Game was 10/9/20.
Anita realizes that her cell phone is glitching pretty badly, and that her apps keep disappearing and reappearing on her screen. Combining that with the unusual inability for the text message to go through while she was in the Underworld, Anita is concerned about the Troys. However, the text comes through as Josh's warning, and she realizes at 3:00 o'clock in the morning there's not much she can do. She gets into her little Honda and then drives back home. Once home she quietly lets herself into the house and shuffles upstairs to bed.
William's sleep is filled with half-remembered images and sounds giving him little rest. Meanwhile, Leta dreams of Hell. She sees the stereotypical Judeo-Christian depiction of Hell, but whichever way she turns there's always a large citadel just at the very edge of her vision. This citadel sports a massive infernal sigil, one that makes her eyes hurt when she tries to see it. She despairs that this sigil may be representing her demonic grandfather, known only by the moniker the Silent Duke.
Josh falls back to sleep pretty quickly but is once again met by New Friend. In this second dream, liquid darkness comes up under him and he floats along like he's in the middle of a river. He chirps, "Hello!" New Friend replies incredulously, "You came back with more trauma? How? It was only a few minutes!" Josh admits they had a run in with a vampire and New Friend calls him the ‘hunter himbo.' Josh protests, "How did you know?" New Friend retorts, "I pay attention. You're all accidental masochists!" Josh protests again as he wiggles and then yelps, "Don't go into that hole!" New Friend retorts, "I'm liquid and you're full of holes. However, my offer stands. You have trauma, I'm hungry, let's deal."
Josh dodges the offer and asks, "What's with the familial connection with these vampires?" New Friend sighs and replies, "I don't think you're quite getting it. All creatures of the night are Family." Josh whispers, "I'm a creature of the night?" New Friend retorts, "Not exactly. Hence the second cousin status. Now, little Fribble, about all this delicious, delicious trauma." Josh demands details on what would happen to him if his trauma is consumed; New Friend replies, "You'll remember the event, but the emotional connection will be gone."
Josh talks himself through denying the offer; he resolves that he has to go through the sucky stuff to become a better person and to help others. New Friend grumbles and then asks, "Then can I at least eat your eyes?" Josh howls, "No!" New Friend offers, "How about your kidneys then?" Josh asks, "If you eat somebody's kidneys in a dream, does that affect their awake body?" New Friend retorts, "Yup. I eat your kidneys here; you wake up needing bathtub full of ice." Josh refuses, so New Friend replies, "Very well then. Peace out, Cub Scout!"
Anita wakes up at 8:00 AM and stumbles into the shower. She bathes and then heads downstairs to get something to eat. Abuela is already in the kitchen and starts nattering at her in judgment but Anita ignores her grandmother and just reaches for the pot of coffee. She downs half the pot as she wolfs down some breakfast and then she heads out to the botanica. She arrives in time to open the botanica at 9:00 AM and sees a small uptick in business as several elderly Latinas drop by to see if the freaky black girl is going to come back today. Anita welcomes the business but sorely regrets that Josh is unable to work today. As the morning drags on, Anita acknowledges to herself how Josh is not only good for business, but he is great at giving her some much-needed downtime.
William sleeps in, until the ungodly late hour of 9:00 AM. He rolls out of bed and carefully examines himself; he finds the hieroglyphs are branded all over his body, except for his face. Realizing someone needs to drive Doctor Ranjip back to Haydenville, William decides that he will borrow Josh's car once again. He makes his way downstairs carefully and finds everyone still asleep in the living room. He starts the coffee and then starts making breakfast when Doctor Ranjip silently joins him in the kitchen. The two men, neither of whom actually looks their proper age, enjoy a quiet but strangely intimate breakfast as they don't say a word to each other.
After breakfast William grabs Josh's keys and Doctor Ranjip follows him outside. They find cold, gray skies, a consistent wind, and a thin sheet of ice all over the roads. The men clamber into Josh's car and William takes a few backroads to get to Route 9. He follows Route 9 through the villages of Leeds, Florence, and Williamsburg to get to the Haydenville Historical District in Williamsburg. He pulls up to Doctor Ranjip's estate; the doctor pulls out a pad and scribbles something down before handing the piece of paper to William. William realizes it's a prescription of some sort and puts it in his pocket as Doctor Ranjip gets out of the car and heads inside to his home. Considering he is arguably out in the middle of nowhere, William decides the best thing he can do right now is to head back.
