Demonsense: Demon Master Part 2

"Then prove it. Give me your name," Daniel replied, circling Geoff, his back to the wards.

"My name is my own," the demon replied angrily. Geoff was sweating freely now, and the air was starting to smell.

"Your name is something you took from our minds. All you demons are nothing but a reflection of our darker myths and fears. You are nothing on your own."

"I am not nothing! I exist, I have existed longer than you, longer than your father or father's father have been alive!"

"You don't exist without a name," Daniel taunted.

"I exist! I exist!" Geoff's voice was high and near hysterical with emotion now. The air was so thick with heat and with mineral smells that it was becoming hard to breathe. But at the same time, the demon's particular energy signature was starting to emerge.

"You are nothing, a mere parasite of the air," Daniel mocked.

"I am Bulteka!" the demon cried. "And I will destroy you! It is you who are nothing. All of you are food, nothing more!"

Here's where it got really dangerous. There was a point when a demon left its host where it could take physically destructive form, in the form of fire. What it wanted most was to stay in its host, but at some point, it might want to kill Daniel even more.

And at this time of most danger was when the exorcist had to attune his energy to that of the demon, wrap it in the ritual energy raised by the spells of exorcism, and eject it from the subject. In Daniel's place, she would be raising that energy through prayer, would, in fact, have begun before trying to get the demon's name. Daniel had managed to move around the area encircled by the wards until he was next to the silver tray holding the salt, holy water, bread and blessed wine. He gathered up a handful of salt as he replied. "Your host is more than food. He loves and is loved. He has physical form. Do you have any of that?"

The demon began to laugh in a way wholly unlike an eighteen year old young man. Geoff's whole body was shaking with it. "I have this host. I have all that I want to eat, and all of it is good. That is all I need."

Daniel began moving around the circle, letting the salt trickle from his hand onto the ground. "By Sky Father, by Thor, I command you. By Odin, Father of Knowledge, I command you," he intoned. As he moved, Bree could read the pouring of magical energy out of Daniel's body and into the salt. As he finished the circle, he blew gently on the remaining salt in his cupped palms, then cast it forward into the air, onto Geoff.

The demon roared in protest, a wordless roar, and Geoff charged Daniel. Daniel closed his eyes, clearly focusing on his personal wards. The boy managed to grip Daniel by the shoulders, but the strength seemed to go out of him almost immediately. His arms slowly dropped to his sides, and a blank look descended on his face. So long as the demon stayed in Geoff's body, Daniel could deflect him.

Daniel's eyes opened, and Bree could see by the rise and fall of his chest that he was breathing hard. He stepped back outside of the salt circle, took up the bowl of holy water and began circling again. "By Mother Frigg, by Freya, by Ostara, I command you." More power rushed into the water.

Bree found herself strangely stilled and entranced by the ritual, her tightly held fear calming even as she watched Geoff start to come out of the paralyzing affects of the defensive wards and become more agitated. This was more power than she and Seth together could have raised, and her confidence that the exorcism would be safely concluded solidified. She focused her Reader sense on Daniel, curious about what he was doing on the energetic level with the demon as he built up the magical energy through ritual. To her surprise, his Demonsense was only lightly engaged. She would have been started the attunment at this stage.

Daniel cast holy water onto the demon, and this time, Geoff shrieked in what sounded like genuine pain. He crouched down, arms wrapped around himself, and started rocking, a stream of syllables coming out of him in a rush, nonsense or some other language, Bree wasn't sure which. Daniel took up the chalice of blessed wine circled again. "By Skadi, I command you. By Frey, I command you. By my ancestors, I command you. By the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost of this sanctuary, I command you." He completed the circle a final time, sprinkled the wine over Geoff, whose rocking and keening increased. Tears poured down his face. Daniel put the chalice back and raised his arms in the final ritual gesture, his face was tilted toward the ceiling, when Geoff sprang at him, throwing himself against the wards raised by the ritual.

Daniel paused, eyes drawn by the movement, and it was a good thing he did, because he was at least partly prepared when the demon left Geoff's body with a last howl torn from the boy's throat as the boy collapsed to the ground. It quickly formed into a vaguely devil-shaped form of fire, lacking in detail, but not lacking in strength. With a hissing and flaring of energy, it turned and was on Daniel before Bree could do more than take a breath. Fear drenched her with shocking suddenness.

