A/N: Mild horniness from here on out. You have been warned. Also, we are now halfway! EEEEEEP!

Quil's mind is a billion miles away as he lopes into the house. He carelessly kicks his shoes aside as he crosses the threshold, not bothering to watch where they land. That'll be tomorrow's mystery. Sam is being such an asshole - it's not Quil's fault the shack is fifty shades of possessed, but there's no arguing with him when the order settles into place.

It's a BS way of winning the battle, but Quil's set on winning the war. He just has to get Mary on his side.

He squints into the darkness, half-hoping to find her stretched out across his couch. It's a pipe dream, thinking she could somehow materialise, but it doesn't quell his wishing. A corporeal form would be sick, and she's bound to be smoking hot. That's like, the first rule of ghost chicks.

"Mary? You here?" he calls into the darkness.

Instantaneously, the room is bathed in dim yellow light, illuminating all of the shadowy crevices in the blink of an eye.

"Ugh, I thought you were never coming home. Playing with the fixtures is so boring without freaked-out humans," she whines, brushing past him with a spine-tingling breeze.

"Sorry. Pack dinner," he replies, dumping his backpack onto the kitchen counter.

The zipper begins to slide along the teeth, slowly revealing the overflowing contents of his bag.

"Dude, don't be nosy. What did we say about boundaries?" he grumbles, but there's no real annoyance simmering behind the words.

"Well, the rule was to stay out of your personal stuff. You take the bag to school. That can't be too private," she points out as she rifles through his things. "Geometry? Boring. I always liked Trig."

"Of course you did," he mutters, digging around in the fridge for a beer. "Feel free to experiment with my homework."

She snorts, sending a puff of air whistling past his cheek. "Doubtful. As if I'd ever…"

Her voice trails off mid-sentence, and Quil raises his eyes from the vegetable crisper to study his backpack. What could possibly be so distracting in there?

Did he still have the condoms from Jared's stash?

Had Jake returned his shoplifted Penthouse magazine?

Could it be -

The crumpled notepaper from his library research slides out onto the counter. The heavy circles around taxilit doesn't do him any favours, either.

Busted.

"Why are you researching spirits?" she asks sharply.

Quil silently prays for a massive windfall in next week's pack allowance, because even the Lord knows his lightbulb budget can't take the hell she's about to unleash.

"Well, I realised I don't know anything about your...kind. I thought it would be polite to check some specifics," he offers, crossing his fingers behind his back.

"I can see your fingers, dweeb."

He abruptly drops his hands to his sides.

"You don't need to research me," she says, but it sounds more like persuasion than reassurance.

"It's nothing bad, I promise you," he says, trying to sound as sincere as he possibly can.

Convincing her would be so much easier if he could just figure out where exactly she stood - physically and figuratively. Her agenda grows murkier by the day, and he's got a piss-poor sense of deduction combined with four brain cells - a losing combination, whichever way you looked at the matter.

"I don't care, Quil. Drop it."

His skin prickles at her acerbic tone, sending tiny tremors throughout his body. Every cell in his body is screaming to phase, to split his skin and shift into his real form.

The last time he'd uncontrollably phased had been months and months ago, shortly after Paul had imprinted on Rachel (mourning for those titties was a surprisingly triggering task).

He's not an overly emotional guy, not by any measure, and yet he's barely hanging on to his humanity.

Why?

Before he can question it too much, her biting tone returns to fill the silence.

"I'm going out. Spirit business."

A small pop rings out, and he can only assume that's her disappearing to another plane...if she can even do that.

The logistics are quite confusing, really.

He contemplates their little spat as he strips off for a shower, flexing in the mirror for the sheer sake of it. Sure, life may be weird and confusing, but at least he has a banging body and a dump-truck ass that just doesn't quit.

Maybe Mary's into that, he muses, cranking the water temperature all the way to hot.

He dips under the spray, relishing the wet heat cascading down his bare back. The tremors have entirely subsided, though his muscles ache from holding the wolf in. He hasn't phased in two days, which probably doesn't help his control, but losing grip is unusual.

He grips himself with a wet palm while he thinks, his mind inevitably slipping back to Mary. If he really focuses, he can kind of remember her dark eyes staring back at him in the mirror, glinting with untold humour as she'd mocked his befuddlement. With every taunt that left her perfect lips, accented by a jaunty tip of the chin, her messy curls had bounced, swishing around her shoulders in a perfect wave of motion.

God, what Quil would do to see her, really see her, in the flesh. He leans his forehead against the cool shower tile, lazily pumping himself as he imagines her standing naked before him. She was the kind of woman that commanded all of his attention, and she'd totally be commanding in the bedroom, too. The raw feminine energy she exuded made his wolf (and other aspects of the man) stand to attention, ready and willing to follow any direction she would bestow upon him. There wasn't an aspect of her perfectly infuriating being that he didn't crave; more than anything, he wanted to dip his mouth to the juncture of her neck, losing himself in her (almost certainly) intoxicating scent.

