How to be Badass (2nd Draft)

“I can’t go to another one of those therapy sessions,” Mimi said.

“Why?” Queri asked. “You’re still talking about demons in your sleep, and when you have those attacks. And you are still depressed. Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Mimi said, quietly, and then took a deep breath and seemed to pull herself back together, something Queri was seeing more and more often. This was something she was learning about Mimi; she had an incredible strength, and it was just the enormous strain that it was under that caused her to collapse as she had.

What exactly that enormous strain was, Queri had yet to fully discover. She knew that Mimi had lost everyone. Her friends and her family. A shooting? Queri wondered. A fire?

“I’m not talking nonsense when I talk about demons, and no amount of therapy will make me overcome that ‘fantasy’,” Mimi said, lifting her hands to form air-quotes around the last word. Queri cocked an eyebrow. That wasn’t reassuring as to Mimi’s improvements. “Oh, don’t look at me like I’m batshit,” Mimi snapped. “I’ll prove it to you. Give me a second.”

Queri was feeling more and more trepid with every word, but she was genuinely startled when, after Mimi closed her eyes, she slumped into a dead faint. Queri started towards her, uncertain. She checked her pulse. Fine. She had to admit she was disappointed. Since coming off the drugs and alcohol, Mimi had been lucid. Quiet, and agonizingly sad, but when they spoke she seemed intelligent and thoughtful. She had what Queri assumed were PTSD attacks in which she screamed about demons and possessions, which terrified Queri, but they had only occurred after triggers or nightmares. This was the first time it had happened when she seemed aware and—

“What the everloving fuck,” Queri said, her voice rising and her eyes widening as she backed away from Mimi when she opened her eyes again and casually readjusted in the chair to make room for the leathery wings that now sprouted from her back.

“I know,” Mimi said. She craned her neck back at them. “Not as pretty as the ones I had last time.”

“Last time,” Queri said faintly.

“Do you believe me?”

“What?” What was she supposed to believe? She was more worried about the fact that those wings looked like they would easily knock over her furniture. And that there were wings.

“Demons,” Mimi prompted.

“I—please explain,” Queri said.

Mimi chewed her lip. “I don’t know where to start. I grew up with this stuff.”

“Okay, start there then,” Queri suggested, still eyeing the wings warily. “Where did you grow up?”

“A guild hall,” Mimi said. “I’m a demonslayer. My entire family is—was—demonslayers. We have… had… fuck…”

Mimi put her head in her hands, and took several deep breaths. “They’re all gone,” she said. “Everything’s gone.”

Even in a state of veritable cerebral arrest, Queri had enough presence of mind to reach forwards and gently pry Mimi’s hands out of her hair and put an arm around her shoulder.

“I didn’t think through this repossession thing,” she mumbled. “How the fuck am I going to get this out of me.”

“Eh?” Queri said, still trying to figure out what was going on.

“I’m going to have to get you to help me set up a ritual.”

“You mean like—a pagan ritual?” Queri said, hesitantly.

“No, like a ritualist ritual,” Mimi snapped. “Oh, Rana, this is when I wish I paid more attention during ritualist lessons.”

“Mimi, I swear to god, if you don’t start explaining what the hell you’re talking about I’m going to just leave this room.”

Mimi’s lips twitched upwards weakly and she said, “It’s a long story. I’m a demonslayer. Demons can possess people, but demonslayers can possess demons right back, which is what I did. Really powerful demons possessing a demonslayer will have physical manifestations of their possession, like these wings. Unfortunately, it’s damn hard to get a demon out of yourself and I’m out of practice.”

“Christ,” Queri summarized.

“He has nothing to do with it,” Mimi said gravely.

“I’m going to need some time to process this,” Queri said faintly.

“I don’t exactly have some time,” Mimi said. “This is not a small demon. At some point I’m going to run out of juice and then it’ll be running around in my body like a meat suit, get it? I am going to write down a list and then we’re going to have some fun doing a ritual on the roof of your good suburban apartment complex.”

That’s pretty much what happened. And if Queri didn’t quite believe that Mimi knew what she was talking about when wings appeared on her back, she sure did by the time she finished watching her trace out highly complex characters inside of an inverse pentagon on the roof, six candles extinguishing in the same moment that the wings faded again into nonexistence, like a glitch in Queri’s mind.

