Eddie yelling at Chris woke Remus the next morning. By the time he dressed and made his way downstairs, they had retreated to opposite sides of the living room. Eddie sat eating his breakfast at one end of the window seat in the picture window that overlooked the creek. Athena sat on the other end, writing in a large book that looked like a professionally published one that had been magically erased. Selena was on the floor beneath her, counting out Muggle money from an open violin case, and Chris sat on the couch, working in a blanked book of his own. Somehow they had avoided waking Vinnie, although Remus couldn't imagine how he'd slept through the fight.
The pack directed Remus to make himself breakfast. In the kitchen were four bagged lunches and a few eggs on the counter, some sausage in the icebox, and not much else. When he finished cooking, he took his plate to the living room to eat. Chris picked his pencil up off the page as Remus sat on the couch. He was drawing Athena and Selena, their pencil-and-paper counterparts moving with lifelike fluidity a few seconds out of sync with the reality.
"That's very good," Remus said.
"Dude, rude much?" Chris asked, turning so that Remus couldn't see what he was doing.
"Chris doesn't like people watching when he draws," Athena said.
Eddie added, "And don't touch his sketchbook if he leaves it lying around. It's jinxed from here to next Tuesday."
"Why do Muggles have so many coins for pence?" Selena asked in frustration. "I think I've got £15.35 here, Athena."
Athena looked over to confirm that looked reasonable, then flipped to a different page in her book and jotted a note. "Hold on to it for now. We'll divide it up tonight. Chris, come here and see if you can think of anything else I can add to this list."
Chris closed his sketchbook and left it on the couch. "What is it?"
"An itemized bill for Narshank."
Chris looked over her shoulder, and laughed. "You're going to charge him for the safety pins on my jacket?"
"I'm going to charge him every knut I can. This is how you make a point with a goblin. You don't call them out. You cost them money."
"OK, I get it. That took two packs, by the way, not one." Athena changed the number on her sheet. "Do I actually get to buy that new wand you're charging him for?"
"Nope. Fenrir's got a spare you can have. Right, Selena?"
"Um…" Selena pulled her watch pendant out from under her shirt and looked at it. "Yeah. He says he doesn't have time to bring it by, but he'll leave it on the mantle at the house, and you can pick it up."
"I'll need a ride."
Athena took a deck of tarot cards out of her pouch, cast Portus on one, and handed it to him. "Here, it'll go off at 9. The pups should be out of your way by then. —Speaking of pups, did Fenrir say anything about what to do with Vinnie?"
Selena picked up the watch pendant again, then shook her head. "He hasn't answered that one."
"I hope he gets back to us soon. We need somewhere safe to take him. We can't take care of a pup here; we live on a kelpie-infested creek. —How much money did Narshank take from you, Chris?"
"About a Galleon 13."
She raised an eyebrow. "I know that game's higher stakes than that."
"I won about 20, but I got most of it into my pouch before he grabbed that. You should charge that like it's mokeskin, by the way. That's all it'll be if he gives it back." Selena swatted his leg, and when he looked down, gestured towards Remus. He rolled his eyes and waved her away. "I'll swing by Nic's and grab another one today, so I can give you the money tonight."
"Chris!" Selena said, swatting him again.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Selena. What I meant to say was that I'll go to a Master Thief's and steal another Thief's Pouch!" He turned to Remus. "Hate to break this to you, Officer, but you joined a pack of fuck-ups. I'm a thief, Eddie's got a gremlin, Athena's a biter—"
"Silencio!" Eddie's spell effect cut him off. "Chris, go for a walk." Chris tried to argue, but nothing came out as Eddie stood. "You can go for a walk or you can go back to Fenrir's for keeps. I don't really care which right now."
Chris vanished and reappeared in the hallway. He looked as surprised as anyone, but when he tried to come back into the living room, he was pushed back by an invisible force. He flashed a rude gesture at Eddie and stomped out of the house as dramatically as possible, slamming the door behind him.
"I'm not letting him come back if he can't behave," Eddie said.
"Would you rather he be with us, or with one of the goblin mafia's packs?" Athena asked.
