darker_london | She looked into the eye of a passing storm (Rachel, Cai, Danny, Zoe)

Entry tags:

She looked into the eye of a passing storm (Rachel, Cai, Danny, Zoe)

With her nerves so high, Rachel was feeling like an electric witch again. She chewed her fingers as she waited for her friends to show up at her house, running up and down the stairs whenever a car drove past in case it was Cai or a dog bark in case Danny had Wolf or a knock on the door which could have been any of them but she thought she'd heard a few different knocks now and it was never them. Right up until the point that it was.

Cai arrived first, his hair a mad tangle as he pulled off his bike helmet. "Couldn't get the car," he said with a grin. "Dom's taking Roe to her specialist. Hey, do you know what the hardest part of learning to ride a bike is?"

Rachel shook her head, jittering.

"The pavement," Cai grinned. Rachel barked with laughter and almost hugged him - then remembered not to.

"So, y'alright?" Cai asked, following her into the kitchen for snacks. Rachel shrugged, pulling a carton of juice from the fridge.

"Too many exams," she said. "Not enough brain. Distracted."

"Yeah, same," Cai leaned against the sparkling bench in the kitchen, his eyes stunned from how bright and white everything was. Not a bit of clutter anywhere, not a single smudge of jam on the counter, not even any crumbs around the shiny, metallic toaster. "Is Zoe alright?" He asked, pulling his eyes away from the freak kitchen to look at Rachel. She was wearing a big blue and red sweater that was almost as long as her shorts, her bare legs so long and smooth and totally not distracted. "She seemed a bit... vicious on the phone this morning."

Rachel turned from foraging for crackers. "She's always like that."

"Nah... this was more. I got the feeling she didn't want to talk to me."

"She probably just needs a good promming," Rachel said cheerfully. There wasn't any junk food in the house, but Rachel had a plate of crackers and celery sticks and cream cheese. She'd discovered in the last year that she liked celery with cream cheese.

"Haha," Cai said uncertainly, and was saved from having to explain his complicated prom feelings to Rachel by a knock the door.

"Danny's knock!" Rachel cheered, and bounded toward the front door. Cai followed - he didn't like being in a kitchen this clean all by himself, it was a bit too much like a lab in a science fiction film.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

When Rachel opened the door to him he grinned and leaned in to kiss her. He was stunned by how gorgeous she was every time he saw her. "Hey beautiful," he said softly. "Cai!" He said more loudly, "hug today, or-?"

Cai shrugged but he shrugged with a grin - a hug would probably be okay, but he was playing it safe and he held out his gloved fist for a fistbump instead.

"I'll hug you," Rachel said, wrapping her arms around him from behind, even though she's already been kissed. More Danny was always better Danny.

Danny chuckled, cheered by the end of their conversation earlier, and he bumped his fist against Cai's before setting his arms over Rachel's. "Good hugs!" he said with a smile. "Are we all alone?"

"Oh, oh! Yes, welcome," Rachel let him go so she could spread open her arms, turning a slow circle in the minimalistic foyer. "Welcome to my house without my family in it. It's nicer, this way, don't you think?"

"I've never been very far into it," he said softly, glancing around the foyer. It was so...clean. Not that his house was messy, it just wasn't clinical. "Wow, it's big." He didn't know what else to say, so he went to take Rachel's hand. "What kind of a thing are we trying?"

"Aah, a thing," Rachel said, pushing her hands into the pockets of her hoodie as uncertainty set in. "I dunno if it's even gonna work."

"Rach," said Cai. "It's okay, we'll figure it out."

She smiled cautiously, and pulled a thin piece of worked glass from her pocket. "I want to know for sure how this broke," she said, passing it over for Cai to look at. He squinted it at as he turned it over in the light.

"I... see," he said. "I don't, really, but, okay. What was this?"

"A piece of a sculpture," Rachel said. "An arm I think."

Danny glanced at the statue and then back at Rachel. "Weird. But I'm here for whatever," he added happily. He was just glad she had included him, really. He wanted to help her in any way he could.

Zoe pushed the door open then, as Danny finished talking, as Cai said "I think this might help, maybe. Because it's physical - oh hey, Zoe - it's a physical thing you can concentrate on, it might help focus your mind, make it easier for me to see."

