Camillo, asleep on the couch with a book open on his lap, is very abruptly awake on the couch.

He doesn't quite remember the transition from the couch to the floor, kneeling by Valentine's side, taking his pulse, yelling Cato Cato Cato at the top of his lungs.

Valentine's eyes crack open, just barely,

and then he shuts them again.

"Please, not this. Not him, not again."

Cato bursts in in his pajamas and one sock, leveling a crossbow.

"What—"

When he sees Valentine on the ground, he freezes in place.

Alive. Conscious. Lucid, or almost lucid, or something like it anyway.

Cato's armed already. Good. "Cover him," and he's running off to the kitchen, fumbling for the cruet of oil from Jerusalem olives that isn't for cooking, the canister of Morton salt that sometimes is.

When he returns, Cato hasn't moved. He has the silver-tipped bolt pointed at Valentine's chest, knuckles white on the grip of the crossbow.

"Do you think it's him?"

Valentine is lying still.

"Anything else. Please."

His shirt has been meticulously mended in a dozen different places and bleached almost threadbare. The pale brown edges of bloodstains haven't quite washed out.

There's no possible answer Camillo can usefully make to either of them.

Camillo's thumb smears oil on Valentine's forehead, salt on Valentine's tongue. Camillo whispers old words of blessing, casting out demons, invoking peace and protection.

(There's still sleep unrubbed from his eyelashes. His book lies, spine broken, on the floor.)

At the last word of the incantation, Valentine scrambles onto his hands and knees and vomits black bile onto the floor.

It coalesces haphazardly, in a few places, into fat worms and lopsided, many-legged insectoids that skitter madly for the dark corners of the room, curses suddenly devoid of a host.

Cato takes it upon himself to stomp them.

It's not even proper magic, really. Certainly it's not the kind of thing that Valentine himself could marshal, in better times. But with Valentine gone as long as he has been, these four walls know Camillo as the head of the household, and he has some authority, here, to bless and to curse.

The first round of precautions observed, Camillo pulls Valentine up to his knees, starts unbuttoning his shirt to check what exactly has been bleeding. "Cato -- when you're done -- bread and water, I want him to eat something from here, make sure he stays..."

Valentine doesn't resist.

"Please don't."

It's not the same scattering of slashes and tooth marks and burns as before, not just fights and accidents. There are deep, uneven pockmarks all over his torso, some as wide as a dime, in clusters and constellations – a long scar flanked by little angry red marks, winding up his torso like a millipede — a stretch of shining, featureless skin that drips down his side.

There's a ring shoved through the skin just under his heart with a little silver charm dangling from it, the one he used to wear around his wrist.

Cato smashes the last bug, grinds salt into the smear on the carpet with his heel before he takes off for the kitchen almost at a sprint.

None of it is actively bleeding or festering. None of his questions matter right now. None of Valentine's objections are material, because Valentine fucking disappeared for months on end and has now forfeited as many as several rights.

Camillo drags Valentine up to his knees, wraps his arms tight around his bare scarred chest, rocks him back and forth and whispers blessings too small to have any force behind them, childhood bedtime blessings, little nonsense verses.

Valentine is tense to the point of trembling, breathing shallowly, waiting for something.

His fingers curl into Camillo's shirt anyway.

Cato comes back with a slice of sandwich bread and a glass of water.

He drenches the bread in the oil that isn't for cooking, for good measure, before he hands it off to Camillo.

Camillo pulls back from Valentine just enough to hold a morsel of bread to his lips. 

He closes his mouth, sets his jaw, squeezes his eyes tightly shut.

God damn it. "Eat. Valentine. Valentine. Look, it's not..."

Camillo eats the bit of bread himself, to demonstrate, breaks off a new fragment.

He shakes his head and tries to back away.

"Valentine. Dad. Please..."

It's not working. He lets him back away, just a little.

"...Cato, I think he's scared of me, can you...?"

Cato kneels down next to them.