"I'd rather he not be such a little snotrag. You bit one guy, and he acts like you're Elizabeth Bathory!"
"He's 15. You were a snotrag at 15, too."
"I wasn't that bad." Selena snorted and tried to cover it with a cough as Athena looked at Eddie over the bridge of her nose. "OK, maybe I was. Either way, I liked him a lot better before I was responsible for him."
"I know." Athena stood and kissed him, then rubbed his arm. "But I need you to calm down before you go to work. It's the third day after the full moon, and if your gremlin goes nuts again, I don't know where I'll find another thirty Galleons."
"You're right." Eddie took a deep breath. "It's OK. I'll tell my boss I'm still feeling a bit sick and ask him to put me on the Morehead renovation instead. He'll be glad to have a volunteer. Everyone thinks that place is haunted."
"Because of you?"
"No, because it actually is haunted. Francis is really cool, though. He'll cover for me if anything happens." Eddie switched to a bad Elizabethan accent. "'I apologize for the inconvenience, my good sir, but the man is a cur. He bit his thumb at me and I could not let the insult stand.' 'Sorry, Mr. Peasegood. I tried to tell him that people don't do that anymore and Jeff can't even see him, he was just biting his fingernails, but Francis wouldn't listen.'"
Athena chuckled despite herself. "Francis can't cover for you if your gremlin turns an excavator into a dragon again."
"You have to admit, that was pretty cool."
"We can't afford cool!" Eddie nudged Athena expectantly, trying to hold back a smile and failing. Finally, she smiled too. "But that was pretty cool."
"You look cute in short hair."
"Thanks. But if I had my way, I'd never cut it again. I'm going to go wake up Narshank."
"Be careful." He kissed her. She summoned a bagged lunch from the kitchen and headed out the door, and Eddie turned his attention to Remus. "You got a job, Remus?"
"Not at the moment, I'm afraid."
"Of course not. Look, we appreciate what you did for Vinnie, but this pack only works if everyone pulls their weight."
"Maybe he could work at that one shop with the guy," Selena said, closing her violin case.
"That one shop with the guy," Eddie repeated.
"You know the one."
"Selena, I'm going to need you to narrow it down a little bit more."
"The shop with the, um… the…" She snapped her fingers a few times, then pointed to Chris's sketchbook on the couch. "Those things."
"Books?" Remus asked
"Yes, books! Haven Books!"
"Emil's shop," Eddie said. Selena nodded. "That might work. It's Muggle."
"I don't mind Muggles," Remus said.
"You got Muggle clothes?"
Selena giggled. "It's gonna be funny if you have to borrow Eddie's." Eddie was a few inches taller than Remus and much broader.
Remus sloughed off his threadbare robe and gestured to the trousers and button-down shirt he wore beneath them. "Will this work?"
Eddie looked him over, but before he could say anything, Selena said, "That's close enough."
"You can't do any magic," Eddie said. "If you get busted for a secrecy violation, there's no way we can get the money to bail you out."
"That's all right. I'll be careful."
Eddie shrugged. "OK. Grab a lunch and I'll run you over."
"I can take him," Selena said.
"You sure?"
"Yeah, I remember where Emil's shop is. You're going to be late if you don't leave soon, but no one cares when I start busking. I'll take him. I'll just run up and get my shoes on." Selena turned to Remus. "Don't let me walk out without you."
She left the living room and ran up the stairs. As her footsteps faded, Remus asked, "Does she have trouble with her memory often?"
"Afraid so," Eddie said. "Be patient with her. She tries really hard. It's just not there sometimes."
"A botched Memory Charm, by any chance?"
"That's our guess. Fenrir—that's our foster dad—found her sleeping on a park bench when we were kids, and she didn't remember anything before he woke her up. Not a thing; all of it gone. I suppose she could have been like this before, but I'm going to bet someone messed up that Memory Charm."