What in h.e.l.l had happened? Daniel had been fully in control, the ritual energies flawless. She stepped forward, closer to the demon as she began attuning to it for all she was worth. She didn't have the ability to pull it off of him by main strength, but she might be able to attune well enough to conclude the exorcism. Her only choice was to trust Daniel to fight off the demon while she did so.

Her fists clenched with the intensity of her concentration as Daniel grappled with the demon. His personal wards seemed to be keeping it out for now, but it was clear he wasn't able to get control of it. The ritual energy he'd raised was still pulsing in the room, but he was too busy keeping the demon from burning him to use it.

Bree almost had the attunment, she could feel it, and she started to reach for the ritual energy, shouting, "By the Father, by the Son, I command you!" She had only a moment to register the strange look of relief on Daniel's face as the demon's form suddenly collapsed and flowed into him. The heat that had been building in the room immediately began to disperse. The demon had given up on trying to kill Daniel and had possessed him instead. Daniel's wards must have given out. She hadn't been quick enough.

Father Steuban's voice had become much louder. He was praying his heart out. Geoff was still unconscious. And Daniel rose from the half-crouch he'd been in as he struggled against the demon. There was an orange light in his eyes, and his face was stiff. Bree's Demonsense was hammering away at her, and her stomach turned at the thought of the demon inside Daniel's body. She was partly in shock. Her chief fear had been that the exorcism might hurt or kill Geoff if they didn't get it right, as that was always a risk with exorcisms. She had never been afraid a demon could possess Daniel when he was prepared and had his personal wards up.

Now she had to try to come up with a way to get a demon out of a man whose magical abilities outcla.s.sed hers on just about every level. If the demon got full control of Daniel, they were all f.u.c.ked. She found herself seriously considering calling on Gelsenim for help.

A ripple of expression came and went on Daniel's face, one of desperation. In that moment, Bree knew Daniel was fighting the demon, and she remembered he had the power to simply order it out. The question, of course, was whether he had the will left to do so. She had a brief moment to consider that if he did, Father Steuban would be in the know about Daniel's Demon Master abilities, but right now, getting the demon out of Daniel was more important. The best she could do on that score was move to put herself between Father Steuban and Daniel. She did so, then moved closer to Daniel, feeling for and strengthening her own wards as she did so. "Daniel," she said softly, "listen to me. You have to get it out."

"I do not want out," the demon said with Daniel's voice. Bree shuddered with revulsion, but she made herself step closer and meet Daniel's eyes. "Daniel," she tried again, "I need you to do this. Fight it. Make it leave."

Daniel took two swift steps and grabbed her by the arms. His face contorted as the demon fought the influence of her wards. Bree had to leave off the attunment she'd been re-building and put all her efforts into her wards. She was trembling all over and so afraid, on such a primal level, that she wasn't even sure she could tell if her wards were working. Daniel's hands felt hot even through the sleeves of her sweater, and he was holding her hard enough to bruise. "Please, Daniel," she said desperately, "please try." She saw the orange light in his eyes flicker, and his face registered doubt. Taking a great risk, Bree raised her hands and laid them gently on his face. "Do it for me," she whispered. Daniel closed his burning eyes, and his whole body shook. Then his eyes shot open, he pushed Bree away, and his voice, his own voice, said, "Demon, I command you! Leave me!"

Bree stumbled backwards, caught her balance, then moved further back as the demon left Daniel's body.

She felt the power in the room double, then triple as the demon whirled, beginning to coalesce again into a physical form. She felt Daniel's energy merge with the ritual energy and move to encircle the demon. The demon felt it too, felt how it was losing the fight.

"You think you have won," it's voice slithered out of the red cloud. "But this is only one battle. A war is coming, and when it does, I will find you. And it will not be slow, your death!"

Daniel gestured sharply, and said, "Be gone!"

Bree could see its fiery form solidify an instant before Daniel's hands turned palm down, and all the energy of the circle landed on top of the demon. "Into the earth, disperse!" Daniel cried furiously.

The energy of the demon dissolved in Bree's senses, and she felt rather than saw the gateway to that other world open up inside the ground below them to receive the demon's remains. For a moment, they were frozen in place. Then the gateway snapped shut, and Bree's breath came out in a whoosh. She wasn't sure how long she'd been holding it.