He gasps, when he sees Valentine's bare chest, bites his tongue and looks away.

He opens his eyes, sees them both together, makes an anguished sound and shuts them again.

"—fine. Fine. All right."

He holds out his hand, palm up. The skin is textured with hundreds of little pinpricks.

It's so unfair. It's all so unfair. Valentine's back and he's not here to save them, he's a horrible frightened tortured mess who doesn't know them and it's the middle of the night and he's tired, okay, he's tired.

Camillo drops the stupid oily fragment of wonderbread in Valentine's palm and he tries not to cry.

Valentine eats.

His brow furrows in confusion, when he tastes the oil.

He swallows without even thinking.

"Good. Okay. Good."

Water, now, for more mundane reasons. Wherever Valentine's been, it hasn't been good for him, and dehydration doesn't help with anything.

He takes the water, and takes a slow, cautious first sip, flinching just before it hits his tongue.

After a moment of waiting, he takes another.

Having exhausted his immediate precautions, Camillo feels abruptly helpless. He covers for it by picking up his book from the floor while Valentine drinks, uncreasing the bent pages.

"...Dad, you're home."

He exhales sharply and tightens his grip on the glass.

"I'm not going to play along," he says, with the last strength he has.

(He leans back against the couch, so he doesn't have to bear his own weight.)

Cato is clutching his crossbow, point down, totally at sea.

"What do you mean," he says, voice almost breaking.

"He doesn't remember us -- or he's hallucinating -- Cato, go back to bed, you still have school in the morning, I'll call you if I need you."

Cato doesn't need to see Valentine like this.

"Fuck off," he says, with tears in his eyes. "I'm not going anywhere."

Valentine finishes his glass of water and sets it carefully down next to him on the carpet.

He wipes a little black streak from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Fine," Camillo says to Cato, because that fight was doomed from the beginning.

And to Valentine: "More? Still thirsty?"

"I'm all right, thank you."

It's fully automatic.

"Fine," Camillo sighs, exasperated, and gets a throw blanket to drape around Valentine's shoulders. "...Cato, lock the Death Trap, I don't want him wandering off all delirious in the middle of the night."

The Death Trap is the second lock on the front door, installed backwards so it locks with a key from the inside. Camillo named it when he was twelve and reading about fire safety, and it stuck.

Cato nods and runs off.

“…how could you possibly know about that,” he says, in the same tone he uses when he’s been tipped off to the taxonomy of some malevolent spirit by the shape of its slime trail.

"Dad, it's me. Camillo."

The throw blanket is as much for decency as for warmth, and as much for his comfort as Valentine's. He tucks it around Valentine's bare torso and tries not to think about the marks beneath.

He ignores the claim, and pulls the blanket closed around him.

"If someone's put a welcome mat at our door..."

"No one put out a welcome mat."

He's so tired. Why are they rehashing first-grade safety curriculum. Go to sleep.

"Go to sleep. It'll probably all make sense in the morning."

"...oh, am I sleeping tonight, then." 

He sounds relieved.

He drags himself up onto the couch, keeping the blanket tight around his shoulders.

Cato comes back, lingers in the door frame.

"Doors are locked."

"Great. Go to bed. Still a school night."

It apparently worked on Valentine. Maybe it'll work on Cato this time.

"Did I not say fuck off loud enough."

He comes in and sits down right next to him.

Valentine takes a deep breath.

"Suit yourself. I'm going to sleep."

If he's choosing to sleep stretched out on the rug by the couch, so that Valentine can't very well get anywhere without stepping on him, that's no one's business but his own.

Cato climbs into the biggest of the armchairs, with his crossbow in his lap.

"...he's back. So it's going to be fine."

"Yeah," Camillo lies.

It takes Cato about five minutes to drift off into a fitful sleep, still clutching his weapon.

Valentine watches them both, eyelids dropping for longer and longer every time.

Even on the floor, Camillo falls asleep before Valentine does.

When the sun rises, Cato stays asleep in his chair.

