless the Weather Machine." The young lady was apparently one of the local Verbena coven. Everyone else wrote her off as an airhead, but I'm not so sure?
After a brief stop to pick up Eric at the Marriott in Research Triangle Park, we continued down towards Jordan Lake and Mr. Forteau's house. The stone golem he usually keeps around led us to his office (unusual - I can count on one hand the number of times I've been into his office). He then informed everyone that, due to favors owed to him by their mentors, they in turn owed him one year's service. The rest of the group was pretty upset about this, but I took it in stride - as much as I appreciated the schooling that Forteau had afforded me in the past year, I figured that nothing is free.
I did notice one thing, though - I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but I was a lot less wounded when I walked out of Forteau's office than when I went in. The chunk of flesh that was missing in my upper arm was whole and healed, although it was still a bit tender to the touch. And my leg was 100% better. Damn. I need to learn how to do that.
After the hubbub died down, Forteau explained what he wanted of us: It seems that Hurricane Fran (which had swept through the area a week before) was caused by the New World Order. The NWO used a (or The, I'm not sure which) weather machine to direct the hurricane at the North Carolina coast to obliterate the Verbena coven which was based in Wilmington. Sometime during the storm, the Verbena struck back, and captured the weather machine. Now, as we already knew, they were planning on holding a festival on Halloween to "bless" the machine. Mr. Forteau's missions for us was to go to the festival and obtain the weather machine in any way that we could. He seemed to regard the Verbena as untrustworthy and likely to do more harm than good with the machine.
Forteau gave us a piece of paper with a Raleigh address on it and said it would be our base of operations, and that we would find a small node for our use (which was good, because my quintessence was running low). We agreed to meet at the address at 3:00PM the next day. Before we left, one more person joined us, a young lady who goes by "Cab." I greeted her briefly before we left.
Prior to leaving, I called John over and made sure that he didn't mind if Crystal stayed with me, as she seemed to be shying away from him and sticking with me. How do I get into these things? He said he didn't mind, and that I in fact seemed a better companion for her. Hmmm.
Eric took Crystal and I back to my place in Chapel Hill. As we drove back, I contacted Dog.
After the initial joy of contact, I thought to him, *I need to bring someone back to the house with me.*
Suspicion distrust curiosity *Who?* Dog asked.
*A young girl. She needs someone to watch over her for a short time.*
Grudging acceptance *OK. It's your house.* I rather doubted that last comment, but I held my peace.
Dog was waiting for us when we walked in. Crystal went first, and smiled when she saw my familiar. Dog got the strangest look on his canine face, then shifted to human in front of her. I was shocked; I had never seen him shift in front of any other human. He bowed deeply to her, and she looked at him, still grinning. Dog leaned over to me and said, "You didn't tell me she was one of Them! Where did you find her?" Then, without waiting for my reply, bounded off to the living room, back in dog form. I poked my head in the room and saw Dog curled up in front of the television, with Crystal resting her head on his barrel chest. I shook my head. Great. I exchanged one enigma for two. One day, I might actually understand all of this weirdness around me, but no time soon. I went to take a nap.