scottish-grimalkin:
askthomasraith:
askmollycarpenter:
theprofessionalwizard:
askjohnmarcone:
Marcone caught Thomas’s eye and quietly thanked him for the painkillers. “Ah, Mrs. Carpenter. Pleased to meet you, though not under these circumstances… That sounds wonderful. Thank you.” He took a moment to gaze at the tall woman, wondering how she could help a man whom she’d threatened for talking to her daughter earlier that week. Compassion was a foreign entity in his life.
As Mrs. Carpenter set to work on his ankle, John looked over at the cat, still standing in the doorway. It didn’t look as though Ramirez had made any headway with it yet. And there it was again, the strange sense of surreality that had become so commonplace to John since Harry Dresden came to Chicago. There was a man talking to a cat while a vampire cooked breakfast and a former Knight of the Cross’s wife tended to a wound.
Very few things in Marcone’s life were normal, but this was stretching it, even for him.
“That’s all of it. Honest.” Maybe if he had a chance to grab some shut eye, he’d be able to remember more clearly. But no. Instead Not Mister had started talking. Apparently he knew It. Well, bigger things to worry about first: If he was ready to catch some Z’s, he could only imagine what Molly was going through. “Molly, I think that once Not-Cat here has been dealt with, you should have your mom drive you home. No buts,” He said, preemptively quashing any rebellion on her part. “Go home, get some rest, we’ll regroup in the morning. And Grasshopper…you did good. Not many go through something like that and come out the other side, including a lot of Wizards a lot older than you.”
“Not-Cat, I want you to listen to me very carefully. I have been beaten, bruised, kidnapped, and Walked Behind. I am in no mood for games.”
Harry’s right hand clenched into a fist, which he aimed at Not-Cat like it was a loaded gun. Each of the bands on each of the rings of his hand were hovering somewhere near full capacity: More than enough to seriously Mess Someone Up.
“Who or what are you, and what do you want?” Who or What, Hell’s Bells, how messed up did your life have to be when you could ask that question seriously and it not be unusual. The Glamorous Life of a Professional Wizard, he supposed.
Molly looked at Harry when she heard her name. Once she had reassured herself of his safety and that he was, relatively speaking, unharmed, her exhaustion had caught up with her all at once and she sat down. When Harry told her to go home, it was a testament to her sheer exhaustion and terror that she paused a moment before even thinking of objecting. But she wasn’t about to leave Harry, not at a time like this. She stood up suddenly, then paused at his praise, feeling her cheeks flush and a warmth that she hadn’t truly felt since this entire nightmare began—happiness—fill her. She opened her mouth to agree with Harry, and suddenly the events of the past few days caught up with her. The world spun around her and she collapsed back down onto the couch.
“Harry,” she murmured. “You’ll keep us all safe from this thing, right?” Before she could hear her mentor’s answer, she had passed out cold.
Thomas, in his first show of plain emotion since Harry had shown up, began moving toward Molly on instinct, stopping halfway across the kitchen. Charity might kill him if he came near her daughter, there were other people who could take care of this, like Harry, or Ramirez, or her mother. After a moment of hesitation he turned back to the stove and stacked the last of the pancakes on the pile before shutting it off, setting the skillet in the stove. The emotional upheaval in the room was playing hell on him, but he wouldn’t lose control again. He was determined. In a short moment of selfishness he just wanted to be somewhere with Justine. She would understand, she would comfort him. He shook himself mentally, reminding himself that Justine wasn’t here right now and he didn’t need anyone to talk about his feelings with, he wasn’t a teenage girl. The thought really didn’t make him feel much better.
The Grimalkin raised an eyebrow, or would have if it did indeed have eyebrows… which it didn’t, because it was a cat. It sighed and pulled itself up to full cat height, “Oh, Wizard Dresden, do stop being so melodramatic. If I were here to hurt any of you would I not have already done so? Or at least tried?” it stated matter-of-factly.
It then unceremoniously flopped to it’s side and stretched out It’s long limbs before looking back at the man it was set on devouring one of these days. However, it was more interesting to have him alive at this point in time. Especially if it kept getting wonderful buffets laid out for it, “I simply want to hang around and see what happens, or I hope that’s the best way to put it. And my… well, we aren’t exactly friends… but at this point I don’t want to call you an enemy,” it paused thinking on this for a moment, “At any rate, I have many names but the one you know me as is Grimalkin,” It said with a rumbling purr before beginning to groom itself again.
The Grimalkin lay out in the shadow cast by the wall near the stairs, “Now,” it started between long licks of it’s pink little tongue, “Little pigs, little pigs… Won’t you let me come in?”
Charity said nothing else to John as she rummaged in the duffel for appropriate wrappings and slowly and carefully applied them to the injured limb. She knew from both first- and second-hand experience just how painful it could be to have an injury treated after it had had time to swell and shift. She was gentle, but thorough, watching for signs of undue pain in the man’s face but not stopping if she saw customary grimaces. She kept her focus on Mister Marcone until she was finished, then kept a similar single-mindedness on getting ice for his foot and something to drink with the painkillers. It wasn’t until she heard Harry address Molly that Charity tuned back into the room.
“Mister Dresden, as odd as this may sound, I would actually prefer that we stay here, if that is not too great an imposition. The protection at our house right now is not what I’d like it to be, and without Michael at home, I don’t think it’s really a wonderful idea for the two of us to be there alone right —” Her voice cut off as she saw Molly collapse for the second time. Her motherly panic, the terror that had driven her here but finally calmed some, was back in full force as frightened questions ran through her head. Normally she handled emergencies much more calmly, but so many things had happened in the past 48 hours.
Charity’s eyes tracked the movements of the vampire in the corner, noticing both his immediate reaction and the afterthought of stopping himself and going back to what he was doing. She wondered at both, but only in a sort of background way. Her Molly, who had seemed safe and fine only moments before, was in trouble again. She rushed to her side and started checking vital signs in a quick, efficient way that almost masked the terrified tremors in her fingers and hands.
“Do any of you know if she was hurt in any way? Any injuries that might cause this?” She asked the room in general, wondering if this was anything serious or just a reaction to shock and exhaustion.
