I let it simmer and brew.  Were there any other common aspects of the incidents besides myself, and, well, what I do? (You know, the Portal thing.)  The Shadow King didn’t count – he was my fetch for now.  I had to expect him to follow up on the things I had interest in, but I hoped that he would be more personally involved in the Witch War rather than spending his myriad energies interfering with me.  Of course, there was a small part of me that shouted, “But they’re my witches!”  I didn’t listen to it.  That’s a whole can of worms for introspection for which I didn’t have the energy to turn the can opener.  (I have a lot of friends and family with electric can openers.  My house even came with one.  This always surprised me, but I did finally come to the consideration that as one got older the things I took for granted were not as simple.)

The Gillikins were still interested in me.  They were a Court, no doubt, but not interested in Small things.

The Small Court got my number (so to speak) from my friend Thomas. Thomas had no interaction as far as I knew with any of the other groups.

The Red Poet Society had paid me off, so I took them off the list of interests, except that there was a Schroedinger’s Dragon at the other side of any Door I might open.

The -cubi just existed.  As far as I knew, except that they carefully protected themselves from me… and who set that up, I wondered?  I still thought there was something involved with the Messenger.  I didn’t trust my instincts, so much, but… She didn’t vamp me.  I mean, she made an effort,  but despite the discussion Matana’s other being had with it, there was a bit of a half-hearted nature to the attempt.

Matana and Ed.  I shook my head.  I had to do a little thinking about that.

Why do a man and a woman go out to something if there wasn’t any attraction?  Except you can have intellectual attraction, I guess.  I mean, I sounded just like a neanderthal, but I think my brain was searching for an angle that made sense.

I had to admit, the vampire thing distracted me.  I couldn’t accept her as a person because she had made a choice not to be one.  It wasn’t like a physical disease she contracted unwillingly, but more like an addiction she chose to feed.  Truly, I didn’t know if she could get help.  She could get dead, sure, but once a vampire, well, the “cures” I knew of got pretty ugly.

Matana as herself was an attractive woman.  Don’t think I didn’t have the urge to tell Ed six times in the conversation that I’d seen her stark naked.  It’s not something I was likely to forget.  I just wasn’t going to forget that she was the evil, evil, undead O!

(Which didn’t work to replace “undead” with “victim of a parasitical other-dimensional creature,” because then scansion was broken and left crying and alone in the dark.  And poets might like it that way, but scansion doesn’t.  Scansion likes to be all sunshine and flowers.  I think.  I stopped writing bad teenage poetry the second my sister got into it.)

Ah yes, my sister.  No connection, I hoped.  As far as I knew I really was the family mutant when it came to the supernatural.  Which isn’t to say they were complete nulls on the scales of Wot Bumps In De Night, but that their focus wasn’t strong enough or their will in a shape to get results.

Like most of us.  Peredur’s nonsense aside, I didn’t even understand wizards.  Vasilisa was pretty amazing.  I’d love to pick her brain for hours and hours just to talk technique and theory, really.  That much I got from Artur.

On the dead list, I hoped.  I wouldn’t have wanted him to be alive in all that fiery anger.  On the other hand, he would have been very tough to kill.

Life and Death were not Small things.

What did the Small Court want me to wish for?  That was really what was getting to me about the messengers.  Clarity.  I could wish for clear answers and solutions to my problems.

Alas, those weren’t Small at all.

What other forces were at play?  Troll Knights of the Small, the messengers of Christmas Present and Future, or at least Solstice Present and Future, to give a dumb Dickens allusion.

Man, I didn’t know Ed was gay.  I mean, I still didn’t, somewhere in my head.  Easy for me to presume that he was just like me, I guess.  I still didn’t know if it was supposed to change anything between us.  I mean, on one hand, he’s still a good, good friend.  On the other, if I don’t acknowledge the difference, am I being a bigot?  I can never tell which side of the line is good for acknowledging I’m an idiot and yet not perpetuating further idiocy.

I guess if he wanted me to treat him differently, he’d say something.  Something about how he wanted to be treated, I guess.  I mean, besides not offering to introduce him to interesting women (which, with the kind of girls I was running into, was probably a blessing anyway.) In the meantime, I’d just consider him Ed.

I still had a dinner invitation from the Questor.  I wanted to do that, but I think my quest was pretty self-evident.  I needed to walk the veils at the eight corners of Monaco and see what Small thing was needed to put things to right before it became a Big problem.  After that I did need to ask.  I needed to ask the Questor what to do about the Dragon.

Because then I could sleep again, and not worry that I would wake up there in the dark with her, or see Doloise again, or smell Ivan burning.

And Rohana.  I needed to know what was going on with her.  Two wonderful nights, or days, or whatever this was, wasn’t a relationship, I guessed.  I didn’t want to push, anyway.

And my insurance company was going to raise my rates.  I’d have to call the agency again and get another job soon.  Not to mention rent another car, if they’d do business with me again.

Cops acting strangely…why did that get stuck into my head?