Daniel's arms fell to his sides. Then he carefully crouched down, struggling a bit not to topple over in the process, and rubbed a hand across the triple circle he had made, muttering the words to release the last energy of the ritual spell. There was a sense of a minor concussion in the air as the spell was dismissed, and Daniel straightened up slowly, still breathing hard. Bree wanted to go to him, but at the same time, felt distaste at the idea. She couldn't help but have the sense that he was contaminated from the demon contact. And in point of actual fact, he could be. He might have picked up taint. And if that were the case, it was her job to find out and get rid of it.

Father Steuban clambered painfully up to his feet and went to Geoff, who was still sprawled unconscious on the ground. While he tended silently to the boy, Bree walked over to Daniel. "You okay?" she enquired, crossing her arms in front of her.

He rubbed at his sweaty forehead with his sleeve and muttered, "Not really."

"Stupid question," she agreed, as she s.h.i.+fted her weight uneasily back and forth. He looked pale, and he was avoiding looking at her. She got the strong impression that he was struggling to get his emotions under control. As this was something she devoutly wanted him to do, she just stood quietly, allowing him time to gather himself. She didn't even try to read him yet, focusing instead on calming herself.

"Every thing alright?" Father Steuban asked, coming up to them and laying a hand on Daniel's shoulder. "It looked like things got pretty rough there. What happened?"

"The demon tried jumping bodies. Fortunately, my wards fought it off and I was able to complete the exorcism. It wasn't pretty, but it worked."

Bree watched Father Steuban closely for tells as Daniel spoke, and it appeared to her that he accepted Daniel's lie. Perhaps he'd been so involved in prayer that he really hadn't seen and heard all that had gone on.

"Well, congratulations, both of you. You've done a good thing. I'll just go fetch some water and some things to clean up the boy," Father Steuban said. "I'll wait to call his mother until he's conscious. I don't want to frighten her any more than she already is." He hurried off. Geoff was more neatly arranged on the floor of the sanctuary, and it looked like he was breathing easily.

"Well, maybe now you can tell me now what the h.e.l.l that was," Bree said quietly once Father Steuban was out of hearing range, and she was surprised at how angry she sounded. Daniel's shoulders hunched a bit at her tone, and he stared at the floor as he said shortly, "That was a possession. I fought it off, with your help."

"What I want to know is how the possession occurred," Bree answered, frustrated. "How could you let it happen? You could have ordered it off you at any moment."

"And let Father Steuban see I'm a Demon Master?" Daniel answered roughly, crossing his arms defensively as well.

"Better that than allow a possession. I trusted you!" she cried, revealing more about how betrayed she felt than she wanted to.

A muscle jumped in Daniel's cheek, and he looked away and said tightly, "Obviously, you shouldn't have."

"Oh for G.o.d's sake, don't go all 'I'm just hopelessly evil' on me. I just need to know what happened here!"

Daniel huffed out a frustrated sigh, then turned to regard her, expression irritated. "I'm not sure what happened. I've never been possessed during an exorcism before. I haven't even really needed a second since doing my first few exorcisms. I've never been close to blowing it like that. And I've never been possessed except those few times I invited Gelsenim in as an experiment. And that one time..."

His voice trailed off, and she knew he was referring to the time last fall when Gelsenim had managed to possess him during a conflict with his psycho ex-girlfriend Franchesca. Bree knew how awful he felt about that. And she'd really believed that doing an exorcism wouldn't be a possession risk for him, or for her, because he'd be completely prepared. He'd once told her he'd successfully done over a hundred exorcisms during his time as a Keeper.

Bree felt better at that thought. She hadn't been crazy for trying an exorcism with him.

"There was this thing, I don't know, a kind of surge or something when the demon tried to jump into me. At first, my wards were working fine, and I was focused on gathering the ritual energy to encompa.s.s it. But then this thing happened." His shoulders jerked up into a shrug. "I'm not sure I even have words to explain it."

"Try," Bree said shortly, controlling the urge to grab him and shake it out of him. She realized the anger she was feeling was an after reaction to the exorcism, and perhaps even more to the sense of security she had lost in the process. She'd been so sure Daniel's Demon Master talent made for a safety net.

Daniel looked gradually less upset and more serious as he considered. "Something inside me triggered me to drop my wards. The only thing I can make of it is that some part of me wanted the possession. Consciously, that's not what I want at all. The idea scares the living h.e.l.l out of me." He finally met her eyes as he continued with some heat. "I know how careful I have to be about demon contact. I'm very well aware I'm p.r.o.ne to Demon Master instability. I would have sworn that no part of me wanted the possession."