“What the hell have I gotten myself into,” Queri wondered out loud.

Mimi laughed, and it was enough to make Queri feel some of the heaviness of realization evaporate. “A shit show. I tried to tell you.”

“I have to tell you, demons isn’t really what I thought you meant.”

Leaving the next day was not as hard as Queri thought it would be.

It wasn’t because she didn’t love everyone so much after all, and that she wouldn’t miss them to bits. It wasn’t that she wasn’t sort of freaking out because she had a very small child in her care. Queri, despite her confidence in her ability to work through problems, was not prepared to be a parent to anyone under the age of twelve. No, it was because it didn’t feel real. She simply was unable to process the idea that she was leaving everyone. Surely this was temporary. And, well, it was—just less temporary than her mind knew or her heart believed.

Mimi had left the involvement of the child’s parents up to Queri, and it was a moral quandry of a degree that was a bit mind-boggling. On one hand, it was not at all okay to take a young child away from her parents, who loved her very much and cared for her well. It just wasn’t right, point-blank. On the other hand, it was an arduous and difficult task to bring someone up to speed on the demon and demonslaying world. At the the moment, time was something that was in short supply, and Queri did not want to be around with Isadora when it ran out.

So Queri had decided to first get Isadora to somewhere safe, and then to deal with her parents. It seemed like the safest way to go about things, even if it would be significantly harder to win over their trust after she had already spirited their daughter away. Since it had already been more than a week, she doubted that another couple of days was really going to make things much worse.

“Are you ready to go?” Queri asked Isadora, interrupting her amiably chattering at Allen. And by chatting, Queri meant ‘talking at’, since Allen sure as hell didn’t have the time between sentences to talk back. He did nod and make sounds of acknowledgement every now and then, bless him.

“Yes,” the girl said. “I don’t have a lot of stuff or anything.”

Queri smiled. “I guess not. Let’s say goodbye then, and get going.” It really was that simple, wasn’t it? It was at that point that she started to feel like a vice was clamping down on her heart as she hugged each of the demonslayers in turn, telling them she loved them, of course she would call, yes she remembered her toothbrush.

When she hugged Allen, he still returned the embrace a little shyly, a little awkwardly, like he still hadn’t figured out exactly how this whole ‘physical affection’ thing worked. But at least he didn’t flinch anymore. “Take care of yourself,” she murmured to him, mussing up his hair gently. It had really grown out. “Is someone going to cut your hair?”

Allen shrugged. “I don’t usually bother going into winter.”

Queri hummed in acknowledgement, and then turned to Dustin. He seemed a little surprised when she tugged him into a hug, but returned it graciously. “You two take care of each other,” she amended her previous statement. They reminded her a little of her and Mimi, if she was going to be honest. Dustin nodded, that solemn look on his face that Queri had grown to know as strength rather than weakness.

Allen’s eyes flickered from Queri to Dustin, and a small smile lit his eyes. “Yeah, we will.”

“Oh, stop hogging her,” Mimi said, pulling Queri into a bear-hug. Queri laughed as she did, muffled by the boobs that were now very much all over her face. Height difference problems, she supposed, if it could be called that. “I miss you already.”

Queri put her arms around Mimi, and let herself soak in the feeling of holding her, and of being held, holding onto that feeling of warmth and connection. “I’ll call you when I find somewhere to stay for the night,” Queri promised.

“You better,” Mimi said. “I’m calling you at some ungodly hour if you don’t.”

Queri kissed her on the cheek, and then after a moment of thought, once, quickly, on the lips. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Mimi’s words lost their teasing edge, and although she needed to go, her arms didn’t loosen around her.

“Mimi, I need you to let go of me.”

“You’re not letting go of me.”

Queri made a noise of frustration, and Mimi let go with a huff. Sparrow was crying. Kidd was scowling at the car like she could stop it from running with the force of the look alone. Fay was helping her, Queri reckoned. God, she loved them all so much.

“Isadora?” Queri prompted, since the girl had wandered to peer under the bush beside the front steps.

“There’s ants,” she declared. “They seem to be happy.”

“I bet they’ll be happier if you leave them alone,” Queri pointed out.

