Post-Blood Rites.

Harry can't go to the internet, so the internet is brought to Harry. I got super behind on these when I had a cold, but don't worry, I intend to finish them all.

"Grr—" The fuzzy pup scampered around the edge of my desk, sliding on the floor. He bounced off the leg of one of the chairs and scooted beneath it, growly-barking as menacingly as the little fuzzbucket could manage. "Grr—raff!"

"What the hell are you barking at?" I left my Cup o' Noodles on the desk to follow the dog. Mouse bumped against the table holding the coffee pot and he wedged himself between the cabinet and the bookshelf.

"What the hell is that thing barking at?" Thomas asked as the door to my office creaked open.

The dog skittered backwards out from between the furniture, snarling and snapping at a spider the size of a quarter. I stomped on it as Thomas scooped Mouse up in one arm. The dog was of a size as to barely still be scoopable, mostly huge paws and floppy ears.

"Aw, you stole his kill." Thomas hugged the dog and Mouse growled a little more, indignantly. "Now he's all pupset about it."

I blinked. "He's… what?"

"Pupset? An upset pup?" Thomas ruffled the dog's ears before gently tossing him back into the floor. He sighed and shook his head at me. "I always forget you've never been on the internet."

"I have people who do that for me," I said airily as I sat down at my desk and reached for my discount ramen.

Thomas dropped into the opposite chair. "You mean Murph."

"Who else would I mean," I said as I put my boots up on the desk. He did the same on his side of the desk, producing a paper bag and from that, a foil-wrapped burrito which he ate while he rapidly texted with the other hand.

His phone beeped. He laughed. This happened a few more times before curiosity got the better of me. "Who are you talking to?"

"Karrin."

"You guys text?" I asked. Casually.

"Sometimes," my brother said, even more casually. His phone beeped again. He laughed again and offered no further explanation or excuse, clearly expecting me to be annoyed about it.

… Which I definitely was not, and why would I be?

"Cool," I said, managing to stab a hole in the bottom of the foam noodle cup with the fork. I swore under my breath.

"She says she might drop by when she goes to get lunch."

"Cool," I said again, as I dumped the lukewarm contents of the leaky noodle cup into what I hoped was a clean coffee mug. I continued eating. So did Thomas, in a silence that was a little awkward. He fed the dog bits of burrito even though I had asked him to stop a million times. He's not the one who has to ride in a Volkswagen with the gaseous little beast.

I had just finished my lunch when the office door clicked open again, and in stepped Lieutenant Murphy. She had a file folder under her arm, and a plastic cup of some kind of horrifyingly healthy-looking green shake in one hand.

"Hello, handsome." She stopped to greet Mouse with a chin scratch before acknowledging either of us.

"Hello, yourself," my brother grinned.

"Hey, guys." She sat in the other chair, next to Thomas, who was smiling widely at me. She tossed the file onto my desk. "Brought you something."

"A new case?" I asked. Murphy shook her head and took a noisy pull from the shake. I opened the file and read the cover page of a sheaf of stapled papers.

DONUT PANIC: A Wizard's Guide to the World Wide Web

I sighed. I turned the page to find a printout, a picture of Captain Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise, with his face in his hands. It was captioned in big white letters:

When you have to explain internet jokes to your technologically-impaired friend.

The image was annotated in red marker like a football play diagram, with arrows and lines and terms like 'relevant' and 'relatable.' There were a few dozen pages of them, done the same way.

"I can't believe you whipped all this up in ten minutes." Thomas seemed impressed. "I was just kidding—"

"Oh, no." Karrin shook her head again. "I've been putting this together for a while now."

"Our tax dollars at work."

"Don't act like you pay taxes, Raith."

"You know," I said as I flipped through the pages. "I still regret introducing the two of you, but now it's for an entirely different reason."

Next: Raven