For some reason, the Addams clan children of all ages and shapes were huddled together and discussing something, and that caused Owen to have some kind of reflex desire to make sure that they did not inadvertently decide to conquer a small country in Eastern Europe, or, why the hell not, any of the States. These ones - totally can do!
But his goal was different - the rugrat-twins clung tightly to the palms of their werewolf father and pulled him towards a bunch of juvenile Addams, not accepting any probable refusals.
There was, of course, a questionable choice to let the little mad motorboats to float freely. But the most responsible action would be to at least be able to recall the faces of the older children, so that there would be someone to ask about the future whereabouts of the offsprings.
"Deeply vexed by your presence at this death feast, hated guest," Wednesday Addams greeted in monotone, clearly saying this routine not for the first time this evening.
"I'm happy to see Gomez's heiress alive once again, and not on her way to the grave. My wife even thought that the Pugsley curse had finally taken its toll and the unlife of the eldest daughter!"
Owen met the girl's unflappable gaze, noticed her raised eyebrows, and therefore finished the thought quite in the Addams style.
"Which is... Uh, such a misfortune!"
Wednesday gave a short nod and looked at the twins. Her gaze expressed all the indifference of the world, but it was clear what exactly she was waiting for. Being the young mistress of the house, and even one of the elder ones in this menagerie, the role of an involuntary shepherd for the younger ones fell to her.
The kids did not keep her waiting and introduced themselves.
"Cardin Alison Zingler-Addams!"
"Carmina Vendetta Zingler-Addams!"
"But you can call us..." they drawled together, glancing at each other for better effect.
To that motion Owen involuntarily smiled, and Wednesday raised her expressive eyebrow a little higher.
"Sin!"
"And Mine!"
"Do you like dynamite and fishing with grenades?" an obviously joyful boyish voice called out. "Or are my hopes futile?"
Pugsley, easily recognizable and barely grown anywhere but waist since last year, looked out at Mina's introduction from behind Wednesday.
"Of course! But I like playing Defuse the Mine with Pawpaw! That's why - Mine! Dad says that maybe I'll grow out of it someday, and not play like that with anyone except the willing Addamses and bad guys, but.."
"What kind of Addams wouldn't want to play mine disposal?!" Pugsley interrupted, looking at Owen with obvious surprise.
Owen sighed and glanced at Wednesday, who also, though she seemed the most mentally sound, showed interest in the answer. The werewolf marveled at himself - after all, some decade ago such conversations would've seemed to him just some kind of crazy talk, but now he couldn't even imagine how he had to live without the Addams clan all his previous life before meeting Hela.
"If a sentient refuses, we don't force them," Owen shrugged and ruffled his son's hair, making the boy openly smile. "Sin, for example, does not like steaks with blood."
Everyone gasped at this information, even those kids who had definitely not been part of the conversation until that very moment. Wednesday still kept her expression deadpan, but there was some confusion.
"Yeah," Cardin chuckled, taking his father's hand and placing it on top of his head again. "As soon I learned how to speak, I start saying no. I don't wanna, but everyone eat it!"
"Smart," Wednesday chuckled, looked into Owen's eyes once, flipped one of her pigtails over her shoulder, then turned to Pugsley. "You see now, you were needlessly shy about ordering those rainbow candies, Pugsley. The color is not important, the main thing is that if you combine them with soda, you could open a new ulcer. And prolonged exposure could even be deadly in the long run, dear brother."
"You're right, Wednesday! Next time, I'll definitely ask Lurch to buy me some Skittles! " Pugsley nodded.
"Oh, yeah! Sour torments!" Carmina got too excited for her own good. "I also love the Patch, the purple one! That the sourest, innit, Pawpaw?"
"Pa doesn't eat such sour food, he still has to live with it until he dies. Mama would totally kill him herself and raise him up as a wight, if only out of pity! I've heard that ulcers are not very pleasant for the non-Addams by birth!"
The son uttered the phrase about "mama murder papa out of pity" as if it were the ultimate truth. Owen was already perpetually tired of being surprised by the Addams side in his children, so he just mentally embraced this world and counted to five.
"Yes?" Pugsley seemed keenly interested. "I'll have to experiment on Joel... Mr. Owen, we haven't met personally before, have we? You..."
"I'm a werewolf," Owen anticipated the questions and offered the boy his hand to shake, "and I just don't like sour candy. I can't get ulcers, regeneration won't allow it. I once happened to chew through and swallow a coffin lid during a full moon, I was hunting a stryga and somehow it coincided..."