Isadora shrugged, as if she didn’t particularly cared if they’d be happier, but stood up, tucking scraggly, dirty blonde hair behind her ears as she did. “Also, it’s Izzy, not Isadora. I only get called that when I’m in trouble. And it only works with the rest of my name.”

Right. “Woops,” Queri said.

“Uhuh.” Isadora bounced happily into the car. I need to do some research to decide if she would be in the front or backseat because fuck if I remember where a six year old sits… Probably the back? Anyways.

It dawned on her the farther away she got from the house, what was happening. It came in little waves, like an illness that tried to claw its way up her throat, the sickening realization that she was leaving behind her favourite people in the world. What are you doing? her brain seemed to yell. They’re back there! Why are you leaving?

Because, dumb brain, she told it stolidly, glancing at Isadora—Izzy—in the rear view mirror, this kid needs someone who can look after her and protect her. And this town is getting too dangerous for her.

Calling New York City a ‘town’ was a little bit of a stretch, but she reckoned she could make it work for the sake of making it sound like a movie line.

She made conversation with Izzy. Just casual stuff, at first. She felt bad for the kid, being dragged away from her life. Ultimately though, she wanted to take the time in the car to make sure she knew what was going on.

“Do you know why we’re leaving, Izzy?” Queri asked.

The girl’s bubbly demeanor quieted a bit at the question, appropriately. “Yes,” she said. “The demons at the office are going to try to find me again.”

“Do you wish we weren’t leaving?” Queri asked. That question was more for her own peace of mind, admittedly.

Izzy shook her head. “They scare me. I want to leave.”

“I don’t know when you’ll see your parents again, but I promise that I’ll tell them what’s going on once everybody’s safe, okay?”

Izzy nodded.

Queri weighed educating Izzy about the demons and demonslayers with the fact that the child was clearly more than a little traumatized by the incident and would probably rather not think about it. In the end she would have to know about them. She was a demonslayer, and willful ignorance was a pet-peeve of Queri’s.

“You can ask me questions about the demons if you want to, and I’ll answer them, okay?”

Izzy nodded again, this time adding, “Okay.” After a moment of silence, she asked, “Are all demons bad?”

“Yes,” said Queri. “All demons are bad. And half demons are, too.”

“Isn’t Dustin a half demon?” Izzy asked, brow furrowing. “He’s nice. I like him. He has soft hair.”

Queri smiled a bit despite herself. “I stand corrected. Most half demons are bad. And they’re a lot more dangerous than regular demons because they can go between our world and the demons without possessing anyone.”

“Will I get possessed?” Izzy asked, and she was scared, and Queri thought maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to have this conversation in the car where she couldn’t properly comfort her or assess her body language.

“No,” Queri said firmly. “You have to give a demon permission to possess you. As long as you never do that, you won’t get possessed.”

“Why do people give permission, then?”

“Good question,” Queri said dryly. “People are desperate, Izzy. There’s a lot wrong with this world and the demons promise they’ll fix it, if only you’ll let them possess you for a bit. They make it sound like a good idea. You have to know better, though.”

“I know better,” Izzy said firmly. “I saw all those people who were possessed at the doctor’s. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

“Good,” Queri murmured, thinking of Allen and how he had never had a choice in the matter.

Isadora had long been told by adults around her that curiosity was her vice.

Izzy was also gregarious enough that she didn’t particularly care.

She and Queri had settled in a motel for the night, and long after Izzy had been put to bed, she listened to Queri typing away on her laptop, eyes wide as her mind spun with whatever it was that she could be doing. She was curious.

Eventually, she had no idea how long she had been laying in bed, she said, “What are you doing?”

Queri’s eyes flicked up towards her, her face illuminated only by the screen of her laptop. “I thought you were asleep by now,” she murmured.

Izzy shimmied into a sitting position, and then shrugged. “I can’t sleep. The pillows are too small and the sheets smell wrong.”

Queri raised an eyebrow at her, but didn’t tell her off. Izzy also missed home, and her parents, fiercely, and she wanted to cry about it, but while any commentary on her damnable curiosity had slid over Izzy like water, the expectation to be tough, to not cry, that had been a far more effective lesson to her. So she didn’t. So she turned to her curiosity. “What are you doing?” she asked again.