Jared was always going on about how his wolf would clamour to mark Kim in the heat of passion, with Quil being inadvertently privy to his many near-misses.

Quil, with his dubious self-control, would stand no chance.

He lets out a strangled moan, working his hand faster along his length.

He imagines pressing his lips against her dark skin, taking her salty flesh between his teeth. She'd gasp and tense beneath him, begging for his mark branded upon her body.

She was entirely irresistible - one command, and he'd be sinking his incisors into her goose-fleshed skin, allowing the wolf to dominate his body and his mind.

He comes with a sudden shout, his hips uncontrollably bucking as he releases his seed against his hand. He comes so hard his vision whites out, leaving only an equal throbbing in his head and his dick that compete for his attention.

If he wasn't sure before, he's positive now.

He, Quil Ateara, is a total goner.

Quil wakes to a cool palm pressed to his shin. He startles, acutely aware of his near-nakedness - a threadbare towel around his waist is not appropriate napping attire, he realises, a thought that arrives far too late.

He rubs a hand against his tired eyes, dreading the awkwardness that's sure to follow. "Sam, we've gotta work on knocking -"

"I'm not Sam," she says, and his world stops.

His eyes snap open, staring up at her in disbelief.

She's perched next to him on his bed, her legs curled beneath her totally corporeal body, and he's half-wondering what kind of drug he's been exposed to.

"You're...real," he breathes, reluctant to shatter the illusion.

She laughs, and it's just as rich and full as he'd remembered.

"I was always real, idiot," she says, and the smile that spreads across her flawless face makes his breath catch in his throat. "Things changed, that's all. Having a body again is nice."

Her words fade into his periphery as he drinks in her newly visible appearance. He'd remembered her chocolate-brown eyes perfectly, though he hadn't noticed the inky fan of her lashes against her cheeks, nor the smattering of freckles adorning the bridge of her pointed nose. He allows his eyes to dip a little lower, noticing with a start that she's wearing his clothes. Better yet, she hasn't seemed to realise her hand's still pressed against his leg, and he's gonna enjoy that for all it's worth.

She watches him watching her, her smile quirking even higher. "Yeah, apparently spirit-wear doesn't materialise so well. Borrowing your clothes is for the common good."

Quil extends a shaky hand to rest against her arm, delighting in the sheer humanness of her warm flesh. "You're - I can't - you're really here. In my bed," he says, his voice terribly strangled.

She giggles. "Yeah, I am. About time, right?"

"Why now?" he asks, holding in the rest of his query: why not sooner?

Her lips purse as she weighs her words. "Yeah, this next bit is gonna suck a little. Stick with me here, okay?"

Quil nods, internally offering her a million and one yeses. Shit, he'd offer his left nut for a chance with her. Patience? He can manage that.

"You were right," she says, staring into his eyes with insistent seriousness.

He almost forgets to breathe. "Right? Uh, about what?"

"Christ, you're dense. Your notes. The notes about spirits," she clarifies, cocking her head. "The taxilit stuff."

It takes Quil a moment to process anything other than the fact her hand has drifted upwards to rest against his thigh. Diverting the blood from down south is a Herculean effort.

"Quil, did you even hear me? I'm your taxilit. I'm here for you."

"Me?" he croaks out, his voice a humiliating high-pitched squeak.

She nods slowly, giving his thigh a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

He just about comes in his pants.

"I don't want to lie to you anymore, Q. They killed me so I could wait for you."

Either this is some truly unhinged shit, or he's living in a horror flick

"Um...are you confessing to being murdered? I'm not really sure what to do with that information," he says slowly, rubbing the back of his neck.

Billy's post-puberty girl talk very much did not prepare him for this eventuality. That, alongside trying to figure out how to talk to her without sending her away in a puff of air (or, more accurately, a pop) is a recipe for a migraine.

She waves a hand dismissively. "We'll get to that part later. It's not as important."

Quil nods, trying to wrap his head around it all. "Right. Okay. You're my taxilit."

When he thinks back later, he'll mentally slap himself for being so focused on her, so obsessed with memorising every perfect, minute detail of her being, at the expense of tuning everything else out.

If he could have kept it in his pants, he would have heard the bedroom door opening.

"Quil Ateara, what the fuck did I just tell you?" Sam roars, his face a lurid shade of red.

He curves his body in front of Mary, attempting to shield her entirely from view, but she's not at all surprised by Sam's sudden appearance.

"Joshua Uley, huh? Guess we're going for a second round," she growls, her eyes darkening to a menacing shade of black.

Her fingernails dig bloody crescent moons into his thigh.

Somehow, his day just keeps on getting worse.