Donovan waves a hand dismissively. "She's sick because we are giving her dozens of experimental medications, I am sure if we got her off them she'd be well."

He does not actually have an argument for that; he does have everything Ayers said about nectar and what it does to people so how about he goes down that route instead.

Montgomery stops him two sentences into the explanation. "Do you think I don't know what my own product does?"

"Then why are you giving it to your daughter."

"Do I look like I have a lot of options?" she snaps.

"No. No, you don't. Which is why I'm trying to help in the first place."

"Yes."

"I-- don't know how you think you're going to help me."

"I can wither you to dust with a wave of my hand, which I assure you is an even less pleasant death than drowning. You can write articles exposing abuses of power."

"If I haven't found a way out, what makes you think you can?"

'And how exactly would you say that leaping to solving all of your problems with murder has been working out for you thus far' would just be cruel, given context.

"I don't know either," he says instead. "I got murdered last week, I'm about as far in over my head as it's possible to get and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But-- I am not very good at doing nothing. And you needed the hug."

"I'm glad there are two of us."

"If I were brave, I would jump into the Font myself and join my Portia."

"........do you want another hug."

"Yes."

Yep okay she can have one.

Mordred is getting really good at hugging cultists, and other sentences that would probably make Zoe make faces.

"--You got murdered last week?"

"Did you know," Mordred says, as if this is a completely normal conversational topic -- still hugging her -- "that most people don't get semilethally drowned by a cultist even once in their entire lives?"

"Ugh. Peter."

"No style at all."

"Someone said he talked like he learned how from a Dale Carnegie course and I really can't say she was wrong.. --anyway. Yes, and he's under the impression that my name is Thomas Lee and I'm still dead, I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell him otherwise."

"How did you come back to life?"

"You don't look like a zombie. Or smell like one."

"I am some variety of nonhuman that doesn't die when drowned, not totally clear on details other than that.

--I don't remember if I told you my actual name, it's Mordred."

"That doesn't limit the options much and even I don't know everything." She sighs.

"What... is your plan."

He thinks about it for a couple seconds, debating whether to reveal the existence of Martin.

"...........depends on how you feel about learning spells that require you to deliberately not use the power you have or exert influence on the world."

"I don't feel like using my power has done much for me."

"Not wrong but I wasn't going to say it -- so my plan is to either introduce you to the person who knows the relevant spells better than I do, or just write them down and hand them to you, depending on what happens when I ask him about it, and then close the mouth in Malta."

"How do you close the mouth."

Mordred explains, haltingly, into Montgomery Donovan's hair, the processes for the rituals of self denial and casting out the black pharaoh.

Montgomery nods sharply. "The spell to cast out the black pharaoh ought to close the Mouth; it's a Mask of Nyarlathotep."