Hey, guess what this chapter opens with?  MORE DOMESTIC BULLSHIT.  Everyone is sitting around and getting ready for Halloween.  And I do mean Halloween.  There’s talk of punch and bobbing for apples and passing out candy.

Also, Matthew gets a box of vaccines delivered to the house so that Diana can be protected before going back in time.  Nathan is all upset when it arrives, because it’s marked ‘biohazard,’ but Matthew expects him to calm down after finding out what it is.

Um…no.  When Diana gets all those shots at once, she’s going to get sick.  I’ve had the smallpox vaccine; it knocked me on my ass.  It’s even worse when you get a bunch at once.  (Had that experience, too.  Isn’t the army fun?)  So Diana’s going to get sick, and while that’s not a big deal to the healthy people around her, that is a big deal to the pregnant woman.  Fun fact: after getting so much as a flu shot, I can’t be around my immuno-suppressed brother for a few days.  If Diana’s going to have a cocktail of foreign diseases rolling around in her, I’d say it’s perfectly valid to want to keep the pregnant lady away from her.  It’s not a guaranteed shot that she’ll get sick, but it’s enough of a chance to not take chances.  I mean, when a baby’s in its development stages, that’s when a case of the chickenpox in the mother can lead to congenital heart failure in the baby.  You don’t just shrug and say ‘eh, it’ll be fine if we’re just careful.’

“Now that that’s done, we need to figure out how Diana is going to carry you—and herself—to some distant time by Halloween. She may have been timewalking since she was an infant, but it’s still not easy,” Sarah worried, her face twisted in a frown.

…what?  How can it simultaneously be so easy that a baby can do it and so hard that you need three ‘guide’ items and a chapter of discussion?  That doesn’t make the least bit of sense.

AND ‘WORRIED’ IS NOT A SPEAKING VERB, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

Diana goes off to practice with short hops around the house.  And…apparently timetravel includes teleportation, because she’s going to go from one room to another, but not one time to another.  I mean, it makes sense to have them both be together, so that you don’t accidently time yourself into outer space, but when there’s no time travel involved, when you’re just straight-up teleporting, why not call it that?

You know what, fuck it, I don’t care.  It’s your messed up magic system.  Go ahead.  I’ll just be over here in a corner, bashing my head against a wall.

“Stop thinking about physics. What did your dad write in his note? ‘Whoever can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead.’”

Riiiight.  Because physicists don’t ‘wonder’ anything.  They don’t ask questions or marvel at the universe or try and poke and prod at mysteries.  Nope, they see all the world as dull and lifeless, because that’s totally how science works.

So Diana spends the next few days getting good at making little hops through time and space and figuring out how to take Matthew with her.

Then Hamish shows up.  Apparently all so we can have three daemons, to go with our three witches and three vampires, so we can have a ‘good’ version of the Congregation.  That concept has been bandied about a bit.  However…so what?  Is there some magical or cultural significance to having three sets of three?  Is there anything to this besides literary symbolism?  Is it here to serve a purpose, or just because the author thought it would be cool? 

Hamish is also part of the Knights of Lazarus and apparently he came over to yell at Matthew and deliver some stuff from his house.

They all sit around, recap the book so far, Hamish spouts off some confusing lines that are supposed to be confusing, and they talk about ‘war.’  Then Nathan says something actually intelligent.

“Wars are fought on computers. This isn’t the thirteenth century. Hand-to-hand combat isn’t required.”

And everyone promptly ignores him without even giving his statement a moment of serious consideration.  Seems we’re going to close quarters combat anyway.

Then they decide to DNA test Nathan and Sophie, because why not.

Also, Matthew wants Hamish to be seneschal while he’s off…um, in the past, and that prompts them to kick all the women out of the room so they can talk politics.  No, I’m serious.  Diana even hangs a lampshade on that fact, but she still scurries on out to sit and wait and make sandwiches like a good little housewife.