"And yet possession can feel good. I've experienced that myself."

Daniel shook his head. "I haven't. There's a certain buzz to it, but to me, it's actively unpleasant."

Bree took a moment to consciously read him as he spoke, and he came across as quite sincere to her. Her anger started to leak out of her. Maybe there really was some mystery here. And maybe if they could solve it, it would be safe again for Daniel to do exorcisms if he needed to. "It seems to me a deep read is in order. I have the one from yesterday to compare it to, so it could be quite revealing."

"Well, I'd certainly like to know if I picked up taint," Daniel conceded, sounding more tired than anything else now. He pulled his s.h.i.+rt off over his head, then draped it across his back. It was chilly in the church.

Bree moved to stand before him, and for once, she wasn't all tied up in knots about touching him. She still had a little frisson of unreasonable anger going to keep her libido in check. She put her hands on his chest and plunged into the read right away, and was immediately surprised at how his base energy read. He should by rights be quite depleted, but if anything, he felt stronger on that level than he had yesterday. His will energy wasn't down much either. She forced herself to sink deeper, and what came across at the next level was how dark the energy felt. It wasn't taint, that was clear. It felt something like depression, something like anger, and a sort of buzzing discomfort. The image that came to Bree's mind was red and black carbonated liquid that had been shaken up and might explode. She'd read perhaps four or five people after they were primary in an exorcism over the years, and none of them had read this dark. That thing she called "the darkness" was larger and closer to the surface again.

She leaned a little into Daniel, an unconscious response to her activating her attunment to go deeper yet. On the feeling level, she picked up shame, anxiety, more anger, and that old strain of self-hatred and self-doubt that Bree felt was related to growing up with Demon Master and Binder talents, widely considered innately evil and corrupt. Even worse, she felt a sense of hopelessness. She couldn't help but soften at that. She wasn't ready to give up on Daniel, not really, and she didn't want him to give up on himself. She pulled out of the read, and regarded him steadily. "No taint, thank G.o.d. But I really do think there's a puzzle to be solved here. That dark thing is worse again."

He squeezed his eyes shut, put his head in his hands, and clutched at his hair, as if he couldn't bear to take in what she'd just said. Bree was taken aback at his obvious distress, in spite of the emotional turmoil she'd just read in him. She'd seldom seen him look so outwardly upset. He usually had a gift for appearing calm and in charge under stress. Unless, of course, he was freaking out and acting seriously scary.

Without thinking, she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder as she told him, "I really do think there's some mystery here, and I don't have the experience or skill to solve it. There has to be a reason your wards fell, and I think it's related somehow to that dark energy I'm reading. I get the weird sense that it's part of you and not part of you at the same time. And that fits somehow with your feeling that you didn't want the possession at all, yet something in you moved to allow it."

Maybe it was her touch, or her effort to seem calm and straightforward about it, but his posture relaxed a little, his hands dropped and his eyes opened. "You know," he said slowly, voice a little hoa.r.s.e, "what you're describing couldn't sound more like taint if you tried. And if it looks like taint, and acts like taint, maybe it really is taint."

"But my Demonsense isn't picking up even the slightest hint of taint," Bree protested.

"And I know you're exceptional in that area. I'm not doubting you on that. But maybe this is some other kind of taint that we don't know about."

"The trouble is, who can we ask about that who won't immediately turn you in to the Ecclesias?" Bree replied, troubled. The Ecclesias would rip his powers out if they discovered his Demon Master and Binder talents, which would likely kill him.

Daniel still looked upset, but at least it seemed like he was thinking again, like he'd backed away from the edge of despair. He took a moment to get his s.h.i.+rt back on, and just then, Father Steuban arrived with a tray bearing a pitcher of water, some cups, a small bowl and some washcloths.

The priest settled the tray on the ground beside Geoff with a grunt, and poured out some water that he handed to Bree and Daniel, then downed a cup himself in several large, thirsty gulps. Then he lowered himself down dipped a washcloth in the bowl of water, and began gently wiping the boy's face and neck. Geoff had foamed a bit at the mouth there at the end, and there was blood on his mouth as well where he must have bitten his lip.

By unspoken agreement, Bree and Daniel walked out of easy hearing distance of Father Steuban and settled down into a pew, grabbing their coats along the way. Bree put hers on, and Daniel draped his across his lap. After a moment, he said reluctantly, "We could ask Gelsenim. He has eons of experience with demon kind and Demon Masters. Maybe he could tell us something about what's going on with me."