"What if what I'm concentrating on isn't a real memory, though?" Rachel worried, though she spared a moment to flash Zoe a warm smile. Cai shook his head, not understanding. "What if I'm remembering wrong? I don't trust my memories, my head is too... do you think it'll screw things up if I'm concentrating on something that might not have happened?"

"I don't think it will matter," Cai said, passing the piece of sculpture to Zoe, who turned it over in her hands, frowning. "In my experience, I've read past, future, things that actually happened or actually might happen. I don't think I'd see false memories, because I don't think it's memories I'm actually reading, but... events." He looked to Zoe for confirmation, because she still knew more about being a psychic than he did, even though their skills were very different.

Zoe was focusing her attention on running her thumb over the jagged edge of glass where it had broken, but froze when he said things that actually happened as she realised of course that meant he probably couldn't read her dreams, and couldn't see what she was thinking. Jesus - that was a weight off her mind. She closed her eyes and sighed very quietly, letting out the relief without appearing relieved at all.

"That sounds right," she said. She caught Danny's eye for a second, and smiled thinly before looking away. She wasn't as confused about Danny as she was about Cai, but still - Danny has told her he loved her, and she didn't know what to do with that. Just because she wasn't as confused didn't mean she wasn't confused.

The moment Zoe arrived, Danny felt awkward. He was trying to listen to Cai, however, and that helped a little. Focus on the issue at hand and ignore the fact that Zoe might hate him. When she offered him a thin smile and turned away, it felt like a knife in his gut, but he couldn't focus on it. He was here for Rachel.

He moved as far from Zoe as he could get, trying to respect her need for space. "Do I just...stay out of the way?" he asked quietly.

"Stay with me," Rachel reached for his hand, wrapping her fingers through this. If what she remembered was true, if Indigo was a monster, then she was going to need Danny. If Cai and Zoe could prove she wasn't crazy, she needed Danny to know that too.

And if she was going crazy? If she was having vivid hallucinations of monsters and threats, then...

Rachel didn't want to think about that. She didn't want to go back to hospital. What if she had to go to hospital and when she got out she'd lost all her memories of the last few months? She couldn't face that again, not when she knew she'd be losing good memories.

She could handle lost memories when she thought they'd all been bad. She couldn't handle losing Danny. The thought terrified her.

Funny, that proving monsters were real and in her house would mean she was not mad. The idea was so ridiculous it almost made her laugh.

She didn't laugh though. She took Danny's hand and led them up to her bedroom. The purples and greens, the photo collage, the fairylights, all of these things set it apart from the rest of the house, made it hers.

Rachel sat down crosslegged on one fuzzy rug, pulling Danny down next to her.

"I think," Cai said, joining them on the rug. "If Zoe and I take Rachel's hands. Danny, you sit behind her. That should stop me accidentally reading you instead." He gave Danny a smile, to show him that he wasn't afraid of accidentally reading Danny (even though he actually was.)

Being in Rachel's room was different and awesome. It was so her and it just made him smile as he glanced around.

Danny let himself be pulled down, kissing Rachel's neck once he was settled. When Cai mentioned he should sit back he nodded. "I wouldn't want to take over the afternoon either." He moved like he was told, his hands still on Rachel's back. "I'm here for you," he said quietly.

Zoe watched Cai get himself set up, heard the way he talked to Rachel and she listened, like they'd done this before, enough times for it to become almost comfortable. Zoe was a little miffed at that - Rachel going to Cai instead of coming to Zoe, then hiding it from her.

Cai peeled off his gloves and Rachel giggled and said "Ooh eer!" Cai winked flirtatiously, wiggling his obscenely naked fingers in front of her.

Zoe bit her lips and didn't say anything. She pushed her terrifying dream to the depths of her mind and concentrated on the present instead. She certainly wasn't thinking about those fingers soft on the back of her neck. And she absolutely wasn't remembering the time she'd pushed her own fingers through his and held his hand the whole while they watched Eurovision with Faye.

No no - Zoe had firmly decided it was probably best just to press on with matters rather than trying to figure herself out. She could do that later - today was for figuring Rachel out, a much more appealing prospect.

She ignored the warmth of Cai's hand in hers almost entirely.

