6.

Effie waited for her light calming spell to hit, studying the boy while the van made its way through the night.

"What's your name?" she asked, trying but probably failing to make her voice softer, more comforting. She had been good at that once upon a time: being comforting.

Now? Not so much.

The only people who willingly spent time with her now were those who had been there from the beginning. The second beginning. The true one in a lot of aspects. Her own beginning had happened years before that when the Council had rung her parents' doorbell and she had been shipped to England.

"You know my name." the boy mumbled back, covering his face with his hands for a couple of seconds.

She simply waited. She was certain she had never seen him before in her life and a glance at Madge told her the girl didn't know him either. Or, at least, didn't remember him from before – before the Seam had completely fallen, before the vampires had entirely taken over, before…

The boy dropped his hands and took a deep breath. The spell was helping him keep calm but she had to admire his self-control. Someone else might have been in utter panic right about then.

Because whatever was going on, it was clear he was not in Kansas anymore and not everyone faced world-changing tornadoes with the same poise…

"Gale." he said, a touch of resignation in his voice. "My name's Gale Hawthorne."

"Hawthorne?" Thresh repeated, briefly taking his eyes off the road to glance at him in the rear-view mirror. "Like Rory Hawthorne? I thought your mom had taken the lot of you out of town after what happened to the little one."

"Posy?" the boy, Gale, asked, worry twisting his voice. Effie heard true panic in his tone then. "What happened to Posy?"

Thresh awkwardly shifted in his seat. "My cousin… She said Rory's sister got… You know… Snatched. That your mom was going to try to get you out of the state."

Madge hid her disapproval but barely.

Effie tossed her a discreet chiding look.

The fact was she didn't know how many children that Hawthorne woman had but attempting the cross with even one kid was dangerous enough. It was dangerous attempting it on one's own. And yet people still tried.

"Snatched?" Gale repeated. "No, no, no… Posy was fine earlier, I…"

"No child has been fine in those parts in a very long time." Effie cut him off, curbing her voice into gentleness again.

The boy kept shaking his head. "I don't understand what's happening, I don't… Everything was fine earlier. Everything was… normal." He tossed an anxious look through the windshield. "It wasn't like this. The Seam… It was normal. People in the streets, no broken lights, it wasn't… It wasn't dead."

The teenagers on the front seats exchanged dubious looks. Effie pursed her lips, leaning back against the cold side of the van, pondering…

There was always a chance the boy had simply cracked, that the terrible reality of their everyday life had become too much and that he had gone insane… He wouldn't have been the first and he wouldn't be the last. Lose enough people and it makes you unhinged. She knew that better than anyone else.

But there was also the tiny possibility that he was telling the truth, as crazy as that sounded.

And they lived in a world where vampires ruled the night and a mouth to Hell bubbled beneath their feet so crazy had to be redefined daily.

"You said Maysilee beat Snow." she reminded him. She tried not to imagine it, not to picture it. Above all, she tried not to remember what had really happened. "Everything just went back to normal after that?" she insisted. "The vampires did not take control of the town? The state?"

Gale shook his head. His hands were bunched into fists and he pressed them hard against his thighs. "There are a lot of them. More now that Snow's been freed but… But it's not like this. This is a nightmare. And Katniss… Are you sure Katniss…"

"I don't know a Katniss." Effie reiterated, hiding her irritation as best as she could. "And I am certain whoever this Katniss is, she is not the current Slayer."

She had talked to Mags two weeks earlier. A lot could have happened in two weeks but if a rogue Slayer had activated in the Seam she would have known. She would have sensed it.

"The world isn't supposed to be like this." he snapped, losing patience. "Something happened."

"That demon…" she hummed. "The one you mentioned…"

"Sejanus." He nodded eagerly. "He must have done something… We were talking and suddenly…"

He lifted his hands and let them drop a little helplessly as if to better illustrate his point.

"What did he look like?" Madge asked, her thinking face on.

Gale described the demon as best as he could. It didn't ring any bell with Effie and, apparently, it didn't ring any bell with Madge either. Too generic a description probably. Ridges on one's face could apply to at least thirty species that Effie could name on the top of her head.

Madge was very good at demonology though, she had memorized a lot of the books in the library, so if anyone could figure it out, it was the girl.

Effie approved her studies whole-heartedly. She had tried to initiate her to magic but the girl didn't have the natural talent for it and she was much more of a scholar anyway. She was suited to that kind of research. She would have made a fine Watcher - might make a fine Watcher one day if Effie found a way to either escape this hell with her merry band intact or to win the hopeless war she had inherited from Maysilee and Caesar.

She would have her and Peeta look at some of the books, she decided, try to identify that demon in case it was one of Snow's latest ploys. She wouldn't put it past the master vampire to send troubled boys her way either to spy or just to add to the chaos.

"You did not have any suspicion he was a demon?" she insisted and when the boy shook his head, looking a bit ashamed, she waved that away. "Did he say anything?"

"No…" Gale frowned. "Wait, yes… He said something about justice being done, about a wish being granted…"

Thresh and Madge both let out twin groans.

Effie managed to express her irritation a little more politely with a huff.

"A wish demon?" Madge scolded, glaring at him. "Really? Don't you know you should never make a deal with those?"

