(written late on the night Rough Neighborhood ended)

There’s so much now. This one day turned my world upside-down and spun it backwards. But somehow I came out of it with things making more sense than they have in a long time.

The passage I started to write at the office seems outmoded now. I’ll leave it in here for posterity or something, but I think I need to start all over.

It started when I left Arizona to come home. The old pull had started again. I remember that. Then nothing for two days until I showed up on Brigid’s doorstep with a couple pizzas and a half-case of beer. I don’t know what happened in that time exactly, except that I got pregnant. (I should have asked Oberon when I had the chance. I hope I at least got dinner and a movie first, or something)

What’s weird is that I didn’t KNOW I’d lost two days. It’s like when you’re driving tired and you show up where you were supposed to go, only you don’t remember driving there… just a hole I didn’t notice. Until we got to talking – Brigid, Cass, Diesel, and me. Tracks and Nails were off doing some guy cat stuff, and Jasmin had to work – The subject of my tattoo came up, and Brigid said she might be able to help me find out what was up. When she did, she told me “my child was not human” and that I’d have to either chose to protect him, or abandon him. And then things got weird. My sense of the currents of life showed me a tiny spark of life growing inside me. I threw up. Not my finest moment.

And then we got pulled into another case. A kid (named Bruno) running from the CH. He’d stolen a dose of a drug they were starting to push. His sister was hooked on it. The Handies picked a fight and we got sucked into this whole gang war.

The drug, Jolt Juice, was made from demon blood, which Theresa figured out. While I was watching her work in her lab, I wrote that other entry, which made things interesting later.

We started tracking down the supply. We had to shut it down, because extended use – and we didn’t know how “extended” – would lead to the user turning into a demon. That would be bad. Of course, now what we were doing was also bad. We’d operated for nearly two years in the shadow of the Crimson Hand without getting involved with them, and now we were right in their faces.

I learned a lot from that.
How much I’ve ignored the Sleepers world
How limited our power is against Sleepers
How intertwined the world is

Things I need to change about myself and that I hope CI changes about the way we work. We have to be ready to integrate with the world, particularly the street culture, because so much of the supernatural world preys on those with no one else to turn to.

I got shot, nearly killed. I would have lost my baby. Oberon – THAT Oberon saved me, and told me a bunch more stuff to rock my world even further. Why he gave Cass to Lord Teeth, how he grew to love Cassie and develop something like human empathy. Who the Triumvirate are, and who the League are. Who my baby is. Atom bomb after atom bomb.

We took down Richard and his thugs ran off. Brave guys. I’m glad they did, since they probably could have still taken us, even with Honey showing up to help. Then things got a little ugly. I would have been glad to kill Richard while we were fighting, and I gotta admit that I KNOW I’m going to regret leaving him alive, but Cass and Diesel were talking about him to die in a dumpster.

There have to be rules. Otherwise, we’re not any different than them. Not right away, but eventually.

But anyway, Richard had an address in his pocket – a ratty old hotel that turned out to have monsters in the basement. We fought demons and a crazy wizard named Arthur Radu. He’d set up a nice place or himself. The most powerful Hallow I’ve ever been in was up stairs, and down stairs the table where he did his demon-blood experiments was a powerul Locus, too.

That led to some excitement, since Brigid really wanted to claim the building, but despite my eforts, Asdza had to send one of her creepy Masker investigators to take care of Radu. I don’t even really like to think about what he did, so that’s why it’s important to face it.

Radu was as good as dead, seriously burned. I’d stabilized him, but I was afraid to heal him because we’d barely beaten him in round one, and Cass and Brigid had to leave to avoid the Interfector. So the Interfector debriefed us. He wasn’t interested in much beyond who Radu was and what he’d been doing. Then he just killed Radu and hauled off his body.

If it had been brutal, I could almost relate to that, but it was so clinical. How much of that guy’s soul can really be left? How long before I’m that way? Or my friends? I can see it happening, but I’m not sure how to fight it. Each step is so logical.

But anyway, it’s been a long day, and the fact my girlfriend isn’t here to share my bed is no excuse to stay up all night.