It didn’t happen as fast as it had before – Cai hypothesised that the presence of Danny and Zoe was acting as a distraction, and his mind wasn’t as focused as it had been on other occasions.

“Is anything happening?” Rachel asked, after a minute. Cai’s brow was furrowed.

“I’m trying,” he said.

Rachel shifted, moving onto her knees and shuffling closer. He released her hand, and put his hand on one side of her face instead.

Well, this was awkward.

She bumped her forehead against his, her eyes open, staring into his. It could have been arousing, in other circumstances, but Cai was pretty firmly stuck on awkward. Danny was still sitting behind her, his hand on her back, and Zoe’s grip has tightened ever-so-slightly on Cai’s hand other.

He told himself he had to relax, rolled his shoulders, breathed through his nose in case his breath stank, and looked into her eyes.

Rachel was ready for it – though she was scared. The broken glass arm of the sculpture she had slid into her bra, close to her skin and over her heart. It seemed like a good place, near the heart. She concentrated on it – trying to recall the nightmare fragments of the night she’s seen or dreamed Indigo, twisted black wings and a sudden crashing to the floor of the statue, the graceful piece of art shattering, the arm broken-

Time twisted, and Cai hit the ground when Rachel hit the ground, the plastic chair and the fold out table she’d been standing on clattering the linoleum floor around her.

She lay there staring at the ceiling. Maybe she was winded or maybe she was in shock. The edge of the table had come down on her legs, below her knees, but it didn’t look heavy. She was little, though, maybe as young as Faye but skinnier.

There was a shout – a question- from another room but when she didn’t reply, a boy followed his shout in to find her. He looked as skinny as she did, though he had a gangly look about him like he was legging it toward puberty. Cai knew instinctively, the way he did sometimes in visions that this was her brother. “What were you doing? You’re so stupid!” He pushed the table off her legs, and she pushed herself up onto her elbows but cried out in shock when her arm buckled underneath her.

“Just wanted some bread,” she whimpered, and he looked up toward the cupboard where the bread was kept, and kiddylocked shut. “I think I broke my arm?” she sounded surprised.

Her brother’s eyes were wide in his grubby face. “I’ll get mum,” he said, and bolted out of the room.

Little Rachel lay on her back on the linoleum, touching her arm with her other hand. It didn’t hurt, but it didn’t work either.

It was hard to judge time in a vision, but it was probably hard for Rachel to judge time where she was, too. Cai got the impression that she was waiting for a while before her brother came running back in. He looked angry. “She can’t get out of bed,” he said. “I’m going to go and find someone who has a phone and I’ll call an ambulance okay? Can you get up?”

Rachel shook her head at the ceiling. Her brother stared at her for a second – Cai felt for him, thrust into the sudden responsibility for his little sister in the wake of a mother who couldn’t get out of bed.

He disappeared again but wasn’t gone for so long, only a moment. When he returned he was wearing a puffy jacket and carrying a blanket and a cushion, and he made her up a little bed there on the floor. She kept her arm out of the blanket cocoon, lying on the lino near a sticky patch of something brown.

Cai heard him leave, heard him locking the door behind him. There were lots of other noises around, people living their lives in the floors above and below then, in the flats on either side. There was a thump thump thump of music through the wall, dogs barking in the street below, traffic.

He was gone long enough that the Rachel’s shock wore off, and her arm started to really hurt. Instead of crying, she stared at it in a sort of growing horror, like she’d just realised this thing attached to her was going to kill her.

Then eventually she did start to cry.

Cai knelt on the floor beside her, as much as the non-presence, vision-persona he was could kneel. He’d seen children cry before, but not like this. Children cried for many reasons, and there’d always seemed to be a degree of shock in the tears. How could this have happened to me? I don’t understand? A wail, and a cry for some adult to come and help. Little Rachel, her dark hair a tangle round her face, began to cry like she couldn’t believe this was happening to her. At first, she cried like she was surprised to consider the idea that she might die on the floor.

But she did not cry so loud that her mother, awake in the other room, would hear her. She did not try to persuade her mother to get out of bed and come help her.

She cried quietly, like she didn’t want to disturb anyone with her death.

