"Jack!"
Elsa doesn't know what she's expecting when she hears the commotion in the foyer. Jack's not actually living in the manor; she doesn't know where he lives, in fact, ever since that little apartment she visited that one time she was unconscious burned down. But, somehow, trouble always seems to find him here.
Any number of life forms--each one more hysterical than the next--have come looking for help and found him here. Monsters and human alike, Jack never fails to turn up just when he's needed, to help a vampire escape from a vicious pack of hunters ("He's reformed! He's subsisted on animal blood since 1786!") or help out a witch who's being stalked by her sociopathic werewolf ex-boyfriend. Somehow the most downtrodden and vulnerable members of the supernatural community have discovered Jack Russell, whose hands are almost as bloody as his enormously soft heart, and designated him as their landing spot of last resort.
So Elsa's not surprised, exactly, when, one morning after Jack's spent the night, someone breaks onto the grounds, sneaks past the guard dogs, and makes it into the foyer before yelling for Jack like there's an apocalypse about to start. Mildly impressed, yes, and perhaps a bit concerned that there might, in fact, be an apocalypse on the go and they've been volunteered to stop it--wouldn't be the first time--but surprised, no.
She picks up a sword on her way down, just in case, but stops short at the top of the grand staircase.
It's a woman this time, human, a brunette wearing a torn, bloody evening dress, barefoot, with disheveled hair, holding a sword in her own hand.
And whoever she is, Jack's hugging her.
"--four murders already. I'm not sure what they're planning, but last night they tried to sacrifice me in a ritual."
"But you are fine? Did they hurt you?"
It's funny, sort of, because even from up here Elsa can see that the girl's sustained some harm. Maybe nothing life-threatening, but there's a gash running along her left temple that's still oozing blood, a slash along her ribs, a shoulder Elsa's fairly sure is dislocated. But Jack, though he steps back and looks the woman over with a careful eye, clucks a little but sighs in obvious relief and tugs her back into a short, fierce hug.
"Good," he says. There's some emotion behind it Elsa hasn't heard before, quite, but it's something adjacent to the tone his voice takes when he promises another creature he'll see them all right. Whoever this girl is, she matters to him.
"You should have called me. You know I--ah! Elsa!"
They both turn to look up at her, and there's something about the girl's eyes--something familiar, a warmth to them, softness in the twin brown pools that Elsa would have sworn she'd seen somewhere befo--
"Elsa, this is my sister, Lissa. Lissa, Elsa."
Ah.
"I didn't know you had a sister." She lowers the sword and glides down the last three steps, something approaching cordiality on the tip of her tongue. "It's--"
"Sorry," the girl says, and now that Elsa's closer and listening it's obvious; the accent, the chin, the warm brown eyes--she should have seen it right away. But of course the real tip-off's in the steady, earnest way she interrupts her. "It's a pleasure to meet you, of course, but we do not have the time for pleasantries, I think. There's a coven of witches who need to sacrifice a werewolf today in order to start an apocalypse."
Ah.
"No te apures," Jack says. He catches Lissa's hand in his and nudges her chin up to look her right in the eye, shoulders squaring up the way Elsa's seen a dozen times by now. "The three of us can stop them. Right?"
There's determination in his eyes when he looks at her, written in the straight line of his shoulders and the set of his mouth. He could probably handle this problem by himself and have it done in time for lunch, and he knows it, and that's as it usually is; and next to him his sister knows it too, standing straight as well, the near-panic she'd been in just a few minutes earlier gone.
And that's as it usually is, too, is the thing. Jack Russell came into Elsa's life and ripped a trail of carnage across the Bloodstone estate, and now every downtrodden supernatural being within a hundred-mile radius has the place down as their safe haven of last resort. It's nothing like what Elsa had in mind when she returned after her father's death, and every last hunter's corpse in the mausoleum is likely spinning fast enough to power an entire city.
"Oh, what the hell," Elsa says, and gestures towards the armory with her sword. "Not like I have anything else to do today."
It's a lie, of course, but for once Jack holds his breath and doesn't call her on it.