Now it was Wednesday who got interested up to the point of making it known, but she was prevented from asking questions about hunting the Damned by a loud exclamation from the culprit of today's celebration.
Owen grimaced, and his reaction was understandable. Belonging to the Addams family and, in particular, to this extremely peculiar questionably sentient one, often prevented Owen from doing the things he, in fact, remained for in the service of the FBI's special anti-paranormal squad. His main task was to prevent the Normies from going completely crazy with connivance and becoming the new Inquisition.
And apart from rare excesses, he was quite successful.
But thanks to Fester Addams, the werewolf had to report every quarter that he hadn't seen Fester, and if he had, he tried to detain him, but he slipped away in time. No one expected miracles from the agents - Fester was a resourceful bastard, and it wasn't the psycho himself who was so annoying in this case, rather those easy interrogations that had to be overcome because of his tricks. No, Fester was mostly annoying as of now by the fact that even at his own wife's funeral he couldn't stop staring at the nearest cleavage.
Including the cleavage of Helleruna Zingler-Addams.
"Please, Hel-hic-na! Me real-hic need thi-hic!"
Fester kept whining in this nasty nasal voice, obviously drunk because he staggered. But he didn't forget to look where he shouldn't, so Owen gritted his teeth and caught the gaze of his serene wife. She shook her head from side to side, and for a moment Owen was lost in her beauty, as it usually happened every time after the slightest separation.
There has always been something magical about this attraction.
The glare of candelabra light in her silver hair, expressive eyes, and a dark pentacle pendant that almost dived into her generous cleavage - everything around seemed to disappear for a moment, as if the entire hall, including the ill-fated Fester, had wanished, and all that remained was the desire to be closer to her, to be alone with her, to tear her dress off and utterly possess her.
Helen definitely shook her head, as Owen remembered when he started moving forward. And this shaking of her head meant that no intervention was needed yet.
Therefore, he stopped himself and glanced around, having plans to find the children and still leave them in the disturbing care of Wednesday. Even though he was ultimately sure that these kids would have too much influence on each other. In the bad sense of this process.
Wednesday, who had previously kept a mostly neutral expression on her face, now met his gaze with barely noticeable disgust.
The girl was obviously used to such fervent gazes of her parents, and she definitely had a very special opinion on it, which, although she kept to herself, she was not obliged to completely hide.
Owen grinned and asked, changing the subject.
"What got into him? Rocket fuel, or what?"
"Because of the recently deceased," Wednesday grimaced and clenched her left hand into a fist - the height of emotions for such a barely living form of life, that was surprising, even, "Uncle Fester been eating for about half a year completely different from what he was used to, and therefore only one barrel was enough for him."
Owen wisely did not specify one barrel of what exactly.
Meanwhile, the situation was escalating, because even the children noticed that their mother was losing patience.
"Uh, oh, he pissed her off!" Cardin admired and hugged his sister tighter. "Mine, are we going to hide, or is it okay? I don't really like the feeling of Mama's shadows, to be honest..."
"Shadows?" Wednesday asked, and lowered her face to the twins in disbelief.
Owen also felt something was wrong, so he stepped forward and decided to save the remnants of his mind and possibly the life of one particular psycho.
"If you have some sort of problem, then discuss it with me first, Fester."
"Mine... Hic, long ago-hic con-hic-stant bwgh-mr-urgh, Hic!"
"I would have figured it out," his wife said softly, but for a knowledgeable person, that usually led to primal horror.
"My love, the trust in you knows no bounds, but we don't need one more final corpse."
Pausing for a moment, Helena seemed to listen to her own inner workings, then she nodded agreeably and briefly clung to her husband, as he came up to deliver his attempt to defuse the situation.
"Mein Teil," she teasingly whispered in Owen's ear, stroked his jaw, and continued on her way toward the children.
Owen in turn approached Fester and tried to take him by the shoulders in order to take him away for a snack, at the least. But the Addams perceived the touch as an attack, pulled a dagger from somewhere under his jacket - as expected, and yelled something about a long-awaited duel - very unexpected.
Owen was too sober for this shit, but on the whole the situation made his mouth start to spread into a toothy smile.
The Addams knew how to throw heartfelt parties, you can't take that away from them. And what kind of party would be considered heartfelt without a good fight?!
***
Owen Sinclair never seemed to gain any superior negotiation skills, even though he worked in the FBI's Criminal Investigation Division, in a special Joint Task Force dedicated to investigating and countering the supernatural.