A wee while later, she stopped, as if crying had been her first instinct, but she was past instincts now, and knew it was pointless. Cai had never witnessed anyone – let alone a child – get to the point of tears where hopelessness set in.

When her brother came back he was by himself, and he looked like he’d been crying in panic too, or maybe just running hard. “It’s okay,” he said, kneeling down beside her. “I had to run to Greyson’s place and I gave him all my money and he let me use his phone, but there’s an ambulance coming soon okay?” He helped her sit up, and she opened her mouth in a silent scream as this jostled her arm, but she didn’t start crying again. She was past tears.

She leaned into her brother's arms and he sang Here Comes the Sun to her while they waited. The last thing Cai saw of them was Rachel promising with all her strength to pay him his money back.

*

Then Cai was back in Rachel’s room, lying on his side with purple fluff in his mouth. Zoe was close to him, but not so close that she’d touch him, her fingers pressing firmly into her temples and her eyes closed.

The blowback from the vision wasn't as bad as before – it never was, when Zoe was there with him; jumping back and forwards in time was easier when not alone. Physically, all he felt was dizzy – carsick, almost. Unpleasant, but not crippled.

“Rach?” he asked, as he pushed himself up off the floor. “Rach, did you see any of that?”

Rachel had pulled herself backwards and was enveloped in Danny’s arms, and though both Danny and Rachel were facing him they were both engrossed in each other. Rachel had her eyes closed, leaning the side of her face against his arm.

“Zoe?” Cai asked, giving Rachel a moment to herself with Danny. Zoe let her fingers drop from her head and opened her dark eyes.

Zoe was feeling like she’d been wrong, very wrong. All of her assumptions about Rachel’s past had been various degrees of supernatural. But now she was thinking she’d been wrong that there was something extraordinary about Rachel – maybe her story was just that of a girl surviving her own family.

She felt extraordinarily guilty, for her old assumptions. And she did not know how to apologise. She certainly didn’t know how to explain it to Cai, who was looking at her like she had more answers than he did. “Rachel?” she asked instead.

“I don’t know,” Rachel said, her eyes still closed. Her head was tucked up under Danny’s shin, her cheek against his arm as it wrapped around her. “You didn’t – you didn’t see Indigo?”

“Indigo?” Zoe said, uncrossing her legs to sit on her knees instead, like she was preparing to get up and bolt. “No, we saw- you were a kid.” She looked sideways at Cai, just to check they’d seen the same thing.

Cai took this as an invitation to take up the story, as if Zoe didn’t think she could deliver it as gently as Cai could (which was true, but not what Zoe was thinking.) He took a breath, and, gently as he could, told the story to Rachel and Danny, while Zoe pulled her notebook from her bag and began to write it all down.

Danny hadn't witnessed the vision, but he had watched as his brother fell to the floor. His instincts were to protect those he loved, and there were too many people in one room to be able to help them all. Rachel had clung to him and so he had clung back, wrapping his arms around her and whispering that he wasn't going anywhere. He wouldn't leave until he had to.

When Cai described the vision, however, his grip on his girlfriend tightened. He had his own problems with his father, but he had always been cared for, at least by his mother. He didn't even know how to feel, discovering Rachel's past as she re-discovered it. It felt wrong to know something like that without her consent.

"Jesus," he finally whispered, and he planted a kiss in her hair. "Rachel, are you okay?"

“I-” Rachel said, frowning. She felt like something important was slipping out of her fingers. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember breaking her arm, lying on the floor, her mother just one wall away but unable to get out of bed, her brother singing to her. “Feel like I should have? Feel like the memory is there, but-” But remembering her brother made her feel sick, sick in her stomach like she needed to scratch it out. She stopped, fixing her eyes on the ceiling.

The first time she and Cai tried to have a vision together, he'd warned her that she, like Danny, might be sucked into the vision with him. But, he'd added, that might just be because they were brothers. It had been different with different people: Once after he'd had a vision with Nonnie, she'd described the feeling as a kind of 'emotional echo'. Once, when he'd had the vision of Faye and Rowe on the ship, that image had found its way into Faye's dreams.

There were no hard and fast rules - or, there probably were, but it was all so new. Magic's just science you don't understand yet, right?

Rachel, for her part, was left with a hollow feeling of loss, settling deep in her stomach. The memory had come back to her slowly – starting with the emotions, and the pictures following.