“I’m trying to find us somewhere to live,” Queri said.

When she didn’t seem like she was going to continue on her own, Izzy struggled briefly with putting her questions into words. “What are you looking for?”

Queri rubbed a hand down her brow and said, “Low demonic activity. Which generally means either low population, or upper-class population. Have to be careful with that, though, because there are some corrupt bastards up there too.”

“So what’s the problem, then?”

“I had to leave my job in order to come with you,” Queri said. “I left the position I’d built up at my job, and I left with short notice so I’m unlikely to get a very good reference from them.” Izzy’s face twisted into a look of confusion. “When I try to get another job and they ask my old job how I was they’ll tell them I did that and they don’t like it.”

“Oh, okay. So what does that have to do with it?”

“I won’t be able to afford an upper-class place,” Queri said. “Not that I’m particularly thrilled with the idea of living in an upper-class place to begin with… A black woman with a white child and no husband is likely to attract some… unwanted attention.”

“That’s weird,” Izzy said, frowning. “What, because you couldn’t have birthed me?”

Queri laughed softly. “Well, I guess I technically could have, if the father was white, and your genes were really picky. But yes, it would be unlikely.”

Izzy nodded. “People are dumb.”

There was a knock at the door, and both Queri and Izzy flinched a bit. Izzy looked at Queri a bit fearfully. Queri’s eyes reflected what she was thinking; no one should know that they’re here. No one should have a reason to be here.

That left two options: It was someone who didn’t know who they were and wanted something benign, or it was someone they didn’t want to see, and they wanted something far more dangerous.

The string of succinct curse words that left Queri’s mouth when she opened the door was enough for Izzy to settle firmly on the second option, and like the insatiably little curious parasite that she was, she scuttled up behind Queri, peering around her.

“There’s an ‘m’ on your face,” Izzy blurted out, before she could stop herself. Probably shouldn’t have said that. Oh well. No going back now. The man’s eyes met hers, and she stared back boldly.

“What a delightfully honest child,” the man said, and his voice was smooth and deep and it reminded Izzy of syrup, but something about it seemed off that she couldn’t put her finger on.

“What are you doing here?” Queri asked, not wasting time on pleasantries.

“Do you know him? Who is he?” Izzy asked, tugging on Queri’s sleeve where it hung above her where her hand jammed against the door frame.

“This is M, he’s a half demon, and he came to my house once before and caused all sorts of problems,” Queri said.

“Did I?” M said, sounding pleased at the prospect.

“You sure did. Now please explain your presence. I’m not feeling particularly benevolent towards you after your last visit.”

“I have information,” M said, “that I’m fairly certain you could benefit from.”

“We’re doing fine,” Queri said tightly.

“I’m sure you are.”

“Izzy, please go back to bed. Or at least, sit on the bed,” Queri said, and Izzy scowled at being left out of the conversation but didn’t say anything as Queri stepped out into the hallway with M and shut the door behind her.

Shockingly, Izzy did not go to the bed. She layed down on the floor to try to hear what was being said.

“I know how hard it is these days to find somewhere with low demonic activity,” M said.

“Yeah, I’m sure you do, since you’re part of the fuckers who made the world this way.”

“Such animosity,” M scolded. “Here I am, risking everything I have to sell you some very precious information, and you treat me like dirt.”

“Why do you think I would make a deal with you? My job is literally to not make deals with you. It’s pretty straight-forward.”

“For the same reason everyone makes a deal with a demon: you get desperate.”

“Well, I’m not desperate yet,” Queri said stubbornly, but it did not escape Izzy that this allowed for the possibility of her becoming desperate.

“I’d be a valuable ally, you know,” M said. “I work with the operation that’s hunting you. I can give you inside information on it.”

Queri didn’t say anything for a moment. “Why are you doing this? If you know where we are and you work with them, why are you offering me a deal instead of serving us up on a silver platter?”

“One gets bored when one is as old and devious as I am,” M said. “I like to… shall I say, stir the pot, every now and then. This story of yours, it ends much too boringly if I were to not offer my help. Plus, it’s always good to have contacts in the human world, especially one as skilled as yourself.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Queri said flatly.

