Saturday morning, it was Mephisto and not Daphne who was waiting in the practice ring when Rin, Shura, Katsumi, Hiriko, and the others showed up for their first official blade bonding lesson. Rin might have been surprised if he hadn't already spent the last two days trying to get ahold of her and failing miserably. All the same, it wasn't exactly comforting to see Mephisto, either.

The dude didn't make excuses for Daphne, or say where she was. He just informed them that classes would continue as scheduled after the hiccup of today and instructed Rin and everyone else to take turns working with the exwires for the next two hours to help get them up to speed. Then he summoned his chair and plopped down in it to watch. Rin made sure somebody else was going to handle the exwires before stepping over to Mephisto.

"You talked to Daphne?" he asked.

Mephisto just looked up at him, somehow holding a steaming cup of tea now. "Hm?"

"Daphne. You talked to her?"

"Oh. Hardly. She sent me a rather scathing message requesting, nay, demanding some time off. She threatened to quit altogether if I didn't comply, so I chose the lesser of two evils and acquiesced." He sniffed, then sipped his tea.

"Did she say why?"

"Why what?"

"Why she wanted time off?"

Rin was hoping if Daphne had told Mephisto anything, that it wouldn't have included any tidbits about himself. And that she might have given the demon king an indication of where she was or what she was up to. Mephisto sensed that Rin was fishing. He narrowed one of his eyes.

"As a matter of fact, yes."

Rin waited for more. Mephisto just smiled, keeping quiet until Rin started to squirm.

"She said she was going to Boston."

Rin's jaw practically unhinged. "She what?"

"She said she was going to Boston?" Mephisto repeated, but Rin was already halfway out the door.

The second he made it home, Rin threw a bunch of clothes and shit into a backpack and ran to the train station. He anxiously tapped his toes and chewed on the inside of his bottom lip waiting for the one that would take him out of Academy Town to the airport. The second the doors opened at the airport station, he bolted from the train, up the stairs onto the street, and across the street into the airport terminal. Of course the lines to talk to the employees behind the desks were hellishly long because it was a Saturday morning. He almost went insane weaving back and forth between the dividers until it was his turn.

"How can I help you?" the attendant said, smiling pleasantly.

"Hi, yeah, um, I need to get on the soonest flight you have to Boston?"

"You'll be purchasing a ticket today?"

"Yes."

The guy nodded and clicked away on his keyboard, his eyes flicking over a computer screen Rin couldn't see. What if there weren't any flights leaving for Boston today? What if there were and they were all full? Shit. He should have checked before coming all the way out here… Rin drummed his fingers against the counter.

"It looks like we have two flights to Boston departing today. One direct flight in an hour, another with one connection at five forty-five."

Rin practically fell over letting out a sigh of relief. "Great."

"There are a few seats available on both." The attendant kept typing as he talked, then flicked his eyes up to Rin. "Which would you prefer?"

"The sooner one."

"All right. We'll have to rush you through security."

"That's fine, this is all I've got." Rin gestured to his backpack, then remembered Kurikara. "Oh. And this."

The attendant raised an eyebrow at the sword. "You'll have to check that," he said.

"That's fine."

An hour. An hour and Rin would be on a plane on his way to Daphne and everything would be fine. He passed Kurikara across the counter to the attendant while the guy typed away, asking Rin's name, address, to see his passport, all that stuff that he needed to know to book him a flight. Eventually he looked up and smiled.

"Your total comes out to 198,555 yen."

Rin tried not to think too hard about that number as he passed over his credit card.

Stained glass was never as impressive at night.

Daphne was sitting in the backmost pew of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, watching as the lights of cars passing on the street outside temporarily illuminated some of the bottom windows. Temporary light. Temporary colors.

Her gaze turned toward the altar, the distant sculpture that sat at the back of it barely distinguishable. She could just make out the figure of Christ at the bottom, the crucifix near the top. Two angels on either side of the crucifix. The rest of it was just a white almost-triangle. Overhead, a few more lights flicked off.

The cathedral was officially closed to visitors. She'd been inside it all day, and sitting in the pews for the last four hours, watching patrons, pretending to pray. She didn't know if she believed in God anymore, if she ever had, but this place still felt like home to her. A refuge from the outside storm.

A single set of footsteps echoed across the stone floor near the altar. A door closed, then Father Michael appeared. She'd called him two days ago, told him she was coming, asked him if she could stay at his place and he'd responded, "What's your flight number? When do you get in?" and had been there at the airport to pick her up.

He was young still, only fifty-three, just starting to go gray, though it was nearly impossible to tell since his hair was such a light shade of blond. He was large, and boxy, with a flat nose and kind eyes. Daphne hadn't realized how much she'd missed him until she'd seen him standing in the waiting area at the airport and she'd promptly started sobbing. It had been three years since they'd been together last, and six years before that. Father Michael grinned as he approached her.

"You ready to go, kiddo?"

Daphne nodded, standing up.

He took a half step, Daphne fell into place beside him, and they headed out of the cathedral together. Father Michael locked the door behind them.

"That Purge help at all?" he asked, glancing back at Daphne over his shoulder.

She nodded, bundling her arms against her chest in the chill night air. Father Michael had performed the Purge that morning. It was an old Puritan custom, one Daphne had endured several times in the past—a cleansing of negative energies from the soul. Castor, Pollux, and Helen of Troy were undergoing the same process, in a vault under the cathedral at that very moment. She could feel the effects of the Purge fighting to warm her spirit.

"It's still working its way through," she replied.

"Good."

"Yeah."

"You hungry?"

"Yeah."

Daphne started to walk away, but Father Michael didn't follow. She stopped, turned, and looked back at him, still standing at the door.

"You've got to learn to let other people help you bear your burdens, kiddo," he said. "You can't go running across the globe every time it gets this bad."

Biting her lip, Daphne looked at her feet. She was a runner. She was stubborn. She held onto things like they were glued to her. She knew all this. But knowing didn't make it manageable. The last two days were evidence enough of that: training, sparring, cleaning out the mountains of gunk that occupied her heart and mind. She'd spent nearly fourteen hours a day in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, trying to drink in its light, let it heal her, and she was a long ways from that yet. Perhaps things more painful than the Purge would need to be used.

"I'm trying," she replied.

Father Michael strode forward, hooked one of his arms around her shoulders and pulled her in at his side.

"Good girl," he said. "Let's eat."