Some of Rachel's memories were like Tarot cards - face down, but there. Cai had reached into her mind and flipped this one over, and even if she did put if back, face down as it had been, she'd still know what this one was.

Yes, she remembered that day. The day she broke her arm and her mother lay in the next room, ignoring her. That was the day she gave up, the first day she thought about dying.

But that couldn’t be right – she’d thought about dying before her mother tried to kill her? That didn’t fit into Rachel’s timeline of events at all. In Rachel's timeline, the depression set in after the trip to the river. Not before it.

But it felt right. Lying on the floor, wanting to be dead. It felt true.

"This was a dumb idea," Rachel said, to no one in particular.

Danny wanted to hold Rachel and never let her go. He didn't know what to say at all, but he knew he had to figure out something. He was fairly sure she had never needed him as much as right now. "You didn't know what Cai would see," he said gently. "It wasn't a dumb idea. Do- Do you want to tell us what you wanted him to see?"

"A- a nightmare," Rachel said. His arms were wrapped around her ribs and her stomach, and somehow that made the horrible feeling in her stomach easier to bear. She dreaded the moment when he would let go, and she'd be left alone with this feeling.

She knew there were other Tarot card memories around this one, face down and hidden for now. She knew that somehow the trail of upside down cards led from this memory to the absence-of-memory surrounding the river Tamar. She knew somehow they were linked, but she didn't know how.

"What sort of nightmare?" Zoe's voice intruded. "What has it got to do with Indigo?"

"Nothing-" Rachel began, but Zoe shot her with a look that said she was not going to take nothing for an answer. "I dreamed she was a monster," she answered. "I wanted to know if it was a dream or not. It probably was."

Danny's stomach felt all jumbled up though and he glanced at both Zoe and Cai. "But-" he said, feeling a little uneasy, "with what we know now...shouldn't we make sure? How can we make sure?" The thought that Rachel might not be safe even in her own home was terrifying, especially after the memory she had just been forced to recover.

"What sort of monster," Zoe demanded, agreeing with Danny completely. "A werewolf? Did she have wings? What did you see - exactly?"

The more Rachel thought about it, the more it did feel like a dream. Like the new-old memory had made everything else feel less real. The Rachel that had broken her arm on the floor of that council flat was not the same Rachel that sat on a fuzzy green rug in Imogene's house today. Remembering that they were in fact the same people made every other aspect of reality do a funny little sideways tilt.

"Not a werewolf, more like... a were-spider - they weren't wings, on her back."

"A were-spider?" Cai shuddered in horror.

"I can engineer someone to run into her," Zoe said. "Someone from Peter's hospital. We can find out what she is."

"And if she's not anything," Rachel said bleakly. "Then I'm just a crazy."

"You're not a crazy," Danny tried to reassure her. "Dreams don't make you crazy, everyone has them. And even if you did see something, that can happen too. I know when I don't get enough sleep or enough to eat, I can see things that aren't there until I fix it. You're not crazy, Rachel." He ran his fingers through his hair and then looked over at Zoe, "is this something that can happen soon?"

"I can call Peter right now," Zoe said, reaching backward to hook her fingers round the strap of her bag and pull it over. "When's Indigo going to be back?"

"Dinnertime," Rachel said in a hollow voice. "If it's true... you can't let her know I know. Zoe. She can't know that I know."

"It's okay, we'll be totally subtle," Zoe said, dialing Peter's number. So maybe there was something supernatural going on! Her instincts had been right! Hah!

Rachel buried her face in Danny's shirt, feeling like a hole was being dug underneath her, wondering how long it would be before she couldn't crawl out.

There wasn't much more he could do, and so Danny leaned his head against Rachel's and he watched Zoe call her uncle.

Peter heard the phone ring from across his office, and he darted over to it to pick it up. "Zoe?" he asked, since he recognised her number. "Everything okay?"

"Ish," replied Zoe. "Hey, Peter, we think Rachel's stepsister might be a - not sure exactly. Not a were-spider cos that's dumb. Rachel said she saw something but they 'weren't wings' on her back. Can you have someone do a fly by or something, see if they can pick up what she might be?"