Selena's feet pounded down the stairs again. She came into the living room and picked up her violin, then pulled a Remembrall out of her pocket. It was glowing scarlet. She bit her lip, then brightened and waved her wand, ordering "Accio lunch!" As the lunch bag flew to her hand, she said, "Look, Eddie, I remembered today," and turned to go, but the Remembrall was still red. "Hmm. Wand. Watch. Violin. Lunch." With a sigh, she turned around. "Eddie, what else am I— Remus!"
The Remembrall turned white in her hand. She gestured for him to join her as he summoned his own lunch, then took his arm and led him out of the house.
"OK, we're going to…" She snapped her fingers a few times. "Emil's, right?"
"Right."
"Yes!" She gave a little fist pump. "It's going to be a good day."
She cast Portus on her violin case and held it out to Remus. As soon as he touched it, the whirling sensation of portkey travel surrounded him, and they appeared in an alley behind a series of shops. She led him to the front. She hadn't quite remembered where the store was, but they were on the right street, and Remus pointed out a weather-beaten sign that read "Haven Books."
Selena led him inside, and at first he thought they had stepped into a wizard's shop after all. It was filled with more books than it seemed could fit into the physical building itself. They were stacked on shelves, squeezed on top of other books, piled onto the floor, even stacked onto the sides of the staircase so that there was only room for one person to climb up or down.
"Emil, are you in?" Selena called out.
A wizened face appeared over a pile of books vaguely shaped around a desk. "Hello, Selena! It's been a while. How are you?"
"I'm doing well. This is my uncle—" She stopped awkwardly, his name clearly escaping her. "He needs a job."
"I'm glad to have him. Same pay as you kids get, I'm afraid."
"That's fine," Remus said.
"One of us will be back to pick you up around 5," Selena said. "Bye-bye, Emil."
Emil made his way around the desk-shaped pile of books as she skipped out the door. "She forgot your name, didn't she?"
"I'm afraid so. I'm Remus."
"My grandkids don't understand why I'm so insistent they wear helmets on their bicycles. One unlucky fall…" Emil shook his head. "Well, let me get you started. I don't believe in computers, so you'll have to do this all the old-fashioned way."
Emil set Remus to work sorting through big cardboard boxes of books, writing down their titles in a notebook, and trying to cram them onto the already sagging shelves. Remus quickly got into the rhythm of the work, but soon he couldn't resist peeking into the various books. Emil had never met a book he didn't like, and all sorts were spread throughout the store. Some were 70, 80, even a hundred years old, while others looked brand new. The books in the Science Fiction section were barely comprehensible, built on technology that was obvious to Muggles but odd to Remus. On the other hand, the books on the Fantasy shelf set him chuckling, and Emil caught him laughing at a passage in one.
Fortunately, Emil shared the opinion, and assured him "what's the point of working in a bookstore if you can't stop and read a bit? The boxes aren't going anywhere."
Before he knew it, noon had come, and Emil shooed him out out for lunch with directions to a nearby park. The park was easy to find, and he couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day, warm and sunny. He ate the lunch the pack had made for him, and enjoyed the afternoon until the hour was up, then headed back.
As he passed an alleyway, some shadow caught the corner of his eye. He stopped and turned, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching him. "Hello?" he asked, studying every visible nook and cranny. Still nothing. With a slight shake of his head, he turned to go back to the book shop.
Before he had taken three steps, a heavy hand clamped around his throat. Another caught his wand arm in a vise-like grip, and their owner dragged him back into the alley.
"What do you want with my children?" a raspy, gravelly man's voice snarled.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes you do. Selena and the others. What do you want with them?"
"They're just helping me get by."
The hand around his throat tightened, warning Remus that his attacker was more than strong enough to kill him where he stood. "You're lying. I know who you are. You're Dumbledore's lap dog."
"Dumbledore abandoned me when my lycanthropy became public knowledge," Remus said. "I've been on my own and among humans too long. Your children are helping me fix that. That's all I've asked of them."
A painfully long pause limped by, then his attacker leaned closer. His hot breath beat on Remus's ear, nearly gagging him with the smell of something rotten. "My children are my Treasures. If you cause them any harm, even any trouble, I will see that you regret it." Then he vanished with a 'crack'.