“You asked, I answered.”

“As far as I’m concerned, I have no reason to trust that you won’t run off to your boss and tell them exactly where we are. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t put you down.”

M sighed. “Because you wouldn’t succeed, and I would hate to tarnish the good-will I’ve earned—” Queri snorted “—by using my power on you. Look, I’m not here to start anything, I just saw you looking in the [insertlocationhere] area and thought you might appreciate a warning that—”

He abruptly cut himself off, and then swore once, softly. “I didn’t mean to say that,” and his voice sounded just vulnerable enough that Izzy believed it. “I’m trying to sell information here, not give it away.”

“Go away, M,” Queri said. “I won’t make a deal with you.”

“I know you will, if it protects her.”

Her was probably Izzy, she thought.

Queri didn’t answer, but when the handle started turning, Izzy jumped and hurled herself down the small hallway and onto the bed.

When Queri walked inside, and Izzy was very clearly not even trying to sleep. “What did you hear?”

“Everything,” Izzy said shyly.

Queri shook her head, and Izzy expected another line about how curiosity killed the cat, and Izzy would parrot back the rest of the line, because once she had gone looking for it because it seemed like such a dumb line. Instead, she said, “It’s good that you’re curious. You need that, as a demonslayer, in order to not get scared off by what you learn.”

It was a bit chilling, but pleasing all the same.

Allen felt the demon slide into his body, and quickly felt it out, testing his power against it before throwing it into what he thought were the right places and hoping for the best.

It didn’t quite work out, and Allen would have gritted his teeth in frustration if he had control of his body, which only made him impatient and sloppier. He had made some improvements to his repossession since coming home (he had finally given in to calling it as such); he still wasn’t allowed to do any physical training, a fact which frustrated him to no end, but Mimi insisted that it wasn’t as important, anyways, since he couldn’t use his tattoos.

“I want to learn the half demon combat, then,” Allen had insisted, but Mimi was already shaking her head.

“That’s high-impact, hard-hitting, and entirely too risky for someone who’s recovering from brain damage,” Mimi said severely, and when Allen had opened his mouth to rebuke, had interrupted him before he even got started by saying, “We’re still teaching you how to fight, but it’s in the most efficient way possible. Suck it up and get to work.”

That had reminded him enough of his father’s words to him that he had, but he had also been scattered for the rest of the day, the echoes of the words chittering through his head like bats in a cave.

But once he had slowly gotten his mind to consider what she had meant, rather than what the words reminded him of, he had to admit that she was right. He was being taught to defend himself in the best way possible, and that was something his father had never taught him to do. His father had done everything he could to make sure Allen couldn’t defend himself.

And he was just starting to come around to the idea that perhaps that was an absolutely vile thing for him to have done.

In his impatience, he ended up just shoving more power at the demon, overwhelming it into submission. It worked, of course, because Allen was starting to learn that he had quite a decent amount of power, and this demon wasn’t particularly strong. He had the feeling his baptism of fire into repossession at the office was going to make almost anything else feel weak, pitiful.

Allen walked over the Mimi and held out his hand, a wordless invitation to banish the demon. Mimi didn’t. She crossed her arms and said, “Sloppy,” the word biting and hateful.

“I know,” Allen mumbled. “I get angry and then it’s all that I can do.”

“No excuses,” Mimi snapped. “You can’t keep it up forever. It’s a weak demon, but you’ll eventually run out of juice, and I haven’t taught you to get a demon out of yourself yet, so here’s the deal. You’re going to have to learn how to be more delicate with your power, or you’re going to run out of power before someone will banish that demon for you. Okay?”

“You’re going to leave it in me,” Allen said flatly, panic clamouring to life inside him already.

“Yes,” said Mimi.

“That’s a terrible idea!”

Maybe Mimi could see that Allen was starting to lose it because she sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, head angled downwards. “It’s not,” she said slowly. “It’s not a terrible idea. I’m… sorry… for being so grumpy. I’m still adjusting.”

“To Queri being gone.”

“Yes.”

Allen rolled his tongue around in his mouth, and thought about what he would be like if Dustin was off somewhere where Allen didn’t know what he was up to or how he was doing, and then nodded. “I understand,” he said.

