"Vaggie and I have organized something really special for this weekend," Charlie announced to Group 1. "We're bringing together all the guests to watch a movie, and afterwards, we'll discuss its merits, and compare our interpretations of the subject matter!"

Leslie, sitting sans notebook for once, discreetly offered a marshmallow to Angel Dust, who impaled it onto his gold fang before chewing. This morning, he had forgiven the well-meaning but fruitless plan to vanquish Valentino. Possibly the candy had something to do with it.

"The movie we've picked," Charlie continued, "is often stated to be one of the best and most culturally significant films of all time-"

"Die Hard?"

"No, not Die Hard," she chided. "It's a story of the power of the human spirit, a story about finding freedom and hope even in the darkest of places…!"

"Wayne's World?"

The interjections were silly enough to make Leslie laugh, but she tried to conceal it for Charlie's sake.

"Oh, I know," Angel Dust said. "It's that fuckin' prison movie, right? The Stephen King adaptation, uh… whatjamacallit."

"The Shawshank Redemption, yes."

"Seen it."

"Seen it!"

As the assembled demons sounded off, Charlie waved her hands dismissively. "Well," she said, "you're expected to attend at least the second half of the evening for a discussion of the movie's themes. No exceptions! If you need an excuse to get out of work, we will talk to your bosses. We want you all here to attend and share your thoughts, or just listen to others. Even if you have seen Shawshank, re-viewing it will certainly be helpful."

Leslie had seen the movie once, as a teenager, and her mom had chased her out of the room for certain scenes. It might be good to watch it again. Hell, it had 'redemption' right there in the title; if Charlie said this movie was good for the soul, then of course it was. Still, the mandatory attendance was a new feature of the hotel's curriculum. Would it not be simpler to show the film separately to each group?

"They prob'ly don't wanna sit through it six or seven times," Angel Dust opined as they left the session. "Don't blame 'em, to be honest. Wanna grab a drink in the hall?"

"Er…" Leslie checked her watch. "Sure, I've got time. Why the hall, though?"

Angel explained that someone had re-erected the fallen pole, and he liked to watch regular demons dancing around it. "Fuckin' amateurs, always fallin' on their faces," he said. "Priceless."

o - o - o - o - o

Leslie rapped on Alastor's door after her shift on Friday night. Her fear of the magnets was interfering with daily life, and she wanted to get it over with. Why couldn't she have thought of a lesser torture? Doing a thousand push-ups… Eating those insanely hot chilies… Anything but this.

No excuses, she thought. If you can subject yourself to pain and discomfort for a few kisses, you can do it to help Angel.

Alastor answered the door with that smug grin of his.

"Are they here?" she asked.

"They're here!" he confirmed. "Had them picked up this afternoon."

Her stomach shrank. "Oh, goody."

Placing his hand at the small of her back, he showed her to the desk, where the magnets were sitting. They were small enough to go down easily, without water, even, and were stuck together fast.

"Now, these are…" Alastor hesitated, fluttering the fingers of his left hand. "I don't remember the pull grade, but they can hold at least a few pounds of weight! Rare earth magnets, they are called. Probably they will cause micro-tearing, whereas these…" He reached across the desk, and Leslie saw two more metallic lumps, also stuck together. "Not quite as strong, but when they do meet, the larger surface area should-!"

"OK, yeah, I get the picture," Leslie said, stepping back. A raw, unpleasant chill ran over her skin.

"Well, my darling," Alastor asked, as he tossed the larger magnets in his hand, "which is it to be?"

She looked from one set to the other. "I don't know."

"Let's go with the smaller," he proposed, picking them up and replacing the other two. With some difficulty, Alastor prised the rare earth magnets apart; then he amused himself by trying in vain to make the like poles meet. Leslie darted forward before he could make the opposite poles snap together; it was a visual she didn't need.

"OK."

Alastor placed a hand under her chin and mimed opening his mouth. She copied him. The magnet was cold against her tongue, tasting clean, like the flat of a knife. It was small enough, and yet she still gagged as she tried to swallow; likely a psychological reflex, to protect her from what she knew was harmful.

"Good girl," he said, patting her on the head. "You can have the other one tomorrow!"

"Can I? Oh thank you."

Alastor chuckled, his hand still resting atop her skull. "I'll remind you, this was your idea!" he said. "Not one of your brightest."

"Hm."

Leslie swallowed a few more times; meanwhile, Alastor moved behind his desk, opened a drawer and took something out. As he touched her arm, the world around them shunted, and they stood in some sort of library room, built around a long table, surrounded with dust-covered bookcases and the smell of antiquated paper. From the window view, she figured they were halfway up the building.

"I didn't know we had a library."

Alastor moved to the end of the room, towards one of those old televisions on an AV cart; and there he paused for a moment, puzzling over the set. He seemed to be holding a stack of DVD cases, not knowing what to do with them. Was he really so clueless about modern tech? Leslie strolled over, pleased to be in a position to teach him, as the opportunity came so rarely.

"So, the DVD slot is here," she explained. "You press that, and then take the disc you…" She trailed off, noticing the covers on his DVDs. "Alastor! What the fucking fuck?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Why do you have these?"

He had the nerve to shrug. Leslie snatched away the cases and put some distance between herself and Alastor. It was bad enough he'd seen her old self in photographs, but finding and taking the videos was too far, and she felt a rash of embarrassment which threatened to eclipse the outrage.

"Well, pardon me for taking an interest!" he said.

Leslie felt her claws dig into the plastic. "Interest? Oh, bullshit!" she argued. "Leave my past alone! God, you won't be happy until you've laid claim to every part of my life, will you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Alastor said, coming to get her. "This was just curiosity: part of my research into your sins, such as they are. No-one is marking their territory! The vee-dees are yours, and you're free to reclaim them-" he took her arm, "-after you clear something up for me!"

She sighed and let herself be dragged. "Oh?"

With Leslie's grudging assistance, they posted the topmost disc into the set. Mortifyingly, she was on the DVD menu as a randomized freeze-frame, in mid-dance with her arms stretched and chin doubled. Lovely. She wished she didn't care, but that was the thing about her relationship to Alastor: he made her self-conscious for the smallest imperfections. Moments of ugliness and fatigue. Her awkward laughter. The perspiration from prolonged work and exercise. Moments of humanity, spiritual notions, feelings... all anathema to him, all things he professed not to have.

But did he mean to make Leslie self-conscious? He'd argue it was all in her own head, a problem she gave herself by comparing to him.

Alastor sped throughout the recording, remote control in hand. "I was watching this one," he said, "but as you see, it keeps-"

"Going and going. Yep."

"What is the context for this?"

Leslie leaned on the table, next to him, ignoring the footage. "Charity danceathon," she explained. "Just me breaking it down for six hours straight, and this is footage of… maybe half. Didn't smash any work records, but we raised $1,100 for cancer research, so it went pretty well!"

"Who is we?"

"Uh, my DJ friend did a quick set, my mom was helping out, my sister filmed... it was a great day. And, y'know, Karlton turned up for some of it," she added, "but six hours is a long time."

Alastor gave her a look, but held his tongue. With a few jabs of the remote, Old Leslie spun and skipped and shimmied and tangoed in increasingly fast motion; in lieu of reliving it, New Leslie examined the spines of nearby books. There was no cohesive genre that she could see, and one of the empty shelves had a message carved into the back: "GET THESE OUT OF MY ROOM ~ HUSK".

Near the end of her bygone performance, Alastor found what he was looking for.

"There," he said, switching to regular play. In the video, Old Leslie was kneeling with her eyes unfocused, arms reaching up and out in faultless repetition. Barely audible was the song that accompanied her dance. That day, the autoplay consigned her, with this particular song, to a deep, dark place. "What were you inebriated with for this dance?" Alastor asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Nothing," she insisted. "Just Gatorade and liquid protein."

"Hogwash," he said (the Alastor version of 'bullshit'), and pointed at the TV. "Look at you. Tell me that's only exhaustion!"