Valentine, however, doesn't.

He pulls himself upright and tries to step out over Camillo without being noticed.

He's weak, though, doesn't have the control of his body that he relies on. His foot clips his side.

Camillo grabs Valentine's ankle before his eyes are open.

"Where are you going."

Valentine flinches and yanks his foot back up onto the couch.

Camillo's finger catches, briefly, on – something –

before Valentine frees his foot and tucks it back under him.

He's awake, now, though still miserably groggy.

"Did you just want the bathroom?" he asks, sitting up. "You can use the bathroom. Do you remember where it is?"

"...you can't have done the whole house."

"Done what to the whole house? Dad..."

Camillo glances around despairingly. It's not that much of a mess, is it?

Now that Camillo is sitting up, he does his best to get up quickly and brush by him, heading for the living room door.

"Dad -- c'mon, wait, Dad--"

Camillo scrambles to his feet, grabs for Valentine's hand.

Valentine flinches, again, and stops in his tracks, as soon as Camillo's hand closes around his.

"Where are you going? What's going on?"

Is someone after him? Is he trying to protect them? Has he just forgotten them altogether, does he think his house has been invaded by strangers?

"Dad. Valentine. Let me help? Please?"

He stops in his tracks.

He looks through the door. He looks over his shoulder at the bookshelves, at the couch he slept on, at Cato asleep in the armchair.

"This isn't—"

He stops, takes a deep breath, looks around again.

"...can I be permitted to see the kitchen?"

On the one hand -- there's knives in the kitchen, and things more dangerous than knives. It would be stupid to let Valentine in, when he's in this state. Valentine doesn't approve of him being stupid.

On the other hand: it's Valentine, and it's Valentine's kitchen.

"Sure. One second. Cato!"

Cato startles awake, yelping, leveling the crossbow before he comes to fully and points it away.

"—good fucking morning, I guess!"

"Same to you. Come point the crossbow at Valentine while he has a kitchen reunion."

"...sure."

He looks down, to aim for his calf,

and pales.

There's a thick metal ring punched in between Valentine's Achilles tendon and the bone, hanging down and resting against the back of his heel.

Valentine looks to Camillo for permission to go on.

"Okay," Camillo says, "let's go," because the sink is in the kitchen and he thinks he might be sick.

Valentine makes his way to the kitchen.

He favors his right foot in a way he didn't before.

When he gets there, he hesitates, and then steps past the threshold.

There's a gasp like he's had the wind knocked out of him.

"It was Cato's turn with the dishes," Camillo says, automatically and stupidly.

“This is my kitchen,” he says, unsteadily. “This is my home.”

“Please — are my children still alive?”

"--Dad. Please."

He's crying, and it's as much relief that Valentine remembers he exists as it is anything else.

“That’s us,” Cato says, but even as he does realization is dawning on his face.

“I can’t believe that. Not again.”

He sounds desperate to. His voice is shaking, and he braces himself against the counter by the door, unwilling to look back over his shoulder.

"--okay. Can you just..."

Cato's hands are busy with the crossbow; Camillo can't reach out and take one. He puts a hand on Cato's shoulder, instead, and tries to pretend that it's to steady Cato.

"...can you just, be, in your kitchen, and not believe us, that's okay -- do you want to cook something, we have things..."

Cato is taking tight little breaths and blinking hard, bow still trained on Valentine's calf.

"Why — have you been put up to being part of this? — is there a way for me to help you, something they want from you, I..."

His kitchen table is right there. His kitchen table and his kitchen chairs.

He limps to them, sits down in one, pulls the blanket back tight over his shoulders.

"...you're home. We're safe. You're safe."

Camillo comes over, cautiously -- not too close -- and squats on the floor nearby, tries to look nonthreatening.

"Can you see the nicks on the table from when I built the Parthenon? And the glue on the window from that stupid sticker Cato put there?"

Valentine traces his fingertip over the nicks in question, slowly.

"...the sock monkey sticker," he says, faintly.