“Yeah? Little snot of a kid like you?”

“Fuck off,” Allen said, scowling, his good will quickly evaporating. “I don’t have to be almost forty to understand having a best friend that you rely on.”

Mimi’s face contorted, and it wasn’t quite an apology, but Allen wasn’t sure she was capable of apologizing twice in the same minute, so he took it for what it was.

“I still think you should try to keep the demon repossessed for as long as possible,” Mimi said. “It will be good exercise for you. It’s a weak demon, so it won’t hurt anyone, and I’ll let everyone know. And I’ll keep someone on door duty so that it won’t be able to sneak out with you. Okay?”

Allen still really didn’t like the idea. It scared the hell out of him. “That seems like a lot of work for everybody for a training exercise.”

“It was actually quite normal when the guilds were around,” Mimi said.

“Oh,” said Allen, considering this. “What kind of demon is this?”

“Stinky sock, I believe.” Allen snorted. “Yeah, I know. Does it have any power?”

Allen cast around inside of himself, and then nodded. “Yeah, a bit.”

“See what you can do with that, too, then.”

That appealed to him significantly more. If he could avoid a fiasco like last time by having better control over the power of the demon inside of him, he would. “Fine, I’ll do it.”

Mimi clapped him on the shoulder. “What a champ.”

Allen rolled his eyes, brain already churning, and walked out of the room.

Allen growled softly in frustration at the sock in front of him, and the kernel of power inside of him that was supposed to make it smell really bad.

Dustin laughed softly, leaning forwards over it from where he sat across from Allen on the bed. “It’s hard, I know,” he said, and Allen scowled in agreement. “It’s like trying to shape water with your hands, if your hands were a bunch of tentacles that you don’t know how to propely move yet because you’re a baby tentacle monster.”

“That is a weirdly specific metaphor,” Allen said, “and yet it is accurate. Fuck.” The last bit was as the bit of power he was trying to manipulate wobbled and collapsed onto his knee. At least the power didn’t work on things that weren’t socks. Otherwise Allen would smell quite awful by now. “Why are you so intent on this, anyways?” Dustin asked, watching with a small smile as Allen tried again with the smallest amount of power he could break away. That in itself was a skill that was surprisingly difficult, but that Allen was trying to master because this demon had so little power that otherwise he depleted it before he could get any practicing done.

“Uh,” Allen said, trying to focus.

“Shouldn’t you be more worried about finessing your repossession of it first?”

Allen slipped again, and sighed. “Nah, after I thought about it I realized Mimi underestimated me if she thought I was going to run out of power any time soon with this demon,” he said. “Also, I have an idea I want to try out with this demon.”

“An idea,” Dustin repeated.

“Yeah.” Allen glanced around furtively, as if somehow someone had gotten into their room between then closing the door and now. “I’m going to make all of Kidd’s socks smell. All of them. And she won’t even know why or how.”

He knew he looked like a smug bastard, but that was because he felt like a smug bastard, and the feeling was better than he had thought it would be.

Dustin laughed, the sound surprised. “I was wondering when you were going to get comfortable enough here for your devious side to emerge.”

Allen smacked Dustin lightly on the knee. “I’m not devious.”

“Uh-huh,” Dustin said. “That time you put fake snow all over your room and then convinced me that it was possible to snow inside was… an accident. I’m sure.”

Allen’s face broke into a grin, all at once, and he folded over laughing. “Oh my gosh, that was great. I wasn’t expecting it to work, you know? It was supposed to be a joke. But then you bought it.”

Dustin smiled a bit despite himself. “Yeah, yeah,” Dustin said. “I’m sure it was fantastic.”

Allen just gave him a shit-eating grin.

Allen had this focus that wasn’t often seen because of his few academic pursuits, but that came out whenever he had a clear goal, or a problem to untie. He sank into this focus as the evening progressed, not moving from the room except for snack breaks whenever the demon’s power ran out and needed time to replenish, and Dustin insisted that he needed to eat something.

“What are you up to, locked away in your room?” Char had asked at one point, shoving a peanut butter and honey sandwich into his hands. He had tried to just grab two pieces of bread and a spoonful of peanut butter, just mind still churning with the technique that he had learned and budding with ideas for what to try next. He just blinked owlishly at her, trying to pull himself out of his thoughts enough to form an answer.

