a struck link // christopher lightwood {3}

one // in the middle of the night

ravelment (n).

entanglement. confusion. disagreement. the web into which one walks. the two-word phrase, "it's complicated."

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Telegram: Alan Lochlyn Westhouse to the London Institute

My sincerest apologies, but I don't know that I'll be able to make it back to London for the wedding. I'd love to attend, but this letter has been forwarded to my current housing in France, where I'm meeting Brigitte soon and we'll be staying for a while. Had I got your invitation earlier, I would have been able to make it, but as it is, I'm now double booked. I'll be giving my invitation to Pluto, so xe can bring a friend if xe wishes. I hope that is alright.

C'est la vie,

Alan Lochlyn Westhouse

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{ castle. }

The lodging house was called Castle. Pluto took the wooden ramp up to the bright red front door and knocked on it. Xe paused for a moment, rubbing the snow off xyr face, and was about to try again, impatient, when the door opened.

On the other side was a small, ebony-complexioned vampire with huge eyes and very long, thick, carefully maintained dreadlocks. "Well," she said, offering a handshake, "you arrived quite late."

"Sorry," said Pluto, accepting the handshake. "You're...Saoirse?" Pluto's new landlady didn't actually have a last name, as far as Pluto could tell.

"I am," said Saoirse, "yes." She smiled brightly and stepped aside to let Pluto into the foyer. "Come in, come in. Would you like me to show you straight up to your rooms, or shall I put the kettle on? You've missed dinner, I'm afraid."

"Don't worry about it, I'll be fine. I already ate. Can I put this down somewhere?" Pluto lifted xyr bag carefully with one hand. It was heavier than it looked. It contained, as Anne of Green Gables might say, all of Pluto's worldly goods. Xe'd gotten it at the Moorefield Shadow Market about a year or two before xyr unfortunate time trip, overjoyed to learn that it was bottomless and yet somehow not done in a style hundreds of years old. Most bags of holding were quite ancient.

"Of course," said Saoirse. "Come along, I'll take you upstairs straight away."

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Castle was four stories tall, and Pluto's rooms were on the fourth floor. Xe had a bathroom of xyr own, a bedroom and a little sitting room that doubled as an office and a study, with a long, narrow, arched window that faced out onto the street below. All six of the suites (there were two on each floor) shared a kitchen, a library, and a larger parlor on the ground floor.

Pluto spent the next hour or so with unpacking, getting books onto shelves and clothes into drawers and placing bric-a-brac and boxes for jewelry and money and hair ties into the places they belonged. In the process of unpacking xe unearthed the Frank's Box xe'd used to help translate the holler goblin tongue what felt like years ago, and Dash's tiny red and gold antique Belgian pistolette. It wouldn't kill a demon, Pluto knew that, but that wasn't the point of it. Dash hadn't bought it for that reason and they hadn't used it for that either. They'd bought it for self-defense, Pluto remembered, afraid that their family, who had left the Clave, might try to kidnap Dash back from it. They'd ended up using it to shoot a warlock in cold blood.

Pluto shuddered and buried the horrid little thing in the bottom of their socks and lingerie drawer.

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