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River nymphs.
I guessed Catcher hadn't managed to resolve the shoe crisis.
When I reached the front door, I could hear music and the squealing of voices. I didn't bother knocking, but walked inside.
I could not have been more surprised.
The front door opened directly into my grandfather's living room, and it was full of people, among them my grandfather and half a dozen nymphs in their typically short, cle**age-baring dresses.
They knelt in a semicircle around what looked like a new television, and squealed while Jeff Christopher stood in the middle with a video game controller in his hand.
But that wasn't even the strangest part.
Jeff Christopher, geek extraordinaire, was in costume.
He wore a pale green tunic, over which he'd slung a forest green cape trimmed in brown, and knee-high leather boots. The tunic's hood was up, just perched at the crown of Jeff's head, but his shoulder-length brown hair shone at the edge of it.
Jeff was tall and lanky, and the costume fit him surprisingly well. But for his lack of longbow and horse, he might have stepped out of a medieval forest.
By the look of the screen, his costume was modeled after a character in the game, who was currently flailing at green, goblinlike creatures with a golden sword. The excitement in the room built as Jeff's character, a ranger of some kind, pummeled the creatures with his steel, until - with a final killing blow - he finished off the last goblin.
The room erupted into a flurry of hoots and applause. The nymphs jumped to their feet and surrounded their victor in a cloud of wavy hair, rayon, and fruity perfume.
I pressed my back against the door to avoid the crush. I'd been snagged by River nymphs before, and I wasn't much interested in another round.
"Merit!" my grandfather exclaimed, finally realizing I'd stepped into the room. In his typical button-down plaid and grandfatherly slacks, he walked over and enveloped me in a hug.
"What's all this?" I asked.
"Diplomacy in action," he quietly said. "The nymphs were giving Catcher fits, and Jeff thought they might be calmed by a show of virtual strength."
It wasn't the type of show that would have occurred to me, but it was clearly working for the ladies. After a moment, Jeff pulled himself away from the cluster of girls; his expression turned serious when he saw me.
He clapped his hands together. "Ladies, thank you so much for squeezing me into your schedule. I need to get some work done, but do you think you could find me some cheat codes for the next level? That would be awesome."
To a one, they squealed and clapped their hands together at the assignment, then jiggled out the front door until the screen slammed shut behind them.
The sudden silence was deafening, at least until the game console reminded us Roland of Westmere was ready for his next quest.
"The nymphs like video games?" I wondered. "They don't really seem the gaming type."
"Not the games themselves," Jeff said, pulling back his hood, his hair damp beneath. Digital adventure or not, he'd definitely gotten a workout. "They like watching shifters win games. They think it's manly."
I frowned in sympathy, then moved closer to wipe a crimson stain from his cheek. "Well, Mr. Manly Man, you have a drugstore's worth of lipstick on your face."
Jeff sighed and scrubbed the mark. "That's not gonna work. I'm supposed to meet Fallon later."
"I don't think she'd be thrilled about their interest in you. Or the evidence."
"She'd go ballistic," he said. "She's got history there, I guess, with cheating."
"Ah," I said. I didn't know enough about her to say more than that.
"The good news is, we've discovered they're easily distracted. Catcher couldn't calm them down, so they went nuclear about a minor issue - again - and drove over here. We discovered a few minutes of gaming calms them down and gets them talking rationally again."
"They have to band together to solve problems," my grandfather said. "And this is much less messy than paintball."
"Whatever works," I said with a smile, then gestured at Jeff's getup. "And what's this you're wearing?"
"The ensemble of Roland of Westmere. He's a character from 'Jakob's Quest' - that's the game I was playing."
"I can't imagine being so involved in a video game that I'd want to wear a costume. I mean, what's the appeal?"
"What isn't the appeal? I get to have someone else's drama for a little while instead of my own."
Okay, that I could understand. My Sentinel leathers were a kind of costume for me - an ensemble that let me feel a little more kick-ass and bluff a little more easily. Not that the role didn't come with its own drama.
"Fair enough," I told Jeff.
He gestured toward the back of the House. "I'm going to change real quick and then I'll come fill you in. Catcher's in the back if you want to talk to him."
"Do you need a drink, baby girl?" my grandfather asked.
"No, I'm good. But thank you. I'll go find Catcher."
I walked down the hallway to the former storage room my grandfather had turned into an office for his volunteer crew. Catcher sat at a homely-looking desk. No costume for him, fortunately. He wore a flat expression, jeans, and a T-shirt that pictured a velociraptor, teeth bared, riding a giant kitten and wearing his own T-shirt that read, KTHXBAI.
"FYI," I said, stepping into the room, "I think the Internet threw up on your T-shirt."
Catcher rolled his eyes. "Is it just me, or is there always vampire drama to attend to?"
"Unfortunately, there is, and I'm attending to it. Although I could say the same thing about sorceress drama. And speaking of, how's yours?"
I meant Mallory, of course, because I wanted - from at least one of them - an update about their relationship.
Uncharacteristically, Catcher blushed. I took that as a good sign.
"We're talking," he said.
"That sounds promising. Especially since you're living in her house."
Before the onset of her magical addiction, Mallory and Catcher shared her brownstone in Wicker Park. When Mallory decamped to live with the shifters, Catcher stayed put.
His blush deepened, and I gave myself five more points. Advantage: Merit.
"Our relationship is a movie of the week," he admitted.
Jeff, having quickly changed, walked into the room wearing a pale-blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and khakis. The combo was his unofficial uniform. He sat down at his desk and began tapping on his keyboard, which was actually a conglomeration of keyboards he'd turned into one Frankensteinian monstrosity.