William drives back to his home in Northampton and pulls into the driveway to get his first good look at the damage to his home. Broken glass and shattered pieces of the window frame litter his front yard. He parks the car and heads inside to find Abby is awake while the others remain asleep. William and Abby have another quiet moment as they drink coffee and wait for the others; William realizes he's still as unsettled by Abby's death and resurrection as he was a year ago. Around 10:30 AM the others wake up and Josh immediately takes some of his pain medication while Abby cooks some eggs.
Veltis is still out cold and Leta frets over him while Josh starts writing things down so he will remember. He asks, "Who needs healing?" Abby replies, "I'm OK, but Leta's throat is squirming." Leta grabs a piece of paper and a pen and writes, "Don't tell me what it looks like!" The hunters discover that their phones are glitching and realize Veltis's coma is the likely culprit. Leta communicates by writing while Josh grabs the Papal hat and tucks it in with Veltis.
Josh continues writing and asks the others, "What do we need to learn? We need to know more about these strix and whatever our familial relationship is with Obadiah." Leta scribbles furiously, "Curse!" William deadpans, "The judges of Duat." Leta writes and then jabs the pen to her question, "Are you a mummy?" William dodges the question while Josh mentions his second visit with New Friend and how she seemed willing to eat his organs. He makes a note about looking for spontaneous organ failure as Leta writes, "That's new!" Ray interjects, "Vampires?" Josh grunts as he writes that down while Leta asks Ray, "You OK?" Ray grins and gives her a double thumbs up, clearly being sarcastic. She pats him on the head and then wonders about Mick and Polly. She writes, "We need to make sure they didn't die last night!" William adds blandly, "We also need to take care of what's in the freezer."
Ray turns to Josh and asks with forced calm, "What's in the freezer, Josh?" This time, Josh dodges the question but asks his grandfather, "Are they still there?" William nods and replies, "Hopefully only until tonight." Ray demands an explanation and Josh replies carefully, "Do you know what a safe-word is?" Ray retorts, "I'm fifteen and I live on the Internet. Also, there's vampires, and whatever the hell that thing is with your basement door." Josh insists that Ray might not be ready for the full truth but the teenager yells, "There was a god in your living room and your granddad agreed to serve it. I think I'm good!"
Josh continues to resist and asks Ray, "How fucked up is this right now on a scale of one to ten?" Ray retorts, "I don't have numbers for that." Leta writes, "We're at a five now." Josh haltingly explains that another familial connection placed spyware. William insists, "On your grandmother's side!" Leta writes, "That's still on the Troy side!" Ray insists on an answer and declares, "I'm running on teenage stupidity, coffee, and these delicious eggs. Tell me!" Leta crabs that Abby should be making her eggs back home, while Abby retorts, "The eggs are in the refrigerator. You can make them yourself!" To forestall an argument, William gets up, opens the freezer, and brings back the Tupperware of now-frozen eyeballs.
William places the Tupperware on the table and Ray stares in horror while Josh rants about changelings. Leta writes, "Some changelings are awesome, but all are crazy!" She then offers jazz-hands. Ray says slowly, "Josh, why do you have a container of eyeballs in your freezer?" William explains the situation with his sister-in-law Helen and how she is now a mad changeling. He admits, "We must neutralize these eyes by bathing them in the light of the full moon." Ray is incredulous but William remains blasé about the entire affair.
Ray states, "So someone ripped eyeballs out of human beings and then used sympathetic magic to spy on you." William nods while Josh avoids the subject by asking Leta, "Can you text Milan about the strix?" Leta gestures that she will do it later and then Josh starts looking up strix online. The first few hits tell him that the strix are some sort of blood-drinking owl monsters; Josh wonders, "Vampires?" They decide it's time for a group chat and Josh sends out a group call at noon.
Anita is the first to reply, "What's up, cute butt?" She also adds that the phones aren't working properly; Josh replies, "We know. We got our psyches ripped open last night. Veltis took the worst of it." Anita grumbles but agrees to drive up to Northampton later; business is slow again so she may shut down early and take a nap first. She tells Josh, "I told the regulars that you were out sick." Mick answers a few moments later to join the call, and then Polly joins the line a second after that. Josh asks her if the pack has had any problems last night; Polly replies, "Not that I'm aware of, but someone is reluctant to get out of bed."
