chapter 1
Inevitable One: If You Go Down To The Woods Today...
by Mhalachai
Disclaimer: Laurell K. Hamilton owns all things Anita Blake. J.K. Rowling owns all things Harry Potter. I am but borrowing the characters for a brief time and shall return them intact at the end.
Spoilers: Set almost a year after Incubus Dreams, so there are obviously spoilers for that. Set in the summer between Harry's sixth and seventh year at school, so spoilers for Order of the Phoenix.
Author's note: Thanks to Calex and Waterfall for their help, suggestions and support. Super thanks to Sonya for her being my always-patient beta in all this.
~~~
I was angry at Richard. Again. You'd think this would no longer be news.
I jerked open the door of my Jeep, still angry, keen on getting the hell away from the lupanar. It never ceased to amaze me how, after all this time, after all we had been through, Richard could still make biting little comments that dug under my skin. Tonight it had been yet another offhand comment, something dismissive about the dirty work I did for the pack as Bolverk. This after the man himself had called me to take care of a messy problem because he did not want to get his hands dirty.
I hadn't said anything at the time, because really, who want to get into a pissing match with the wolf king, the Ulfric, on the night of the full moon? So I bit my lip, gripped my gun even tighter, and counted weresheep.
At least I hadn't been the only one to pick up on the comment. Sylvie, Richard's Freki, his second, had glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, wondering how I would react. Shang-da, the Hati, protector of the king, had shuffled his feet the tiniest bit. If I hadn't known better, I would have said he was restless, standing there in the dirt in his dress shoes, but his movement had put him a bit more between Richard and I.
The little meeting wrapped up just before dusk fell and the rest of pack started to arrive. I bailed, not wanting some bad little werewolf to mistake me for food just after the change. The trek back to my car lessened my level of tension a bit, but not enough. I wasn't annoyed any longer, I was just mad. At Richard, at myself, at everything. But anger is my friend, and I could wrap it up in a little ball inside me for later.
By the time I backed my Jeep out of the clearing and onto the road, the sun was gone and the moon was up, rising large and full over the road. I had the windows open and the warm summer wind blew my hair around as I drove. From the woods, I heard a howl, then another. The pack was hunting.
A few minutes later, just before the turn-off, a wave of alarm swept over my body, so strong I almost drove off the road. I slammed the brakes on and pulled the car over to the shoulder before I veered into a tree. Another wave of alarm, this one mixed with a tinge of hunger. It took me a second to realize I was feeling Richard's emotions. With that thought, I could see out of Richard's eyes, along for the ride.
The pack was hunting, but the prey this time was not deer. A human was running in front of a few of the wolves, three huge wolves. Richard ran after them, his thoughts still human enough to know that he did not want to kill the boy. Richard came level with one of the wolves and slammed his fist into its head. As his fist knocked the wolf to the ground, I realized that Richard was in wolfman form.
Another of the wolves stumbled, but in the confusion, the third sprang and landed on the human. They went down in a pile of fur and flesh and the boy screamed. Richard was on them, grabbing the wolf's mouth and pulling it back as hard as he could, wrestling with the animal. Claws flashed out, slicing against wolf and human flesh. More screaming, but Richard didn't have the time for this. More wolves had caught the scent of the hunt and were coming.
Richard finally tore the wolf free and flung it hard into a tree. The human rolled to his feet and pointed a stick at Richard. Richard snarled, fighting the urge to go for the boy's throat, then yelled at him, "Run!"
The boy paused, then turned and ran. Richard stood still, crouched, then thought at me, he's going to come out of the woods near the turn-off to Freeman road. Then my double vision stopped and I was staring at the road, gasping, a death-grip on the steering wheel.
What the ******** was that? When in doubt, pretend that the crazy metaphysical s**t was just another day at the office. I slipped the car into gear and floored it. The turn-off Richard mentioned was only a few minutes away. If I wanted to get the kid out of the werewolf-filled woods before he got himself munched on for real, I'd have to hurry.
I slowed a bit as I approached the turn-off, scanning the woods. Then, just ahead of my car, the boy tore out of the trees and ran to the side of the road. I slammed my brakes on and leaned over to get closer to the passenger-side window.