Peter blinked for a second, trying to remember who Rachel was. "Of course," he agreed, a moment later. "If you let me know where it is, I can send someone. Is there anyone you want to do it specifically?" He didn't want to accidentally send someone Zoe didn't trust.

"I don't know, someone who can be sneaky? We don't want her to know we know." She looked over at Rachel to reassure her they'd all be subtle, but Rachel wasn't looking at her. Rachel was letting Danny stroke her hair and, if Zoe didn't know better she might have thought Rachel looked almost content. Eyes closed, peaceful.

"Alright, I'll ask Aly to do it," he said, settling on his wife since he knew she could be careful. "And I'll let you know as soon as she does, okay? Is everyone alright?"

Were they? Zoe wasn't sure. She reached out and touched Rachel's ankle, causing Rachel to jerk her leg away from the touch, and open her eyes. She relaxed a little when she realised it was Zoe. Are you alright? Zoe mouthed, and Rachel looked at her like the answer to that question was way, way too long. She shrugged. "I guess we're okay for now," Zoe said. "I don't think anyone's in immediate danger." She raised her eyebrows at Rachel to see if she agreed, and Rachel shrugged, which was totally helpful.

"O-okay," Peter said, sounding less than reassured himself. "Should I have Aly do this now, or wait? And if she has to wait, will there be someone who can tell her when she should do it?"

"Rachel, where are they right now?" Zoe poked Rachel's ankle again. "Sorry Peter - I just found out just now so you're living it in real time with me." There was a pause as Rachel frowned and rubbed her forehead, but told Zoe where she thought, and Zoe passed it on to Peter. "Okay, Rachel thinks they're at the beauty parlour spa thing near Hyde Park, maybe Aly could stake it out or something? Indigo's fifteen, white, big brown hair, short, and her mum's Imogene and she's a bit taller, same brown hair but it's straight. They'll be back here in a couple of hours if she can't find them at the spa, though."

"Alright, I'll call her now," Peter said, glancing at the door. "And I'll get back you. Take care, okay?"

Danny watched Zoe as the conversation wound up, and then he kissed Rachel's hair again. "Sounds like they are going to handle it for us," he said gently.

"They totally are," Zoe said, and smiled at Rachel. "Look - if it turns out she's an evil demon thing, you can just move in with me, okay?"

"What?" Rachel said, sitting up straight all of a sudden. "You're not serious."

"Yeah, I'm going to leave you here with monsters," Zoe said, eyes rolling. "I mean, I knew they weren't charming to begin with, but still."

Rachel was speechless.

The fact that Zoe was offering Rachel a spot in her home made Danny smile widely. He knew he probably couldn't do the same, since his mother wouldn't want them under the same roof, and he was relieved to know Zoe was willing. "And your mums would be okay with that?" he asked her. "I don't really want to leave her here if we find out...you know- You could stay with me for a few days," he said to Rachel then, "but my mother probably wouldn't like it to go on for too long."

Rachel shook her head slowly. "I don't wanna upset your mum," she told Danny. "Or yours Zoe."

"Shut up, they'll be fine," Zoe said, certain that they would be. Of course they would. There was a part of her that told her to slow down a bit - she wasn't sure that she was happy to live with Rachel. What if being around each other all the time ruined their friendship? Could she handle Rachel, twenty four seven?

Could she handle it if she left her here with a demon? A demon causing Rachel to have nightmares? Zoe wondered how much of the last year was down to her family - the current incarnation of her family, that is. Clearly her first family still left a deep mark.

Rachel frowned in apprehension. "Maybe," she said. The thought of moving was so big, and even though they'd both said for a while, for a few days, Rachel wasn't sure. She couldn't leave home and then go back, could she? Would her dad let her go? If he did, would he take her back?

And what if this ended in her moving out forever? Would she be able to survive without her dad? "I'm not in danger from Indigo," she said, adding silently, so long as she never finds out I told on her.

"Are you sure?" Danny asked, his expression dubious. If something happened to Rachel, he didn't think he would be able to handle it. "I mean...if there's ever a problem you know you can come to us, right?"

Rachel laughed lightly; this seemed funny. She felt like she came to them with all her problems. Some days she felt like all she did was complain. She leaned back into Danny again, wishing that this afternoon was simple enough that she could just enjoy his presence and not have to make any terrifying life decisions. "I'm okay," she reassured Danny. She'd survived her mum, broken arms and cold floors.

