1. On Winter's Wings
The most frustrating, though admittedly amusing in hindsight, factor of Cynthia's bombshell was that the dragons weren't going to show up this week. Being so intimately familiar with the processes surrounding relocating various entities, Sam's mom didn't realize the rest of us interpreted her warning as an imminent event. It was only the next day, when trying to plan where we could possibly host such a gathering, whether we even had time to rent a ballroom, and how we would possibly plan food for such a large number of people (and the unconfirmable variety of diets) at the drop of a hat, that she realized her mistake.
"I'm sorry, James," she said, stifling a humorless chuckle as we sat around the table. "I appear to have misinformed you by omission. While this is something we need to plan soon, it doesn't need to be done today. The dragons need to apply for temporary residence, explain why they're coming here to both their authorities and ours, likely argue at least one round of automatic rejections -- it's going to take some time. A month would be optimistic; two or three is more likely."
Which was a good thing. The guillotine I had imagined crashing towards my neck the day before wasn't yet falling catastrophically, even if it was still hanging above me. Relieving the pressure by letting us know the due date on this task was both still up in the air and a ways off still had some unintended consequences, unfortunately. No longer under an impossible deadline, scrambling like headless chickens to half-ass what we could do in the short time available meant that we got to take a step back and really look at the size of the mountain we had to climb. Before, only able to see a single hand-hold at a time as we tried desperately to scale it, we couldn't see the magnitude of the entire problem. Now, we had enough time to let it sink in.
Unfortunately, the ambiguity of their arrival date and the confusing, one-way nature of the channels by which we had communication meant that no one had specific steps we needed to take, at least not yet. Zenya contacted the hotel Beth and I had changed at before we met Aisling for the first time, and after they confirmed things with Aisling's office, they concocted a tentative plan for using their ballroom to host our little meetup. Since I didn't have a place of my own to host the dragons and their retinues, I felt it was for the best to do it publicly. It had the added side-effect of being a largely neutral place for us to meet; at least, as neutral as anywhere in Philadelphia could be. Until we had more firm dates, we couldn't really take other actions, which left me going through the motions of the routine I had established, trying the best that I could to prepare.
Fortunately, the uncomfortable ambiguity left us enough time to handle several other dangling issues. Less fortunately, one of those issues was the wizard I had endured during the house meeting at Aisling's estate, who eventually reached out to Beth and Sam about the potential for an independent evaluation of their living situation.
Sam, not exactly politely, but well within the acceptable diction of professional exchanges, declined, informing the wizard that she had made no complaints to the authorities and had no concerns at this time. She outlined her awareness of the resources available should a problem arise in the future. If he wanted someone to contact for further information, Cynthia was available to discuss our living arrangements. After all, she was the case handler for my transition, had extensive and intimate knowledge of both standard proceedings and our unique circumstances, and could verily say whether or not there had been any unjustified improprieties or transgressions that deserved to be brought before an official. She had Zenya look over her response several times, slightly workshopping the language so that it would brush right up against the line of being inflammatory without crossing it.
Beth, on the other hand, pulled no punches and did not ask Zenya to screen her words -- if they found her response incendiary and combative, good. She told the wizard in no uncertain terms that she was not at all inclined to interact with him or anyone from his offices at any point without significant word done on their end to demonstrate that they were acting in good faith. How dare he suggest that she had been mistreated since arriving in Philadelphia? If he cared as much as he was pretending to, she reminded him that she had always been a member of his house, even when we lived further north and neither of us had been aware of this world's existence. Where was he then if he cared so much about her well-being and her accommodations? Where was he when she spent evenings scrounging for food on the streets? Where was he when she spent nights sleeping at her part-time job, knowing that it would get her fired at some point but having no better option? As far as she was concerned, the only two people who had ever done anything for her were her deceased father and me, and damn this pompous, avaricious man to hell if he was suggesting anything to the contrary. She needed no evaluation but her own, and she was currently living a life better than she had imagined, one that could only be improved now if pushy busybodies with political agendas would leave her alone with her husband. Until she saw him taking strides to help those who needed it, magic or not, he could simply fuck off, because his actions made it painfully clear that he hadn't even a single thought for Beth except as an avenue to badger me with.
Sam's message received the concise, requisite, "We will speak with the listed Ms. O'Brien. Thank you," in response.
Beth's, unsurprisingly, received no response.
I also received a message from Bob apologizing for bothering me but asking permission to visit the apartment. Typically, he wouldn't need approval to see a vampire in his domain, but he didn't know what the precedent was for when a vampire belonged to another house, and my draconic nature certainly encouraged him to proceed with a level of caution and respect he may not have offered everyone else.
The explanation for his prospective stop revolved around a vampire's ability to regenerate with blood. Younger vampires, those turned in the last twenty years or so, tended to be locked in a battle with their predator instincts and, as such, at least in this part of the world, were closely monitored to ensure that they followed the local regulations and were not exposed to unnecessary temptation. Zoey informed me that she had participated in a task force eighteen months ago that successfully captured and contained a very, very fresh vampire -- a woman who had been accidentally turned and then let loose without knowing what she was, proceeding to leave a trail of carnage and other freshly turned women and horrifically distorted ghouls in her wake in her confusion and rage. My werewolf mate didn't comment on what the outcome was, except firmly stating that the outbreak had been contained.
Zenya was not a concern in that regard, at the very least. Older vampires, ones who had conquered their hunger and bent it to their will rather than being controlled by it, still had annual check-ins with the authorities. Bob wasn't entirely sure who the authorities were in this case, though it was either him or me, so he planned to stop by, showing me the forms that needed to be filed and the responses that needed my attention. He stressed that for Zenya, it was a perfunctory formality that would take only fifteen minutes or so. I understood why, when, after we chatted politely for a minute or two at my dining room table, he began asking Zenya the questions for his form.
Was her budgeted blood supply adequate for her needs? Yes, given that she didn't ever use it. In the last 12 months, had she drawn blood from anyone not listed as an approved, personally informed, consenting donor? No. During the previous 12 months, had any of her listed donors suffered adverse effects from either acute or chronic blood overconsumption? No, of course not. At any point in the last year, had any of her listed donors needed medical care or hospitalization as a result of an accidental overconsumption? Nope. Over the previous 12 months, had she had any impulses to turn any woman into a vampire or to turn any man into a thralled ghoul? No. In the last twelve months, had she, intentionally or otherwise, turned any women or men into vampires or ghouls? Not a chance.
Of course, Bob was aware of her aversion to blood -- he had the last twenty years of her blood bank withdrawal history with him as he asked her the questions. Every year's line had two liters of budgeted allocation, an amount he said was the lowest standard volume allocated to any vampire in the region, next to a goose egg in the actual withdrawn column. As the steward for vampires in the land, he was responsible for ensuring every vampire followed the rules, even ones like Zenya who were completely innocent. He looked at me pointedly as he explained that enforcement of these codes was part of the agreement necessary for the acceptance of vampires in the civilized world.
He didn't come right out and say it, being more tactful than that, but he heavily implied that the reason there were a single-digit number of dragons remaining in the world, and that they were individuals kept physically isolated from one and another most of the time, were that such an agreement wasn't reached with us in the past. He certainly didn't mean it as a threat, peacefully sipping a cup of coffee at the table in the apartment I was living in, more as a warning. I couldn't be sure that he knew what was happening, but he was a reasonably well-informed political figure in the area, so it wasn't surprising that he had heard rumors. He was warning me -- be careful when my brethren arrived, because the so-called civilized world had done some irreversible things to dragons that didn't at least performatively bend their knees to the seats in the past.