"Get in!" I shouted at the kid. He looked at me in the moonlight, startled, glasses slightly askew. "Damn it," I yelled when he didn't move. "In another minute those wolves are going to be out of the woods and eating you. Would you please get in the ******** car?"
Maybe it was the please, but the kid finally ran over. He fumbled a bit with the door handle and it took him two tries to climb into the car. Once the door was shut, I slammed on the gas pedal. The kid was flung backward into the seat and stayed there, gasping.
I concentrated on driving for a few minutes, putting distance between us and the hungry wolves. The kid concentrated on his breathing.
"Put your seatbelt on," I said after a few minutes. He turned his head and looked at me blankly with big glassy eyes. Damn. I tried again. "Look, put your seatbelt on. If something happens, you won't like the trip through the windshield."
He started to fumble with the seatbelt, like he had with the car door, but eventually he got the buckle fastened. I kept both eyes on the road, but occasionally glanced over at the kid. Not really a kid, I thought. He wasn't very tall, but he was lanky. Even folded into the passenger seat of the Jeep, I could tell he was taller than me, which wasn't really that unusual, but he didn't look any older than eighteen. His hair was black in the light from the occasional street light, and he had on a pair of glasses with thick black frames.
He didn't say anything, but as we turned onto Carnell, he was watching me out of the corner of his eye. I could probably draw my gun in the space of time for him to try anything, but then again, drawing a gun from a sitting position really sucked.
"Aren't... aren't you going to ask me my name?" the kid finally asked. His oh-so-refined British accent couldn't mask the apprehension in his voice.
"No, I'm not. And I'm also not going to ask you why you were in the middle of a forest on the night of a full moon until after I have had a chance to look at whatever wounds you may have," I replied. I wanted to get him out of the car as soon as it was safe. Whatever injuries the boy had needed to be cleaned and I didn't want to do this in the enclosed space of my car. After all, I'd never met the kid.
"Oh," the boy replied, as though I had confused him. Him and me both.
Finally, we pulled into our destination, a gas station just off the Martin overpass. I stopped the car next to the phone booths, where the overhead light fell in a yellow swath through the window, casting the boy in sepia tones. I killed the engine and leaned back in my seat, drawing my gun as I did so and putting it between my leg and the door, hidden from the boy's view. He didn't seem to notice; he was staring at his hands. There was either dirt or blood rubbed into his fingers.
"My name's Anita," I said softly. The boy turned his head, slowly, like he was caught in a dream. After the hour he'd just had, it was probably more like a nightmare.
"What's going to happen to me?" he asked. He didn't sound scared, like I would expect from someone who had just been clawed by a werewolf. He sounded resigned, like this sort of stuff was old hat. It made me frown, and I put my thumb on the safety of my gun. Just in case.
"We should clean up those wounds of yours, then get you home." I undid my seatbelt with my free right hand and wormed the belt over my left hand, gun and all, without exposing the Browning.
"Home," he said under his breath, to himself. I heard him draw a breath, and he straightened his back, turned to look at me full on. "How did you know I was hurt?" he asked, apprehension in every movement. The outside light fell across his face, highlighting an old scar on his forehead.
I sighed. I'd had enough of this. I opened my door and slid out of the car sideways, then walked around to the back to get the first-aid kit Micah had bought me, the one with lots of odds and ends to clean up cuts and claw marks. Funny how often I used it these days. I tucked the gun into the back of my jeans so I could have both hands free, hoping that no one in the gas station saw it. People had a tendency to call the cops when they saw someone with a gun.
First-aid kit in hand, I rounded the car. The kid was still belted into the passenger seat. I opened the door. "Would you like me to take you to an emergency room instead?" I asked. If he said yes, I'd do it and wash my hands of the kid, but having it on your medical record that you've been clawed up by a lycanthrope made life difficult, especially for international visitors. There had been a case a few months ago in California where a tourist from Russia had been clawed up by a werewolf and it had made the papers, causing quite the international incident. The Russians didn't want him back and the American government kept trying to deport him. Last I heard, he was still in L.A., waiting for the debacle to be sorted out.
The boy must have been thinking along similar lines, for he shook his head. He licked his lips and started to speak, then stopped, swallowed, and tried again. "It's my shoulder. The right one."
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. It took a bit more waiting, but he eventually undid the seatbelt and moved around enough for me to see the wound. Three claw marks rode up and over his shoulder, and from the angle of the wounds, I knew it must have been Richard's hand that had injured the boy, not the fully formed wolf that had jumped the kid. s**t.
