"Yeah, understandable."

He goes and finds Darren.

"Darren, Charlie's on the phone."

Darren is currently at his computer, notebook in hand, drafting out spells with the rune-sorting program in the background. He looks up at his father, impassively. He takes the phone, because maybe Charlie has resources that can be used.

"Five minutes ago a pitch-black ink-like monster flowed under the door like it was part of the floor, formed up into a shapeless flowing mass, and then - swallowed Bella." There is a faint waver in his voice at Bella's name, but otherwise the tone is curt and flat. "I hit it with a light spell, it didn't hurt it in the slightest, and then it fled to a storm drain and melted through. I tried to see what direction it went but I couldn't tell because storm drains are dark. I'm making a spell to find it."

And then he is going to ask it in no uncertain terms where his girlfriend is. Then, he kills it.

"It did not care about my presence in the slightest," informs Darren curtly. "I could have been wall-dressing for all it cared. It's much smarter for it to travel by out of the way methods to - where ever it goes." Pause. "I'm going to give the phone back to my dad, I'm going to find it."

There is no hesitation in his voice, only disturbingly calm certainty. He will be finding it.

"Yup."

And then the phone goes back to Vernon.

"Mm-hm."

Click.

Click.

Well. Now he's got some other people to talk to.

Darren - prepares. He tells himself that he will do Bella more good if he walks into whatever he's walking into full prepared for everything. So he prepares.

He makes a spell to find the ink monster. He makes several other spells that seem like they might hurt it - light obviously doesn't work, but maybe something involving stealing energy, or ripping it apart, or - various other things. He has lots of ideas, he wants to have as many as possible on him for the inevitable ink monster confrontation, because he is going to kill it no matter how unkillable it seems. It ate his girlfriend. It dies.

His sister can't really do much right now, but she prepares, too. Her preparation is less cerebral, and more - going out and buying knives. Lots of knives. She'd get a gun or two, but can't on such short notice, and not while she's still seventeen. She practices throwing the knives, takes to it pretty quickly, and deems that while not as good as guns, it's faster than magic and not utterly useless. She grabs a few combat scrolls, practices saying them in Spanish (because Darren's sure as hell too busy to help her with pronunciation, and Spanish is at least more straightforward in that vein) so she can use them, and then - waits. Practicing with her knives.

It's not a long wait, Darren turns out to be exceedingly efficient in this sort of crisis, and soon they're ready to go. They debate over bringing Mrs. Adams, and eventually decide against inviting her due to her lack of wings. They can make it to the necessary location faster than she can - so they tell their dad that they're leaving, and then they use Darren's spell to locate where to go, and they go.

The flight is several hours, but in terms of geographical placement it's relatively close by. Lucky. It wouldn't matter if it wasn't, though, the twins are pretty committed to this. They are going to kill at least one creature today. Possibly more.

Darren turns them both invisible, and then they start investigating when they're close to where his spell says to go.

Oh, look, guards. How quaint.

Too bad they're not guarding this patch of wall, over here. Because Darren brought a few scrolls that let the twins just - phase through a wall. A muttered chant, a pair of held hands, and then they're both inside.

First priority: find Bella. Second priority: kill the hell out of the ink monster and whoever was responsible for sending it.

Savannah leads the way, because she is the one with the knives. Let's go wandering, hmm? See what kind of things they find. Preferably sphinx shaped, they are looking for a sphinx.

(Personally, Savannah doesn't think Bella's alive. Of course she hopes she's wrong, but - well, she's not an optimist. Realistically, she's dead, and Savannah will be killing every single person in this warehouse. Darren can help.)