The hunters hear shifting and grumbling on the line as Hope burrows under the pillows and demands Polly do something about that evil thing in the sky. Polly retorts, "It's called the sun." She turns her attention back to the group call and asks, "Is anything else happening?" Ray pipes up, "There's eyeballs!" Leta starts laughing but it comes out as this horrible croaking noise. Josh provides a quick explanation and there's some joking that there's a magical security system in the dishwasher. Anita snaps, "Is anyone in the Troy family normal?" Josh replies hopefully, "Me?" and exactly zero people on the call believe him. Doctor Ranjip then joins the call, meaning the cell is now all present. Josh alludes to making his grandfather talk about last night, and Polly retorts, "What, are you going to use a crowbar?"
Anita tells the others that she has to go as more customers are arriving, so she drops out of the call. A few moments later she accidentally texts the group, "Are you OK? Is your dick still attached?" Josh immediately texts back, "Wrong window!" then adds a lot of eggplant emoji. Anita sends back, "Sorry about that! For context, Peter hooked up with Gothi last night." Mick texts, "Well that explains that. Let us know if he's not dead. Well, dead-er." Josh snickers and ends the group call.
Josh says, "OK granddad, start talking!" William replies, "About what?" Leta holds up and points to the paper that asks, "Are you a mummy?" William insists, "Everyone here knows as much as I do." Josh grumbles but Ray jokes, "William 1, Josh 0. Round 2, fight!" That gets a few snickers from the others, but William asks, "Anyone know of the judges of Duat?" Josh gets his laptop ready and admits he thought he heard his grandfather asked for the judges of doo-wop. He starts searching online while Abby reminds everyone, "Some of us have seen a Judge! In Stanford, back in April. Those of us who went into the house and then triggered that weird thing in the Nazi basement. Leta saved us from that, but Merat Su claimed that that was her Judge."
William concedes, "I am not a mummy," while Leta mimics the now-infamous mummy head smash to Josh. Ray interjects, "The Judges were sort of like gods of the Egyptian underworld, but between that and the strix, and the eyeballs, I think you're all a little over your heads." William grabs the Tupperware and puts it back in the freezer while Josh asks, "Grandpa, did you get an instruction book with the tattoos?" William snaps, "You were there. There is no instruction booklet!" Josh insists the hieroglyphs burned onto William's flesh may be an instruction manual of some sort, and he carefully checks some of the marks against an Internet search. Josh figures out the hieroglyphs seem to be a proto-Egyptian language. He asks, "What do you remember about last night? What does it mean?"
William explains his strange dream where he met Leta's dead mage friend Kirk. Leta scribbles, "I knew him from Boston." William continues, "We were then in Merat Su's library, and then I was back in some ancient city where I met Hakim as a human. I was Merat Su's husband, and I think I was about to undergo the ritual of becoming a mummy. And then I woke up with these marks on my arms." Leta writes, "That's whack." Abby jokes, "We should head up to Cummington then. This will make Barry Kells jealous and we can see Boris again." Josh asks, "Do we really want to go to Cummington right now?" William considers the idea, to spite Kells if nothing else.
Leta writes, "Ask the totem? You know, use our vital resources!" Josh agrees and attempts to summon the Academitrix of Classical Studies at Smith College for Women. He concentrates and then the totem materializes in the kitchen. She does a doubletake when she sees William and her expression clearly conveys, "What the fuck?" She whispers to William, "Do you understand what you have done?" William shrugs while Josh explains what happened last night. The Academitrix demands, "I need to see everything," as she gestures to William. William grumbles but then heads upstairs to his bedroom for some privacy. The totem glides up after him and once he closes the door, he takes off his shirt. The totem examines all the markings on his arms and chest carefully before gesturing for him to strip down even further.