I kept that cheery thought to myself. "Would you like me to clean that up, or do you want to do it?" I started to put on a pair of latex gloves before he answered.
"Maybe you ought to do it," the boy said. "I might miss something." It sounded as though it had cost the boy something to make an admission that he needed help. It made me knock a few more months off my estimate of his age.
"This is going to hurt," I warned him as I moved him around to face away from me. If he hit out, I wanted it aimed away from the general direction of my torso.
"It usually does," he replied. An interesting way of looking at things. I picked up the spray sanitizer and a gauze pad. When I sprayed the liquid onto his shoulder, he hissed and tensed, but didn't punch or swear. It took me a good ten minutes to clean the more obvious bits of dirt and fabric out of the wound. A small pile of bloody gauze pads lay on the floor of the Jeep when I was done, but the kid's shoulder was patched up and covered against the air. None of the wounds were deep enough to need stitches, but that wasn't the danger. No, the danger had been festering since Richard's claws bit into his skin.
I took the pile of bloody fabric, wrapped it in a plastic bag from under the seat and walked it over to a trash can, leaving the boy to collect himself. On the way back to the car, I put the gun back up into my holster. No matter what they do in movies, it is never comfortable to have a gun anywhere on your person unless it's holstered, and even then it's open for interpretation.
I got back into the driver's seat. "Now what?" I asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Do I take you home? Someone must be worried about you," I said, frowning. The boy closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat rest.
"Probably not."
"What, you have a late curfew? Mom and Dad not going to worry until midnight or something?" I asked. I was in no mood to deal with the typical teenage angst right now.
He squared his shoulders and barely winced against the pain. He stared out the windshield, very careful not to look at me. "My parents are dead. My guardians... they won't worry."
Okay, maybe different from the typical teen angst. "Do you have somewhere I can drop you?"
A ghost of a smile crossed his lips. "If you're going past the Central Hotel, then you can leave me there, if we'd be there before eleven."
"Hotels don't have a curfew, kid," I said as I started the Jeep. "What, your guardians won't let you in after eleven?" I said it as a joke, but he didn't take it as one.
"As a matter of fact, yes," he said, starting to show a bit of anger in his voice. "Look, thank you very much for saving me from the w... the woods, and helping me and all that, but if we can't get to the hotel by eleven, then just drop me somewhere and carry on with your evening." He glared at me, eyes blazing, as if daring me to kick him out of the car. His attitude made me think that he'd been kicked often, if not literally then figuratively.
I looked back at him steadily, one hand on the gearshift and one on the wheel. I wondered why he had faltered on saying werewolf. I also wondered what kind of relationship he had with his guardians that they told him they'd leave him outside for the night. It was 10:48, and there was no way I could get to the hotel by eleven; it was across town. And hey, if I had been clawed up by a were-anything when I was a teenager, I might not have wanted to go home either.
"Are you hungry?" I asked. He hesitated, then nodded, lips pressed together. "Okay, I know this all-night diner. Do you want to go get something? We can hang out for a bit, talk." I really had no idea what possessed me.
Okay, yes I did. I was feeling guilty. Because Richard had infected the kid, maybe, and I knew it was going to eat him up alive tomorrow. The kid also reminded me a bit of my brother Josh. Josh couldn't be more than a year older than this kid.
"Yeah, that sounds good," the boy said, quietly. I put the car in gear and got back onto the freeway. "And I'm not a kid," came out, quietly, as I merged into traffic. I smiled.
2. Two: Follow the yellow brick road
Inevitable Two: Follow The Yellow Brick Road
by Mhalachai
~~~~~~
There was a spare shirt that the kid put on, one I had found in the backseat. It was Asher's, and I so did not want to go into why I was finding Asher's clothing crumpled in my car. The shirt covered the bandages and almost made the kid look presentable. His pants were scruffy, well-worn and way too big, but his shoes looked like they had been rather pricey before the jaunt into the woods.
We were halfway across the parking lot when my cell phone rang. The kid looked at me curiously as I struggled to get the thing out of my jacket pocket. The screen on the device told me that it was someone at the Circus of the Damned. "Hello?" I said into the phone, turning slightly to get a bit of privacy.
