"Come on, honey. You'll be okay."

Drac watched as Ericka scooped the child off his desk - leaving behind large damp spots and a few small puddles of water - and carried her off into the elevator. Leaving him alone with Johnny and a few guests still staring after them.

The stares quickly stopped with a single glance, of course.

Johnny was the one to speak first. "Wow," he whispered, after making a low whistle. "A selkie…"

"Yeah. Of all things..." Drac muttered, turning his attention to the wet spots on the desk. He grabbed some nearby paper towels and tried to blot up the worst of it. Some of the papers couldn't be saved, but he'd already copied those twice already.

Johnny hummed under his breath and began grabbing the ruined papers. "I bet someone had caught her and she ran," he said. "Maybe a local."

Dracula nodded mutely.

And then the fact they were even having this conversation caught up to him. "Wait," he said, turning with a mild frown. "How do you know-"

"Well, seemed obvious to me. Selkies live in the ocean. Or go upriver. Lakes are landlocked. Only way she'd end up in a lake is if she was brought inland," Johnny said, shrugging.

"No- not just - you know what selkies are?" Drac had fully expected to have to explain why there was someone wrapped in a seal pelt.

But Johnny just paused in his work and fixed him with a deadpan, almost bored and slightly frustrated Look. "I've traveled," he said bluntly. "I do my research, I've been to the Orkney Islands, I know about monsters and spirits and fair folk, Old Man." He huffed, rolling his shoulders a bit. "Hey, I might be, well, me, but I'm not stupid." He tore off some more paper towels, focusing on another wet spot on the farther side of the desk. Instead of waiting for a response or some form of apology, he continued, "I never thought I'd see one, though. Least I don't think I saw a selkie before. There was the time I went to the beach and there was a whole crowd of seals just sitting around, but they could've been normal ones. I dunno..."

A moment later he fell silent, frowning and clearly still trying to puzzle out whether he'd seen normal seals or not.

Drac thought it was best to leave him to it.


After about twenty-odd minutes, he couldn't take it anymore.

He had to go upstairs. Find out what exactly had happened. See this for himself.

Figure out what the heck they were going to do from here.

Ericka had pulled up a child. And a faerie child, at that. Faeries were just as old as monsters were, and had their own complications and lifestyles and magic. It'd been why he'd flinched back without meaning to; the magic surrounding the coat was so unlike a monster's. It felt like he'd been spritzed in the face with a bit of ice-hot holy water.

It was something they'd all get used to, of course, but then there was also the problem of finding her parents, how long they could feasibly keep her, the question of whether her captor would come looking for her…

He had just misted into the room when he heard Ericka saying to Mavis "Could you get your dad?"

"I'm already here," he interrupted calmly, moving forward. He kept his eyes trained on the child. She looked comically tiny in the bed they'd settled her into, large and thick covers hiding all but her head and one hand from view. Her coat had been taken and was hanging over the back of a nearby armchair - separated from her, he couldn't feel any fae magic coming off of her. And what he could feel from the coat was diminished.

The girl had been close to falling asleep already, but the moment he entered her line of sight, her dark eyes snapped wide open. She sat up quickly, swaying slightly - likely dizzy - and made a strangled noise in her throat as she pitched to one side.

Ericka saw it before he did - she grabbed the girl just before she could tumble off the bed. "Whoa! No no no, it's okay!"

"Hah..haahl…" the girl tried to cry out. But something was wrong. Her voice was too rough, too hoarse and faint.

"She's sick," he realized.

"I'll get cough syrup," Mavis quickly offered.

"Wait, can she have that?"

"What else can we do?"

"She needs a doctor," Ericka said, still holding the girl to her. The girl was still trying to wriggle away, but she was quickly tiring out again. Dracula noticed she kept looking at him, trembling each time. "She's way too light, I could see her ribcage and her spine…" One of her hands went up to the back of the girl's head, trying to soothe her. "She needs help."

Dracula could see that. He'd seen it in the few seconds he'd had with her downstairs, and he could still easily see it now.

Any fears or worries about what they were going to do with her were gone as he moved closer and knelt down. He reached a hand out-

-the girl flinched, whimpering.

"Hey, hey, it's alright…" he tried. "You're safe here…"

She didn't seem to have heard him, burying her face in Ericka's neck, arms wrapped tightly around her.

Well. They'd have to fix this, too, wouldn't they?

"She's staying here."

"Oh, no question," Ericka said, just as Mavis reentered with a bottle of fake-cherry syrup and a medicinal spoon.

"I brought the cough syrup!" she said, holding it out like a prize. "Now… how are we making her take it?"

And thus began the first of many, many battles.


"Don't you give me that look," Dracula huffed five minutes later, as the girl gave him a dark, withering look that could spoil milk. The bottle sat empty on the nightstand, and one of his sleeves was soaked and smelled like horrible not-cherry. "It's to help your throat!"

The girl just jutted her chin out at him.