"The purple one," Camillo agrees.

"Cato. I don't think he's going to do anything. Can you get the bolt cutters?"

Cato nods sharply, drops his crossbow on the kitchen island, and runs for the garage.

"...not for any digits, I hope," he says, distantly.

"Jesus," Camillo sighs. "--for the ring, Valentine."

"The..."

"...oh, right. That one."

He touches it with the toes of his other foot.

"You might have trouble with it. It's quite thick."

"We cut through my U-lock that one time," Camillo says, optimistically.

Where's his phone. There's his phone. He needs to call Cato's school and tell them Cato will be out sick today. Not that Cato ought to miss another day of school right now, but he'll never convince him to go in.

The school is not pleased with Cato's absence. They want to see a doctor's note this time.

Cato returns with the bolt cutters and one of the three first aid kits.

"Do you want to do it yourself?" Camillo asks Valentine, because he's pretty sure Valentine isn't going to try to hit one of them over the head with the bolt cutters given a chance.

He holds out his hand for the tool.

Cato hesitates, for just a second, and then hands it to him.

Valentine lifts his foot up onto the chair next to him, hooks his finger into the ring to pull it up and out.

It stays in place, more or less, as he slips it between the bolt cutter's blades.

"...I won't have enough leverage."

He might, on a normal day. But not this one.

"...do you want me or Cato?"

It should be his job, really. But Cato might be less threatening.

"You."

If it's not his children, they can do what they want either way.

If it is — Camillo will want to protect Cato, much more than he'll want to pass off the job.

So Camillo kneels by the chair and applies the bolt cutters to the iron ring, trying not to jar it too badly.

Valentine shuts his eyes and breathes through it as it shifts.

It's solid, but not solid enough to hold up to the shears. It resists, a few seconds, and then gives all at once.

"There we go," Camillo says, as if Valentine is very small and Camillo has just pulled a splinter from his foot. "Do you want to take it from here?"

It's surely going to hurt, taking it the rest of the way out.

"...cut it again. So there's a larger gap. Then I'll pull it out."

Cato is preparing bandages, and not looking.

"Yeah. Okay."

Don't start telling him how to handle it. It's too normal, too comforting -- he'll relax. He can't.

The second cut takes a couple of tries; the ring keeps slipping under the shears. He gets it eventually.

He lets out the breath he was holding, when he hears the piece of iron clink off the seat of the chair onto the floor.

"...all right. Look away."

Camillo wants to protest that he doesn't need Valentine to protect him, but he remembers how relieved he was, just a moment before, to see Cato looking away.

He turns his back.

He pulls the sharp cut edge of the ring through the hole and out.

It's not nearly the worst thing he's had to do to himself in the last three months.

He lifts it in his palm, then, and just looks at it, the ring freed from his body, his body freed from the ring.

"...this should have some power to it," he muses, miles away.

"Oh my god," Camillo complains, affectionately exasperated, and then it's time to wash Valentine's ankle in a mixing bowl with lots and lots of fresh clean water.

There's not much blood at all. It must have had some time to heal. It's just a hole, lanced all the way through.

"...it really is you," he says, watching the water trickle through him.

"It's us, Dad."

He sacrifices one of the older dish towels to dry Valentine's foot, holds it steady in his lap for Cato to bandage.

Cato's wrapped a lot of bandages. He makes quick work of it.

Valentine watches his hands.

He reaches down to take one of them, when it's done, feel it light and warm in his,

and then nearly knocks them all to the floor grabbing them and pulling them into his arms.

"You're alive. You're alive. You're alive."

He chants it like it's its own blessing.

"We're alive. We've been okay."

The latter is a bit of a stretch, but at this moment, with his face in Valentine's shoulder and his arms around Cato and Valentine both, it feels true.

He smells like blood and sickness and the texture of his back is wrong on Camillo's hand but he's here, and holding him, and not letting go.