William grumbles but he takes off his shoes, socks, and then pants. The totem carefully examines the marks on his legs before she gestures for him to drop the underwear as well. She also tells him, "You have glyphs on the bottom of your feet." William protests at removing his underwear but the totem retorts, "You know castration is big in Egyptian mythology, right?" William sighs but complies. The totem then carefully examines the markings on William's butt and genitals before nodding and motioning for him to put back on his clothes. He gratefully complies and she whispers to him, "Follow me." She then glides through the wall to head downstairs; Williams snorts and just goes through the door like a normal person.
They rejoin the others in the kitchen and the totem informs them that the markings are an incredibly potent binding spell, linking William to the Judge Kenemti the Penitent. She states, "Think of it as a mark of ownership. He is now a religious figure in that cult." Josh asks, "How can there be any Judges left if no one worships them anymore?" Leta writes and then underlines, "Mummies!" before jabbing her pen down to prove her point. The totem agrees and tells them, "They do not experience linear time." Josh asks if the totem has encountered any mummy cults on campus; she replies, "Some cults have brushed up against campus, and I destroyed one cultist, but that was a long time ago."
Ray tentatively asks, "How do we neutralize the eyeballs?" The totem explains, "Wet them and then hold them up to the moonlight. Be wary, this is fae magic and that always attracts fairies." Josh asks about the strix, and the totem replies, "Blood-drinking owl spirits and mortal enemies of the vampires." Josh freezes and asks carefully, "Can they appear in dreams?" The Academitrix admits that she is not sure, and Josh describes his encounter with New Friend and how she wanted to eat his trauma and then his eyeballs. He tries to describe what little he knows of New Friend's liquid form and wonders, "Is ‘tentacley' an adjective?" The totem retorts, "I have spent decades bound to Smith campus. Trust me, tentacley is an adjective."1) The hunters realize that they simply don't want to know.
The totem continues, "What you describe sounds more like the Family, a brood of primordial horrors from humanity's nightmares." That does little to calm Josh but Leta writes and holds up, "Troy curse?" The totem replies, "If there is one, it was not sworn on campus." Leta grunts as she realizes the totem's limitations but then points to Veltis. The Academitrix examines Veltis and states, "I would need to take him into the Shadow. I know spirits who can help, assuming they haven't been eaten. However, for your safety I must sever your connection to him." Leta insists on coming along, but the totem remains firm and intones, "You are flesh. He is flesh and spirit, so I can get him in. I cannot bring you and it would not be safe for you. This is your choice to make, but you must make it soon or he will never wake up." With that the totem vanishes.
Leta texts Giuseppe in Milan with a basic retelling of the vampire attack and the terror unleashed that crippled Veltis and brought up all sorts of their trauma. Giuseppe immediately calls her and without thinking she answers. He says, "Hello?" and Leta makes a noise that sounds like the monster from Young Frankenstein. She hands the phone to Josh, who greets Giuseppe and explains the situation. Leta starts writing out what she wants to say while Josh relates it to Giuseppe. She tells Giuseppe about Veltis's condition and Giuseppe replies, "You may have to bring him back to Milan. We can attempt a ritual here to bring him back." Leta realizes the chances of success there are about the same as if he stays here and asks Giuseppe about the Shadow.
Giuseppe freely admits, "It is the spirit world, but beyond that we know very, very little about it. Demons seem to operate on a different plane, so few Lucifuge have encountered the Shadow and survived. The question boils down to this: do you trust her?" Leta waffles back and forth before Giuseppe suggests, "Perhaps a compromise then. If Veltis qualifies as spirit, then perhaps I can have one of the intangible demons guarding little Malcolm to accompany Veltis. However, you will need to make a decision quickly."
Leta miserably agrees but asks Giuseppe about the strix and Duat. Giuseppe provides what he knows, but it's about the same information that the totem already told them. Josh wonders if they can ally with or possibly even befriend the strix; Giuseppe retorts, "Bad idea. You're just another thing to eat." Josh protests, "No, that's horrible!" Giuseppe asks, "Mr. Troy, what did you do?" William replies simply, "It was a long night." Giuseppe informs him, "Welcome to a world of cults, assassins, ancient relics, and obsolete moral codes." Josh asks about the Family; Giuseppe replies, "Monsters made flesh. Think of a Medusa in a modern form. We've brushed up against the Family many times over our history, but they don't seem to be explicitly demonic. I will go to speak with the Lucifuge Herself and call you back as soon as I can. Arrivederci."