Martin frowns, struggling to settle his thoughts enough to consider what their next step is. Something in Eliot's explanation bothers him, but he can't place it before the conversation is turning, absurdly, to his cat.

"O-oh." He looks down stupidly at The Bishop, still a little too stressed to purr, and plants a comforting little kiss on his head. "This is The Bishop."

He desperately doesn't want to say anything more about it, to get into the ins and outs of why a cat, for a multitude of reasons; he doesn't want to be doing any of this, this close-quarters socializing, when he's not ready yet, he's only just started to poke his head above ground and he can't... He hasn't even spoken to John yet, not properly. He wants to focus on the task at hand, not his cat, not his absent personal life, if he can just figure out what it is that's—

"Wait," he blurts out. "Is it just meant for hostile things? Your spell, I mean?"

As terrifying as the apparition is, he can't say it actually made any aggressive moves toward them, and unless it's very slow, there's no real explanation for why it hasn't followed them here, either.