"You know how hard it is to get coherent information out of him," Bree replied. Daniel didn't answer, and what he was getting at dawned on her. "Oh, you mean I could let Gelsenim possess me, then read you. That way, I'd get a clearer sense of what Gelsenim knows."

Daniel sounded a bit guilty as he said, "It might work, but I don't like asking you to do it."

Bree found she was more intrigued than upset by the idea. "It could work," she said, thinking hard. "In fact, let's do it. I was planning on trying out the trial possession thing next weekend anyway. Do you think you..." her voice trailed off uncertainly.

"Do I think I'll be capable of calling him off if I need to? As long as he doesn't try to possess me, I'll be fine. That's how I got into trouble today. And he's certainly not going to try to possess me if he can possess you."

"Well, that's a point."

Geoff was starting to come around, and Father Steuban was helping him to sit up. He murmured something to the young man, but they couldn't hear what. Bree let silence fall between them. She felt tired out from the rollercoaster of emotions she'd just been through. At the same time, she still felt unpleasantly revved up and restless with a mixed anger/adrenaline hangover. Her mind skittered around speculations about what had happened to Daniel, about her own reactions, and she finally came around to thinking more about how the exorcism itself had gone. "You know, all things considered, that exorcism went unusually quickly," she commented. "You got the demon to the surface fast, and it didn't take you long to raise the ritual energy. It sounded like you were invoking Norse G.o.ds."

Daniel looked a little uncomfortable as he replied, "Yeah, well, it's how I was taught by my father. I'm not actively into the Norse pagan religion thing, but I guess those are the deities I'm most comfortable invoking, that I have the most personal connection with."

"What interested me most was that you didn't seem to really attune to the demon's energy to get a grip on it. It felt to me like you basically just powered it through, even though I never felt that you were using your Demon Master ability. That doesn't make sense to me."

Daniel put his elbows up on the back of the pew and leaned back tiredly. "I'm not the Reader you are, and honestly, I don't think my Demonsense is quite as good as yours either. I'm not that good at removing demon taint for that reason. The work is too subtle. For me, exorcism is more a use of Caster energy. If I can get the demon to come to the surface, I just raise a s.h.i.+t load of ritual energy and shape it in such a way that it encompa.s.ses the demon and forces it out."

"But how can you feel the shape of the demon if you don't attune? How can you feel that you've gotten it all out so there's no taint left over?"

Daniel shrugged. "I'm not honestly sure how I do it. I'm reading enough of the energy signature to get the general feel of it, then I just sort of wrestle it into the ground."

Bree zipped up her plum colored fleece jacket as she considered what he'd said. "I suppose since I'm not as much of a Caster, I've had to go about it another way. The only way I can get a grip on the demonic energy is to really attune to it. It feels pretty gross, but it works. It's also the way I was taught to do it."

"I think most Exorcists are taught that way," Daniel conceded. "In a way, I've always thought of Exorcist talent as really more of a combination of Demonsense and Reader talents in people with strong will energy. They don't have to be strong Casters. Exorcist spells are actually quite simple compared to most castings. I suspect the type of will energy most Exorcists have is a sort of low level Demon Master ability. But since I'm not supposed to have Demon Master talent, I've had to figure out how to do it mostly on Caster ability alone."

"I suppose that means you have less actual contact with the demon that way. That's definitely a good thing." She didn't add, especially for you, but she thought it.

And then what the demon had said at the end jumped out at her. "Um, Daniel, didn't that demon say something about a war?" When he didn't answer right away, Bree felt her heart sink. "Okay, that's a bad thing, right?"

Daniel most definitely did not look at her as he said, "You know how much demons like to make threats."

"Oh no you don't. Don't try to protect me on this! I'm likely to make up something even worse than it really is if you don't tell me," Bree insisted, turning toward him and putting a hand on his wrist. When he still didn't answer, she shook his wrist a little. "Come on, spit it out."

"It really may just be the usual demon threat."

"But you don't think it is."