“Practicing,” he managed.

Char shook her head, a small smile on her face, and Allen scuttled out of the kitchen, already feeling over the bit of power that was growing back inside of him.

It was very late by the time he felt that he had enough control over the power—in very small portions, mind you—to try out his joke. He happened to know that Kidd, as a chronic hater of laundry, had done all of her socks that day, and as a chronic hater of folding, had left them all in the laundry basket in the sitting room.

Feeling maybe a little bit devious, Allen sat down in front of the basket and went through it, applying just a bit of power to each sock. The stench was glorious. He folded the socks neatly as he went, because that was somehow funnier than leaving them in the heap they had previously been in.

Queri slowly turned the corner, her senses on high-alert. She didn’t know why M had directed her towards this town in particular, but she figured that there were two prominent options: one, that it was a safe place to settle, or two, it was a hub of demonic activity. Either way, it was worth checking out. If it proved to be the latter, she could let Mimi know and they could try to clean it up.

As it was, the latter was looking infinitely more likely. The city was big, sprawling, and seemed to be suffering. There were more boarded up shops and empty, run-down streets than she cared to count. Those that she did see had a look of tough coldness, as if they were actively trying not to care about the world around them. As if that was the only way to survive here.

She sucked in a breath as she felt a demonic soul rush into existence on the human plane, and heard Izzy squeak as she did as well. “That felt like the office,” she said.

“Yeah, that’s what it feels like when there’s a demon nearby,” Queri said, pulling over quickly and parking the car.

“Dustin didn’t feel like that,” Izzy said. “He felt normal.”

“For some reason the sense doesn’t extend to half-demons,” Queri said. “I’m going to go check it out. I want you to stay here, because you’re not trained yet and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Izzy nodded, looking properly serious.

“Okay,” Queri said, mostly to herself, and reached down to feel her knuckles in her pocket before stepping out of the car. She locked it behind her, and set about tracking the feeling of the demonic possession.

It was an infuriatingly slow process. It was an instinctual, base thing, probably just a way of identifying kin—because whether demonslayers liked it or not, they were related to demons in one way or another. Queri herself had dealt with small bursts of demonic power her whole life before Char bound it into demonslaying power with the tattoo.

Finally, she found the source, and wasted no time in pulling on a mask, stalking into the movie theatre, and punching the demon out of the poor woman’s body.

The woman collapsed, and Queri caught her, lowering her to the ground.

“Everyone leave,” Queri said, her voice distorted by the masking technology. Everyone did. “Ma’am,” she said softly, speaking to the woman now. She looked at her, wide-eyed and unblinking. “Ma’am, do you remember what happened?” Queri purposefully put her body between the woman and the room full of carnage, turning them away.

The woman just continued to stare at Queri until a small trail of saliva trickled down her chin, and Queri frowned. She heard movement outside of the theatre room and started. Something was very, very wrong. Gently laying the woman down, she hid herself behind the rows of chairs as a man stalked in. He didn’t seem to note the damage even slightly, going straight for the woman. He scooped her up, slung her over a shoulder, and walked out.

Of course, Queri followed them. Quietly. Distantly. She lost them when they climbed into a car, and she wasn’t at all willing to bring Izzy with her on this chase, even if she could get to the car before the others disappeared. She took note of the license plate and make of the car, and then turned and went back to the car.

She found a hotel room and set Izzy up in it with room service and a movie before she headed out again, the incident gnawing at her.

The woman had been insane, certainly. It wasn’t uncommon in victims of possession, especially those without demonslaying blood, and yet something about it rubbed her the wrong way. Usually someone who had gone through a possession would lash out, express fear, paranoia, or hallucinations. They didn’t become living vegetables. They didn’t have men come and collect them as if this was an everyday occurence.

She had suspicions, but she didn’t want to give any of them strength until she had more than circumstantial evidence to back them up.

Methodically, she worked her way around the city. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking for. A couple times demonic presences flared up, and then flickered out before she could locate them. It was infuriating.

After this happened for the second time, Queri almost growled to herself. She had been getting closer, she was sure of it.

Then she saw the car from earlier, probably, Queri thought, leaving the scene of the possession that had just disappeared.