"You are," said Zoe firmly. "And we'll make sure you stay that way," she wasn't sure she trusted Rachel to be honest about danger. How long had she suspected that Indigo was something else? And not told anyone? Zoe couldn't comprehend her reasoning behind it.

She caught Cai's eye, Cai who'd gone quiet a while ago. "Are you alright?" she asked, hesitating - just a moment - before asking. As if asking would expose her to some kind of vulnerability. "You look gross."

Cai smiled. "You so nice, Zoe. I'm alright." He was still feeling the blowback, the achey fuzzy feeling in his head, and the feeling, the leftover feeling of... it wasn't quite sadness, or loss or betrayal. Though, he was definitely feeling second-hand betrayal and anger directed at Rachel's mother - who didn't run straight to their kid when she broke her arm? Even if they were depressed themselves? (That's the feeling he got, from the other room in the dinky dirty flat - that her mum couldn't get out of bed because she was sick.) But still. If her mum was that sick, why wasn't someone else there, helping her? Where was Rachels dad?

So many questions. It was hard to take in any worries about Indigo, he had too much to think about.

"And are you sure?" he asked his brother. There were too many people to take care of and too many things to think about and just what in the fuck were they going to do if Rachel's step-sister was some kind of demon? His head felt fit to explode. "Should I get you something, man?"

Zoe's phone buzzed as soon as the question was out of his mouth, and instantly, Danny's eyes were locked on her. "What does it say?" he whispered quickly.

The message on Zoe's phone would confirm that there was indeed an angel and a demon in the spa, and Zoe could call Aly if she needed to talk to her.

Cai shook his head to Danny, holding up his drink bottle. "Water helps," he said. Water cut through the muggy feeling in his head, cleared a path through the fog.

Zoe's face, though, was clouding over. A demon AND an angel? Is the mum the angel? Anything weird about them? she messaged back, frowning. Leaving off any questions about were-spiders. Had to be some weird demon thing.

"You were right, you know," Zoe said to Rachel. "Probably a demon. And Imogene, she's an angel. Or the other way around."

"Whoa," said Cai quietly. Rachel frowned and curled a little closer into Danny, not sure if she liked being right.

Danny's jaw dropped and he held Rachel tighter, glad she had curled into him. "Oh shit!" he hissed, staring at Zoe with wide eyes. "Shit, what- I mean, what do we do? You said they're not always bad, right? Are they always bad?" Will they kill Rachel?

"They're not always bad, no. It just means they have the potential to go bad," Zoe said.

"Everyone has the potential to go bad," Cai said with a frown.

"Yeah but demons, and angels too, they're stronger than people." Zoe reminded him. "Plus the wings. When they go bad, they're better at it."

"Shit," Danny breathed again. "W-what do we do?" he asked, watching Zoe carefully. "Rachel...do you want to stay here?"

"I dunno..." Rachel shrugged, unsure of herself. "Won't it look... suspicious, if I leave now?"

"No," said Zoe. "They don't know you know. You'll just be going to stay with a friend during the last of exams. A friend who has studied with you before, who has helped you pass so far. I'm totally the best cover story. Absolutely believable."

"I guess," Rachel bit her lips together. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"Well, stay with me and we can work it out," Zoe said, as if the path ahead was straight and clear. Maybe to Zoe it was, but Rachel could see it overgrowing as they spoke. There were so many hidden vines and pitfalls, so many places to trip and fall. But maybe if she stayed with Zoe, the path would stay clear. There weren't many obstacles that could stand in the way of Zoe, were there?

"Okay," she agreed, feeling just the slightest hint of relief as she said it. "Okay, I'll come with you."

It was a relief to hear Rachel intended to stay with Zoe. He really liked Zoe's mothers, and Rachel's father just...scared him. The idea of her dealing with a demon too- An angel didn't seem so bad, but what did he know?

"I can come see you guys there," he said, and then he glanced at Zoe, because he still wasn't sure if she liked him or not. "I mean...if that's okay."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She looked into the eye of a passing storm (Rachel, Cai, Danny, Zoe)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Oh babies.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject