and for my next gig...

I got back in time to celebrate Valentines Day with the Little wolf after all. She seemed to like the bracelet well enough, even though I got it at the last moment.

It's not easy to keep track of the human festivals, but I'd meant to plan ahead, this time. I'd meant to get the Minions to handle the shopping side of it. Erynne wanted to get some proper weapons - and the Diran is an weapons expert. She's a trained assassin and a skilled thief, I hired her last year as a bodyguard for Erynne. It turned out that Erynne could find trouble in spite of her, (and the little wolf may be a better fighter than Nixi anyway. She's got what you might call natural talent.)

Having a Diran on retainer still seems like a good idea. It's not the kind of thing I usually do, but the war with Zranth could hot up any time. I'd heard that refugees from the Scourge are reaching LA, so I hadn't objected to Nixi checking the place out. She's been gone for too long, so I sent Marty to find her and bring her back by portal. He reported that he's found her and they were heading back. They weren't back for the last gig - and that was the last I heard of them. It's been weeks.

I meant to tell Erynne. I wish I could take her with me. She can look after herself better than I can, sometimes. But there's always a risk of portals misrouting and we found something that could be very bad when she made the first trip where she opened the ways. We took that trip in high summer, on a sweltering July day. We'd went right to the place I'd expected - but we arrived in December - a couple of years before we'd set out. I've known the portals do some crazy things, but time tripping can be bad.

All the Minions had to do was come through a portal from LA to Sunnydale. (Marty can't drive and Nixi isn't big enough to manage a human's car. Her feet can't reach the brake and anyway the cops hassle her. I wish I'd told them to go by train.) Marty's a trained member of a Gig-Team and Nixi's a Diran, but it looks as though they went into a portal and didn't come out. I'm going to have to find out why, and it may not be a good idea to take Erynne on a trip like that. The Zranthians are about as bad as it gets, and the little wolf can't teleport.