"It fits too much with what we've been seeing around here lately," he said reluctantly. "The increase in possessions. The increased aggressiveness in the demons. There are cycles in demonic activity. It's been doc.u.mented over the years. There are times when they gather together for some reason, or are called together by Demon Masters, and you start to see wide scale changes in human behavior due to the increase in possessions." Daniel was speaking calmly, but his visible reluctance to talk about it told her how serious it really was. "There's usually some spiritual or esoteric explanation put forward about the surges in demonic activity. Right now, I'd say people are describing it in terms of our society, Western society any way, becoming decadent and corrupt, like the Roman Empire before it fell. There's less of a widespread cultural belief in the devil. Maybe most people don't think of it in terms of evil anymore. And as you know, I'm not sure I think of it in those terms either."

"The 'other dimensional beings' idea. It's not exactly a popular theory. Even I'm not fully convinced," Bree admitted as she let go of his wrist and put both hands in her coat pockets. "I mean, after all the information we've gotten out of Gelsenim, I get that demons are probably beings from some other dimension, that it probably isn't h.e.l.l as I was taught to think of it. But I'm not sure I buy that they aren't innately evil. They feel evil, they do evil. Seems pretty convincing evidence to me."

"Well, whatever they are, sometimes they go to war. They organize, usually with human Demon Masters, and usually with the cooperation of other dark magic users who want something out of the transaction. We know what the demons want out of it. They want to be able to permanently possess human beings so they don't go hungry. The question is, what do the people working with them want?"

Bree sighed. "What do they ever want? Power? Money? Revenge? We all have weaknesses. We all have darkness that can be exploited." Her mood dipped as she considered just how much darkness she had sensed in Daniel today. He was, in many ways, incredibly kind and altruistic. But he was also very angry, and very wounded. And in addition to being a Demon Master, he was also a Binder. It was another forbidden talent that made him capable of utterly taking over the will of another person. He tried not to use it, and Bree tried not to remember he had it.

"So this war thing," Bree said uneasily. "Should I be afraid?"

"Let's just say it behooves us to bone up on our warding and casting spells." He paused a beat, then added, "Immediately."

CHAPTER THREE.

Bree cut around the avocado the long way, then put down the knife and twisted it slightly between her hands. It came apart smoothly, and she looked with satisfaction at the unblemished, creamy green interior. She'd managed to get one at a perfect stage of ripeness. She put down both knife and avocado and lifted the lid on the large pot of water on the stove to see how close it was to boiling, and set it back down. Not quite there yet. She looked at the clock on her microwave. Yep, both Daniel and Dion were late. That was a good thing, because she was running late as well. Her last ma.s.sage client ran over so she was behind in getting dinner going.

She pushed back a strand of hair that had escaped from her French braid with her wrist and went back to cutting up the avocado, then arranged the chunks on the salad greens in a large wooden bowl. She was working in the limited counter s.p.a.ce afforded in her small kitchen. She'd fallen in love with the tiny jewel of a Victorian house for its character, sense of history, and plain good vibes. She loved the tall ceilings, the long, narrow windows, the wide wood trim around all the windows and doors, the worn wood floors. Having lived here for two years now, she was less enamored with the lack of s.p.a.ce. She'd given the kitchen cabinets a fresh coat of white paint when she first moved in, and painted what little wall s.p.a.ce there was a light spring green, but that had failed to make the kitchen seem any bigger.

As she finished the salad, she heard a meowing at the back door. She went to open it, and in scampered her cat Hanroi. He was an older kitten, perhaps five months old, still slender, intense and playful. He was a cla.s.sic striped grey and black tabby with prominent, rounded whisker pads, like a little lion. He announced his entrance with a loud series of meows, then jumped shamelessly up on the counter where Bree had been working.

"Hanroi, down!" Bree scolded, though without much hope. She was supposedly a Cat Master, but thus far, the only sign of that was the way she attracted cats. She seemed to have none of the Animal Master's gift for training the species of animal attuned to her. But at least with Hanroi here, the neighborhood cats had stopped trying to sneak into her house all the time. She wasn't sure how that worked, but she was grateful.

As expected, Hanroi ignored her, and she had to physically lift him off the counter. He struggled, and knocked the avocado seed off the counter and onto Bree, leaving a streak of green on her orange ballet neck sweater. She dabbed at the spot with a sponge, exasperated, and the lid began to rattle on the pot of water. She gave up temporarily on her sweater and took off the lid and dumped a package of spaghetti into it. As she was giving it a stir, the doorbell rang. She hurried through the dining and living rooms and the hall to the front door, Hanroi scampering along behind, and opened it to find Dion had arrived for the pow wow first.