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"Look," he begins, "not that I expect I'd find this convincing in your position, but -" and then the ground shimmers under them and half a second after that it's not there at all.
They fall.
The ground they hit instead is cold and muddy. The stars are exceptionally bright, and close overhead.
" - what?" says Ryan.
Alex doesn't answer him. Alex is looking out into the darkness, horrified.
It's locked.
I'm pretty sure there's noone in there. Do you want to break in - they might've left a note, or - evidence of what happened -
Yeah. Normally I'd hesitate to leave it in worse shape, but - it's not like whatever's out there is all gonna be stopped by a lock.
The house does not look like anything particularly terrible has happened in it. She checks the kitchen first. There's a note on the fridge in Azalea's handwriting that says 'Going to LA - please call if you come home' and a cell phone number. She takes it.
Milk says November 9th. Doesn't smell bad yet. Doesn't say what year because it's milk. - calendar still says October 1997.
You need to use the phone first?
"Yeah. Totally. I'm really sorry," she says, because she doesn't super know how to say anything else. "We're good. You're in LA?"
" - yeah. Did - God, Karen, we've been worried sick about you for three weeks, and then Sunnydale went all - whatever the hell is even happening there right now - "
Her throat closes up.
Somehow it had failed to sink in from the explicit date-checking that she'd only been gone three weeks. There isn't space for everything that's happened to fit into three weeks.
"M'fine," she says, though it actually kind of feels like she's listening to someone else talk. "I'm sorry. We'll, uh, we wanna figure out what's happening here and then we can find you - can I have an address - "
She finds a pen and scribbles down an address on her paper as she's given it. She thinks she says something else sort of mildly reassuring but also super lame. She forgets what it was as soon as she hangs up.
Azalea's - fine.
He talks on the phone in Quenya for a pretty long time, paying only a bit of attention to where she is and whether anyone's approaching the house and what Wishbone is doing.
Her laptop and journals are both missing. Everything else is almost exactly as she left it. This strikes her as kind of incredibly terrible for reasons she doesn't totally understand.
She mindlessly grabs her adventure bag, then stuffs it full of clothes and some things that she considered valuables when she was twelve. When she's done, she sits on the stairs and holds Wishbone.
Eventually he hangs up.
It happened on Halloween. Most people turned into their costumes. They tracked it to a particular costume shop, but that was as close as they got to figuring it out. The proprietor had fled. I explained the change in priorities to them, everyone's going to Canada to work. Except Macalaurë, he's coming here.
How many people made it out? Do we have, like, dead-or-transformed numbers?
They think it couldn't have been more than a couple thousand transformed. Mostly little kids, right, that's who does Halloween -- and the college got hit hard, I guess. Couple thousand dead. The Bureau took a lot of the transformed kids prisoner, the harmless ones, pumpkins and bunny rabbits and not-too-deadly monsters and confused princesses -- but there're a bunch that are above the power level that was available here - that would've been available here even if you'd been here -
I oppose you doing anything even remotely dangerous until Macalaure's here and you can do confession.
I want someone to check on Zeke at some point. I'm not gonna say it has to be now. Partly because I'm not super sure I could say anything if I ran into him.
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