"Are you all right, ma petite?" Jean-Claude asked, his voice like warm velvet even over the phone.
I shrugged, even knowing he couldn't see it. "Yeah, it's all good. What's up?" What I mean was, why was he calling. He usually left me alone on the night of the full moon, because more often than not I was buried in problems up to my a**. Like tonight.
He was quiet for a second. "Earlier this evening, our Richard had... how do I say it?"
I understood. He was talking about the projection of the little hunt disaster. "You don't have to. It's all under control."
"Am I to understand that you are still with the little lamb?" There was a hint of something in Jean-Claude's voice.
It took me a second to clue into what he was talking about. "Yeah, it's time to get a bite to eat." I didn't feel like going into detail, and especially not giving up names.
Jean Claude sighed, the way he did when he was exasperated with me. I'd been hearing that a lot recently. "I take it that you do not need any of us to attend you?" Which was his way of asking if I needed any protection. Geeze, I appreciated the chivalry, but it was only a kid.
I smiled, even though he couldn't see it. "I'll be fine. You know me, tough as nails."
"I know, ma petite." He paused. "You will call me if you need any help?"
"Of course," I said. His idea of when I needed help and my idea of when I needed help often did not mesh, but he was trying. "I'll call you later."
"And I will await the sound of your voice with eager anticipation," he said, lingering over the last word with almost obscene suggestion. My breath caught in my throat, even though I shouldn't be surprised anymore when he did this. It made me want to drive to the Circus and crawl into bed with him and stay there, doing wicked little things with him, until the sun stole his soul away for the day.
He laughed, and I realized that I was visualizing things for him through the marks. "You do that," I snapped, and hung up on him while he was laughing. I could feel his amusement still and knew that he would be keeping the marks open so that he would know if anything came up.
I turned back to the kid. He was standing a few feet away from me, head cocked to one side, a curious expression on his face. I let my breath out in a hiss. "So. Inside?" I asked.
He nodded and waited until I was next to him to make for the restaurant, although calling it a restaurant was a bit generous. It was an all-night diner that was frequented by cops and dock workers, so you knew the food was cheap, greasy and good. Best of all, free refills on coffee.
A small bell tinkled when I opened the door and stood aside to let the kid precede me. I walked the length of the place to a booth where I could keep an eye on the door and on the parking lot through the window, even though the place was pretty much deserted, and sat down. The kid followed and slid gingerly into the booth facing me, wincing as his back hit the edge of the seatback.
I stared at him in the glare of the florescent lights while I wanted for the waitress to come over with coffee and menus. His hair wasn't as dark as I originally thought, a deep brown instead of black, that looked like it had been cut with lawn shears. He was pale, with the beginning hint of a tan, as though he had been hiding from the sun until recently. His face was thin, with his cheekbones a hint too prominent for natural thinness. The most striking feature was his deep emerald green eyes, so strangely familiar that I found myself staring. Where had I seen those eyes before?
He was more circumspect in his examination of me, glancing at me, then away, then back. His hands were on the tabletop and he clenched his fists, then twined his fingers, then smoothed his hands over the table. He repeated this a few times before I sighed.
He froze, then opened his mouth to say something, but jumped when the waitress came up behind him. She had threaded two coffee cups on the fingers of her left hand, which also held two menus and utensils.
"Nice to see ya, marshal," she said, winking at me as she said it. Oh, it was a great joke in here that I, federal marshal and vampire executioner extraordinaire, would frequent the place. Luckily for me, they either glossed over the point or simply didn't care that I was also the Master of the City's sweetie. The attitude was reinforced a few months ago when RPIT and I had obliterated (oh, sorry, removed from a state of danger to the public) a rampaging demi-demon down on the docks.
"We'll have you some fresh java made in just a minutes. We didn't expect you in tonight," she said as she plunked down the empty cups. The boy stared unseeing at his cup, then his brain started working and he opened his mouth to protest.
"Oh, no, I haven't any money," he said, a bit frantic. Why is it the minor things that set us off when we're a**-deep in trouble?
"Hey," I said, cutting him off, "My invite, my pay." He looked a bit lost, but nodded. He was actually skittish, I realized. I was forcibly reminded of Stephen, and I had to swallow my growing unease. What kind of guardians won't let a kid, even one who was almost an adult, back into a hotel after eleven, or make sure the kid has money when wandering through an unfamiliar city, or make sure he's not out running through woods under a freaking full moon? Forget unease, I was barrelling right toward anger.
The waitress told us what the specials were, then left us in peace. I flicked through the menu, letting the kid compose himself while I thought about getting a burger, then settled on a sandwich.
The waitress returned with the coffee and to take our orders (the kid ordered a burger and chips, which I thought was an odd combination) and once again left us in silence. In the back of my mind I could feel the brush of Jean-Claude's presence, a reassurance for myself as much as him, and a thin thread of rushing blood and movement as Richard hunted with his pack. I held my connections to them loosely but securely as I often did, these days.
"Marshal," the kid said, "Is that your name? Anita Marshal?"
I gave him a blank look. "What are you talking about?"
"The waitress, she called you 'marshal,' and you said in the car that your name was Anita," he explained, firm in his interpretation of the night. Anything to prevent thinking about his shoulder and what may happen in a month from now, I suppose.
"No, it's not. Anita's my first name, but the last name's Blake. The waitress," What was her name again? "Clarice called me 'marshal' because I am. One, I mean." I may have made the sentence more grammatically correct, but that was more effort that I wanted to make.
"Oh, I see," the kid said. "So Marshal was your maiden name?"
I almost laughed. Now I understood what he was driving at. "No, I'm not married. I'm a federal marshal," I said as I pulled my badge out of my pocket and flipped it open on the table.
His eyes went wide and he bent over the badge. "Wicked," he breathed. "Is that why you had a gun in the car and a first-aid kit in the back?"
So much for being discrete. "Uh huh," I answered, and it was not a total lie. "I need to stop calling you kid. You ready to give me a name?"
You would have thought I had told him I was going to push him into traffic, the way he drew back and put his hands on the table. I found it odd that he hadn't reacted like this when I told him I was a cop, basically, but only when I asked his name. Nothing illegal, then, but just not wanting people to know his name? I cast another malicious thought at his absent guardians.
Just as I thought he wasn't going to answer, he said, carefully in his charming accent, "Harry. My name is Harry."
Hey, it was a start. "It's nice to meet you, Harry," I said formally and held out my hand. He seemed to see something in my reaction, or lack thereof, to his name, and reached up to shake my hand.
The second his skin touched mine, I knew I had completely misread him. When his fingers closed around mine, I felt power; raw, clean power. I gasped and pulled my hand away. He was staring at me with wide eyes.
"What are you?" I demanded, just as he said, "What did you do?"
Quickly, I pieced it together. "You're a witch," I breathed, low. The magic on his skin felt like a cool drink of water in the forest on a hot day, green and pure and clear. It wasn't death magic, the stillness that I held in me, but life. He reminded me of Marianne, the vargamour of the werewolf pack in Tennessee. But Marianne had never been so powerful, had never carried so much power under her skin.
"Wizard, actually," he said under his breath. "What are you?"
I shrugged as I answered him. "I'm an animator." It was refreshing talking with someone who didn't know what I was on sight.
"What the bloody hell does drawing have to do with this?" he demanded, as if I was making fun of him.
"Animator, not an animation artist. You know, animator?" He was still staring at me blankly. "Vaundun?" Nothing. "Necromancer?"
He jerked back in the booth at that last, banging his bad shoulder into the booth back, but he didn't seem to notice. His eyes were open very, very wide behind his ridiculous glasses.
Okay, so he knew necromancer but not animator. I wasn't all that up to date on the European branch of the business, but I did know that of all the European countries, England probably had the most lax regulations on raising the dead. I hoped this meant that he wouldn't do anything stupid.
His mouth started working, but he couldn't get any words out. It reminded me of that scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and the Scarecrow oil up the Tin Woodman's mouth for the first time, and it wasn't at all amusing. I sat still, hands on the table in front of me. After feeling what kind of power Harry was exuding with a simple touch, I didn't want to see what he might do if threatened.
Finally, he stopped flapping his jaw and swallowed a few times. "How interesting," was all he said.
He wasn't fooling anyone, except maybe himself. He was spooked. "Do you have a problem with animators, Harry?" I asked. My voice was cold.
I wasn't expecting him to say yes. The kid had offered me maybe two words of honesty all night, but he surprised me by saying, "As a matter of fact, I do."