Cato has one hand tight in Camillo's shirt and one on Valentine's wrist, like if he doesn't hold onto him he'll disappear as quickly as he arrived.

"--you need more water. And food, and electrolytes, and a bath -- and antibiotics, probably, if you have anything fresh, and painkillers..."

He can't stand to just be here and feel. It's too much.

"No painkillers," he says, before he can even finish processing the sentence.

"Advil, Valentine, jesus."

And they're back on familiar ground.

"...all right," he says, reluctantly, "Advil. If it's already here — "

Cato is already passing it over.

And Camillo is already filling a glass with water.

Valentine will take two little capsules and sip half a glass of water, huddling under the blanket draped over his shoulders.

"...how long?"

"Three months -- four? -- no, three. Three months."

"...three months."

He's not sure if that sounds too long or too short.

"And are there — active threats?"

"The usual. Sightings of Hubert's stag in the suburbs. Something keeps trying to break in the side door at night. We've got it under control."

He sighs and it's like half the weight of his body has left on his breath. His shoulders crumple and his forehead tips down towards his glass of water.

"You are both marvels. Wonders of the world. I'm so proud of you."

 The inside of his shirt is good for wiping away tears.

"We missed you. I'm so glad you made it back."

“How did you do it? I — don’t think I saw any of your materials.”

Cold. Nauseous.

"We thought you--"

“…no. No, I had nothing to do with it.”

"I think," Camillo says, distantly, "we should move you to the panic room. For the time being."

Cato is already up and heading there.

“Yes. That seems best.”

Camillo offers Valentine his arm.

Valentine reaches out to take it — stops, flinches — pulls himself up by the edge of the table.

He still limps, as he makes his way to the basement stairs.

The panic room was a laundry room, in a previous life. Actually, it's still a laundry room, because this is where the dryer hookup is, and it's never quite reached the top of their list of home improvement projects. The heavy bars on the door, the labyrinthine pattern painted on the floor, don't really interfere with the laundry.

The walls are reinforced, inside and out, to stand up to a guy with a crowbar, because sometimes the forces of evil have a crowbar. The real defenses were put in at the same time.

Camillo doesn't like to think about the black dog buried under the lintel.

He stops on the threshold and whispers a blessing before he passes from one imprisonment to another.

The words feel light and false on his tongue.

Camillo hovers nervously outside the door.

"Do you have -- any idea -- why they would've sent you...?"

Valentine paces the room, checking the wards.

“I can only guess.”

Cato comes downstairs with Valentine’s discarded shirt clutched in one hand.

“…if you would put that in evidence, and fetch a new one—”

He’s already gone.

Camillo steps into the room to turn on the utility sink at a trickle. The tired, painted-over pipes above the doorway shudder, and the drain gurgles softly. It's not much, but it's running water -- one more barrier to be crossed.

"Do you want help setting up the futon?"

“Please.”

He has to sit down on the floor next to it, halfway through, strength having left him. He apologizes for it.

Cato comes back with a full change of clothes.

Camillo finishes with the fitted sheet and steps out of the room, closing the door behind him so that Valentine can change in privacy.

"You should go in to school for the second half of the day. Nothing here is time-sensitive."

“What the fuck does school matter? If something tries getting in—”

"If CPS decides I'm not a fit guardian because I can't get you to school we will have bigger problems, Cato."

“I’m an adult in like two months.”

"You will be a more functional adult if you have a high school diploma."

“High school diploma doesn’t make my aim any better.”

"High school diploma makes it easier to get a mortgage and have your own panic room someday. High school diploma makes it easier to get access to university reading rooms -- for fuck's sake. Valentine! Tell Cato to go to school!"

“I don’t want my own—”

“Go.”

His voice comes clipped from the other side of the sheet.

“They’ve already done a fine job sending me back, if it keeps you both in the house.”

Cato’s shoulders drop, and his ears go red.

Camillo will mock up a doctor's note on the computer and fill it out in his worst handwriting.

Cato gathers his things.

