4th of January, 1983

1982 has passed by us and is no more. Adelaide and I celebrated quietly, by ourselves, when midnight came around to herald the New Year. Christmas was a busy affair. Somehow the quiet family party we'd originally planned exploded to inviting a great many distant relatives and friends, then renting a hall to host the event. But now it's all over, the children will be going back to school fairly soon, and it's back to work for the rest of us.

Lessons with the three children - Joseph, Andrew and Geraldine Mercedes - are progressing well enough, though now I'm beginning to question the wisdom in teaching them if they're only going to go looking for bloody trouble. Amber tells me that she, the three, and a few other students - Aldercy Preves, Megaera Maragos, Ezekiel Thornton - ventured down alone into the dungeons of Hogwarts, looking for the Nameless Lady's prison. Wonder of wonders, they ran into trouble, in the form of some bronze centipede and flurries of arachnid-like th'eriens. What did they expect? What sort of idiocy possessed them all to go alone?

I took the time to inform their parents and the Headmaster. Dumbledore says that only children are going to be able to find the Nameless Lady's prison, the acorn. No one over the age of eighteen, I believe he said, could unravel the enchantments the Herbology Professor had long ago put on the thing. Madness. Sheer madness. Still, if the children must take part in the unmaking of this, then the least that can be done is taking a Professor as an escort. I'll not have my young cousin - not to mention two Guardians of the goddamned Seal - pulling unnecessarily risky and stupid stunts.

Locke Kinnison has attracted the attention of Kuznetsov's hunter vampire. The creature tracked him to his home, frightening his children and trying to kill him, though admittedly... he didn't do a very efficient job. Still, their battle was destructive. Kinnison has had more of a hand in this business of the Artefacts than I realised, and the Bitch is figuring it out. He'd best be careful, or he's going to end up dead.

Corruption made another appearance in the streets, this time Charing Cross Road. Three burning hounds, easily dispatched. But what were they there for? Just to frighten the Muggles? Did they have a specific target in mind? There were injuries but no deaths. I took care of three of the four too quickly.

And in the midst of all of this, there is Spiritus. Another realm, just like the Realm of Dreams, Beyond the Stars, Heaven, Hell. We're fighting there, all of these gathered souls, to find who is worthiest to take on the Dark Mother, Ta'nnenger. Tanne. We've faced her once - or rather, James Drake did - though it's all a vague memory now of a dream world. I remember a red-haired woman shifting to a hydra, spewing horrors unimaginable, just a few seconds before Drake obliterated her with a blast of power from a battleship.

Meanwhile, my undercover work continues according to plan.
No word from the Unspeakables, no word from Hollingberry.
No new Tuatha de Dannan.