"What happened?" I was curious for a couple of reasons. First, some people tar all animators with the same brush and I did not want to be dealing with someone else's mess. The other reason was that I was, as always, curious. You know the old saying about curiosity and cats. Especially were-cats.
The kid glanced around, and seemed to realize for the first time that he was sitting with his back to the door. He swung half around in his seat, putting his wounded shoulder to the back of the booth. "It was a couple of years ago, now." He stopped and gulped at his tepid coffee.
Gradually, the story came out. Harry told me that a few years ago at his school, someone had tried to kill him, but first used a spell or something to reform the body of a man who was existing in shadow form. He described the spell in detail, in an almost morbid fashion. The surrogate for the spell used the bones of the man's dead father, some of Harry's blood, and then he cut off his own hand. The vitriol in Harry's voice when he talked of the surrogate was thick.
When Harry was finished, he was shaking and I was queasy. I hadn't known there were spells or anything to remake a body for a stranded soul. Of course, I hadn't thought that a soul could exist without a body for more than a few days. Learn something new and terrifying every day.
We were sitting in a well of silence when the waitress brought our food and refilled the coffee. I didn't want to eat anymore. Harry eyed the potato chips on his plate, askance. "Look, kid... Harry," I amended, "I wouldn't do anything like that. Necromancers are just as varied as witches in what they will do."
"You mean what they can do," he said, heat in his tone and a slight flush in his cheeks.
"No, I meant what I said. The ability is not important, it's what we will do, not what we can do, that makes us dangerous. Raising zombies is one thing. Giving a body back to a... wraith is a whole different level." I realized I had eaten half my sandwich while I was talking, even though I hadn't wanted it. "I take it this guy was a really bad guy?"
There was a hollow light in Harry's eyes when he lifted his gaze from his plate. "One of the worst. He killed a lot of people. He tried to kill me when I was a baby. My mother died protecting me. My father died trying to protect us both. Now Voldemort's back and he's trying to kill me again. And I put everyone else around me in danger." There was a stubborn set to his jaw now as he placed his napkin back on the table, his motions achingly careful. "Now, thank you for your help tonight." He made to get out of the booth.
I reached across the table and grabbed his arm. He flinched, but didn't pull away. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Weren't you listening to me?" he hissed. There was something close to panic in his eyes. "Bad guy, kills things? After me?"
"Where is he?"
Harry slumped back into the booth, and I let go of his arm. "I don't know. Last time we heard anything, he was in England."
"See? You're safe." I picked up the remains of my sandwich. "And if he comes to Saint Louis, he better not try anything."
"And if he does?"
I smiled at the kid, but not like I was happy. "We stop him."
"Stop him," Harry repeated, and stared at me. It was very unnerving, the hopelessness in that stare. "Why are you offering this?" he asked. "You don't know me."
"No, I don't," I said. Truthfully, I didn't know why I was offering this, but something about the kid made me want to protect him, the same way I did Nathaniel, or Stephen. And if it was a big bad wizard guy, I was the one to help protect him. "Look, if what you said about your guardians not letting you back in the hotel is right," I trailed off until he nodded, looking embarrassed about it, "Then you'll need a place to sleep. And we'll need to talk tomorrow about some stuff."
"Stuff?" he said around a mouthful of burger. I managed not to wince.
"Like your shoulder," I said. His chewing slowed, but he managed to swallow.
"Right. Any ideas?"
"I've got a couch. It's not the softest thing in the world, but it's dry," I said as I dug into my jacket for some money.
Harry made a noise that was suspiciously like a snort. "Anything's got to be better than the hotel floor."
I looked up, sure I had misunderstood. "They're not making you sleep on the floor?" I asked sharply.
A flush crept up Harry's cheeks and his gaze wavered, as if he wanted to look down. He didn't answer.
I wondered if he was lying to me, but I didn't think so. I've gotten better at reading when people are lying to me, and I didn't think this teenage boy would be able to fool me. Of course, far be it for me to fall prey to false pride. So I'd be careful.
I dropped my eyes back to the table to sort out the money. I heard Harry sigh shakily, then again. Delayed reaction. I got up from the table to pay the bill and to give him some time to pull himself back together.
Tomorrow, I'd wonder what I got myself into.
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