When he’s ready to walk out the door, he grabs Camillo’s arm and makes him look.

“If something happens you have to text me. You have to text me.”

"I always text you if I need you."

He nods, and then he’s out.

Downstairs, the sheet is down.

Valentine has changed, the old clothes folded neatly on the corner. His hair is wet and the new shirt sticks slightly to the skin of his back. One of the other first aid kits lies open next to the futon.

He’s looking through the slim bookshelf on the far wall for something, on the shelves of actual books above the detergent and the spare pillowcases.

"You look better."

It's kind of a lie. The fresh clothes and the hair plastered to his forehead highlight the weight he's lost, the scarring on exposed skin.

“Up and up from here,” he says, automatic and barely present.

He pulls a thick volume from the top shelf and sits down heavily on the side of the futon.

"...you should tell me everything you can remember. We don't know what might be important."

And he wants to know.

He stiffens.

“I’ll take notes.”

"...sorry. I know you don't want to talk about it."

He sits down in the doorway, feet up on the doorframe.

“I will. Soon. For safety’s sake. But I…”

He looks around the room. He looks down at his bare feet. He sighs.

“…Christ, I could really use a drink.”

An awful, pragmatic part of him is trying at once to calculate what harm a bad actor could do with a glass of single malt.

"When the advil wears off."

“…Camillo.”

"I'll go get that, then."

Even if this is not in accordance with the small text on the advil bottle.

“Thank you.”

Camillo brings him a glass of something from a fancy bottle. 

Valentine takes it from him, inhales the scent of it.

The first time he puts it to his lips, he flinches, has to back off a moment or two.

The second time, he manages a sip.

His shoulders drop for the first time since he’s arrived home, and he sighs with a deep, broken exhaustion that doesn’t quite manage to drown out the relief.

“What a beautiful world this is.”

All right, so it's worth a little bit of liver damage.

"...there's been bodies washing up from the lake. I was up late, trying to figure out -- do you want to help?"

It's the nearest thing to normalcy he has to offer.

“—normal faces?”

He sits up a little straighter, props his elbows on his book.

"Probably, but I can't be positive -- the morgue doesn't like me as much as they like you--"

He has pages of notes on it, and a stack of books to haul down from upstairs.

Valentine pores over his notes, thumbs through books with shaky hands from one bookmark to the next.

About halfway into the glass of brandy he remembers to, tentatively, ask for something to eat.

They have been under a lot of stress and eating a lot of Kraft macaroni and delivery pizza.

Would Valentine like ... pasta. With ... canned tomato sauce. Camillo can turn those up.

“…it might be — prudent — just to start with bread and butter.”

"--yeah. Of course. Sorry."

It's not good bread, or fancy butter, but it is real food, on a chipped fiestaware plate. Camillo's brought the electric tea kettle, too, and tea and lemon and honey.

Valentine tears tiny fragments off the bread, one at a time. He inspects them and rolls them between his fingers before each bite he takes, still sometimes hesitates and has to take a second try.

“…you might be assuming it’s aquatic too strongly.”

"I might be assuming the lake monster is aquatic too strongly."

“Anyone can dump a body in a lake.”

He’s unwrapped a tea bag, and seems to be going back and forth on whether to put it in the mug. Eventually, it’s a yes.

"Yes, Scully, it's probably just a serial killer who targets exclusively universalist unitarians."

“I didn’t say mundane, did I?”

He opens the jar of honey,

dips the tip of the spoon in, inspects the way it shines.

"Z didn't find anything when he checked out the UU church."

“…so he’s involved, now.”

Camillo crosses his arms.

"I made a call."

He sighs, nods.

“It was yours to make.”

"You weren't there," says Camillo, who has been rehearsing this argument for months, "and Cato and I can only be so many places at one time--"

“Yes,” he says, gently, “I know.”

The kettle clicks off. He pours.

"--sorry."

He's such an asshole.

He shakes his head.

“You don’t need to apologize to me.”

He watches the tea bag float to the surface of the water.

