[ PORTLAND, FROM LAMBERT'S PERSPECTIVE ]

[whattaprick]

Prologue

Six years ago, Lambert discovered his sister was a werebat and that the supernatural was real.

A year or so ago, he moved to Portland and started working at a cat cafe. At some point, he got turned into a cat after blowing up at the owner, and he kept working there out of spite.

Half a year ago, Lambert discovered one of his regulars was a literal angel of death.

Three months ago, he rescued "John," a crow who also turned out to be an unfairly attractive guy. Apparently, feeling like he owes Lambert his life was sufficient incentive for John to stick around, because he hasn't been able to get rid of him since.

Week 1

Lambert tears down some posters and whines at John about it. He also whines at some totally unrelated girl at the university about it. He also meets a not-so-friendly ghost.

The fae who put up the posters pays a visit to the cat cafe and adopts a cat and nearly gives John a heart attack. Afterwards, Lambert and John try to calm down from their near-death experience (and then have Chinese takeout and drunk makeouts at John's cool squatter pad). Like a responsible big brother, he tells his sisters not to expect him home.

Unfortunately, part of the deal of making the Beast leave the cafe alone means putting up a freaking huge poster for it in the cafe instead. From the reporter Carly, Lambert learns the Beast killed another fae and has done this whole Animal Fair schtick before. Lambert also tries to convince his sisters the Animal Fair is bad news but mostly only ends up making them more interested in it.

Since he can't leave well enough alone, he also asks Jonathan Strange, local shitty magician, what he knows about warding against fae. Strange informs him there's some messed up shit with omens and the like happening, and Lambert asks him to demonstrate by reading fortunes with tarot cards for Strange, himself, and the Beast.

He closes the week by having a stupid text fight with John about the Animal Fair after being freaked out when Peridot doesn't respond to his messages (as she's busy snooping around the venue for the Animal Fair being a bat).

Week 2

Lambert, against his better judgement, attends the Animal Fair partly to chaperone his sisters and partly to say 'fuck you, John, I do what I want.' He ends up meeting the Beast (again) and learns she's really kind of got a shitty attitude, running into his transformed weresisters, meeting Tamaki possessing a boy named Yuya, and encountering one of his cafe regulars, Rita, transformed into a bird (and apparently she's also a changeling, so what gives).

Upsettingly, he doesn't manage to make contact with John since the night before the Animal Fair, but Lambert has other problems anyway: he starts having strange dreams of a much more violent life than his own, and he runs into a kid who seems to recognize him. Actually, while he's stuck working a cat cafe with cats in little Halloween costumes around, he seems to keep running into distressingly familiar people. At some point, Lambert's premonitions even lead him to arm wrestle a demon and totally fail to prevent a human sacrifice, which does wonders for his mood. After all the shit he's seen, it's no wonder Lambert ends up looking for some more substantial protection, although he can't shake the feeling he'd be more comfortable with a sword.

The next time he sees John again, it's more or less in the worst way imaginable. In an altercation at the cat cafe, involving Strange's ex-wife and Strange discovering John was taking his ex-wife out for dates whenever he ordered him to check up on her for him, Strange ends up setting off a protective ward that transforms him into a cat. While Lambert and John are figuring out what the hell to do with him, one of the Count's daughters attacks them in the alley behind the cafe. A resurgence of memories he can't determine the origin of gives Lambert the ability to kill one of John's sisters. After dumping Strange at his apartment and stealing all the notes he's managed to gather on what's been happening so far, John takes him back to his place and patches him up, both of them a little shaken.

Week 3

With the notes he's taken from Strange, Lambert tries to get a better sense of what the hell is going on. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't have a lot of success at this, given Strange left things out of his notes and because

Lambert and Peridot shout at the Beast about weird visions and discover she's even less clued into the plot than they are. The Beast also locks lips with Lambert to sample a bit of his soul, and they summarily find out they must not originally be from this world (and also, a whole hell of a lot about Arcadia and the fae's world colonization strategies).

Week 4


When the time for the ritual is finally upon them, Lambert calls on the Earth Spirit's promised aid -- but it manifests in a wa