More often than not, threats and even more violent methods assured his success in communicating with other supernatural beings at work. So he had absolutely no idea what to do with a teenager who didn't want to communicate. And you can't just make that teenager listen, all the while the man definitely understood that he treated Enid as if she was already working under him and aware of all the risks.
Enid was not exactly a wallflower that just escaped her greenhouse, but still. The girl did not fully know the malice of this world.
Owen tried to delay this moment - of that de-greenhousing - as long as possible, as she stubbornly clung with all her limbs and teeth to the stability and calm that the pack provided her. Owen didn't quite understand why the girl chose to hurt herself over and over again by staying in the family. The same family that would have to abandon her, and who would totally, no question, abandon her if their insinuations of her inability to wolf-out had any truthful basis.
Sinclair had been offering her a move ever since he felt the echo of Enid's pain and tears at her closest family's resentment.
The girl repeatedly refused and continued to persistently endure.
Owen understood that this would end one day, and therefore, when the opportunity presented itself to combine one of his work-related investigations and meeting Enid, he did not think twice about putting his plan into action. He invited her to a place where he and his partner were travelling to. They were supposed to inquire about smuggling dangerous supernatural substances and - most likely - beasts.
Cases of poaching and smuggling of the supernatural involved the participation of this Joint Task Force when it was necessary to negotiate and minimize casualties. You can always launch an ordinary FBI spec. ops, of course, but launching them into a children's camp with plenty of nervous teenage werewolves is only necessary if you want to break through the bottom of Hell with your thought capacity, of course.
And ever since Owen realized what exactly connected him and Enid, he had been anxiously and eagerly awaiting the opportunity to bring her up to date. Remembering himself at her age, he assumed that any teenager would be enthused to have adventures and some kind of being special. The man understood that she certainly could not achieve this - being special - in the pack. If she tells her pack that she's the Alpha Werewolf, then they will either try to break her, which sometimes worked, but did not add any mental health, or she will simply be kicked out the same way Owen was kicked out.
If you can't benefit the pack, then you become a burden to it. And historically, it was customary to get rid of a burden.
Thanks to an accident caused by the greed of Enid's parents - and nothing but greed can be called that desire to get their son's wolfing out as soon as possible and without much effort on their part - and a little less greed of his own wife, Enid will be able to receive some of his skills and hardly pleasant flashbacks of memory, right after his death.
And it was precisely because of this peculiarity of their relationship that he needed to bring her up to date as soon as possible, but his wife dissuaded him until the last moment. Hellerune Addams, member of the large clan that consisted of various supernatural beings, was a witch with a professional specialization in souls and an unprofessional love for necromancy. She could neither see the future nor delve into the past, so her advice was rudimentary in nature. But as a loving husband who never found his head after its loss, and never returned his heart back from the tenacious cold hands of an Addams woman, Owen listened to her opinion and believed that she was right.
Enid shouldn't be involved in such a dubious enterprise - even though it was, basically, rather useful work for the state as, in fact, some sort of protector against supernatural problems.
And then the man almost died on one of his cases, after which his wife almost shook his soul out of him. It was impossible to hide the event of almost dying, because, according to old tradition, she spelled the steel on her favorite dagger to rust in case of death stumbling too close to her hubby.
That's how bringing Enid up to speed became a more pressing issue.
The girl had an approximate idea of what the connection between the older Alpha Werewolf and the younger was, yes, but few people in the pack and beyond understood why it was so important - the continuity and uniqueness of this continuity. In packs, the memory of ancestors - the most important and basic, precepts and laws, the development of abilities and assistance in management - all these things were passed down this way.
More than once or twice it happened that the pack simply stopped sticking together after one generation, as soon as the Alpha Werewolf ceased to exist, without having time to find a replacement. These stories, of course, were interesting to some extent, but they did not concern Owen much - he'd never had any mentor, he had never been anyone's legacy, and therefore he was afraid that as the first "transmitter" in this chain, he might pass on a little more than just some basic skills using orders and that usual minimum from all previous Alpha Wolves. This thing shouldn't really happen to werewolves outside the pack at all. Also, even in the packs the new Alpha Wolves are actually being prepped to accept this from the very start, the Elder wolves speak and show, warn and teach.
In his case, there was a fear that the girl - in the event of his death, of course - would be swarmed by it without explanation, it will make her see what she was not supposed to see, because his memory, especially with the use of abilities, was full of completed work tasks.
Although, if Owen were to be honest with himself, he definitely considered a completely different case to be the starting point in changing his attitude towards Enid and, accordingly, in his decision to involve her in his investigative work.
***
"Mr. Sinclair."
Owen did not recognize the politely indifferent female voice from behind the door. Which is why he put on his leather jacket and pretended that he was leaving already.
He was actually going to go to the boss first, in order to remove his stupidly brave trainee - the werewolf girl tried to put the moves on him, even though he was happily married, which she knew perfectly well. She also knew who exactly he was married to, hence the suspicion of stupidity along with the courage.
"Yes, come in," he opened the door and smiled toothlessly. "Is there something urgent? I don't remember you in our division."
"I'm from HR," the woman said seriously and then frowned. "You have submitted an official request for the transfer of a female werewolf trainee to another operative pair, for a reason that you refused to specify in the report. I'm afraid I need more details, because we have certain instructions about her appointment."
"Sandra is doing great as a trainee, but..." Owen sighed miserably. "She doesn't understand that I'm married. She'd better try and get it into her skull somewhere far away from me, to be honest. There was no active harassment, otherwise I would've submitted a completely different report, there is just a lot of awkwardness, which affects the quality of the work of the entire group. And what are the instructions? I've never heard of it."
"You see, Agent Sinclair, there's a recent regulation that it is necessary to unite Alpha Werewolves into common groups, both to prevent possible manipulation of consciousness and to attempt a creation of the so called Legacy connection," the woman paused significantly. "Since this connection has not been studied enough and there is almost no opportunity to study it outside the pack, such a decision was considered more than appropriate."
"Still, I insist on transferring her to another group, miss..."
"Lawson. There's something you're not telling me, Sinclair. Do you want to kick her out because you can't order her around in your favorite style? Is that the case?"
A polite smile froze on Owen's face under the attentive gaze of this woman, and he squeezed out through his teeth.
"My... style? Are you confusing me with someone?"
"Isn't that how you solve most problems when it comes to your fellow beings? I read your reports before I came here, and every case where you can persuade a werewolf with an order, it happens. I would have a much calmer life if your kind could be reached with simple words rather than supernatural orders."
"Well, I'm not a negotiator," Sinclair laughed nervously, trying to get off the subject and turn it into a joke, but judging by the look of the normis woman, he failed, and she continued to drill him with an incredulous look. "I will never stoop so low as to push my will on an ally. That's not the case, really."
"No one will change the regulation for you, Agent," Lawson pursed her lips and reached for the door handle to leave the office. "If you have nothing else to say..."
Owen followed her, wanting to go straight to his immediate superior, but soon realized that their paths were aligned.
When both he and Lawson simultaneously approached the office of the man who could both solve and exacerbate the problem, Owen had very few options left. And when Sandra jumped out the door to meet them with the look of a beaten up puppy, Sinclair thought grimly that if he came out of this talk with this - in the literal sense of the word - ghoul with untouched secrets, then he would believe in the Christian God.
Simply put, it immediately became clear to him, that Enid's secret would have to be revealed.
On that day, Owen was given the task of preparing the ground for a possible recruitment. The man never had a wish to put Enid's name and the Joint Task Force that investigates and responds to the supernatural problems in the same sentence, but come on. This was the first and last time in his entire career when a man regretted that he did not particularly strive for growth to be the big boss, as he always understood that the higher the rank, the more the problems.
Owen hadn't thought about it for a while, although he laid some groundwork. But the event of his boss finding out about his secret with Enid, triggered the whole chain of events. And that's how Enid probably won't have many options left for the future, even though he vowed to give her a choice, or at least the illusion of it.
And the girl only just had to find this out in the near future.
Owen cursed himself for lying to the kid, but there was nothing he could do about it anymore. His attempt to include her in his "adult" business, that is, the investigation and possible rescue of mythical animals from poachers, went to waste when that asshole dared to lay a finger on her. That fucker was hiding behind religion and science, all at the same time, in his barely concealed mania.
Now Enid's trust eroded, and all the mistakes Owen made earlier, were clearly visible, because they'd already made him shit and feel like shit.
The only positive thing is that the fucker's ashes are now travelling to Owen's beloved wife for further interrogation.
Owen remained a Sinclair according to his ID, yes, but if it hadn't been for the hassle of filing all the new documents, which he was just too lazy to care about at the time, then the Addams surname would have been just right for him.
After all, it was his relationship with a woman from the Addams family that taught him to extract the remains of his enemies for further use in necromancer rituals.