Cora called it the “excuse to drink” party.

Because, you know, being one of a handful of people (to use the term loosely) who have blundered into defending the very existence of reality from greebly horrible otherdimensional monsters isn't a good enough reason.

It's just that this time we had tiki torches and tiny umbrellas in our drinks.

Flamingo Straws are a horribly inefficient way of drinking beer.

Still, as parties went, things went fairly well. We had a couple of guests from afar (Mari was in town, as was Cora's Three-Quarters-Demon Boyfriend), and another trio of new recruits: a wizard-lady named Gant, a guy from Minnesota named Fletch, and one of Brayker's old buddies who I will refer to as Agent Beltbuckle. Drinks were drunk, food was eaten, and conversations were conversed. Artemis tried explaining the difference between wizard magic and vampire magic to me, but I didn't quite get it. Apparently having hypno-eyes and being able to turn into a bat doesn't count as magic? Whatever.

So yeah, we did the generally social thing- that is, until Penny caught word that Lester Rothstein (the half-vampire ghoul-bitch Servant from Wayngro's list), was classing it up down at the Houston Opera. Artemis, Ash, and Penny went and tailed him...at which point they realized it wasn't really Lester, but rather a body double who'd been hired to pretend to be Lester. I can only hope that the real half-vampire Lester was hiding in a basement somewhere, and not getting up to crazy nefarious shit.

Oh, and there was some crazy nefarious shit going on, too. Dunno if Lester had anything to do with it.

In case you missed the Saturday night news, somebody decided to blow up a CUT church on the north side of town. And before you start cheering, we weren't the ones who did it. In fact, within minutes of the bombing, the cops got an anonymous message pinning the blame on one Mr. Glass.

In case the name doesn't ring a bell, Mr. Glass is one of the stars on our Wall of the Fallen; he died back in 2009, during the Case of the Voodoo Doll of Baron S. I never knew the guy, as I was blissfully unaware of all this magic bullshit way back then. Ah, better days. The fact I can count on one hand the number of people who were around Houston at the time isn't an encouraging fact when you start thinking about turnover, though...and you wonder why I drink so much?

Just kidding. Nobody wonders. Or cares. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get another beer.

The most prominent theory on Glass' sudden appearance was the fact that the bombing was probably done by his “fetcher” clone, because all fairy Changelings have clones made out of sticks or something? Miss T may have tried to explain it to me once but I didn't listen very carefully because I was too busy being creeped the hell out. (Seriously, she looks like she's made of spiders). Stick-clone or whatever, fake-Glass' records held up from the checking I did, which either meant someone was doing a hell of a job covering their tracks, or he's been kicking around since 2009 in one way or the other.

After some magic-scrying stuff, Dr. Watts tracked fake-Glass down to a big cargo ship in the harbor. A ship registered to Diadem Logistics (a Truth-affiliated company), which word on the street says is moving assault rifles. Greeeat.

More scrying tells us that not only is Glass on the big boat, but there's also a Tear, an Abomination made of Fire and Hate, and like half a dozen dudes called 'Reapers,' which are apparently government trained commandos with explosive vests and death wishes (thanks to Cora's 75% demon boyfriend for the lowdown on those dudes, by the way). You'll understand why I decided to sit that one out.

Hell, from what I heard about it, things were even worse than it sounded. As apparently, the FireHate Abomination was tough enough that even Dr. Watts had trouble hitting it, and the Tear was bigger than any other Tear we've encountered up until this point. And, if it weren't for the efforts of Wolf (who is not a werewolf) and his healing magic, I'd probably be writing some obituaries right now. Props to him (even if he probably won't be reading this because he lives in a hole somewhere and doesn't know how computers work).

So yeah. Party's over, folks. I've got the feeling that things are gonna get worse before they get better. Or, shit, do things ever get better? After we took out Romanati and fucked the CUT's shit up back in November, I bet those squiddy bastards are bringing in the big guns (or tentacles, or whatever) to start pushing back. Lucky us.

And there's my excuse to drink, right there.