"But I didn't, alright!" Gale scowled. "We were just talking! He was my friend! I thought he was my friend and I was just complaining about…" He stopped, shook his head. "I didn't…I didn't make a wish…"

For all his protests, his voice dissolved into uncertainty and Effie rubbed her forehead, the everlasting headache increasing another notch. "Justice is done, you say? Not vengeance or revenge, justice?"

Hesitantly, he nodded.

"Were you, perchance, feeling a touch vindictive lately?" She didn't manage to hide her sarcasm and it didn't go over well with the boy who sneered at her.

"If you weren't trying to turn Katniss away from me…" he retorted.

Madge twisted back around to face the road, apparently as uninterested as Effie now felt. "Yep. That's it. Vengeance demon."

"I hate those." Thresh snorted. "Always a mess."

"Mystery solved, at least, children." Effie offered, aiming for cheerful. She tried sometimes. To act like she used to feel. To remember what it was to be full of joy. To remember what it was to feel human. "It broke the routine, let's not complain…"

Gale seemed flabbergasted or maybe angry. It was hard to say and she wasn't that interested anymore. She had bigger fish to fry than an idiotic teenager accidentally making a wish to a vengeance demon.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" the boy snapped.

"Language." she shot right back, annoyed enough that her magic flared.

She pulled back on her mental leash and brought it under control. But it didn't entirely settle down. She could feel it bubble inside her, right under every inch of her skin, burning and searing and so desperate to escape her tight grip… More and more it felt like trying to control a thousand wild horses at full gallop with a frayed piece of string. More and more it felt like the magic was riding her instead of the opposite.

But that was a concern for another time. A time when she could worry about herself instead of about the people under her care.

It was wishful thinking, of course.

Magic always came with a price. She was just hoping she could pay it when it was all over. Somehow.

"What's a vengeance demon?" Gale insisted, his voice a growl.

"It is all in the name really." Effie explained with a sigh. "A vengeance demon will appear if you feel extremely vindictive and will coax you into making a wish to repair the wrong you have suffered… Some specialize in certain areas… Cheating partners, molesters, domestic abuse… Some like to keep it diversified. We see our share of them around here for obvious reasons."

"But I don't…" the boy started protesting only to abruptly fall silent. He winced a little. "What about if I felt my best friend was being unfair to me?"

"If the betrayal runs deep enough, you could have attracted one… We live on the Hellmouth after all. Even in your weird fantasy." Madge commented, sounding a little bored.

If Effie had found the energy, she would have worried about how numb the girl had become to all this suffering. Maysilee wouldn't have wanted her niece to grow as bitter as Effie, even a niece she had never met.

Gale winced harder. "Alright. Alright. So how do I fix it?"

"You can't undo a wish." Thresh sighed. "Even idiots know that."

"Fuck you, man!" the boy snapped.

Effie suddenly swiped her hand in the air, left to right and Gale choked in indignation when he felt the spell take effect. It was a small spell. Practically tiny. It sealed his lips together. She glowered at him.

"I do not tolerate that kind of language." she stated again, enjoying the feeling of power that came from that rush of magic far too much. "Now, here's the thing… Whatever ridiculous wish you made because your friend hurt your feelings, it was powerful enough to create a different reality. One where Maysilee never succeeded and one where Snow rules supreme." And it was hard not to be resentful about that, hard not to look at the boy and not see the reason for all her problems, all her sufferings. However, in the grand scheme of things… "And it is irrelevant to us because those are the cards we have been dealt, this is the world now and, for us, nothing has changed. You, however, will have a lot of adjusting to do, I fear." The boy was young. Seventeen or eighteen perhaps? It would be pointless to hold a grudge. And dangerous. Her grudges were never safe and he didn't deserve it. He hadn't known what he had been doing. "Wishes never work out for the best."

She took a deep breath, had to force herself not to give in to the dark pull of the magic that wanted her to hurt something, to ignore the evil whispers of the Hellmouth in the back of her head, to make sure she still had a tight hold on the dozens of spells that tugged her in different directions at once… So many spells sometimes she felt like they would tear her apart…

"We're at the first checkpoint." Thresh declared.

Unnecessarily in her case.

She had felt the wards surrounding the Village closing back around her, welcoming her back, pulling her apart a little more…

Her little fortified suburb was a lighthouse in the dark. Electricity was unreliable since it was under the vampires' control, like everything else, but they had their ways. A few generators, a couple of witches, a few useful demons and half-breeds who didn't quite enjoy Snow's rule – political refugees, they called them – torches and fire pits…

Refugees, people who needed shelter, lost souls… They could see it from afar.

So could the vampires.

But Effie didn't regret her choice to stand firm instead of going underground.

It had proved the best option in the long run.

And the humans who were still running free, running scared, needed the beacon of hope in the distance, needed to know Good was still fighting, was still resisting, was surviving…

"Welcome to Neverland." she told Gale and she almost managed to mean it.

Welcome to Neverland! What a nice little place we have right? XD So... What do we think about this Effie? Are we feeling sorry for Gale? I do feel sorry for him, he didn't mean it and it doesn't look like he's making friends... I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Please let me know!