If only Valentine would demand a full accounting of the last three months from him -- would ask him what he thought he was doing, tell him how to do it better --

"I don't think we should tell anyone you're back, yet. Even our allies -- outside of Cato and Z -- in case anyone slips up and knows..."

“…that might be useful, yes.”

He picks up the lemon, turns it over in his hand.

“Have I been, ah, let go, yet?”

"...not totally sure. I should open some letters."

It hasn't been the most pleasant topic to think about, nor yet the most urgent.

“I’ll take care of the mail.”

He takes another sip of brandy.

“…I assume there’s a great deal of it.”

"Only a little!"

Insofar as qualitative statements can be true, this one is false.

He actually laughs, at that.

“…reading the mail,” he says, staring at his steeping tea. “I really can’t believe it.”

"Neither can I."

They hit the books in earnest, after that. By the time school lets out, they've established that the Unitarians have rigorous background checks and a strictly-enforced two-deep policy -- which doesn't rule anything out, but does make it less likely -- the bodies aren't showing up around the full moon, one of them had children so they can't be virgins, and the local endangered salamanders are doing just fine.

Valentine is flagging, somewhat, by that time. He misses whole sentences spoken aloud, scans lines of text again and again without comprehending them.

When the door slams upstairs, he goes very still.

"...do you want to see Cato right now, or should I distract him."

Or, rather: do you want to be seen by Cato, like this.

“I’d rather not choose, thank you,” he says, mechanically, and then he stops and bites his tongue.

“…he’ll want to make sure I’m still here, I’d expect.”

He could cry. He didn't know that spaghetti was bad -- that touching was bad -- that asking questions was bad -- 

"--if you lie down I'll tell him you're asleep and let him peek in."

“…thank you. I’m sorry.”

"Please don't be."

Off he goes to quiz Cato on whether he got notes from a classmate for his morning classes.

“Nothing happened?” says Cato, conveniently skipping over the question of notes.

"We worked on the lake monster until he started to nod off. He's -- not at a hundred percent yet. I think he's going to need a lot of rest."

“…yeah.”

“Did he tell you what happened?”

"He didn't want to talk about it."

And if Valentine writes up a summary, Cato doesn't need to see it.

“—he has to at least tell us who got him.”

"You're not wrong. Just -- maybe after he's managed to eat a full meal."

“…he’s not eating?”

"A little. And hydrating, so I'm not too worried."

He hangs up his backpack, shucks off his shoes.

“I’m going to kill them. Whoever it was.”

"Not if I get there first."

He takes the stairs up two at a time.

When he comes back downstairs, he has his other backpack with him.

“Did he figure out the lake monster?”

"He thinks it might not actually be a lake thing." And that was pretty much the only coherent insight he managed to articulate all day, but Camillo isn't going to say that.

“Then why are all the bodies in the lake,” he says, skeptically.

"Really convenient lake? Did it once, and why change what works?"

“…cool. So now it could be literally anywhere in town.”

"We might just have to stake out the unitarians and hope we see something."

“Guess so.”

He’s fiddling with his dubiously-legal switchblade in his pocket. There’s a familiar click as it opens and closes.

"Listen, Z should be finishing up his shift at that awful little tattoo place in like half an hour. Why don't you swing by and pick him up, and we can all put our heads together about the lake monster and whatever's been going on at the belltower lately?"

“He really needs to get a car.”

"We did kind of get his last one squished."

“That’s…fair.”

He gets his jean jacket from upstairs, before he goes, the one he usually only wears out on hunts when it’s as hot as it is. It’s closer to armor than anything he wears. (Well, anything but the kevlar.)

Camillo lets him go without threats of heatstroke. He needs all the armor he can get, today.

In the meantime, Camillo beats the bounds, renewing and strengthening what protections he can, checking the curses that serve as pitfalls and tripwires. Nothing has been breached since yesterday, which is good. Another of the greater wards has fallen from disrepair, which isn't. 