Now we’re talking, Queri thought, and smoothly adjusted to follow it. Subtly. From a distance.

When the car pulled into a garage beside what looked like a private hospital, Queri kept driving past, but observed it keenly as she did. This was a… strange part of town for a private hospital. A sign out front read ‘Amy’s Psychiatric Ward’.

Queri’s feeling of unease shifted smoothly into something sicker. Were demons targeting psychiatric patients? She considered her options as she aimlessly wandered around the block. She could try to enter as a patient, or a visitor, to get a better scope of the place. That would be more tactful than a B&E, and far less illegal and likely to jeapordize her career. It would be hard enough finding another job as a black woman with a bad reference. She was a little bitter about that. After all the work she put into getting a good reputation… maybe they hadn’t taken it as badly as she thought they had.

But she couldn’t help but think that there was more than just demons making deals and people sad and angry and insane enough to make them involved here. She saw the trickle of drool from the woman’s mouth again, the man tossing her over his shoulder like she were a bundle of goods rather than a person. Her suspicions laboured to make themselves heard over her loud protests about the lack of proof.

“I shouldn’t break in,” Queri muttered to herself as she pulled back into the hotel parking lot and parked. She didn’t get out of the car.

Demons never felt all that right to begin with, but something about this situation definitely felt extra wrong. It tugged at her instinct, screaming at her to get away, to not be seen—but that wasn’t her job, and she knew that if there was something wrong here then that was nothing but all the more reason to stay and figure it out.

She was still fighting with herself about it as she slowly got out of the car and locked it, and all the way through the hotel lobby and up the stairs (she wanted the time and exercise to think) to her and Izzy’s room. When she finally got the door to open for her (she had always been shit with the hotel room key cards), she found Izzy standing in the little entrance hall.

“I heard you trying to open the door,” the little girl said in a whisper.

“Sorry,” Queri said. “Did I wake you?”

Izzy shook her head mutely. Queri gestured forwards and the both of them went back into the room. She hopped back onto the bed but didn’t lie down, instead smoothing out her nightgown and looking at her lap.

“What’s wrong?” Queri asked, going to kneel in front of her. She rubbed a hand over her shoulder, and Izzy shrugged. “It’s okay to be afraid, you know. And sad. This is a hard thing to do. Let yourself feel that.”

Izzy’s face crumpled a bit, and she reached out blindly for Queri and Queri took her immediately into her arms. She drew her onto her lap on the bed, holding her head to her shoulder, hugging her soundly. She was crying now, and Queri couldn’t help but wish they hadn’t had to do this to her. It wasn’t fair to her. But it was the right thing to do for her, and for the rest of the world, for many other people would suffer aside just her if the demons had succeeded in putting the forsaken tattoos on her back.

“That’s it,” Queri murmured, stroking her hair. “I’m sorry this had to happen.”

Izzy didn’t cry for long, all things considered. Thirty seconds later, she pushed back from Queri, wiping her hands across her face messily. “Sorry,” she muttered.

“Don’t apologize,” Queri said. “Expressing your feelings is an important part of healing. It’s perfectly natural to feel lots of negative emotions in the situation you’re in.”

Izzy giggled. “You sound so… so… tech… technique—” she frowned as she groped for the word.

“Techincaly?” Queri provided.

“Yeah. That.”

“Comes with the territory of being a lawyer,” Queri said dryly. “I hear that a lot.”

“Did you find anything?” Izzy asked, still sitting on Queri’s lap even if she was no longer buried in her shoulder.

“Yeah,” Queri said. “I’ll tell you about it once I know more. I’m going to go back tomorrow.”

“Can I come?”

“No,” Queri said. Seeing Izzy’s disappointed look, she said, “I’m sorry, but it’s a psychiatric hospital, and I don’t know what’s going on inside. I don’t want to bring you if I might have to fight my way out. You might get hurt, and you’d be a liability since I’d have to be protecting you the entire time.”

“A lia-what?”

“Liability. A weakness for me.”

“Oh,” said Izzy. “Okay.”

She still looked disappointed, but hopefully she at least understood, now. “Get some sleep,” Queri said. “I’m going to see if I can dig anything up on the hospital and then do the same.”