Indeed, Old Leslie had a queer, crazed expression on her tired face. She crouched, swabbing the floor with her head, clawing across the polyvinyl, and raising her arms to the heavens. And the song? There were no lyrics, only drums, claps, metallic wub-synth, and a woman's throat-singing. The throat-singing was the soul of the thing. Sometimes they were electronically stuttered, but regardless, the vocalist told a tale in desperate gasps, in the primal spirit of a race for one's life.

"I hate that song," Leslie said.

"Then why do you have it?"

Like the photos of herself and Karl: too painful to use or discard. Just another stupid relic she was compelled to keep.

"It was meant for something else," she murmured, fingers resting on her temples. "This woman I saw once, she wanted to do some physical theater. She'd had this really traumatic experience I won't go into, but this song and dance was supposed to help express it. Be kind of-"

"Primitive?"

"Yes! Like… the oldest form of dance." Leslie gestured to the screen. "This is what I've been talking about, with the… I don't know. Maybe you dance for the joy of it, Angel dances sexy-"

"As do we, on occasion!"

"But there's another facet to dance, and you're staring right at it. It means something…" she said, sitting back, "if you're not a sociopath, anyway."

There was a lull between them, as Alastor watched Leslie's former flesh-vessel wring itself dry on the dance floor.

"You project," he said, "astonishing weakness."

A defeated sigh. "Let's turn this off then."

"Pick one of the others."

She grumbled, but did as he suggested. One of the DVD cases gave her an idea. Before the horrid tune could reach its crescendo, she ejected the disc and replaced it. "This one is interesting," she said, "because it's me and the troupe rehearsing a talent show audition. See if you can guess which one I am."

It was a standard ensemble piece, the music unremarkable, but Alastor soon saw the interesting part. All twelve members of Dance Dance Revelation, as they were called, wore identical skin-tight garments, facial coverings and wigs. With skin and hair concealed, it was nigh impossible to discern one dancer from the other, which was exactly the point. Alastor left the table's edge, standing beside her with a competitive sheen in his eye.

"The front row?" he asked.

"I'm not going to tell you."

Leslie's clumsy hands put away the danceathon disc; her attention was for Alastor as he focused on the screen. His jaw was clipped shut, still smiling, but concentrated. So often she'd felt his discerning gaze; it was strange to see it from the outside.

"There," he said, and pointed.

She checked it out. "Hey, you got it! Good guess!"

"You needn't humor me."

"No, really, you got it right. OK, look away for a sec." He did, regarding the ceiling until the troupe had shuffled. "Try now," she said.

Alastor, again, gave the matter serious consideration. It was not a case of eenie-meenie-miney-mo; he seemed to refer to some inner knowledge he couldn't possibly possess. Eventually, he pointed again. "You!" he declared.

She nodded in surprise, reaching for the remote. "Yep. That's me," she said. What gave it away? Never mind. This time, Leslie sped through the dance at x8 speed, determined to catch him out. Pause. "Here. Last try."

This time, he barely hesitated. "This one."

Leslie pressed play and let the remote fall, literally struck dumb. Only twelve of us, she told herself; it wasn't like he'd blindly plucked the aces from a shuffled deck… Still, he gave the correct answer so fast. How did he guess right the last time, when the troupe's differing kinesics was removed by the pause button?

"That's weird," she said. "I don't… "

Alastor didn't wait for the question he knew was coming; instead he stood up and stretched. "Well, I don't know about you, but I'm in a dancing mood! Shall we?" Without waiting for an answer, he took her hand and spun her so rapidly her ears flew out and smacked her in the face.

"Ow!"

"Whoopsie!"

She heard his inner radio, the dial tuning back and forth, until the air was filled with a jazz standard of his choosing: Leon Redbone's rendition of "Some Of These Days", according to him. As they danced, Leslie tried to shrug off her cares, dancing as he did, for the hell of it, laughing with the tempo changes; and just for a few minutes, she forgot what a bastard he was, and about the magnet slipping through her digestive system.