He traces the dove's blood on the lintel with his fingers. Valentine never let him see how to set that one. Today doesn't seem like a good day to ask.

Cato returns, shortly,

with their houseguest right on his heels.

“Hey — I heard —”

"He's back. But taking it really easy for the moment. He's had a rough time of it."

Z gets the tightest possible hug.

Camillo gets the same. (This is a very good time for Z to be a tall guy who lifts, in his own opinion.)

“Yeah, no shit — Cato said there’s a, uh, piercing thing I might need to look at?”

Camillo squeaks, because all of the air is being squished out of his lungs, and then he lands back on his feet and gives it another try.

"That's a really good idea, yeah. He's in the panic room, just until we're sure everything's cool. C'mon."

Z follows him downstairs, ducking the little bundle of dried herbs that’s the right height for everyone who lives here but always hits him in the forehead.

The door to the panic room is locked. This makes sense, given the purpose of the panic room.

Camillo knocks.

"Hey -- Z's here, can we come in?"

It takes a minute.

After a wait, “Passphrase?” comes muffled through the door.

(Voices are easy to mimic.)

"Pink Zelda kissed six Pikachus under the hemlock tree."

(It's an old passphrase.)

(Even given the direness of the circumstances, Z has to cover a laugh.)

Valentine, on opening the door, just seems quietly relieved.

Z abruptly forgets how to code switch.

“Uh — hi. Welcome back, man.”

Camillo was in the room, once, while Z tried to talk down an internet friend over a voice call. 

He doesn’t sound exactly like he did then, but it’s close.

"Z's gonna take a look at your foot. He's good with -- home piercings."

“That’s one thing to call it,” he muses, as he limps across the room to sit on the futon.

He raises his foot to set it beside him on the bed, gingerly.

Z kneels beside the bed to take a look.

“…how the fuck is this healed?” he says, immediately.

"It's been three months."

“Yeah — not with this location, man.”

He peers to the side.

“This is, like — at least a year. A really lucky year.”

"So whoever nabbed him has some kind of healing going on? Seems weird."

It feels awful to talk across Valentine, wan and exposed and barefoot, while he sits there passively. But Camillo doesn't have a better idea for what to do.

“I can’t tell you how supernatural their wound healing was. They certainly had different methods.”

He keeps looking.

“…this…I mean, I guess it would have been a shit placement, but that was probably the idea — Cato said it had a solid ring in it?”

"Yeah. Need to see it? It should be on the table upstairs, unless Cato put it in evidence already..."

He's trying not to imagine different methods.

“Doesn’t really matter anymore, I guess.”

“It’s — pretty sure this fucked up your tendon. This is the part where I’d tell you to let a doctor take over.”

"We could just take you in to a doctor. Tell them it was a bad idea -- maybe that I did it, not Z, don't want to get him in trouble with the tattoo shop -- they can yell but they can't actually do anything..."

It would be ironic, wouldn’t it? For them to let him back into his own house, to bear him gently out of the one safe place and then sweep him back again. He won’t be complicit.

But if it’s his children, if they need him…

“I won’t be useful in the field for a while yet. It can wait.”

“It’s not about you being useful!”

It takes him a moment to gather a response.

"—well, it's not time-sensitive otherwise, is it. There's only so far I can walk in this room."

"Fine," Camillo snaps, and huffs all the way out of the basement before he sits down on the top step and cries.

Z shows up at the top of the stairs shortly.

"Hey."

The top step can fit one more.

"Sorry. Rough day."

He bonks his head on Z's shoulder.

"...holy shit, you don't have to apologize, man."

He pats the back of his neck.

"You want me to crash here tonight? I have my meds."

"...yeah. I'd kinda like that, actually."

"How bad is it going to mess up the healing if we can't drag him to a doctor? I think he would, if I pitched a fit, but..."

"...I'm, uh, not totally positive. Don't think it would be that bad, but I can ask some guys I know on the internet some weird questions. I've never actually seen one of these in person."