9.

Gale had tucked himself in an out-of-the-way armchair, a pile of borrowed books high next to it. When she had handed him the books, Madge had promised he would find everything he needed to know about vengeance demons in there and it might have been so but he wished she had actually offered to help him look. The books were hard to read: they were old, moldy, the paper was yellowish and frail, the prints were hard on the eyes… And Gale wasn't much of a reader in the first place.

Besides, the house was in such an uproar that it was hard to focus.

He had only caught a few hours of sleep around dawn, curled up in a borrowed sleeping bag from Mellark's cupboard. They had both been woken up by what had turned out to be magical alarms.

He wasn't entirely clear on the details because nobody had seen fit to explain anything but it seemed Trinket had gone back out with a team a little before dawn to go witch hunting – irony – and had led her people right into a trap, making Gale wonder if any Watcher was ever competent or if it was just his luck. They had escaped the trap but it had morphed into an outright battle and now, it was mid-morning, and people were trickling in, wounded and bleeding, to report to Madge who was manning the house like she was in charge.

Although, since Mellark had dashed out at dawn to go to the infirmary – wherever that was, Gale was assuming another of the houses – and Trinket was still out there, he figured maybe she was.

Watching her boss everyone around was distracting and a more compelling sight than the dusty books. Her blond ponytail swayed left and right as she ran to fix one problem after another. She noticed his staring, he could tell because she kept tossing him irritated glances.

Somehow he got the feeling she didn't like him.

That felt weird. Mostly because his Madge didn't seem to dislike anyone.

He tried to focus on his research but the more he learned the more uneasy he became. Vengeance demons were powerful. A lot more powerful than he had been banking on. They could alter reality, travel through time and space, bring people back to life… The only limitation to their power seemed to be that they needed someone to make a wish to make anything happen. But there was no redoing wishes. Once it was done…

A loud noise made him look up again in time to see Madge crouch and hastily gather the numerous notebooks she had just dropped. Without thinking – and glad for the excuse – he abandoned the armchair and his books and went to help her. She still looked irritated when he crouched next to her but she still muttered a polite thank you.

The notebooks were all different in sizes and kinds. Some were simple school issued ones, others were colorful like a child's diary, some were…

"Paper has become difficult to find." she explained when she spotted his frown. "We use what we can."

She picked them up and stood up before turning away, heading straight for the library.

Gale had been parked in the living-room – what used to be a living-room but now seemed to be an improvised-turned-permanent war office with couches and armchairs – all morning and he was tired of sitting and reading. He took his chance and followed her. "Are you sure I can't help?"

He had offered before and she had shot him down every single time. It seemed like the storm had passed now because people had stopped running in and out.

"If you're so desperate to do something, you can make tea." she retorted without missing a beat.

He wasn't sure if she was serious or not but he decided to humor her all the same, hoping it would improve her mood. It was in his interest. Mellark had made it clear the previous night before they fell asleep that Madge was the closest thing to a demon expert they had. If someone could help him identify his vengeance demon, it was Madge.

There were kids in the kitchen, young ones about seven or so, who were about their business like they were tiny adults. Gale had problems reconciling with that. He kept out of their way. By the time the water was boiling he had found some of what he hoped was tea and not poison and mismatched mugs.

Madge looked surprised when he walked back into the library with a mug in each hand. She took hers without a word and leaned back over her papers. The big round table was covered with papers and books. He spotted the word Quell scribbled on her notebook, sometimes angrily underlined…

Both Mellark and Madge had mentioned it several times the previous night.

"What's a Quell?" he asked, taking a sip of the scalding tea. Good thing it was so hot because it burned his mouth and prevented him from gagging too much at the awful taste. What he needed was some strong coffee but he doubted he would find any in that house. If paper was in short supply, he supposed coffee was out of the question.

"Annihilation." she sighed. "It's a mystical event, probably something that happens every given number of years, and it's right around the corner… That's all I can tell you so far because none of those books is helpful." She glared at the old tomes as if they had personally failed her and then took a mouthful of tea. She didn't seem to think it tasted terrible but then again this Madge seemed to have strange tastes. "Did you have more luck?"

He made a face. "I haven't found the right demon yet."

And he wasn't sure what he would do when he did.

She nodded, already distracted as she skimmed through one of the texts.

"What happened to you?" He blurted out the question before he could think twice about it and she looked up, a frown on her face. She didn't look happy with the question. Or with him for that matter. He backtracked. "I mean you're so…" His sentence trailed off as he failed to find a non-offensive way to say what she seemed like. "So…" He was digging his own grave and he was entirely too aware of it. This Madge wasn't any more a fighter than his was, at least he didn't think so. She didn't have the muscles or the attitude but it was obvious she could handle herself or she wouldn't have been out with Trinket and Thresh the previous night and… She looked dangerous. Even if it was all books and glares and scorn. "Hard."

"Hard." she repeated without any particular inflection.

He cleared his throat, lowered his eyes to his mug because it seemed safer than meeting her blue eyes. "You're not… yourself."

"And what am I like, in your perfect little world?" she mocked.

"You're…" He hesitated, not really sure how best to describe her. He had had a lot of prejudices about her for a long time. Because she was one of the wealthy kids, because she was the Mayor's daughter, because he had thought he knew better… But the more he got to know her… "Pure."

The word slipped out, entirely inadequate.

"Pure." She snorted, more amused than offended. "Like an unicorn? Well, sorry to disappoint but I haven't been… pure in a while, if you catch my drift."

She topped that with a wink that made him blush. Blush. Annoyed at himself – because he was certain his Madge would never have made that kind of joke and he wondered what it would be like if she ever did – he cleared his throat again. "I mean, you're kind. Compassionate. Loyal. Brave but not reckless. Funny. Sweet. Generous." Stop talking, his brain ordered him but his mouth was running and, surprising to even himself, it seemed it had more to say about her than he had thought he ever would. "You're a great friend. And you're… I mean you're… Pretty."

She watched him for several seconds, mirth dancing in her eyes. It was maybe the first thing that had seemed familiar so far. She looked exactly like she always did when she was about to tease him.

And teased him she did. "You wouldn't happen to be a little in love with me, right?"

"What? No! That's…" he stuttered and then shook his head. When was the last time he had stuttered because of a girl? He didn't even stutter for Katniss and he had been in love with Katniss for… He wasn't the stuttering kind. He had game – as all the girls he had kissed before could attest. He didn't get flustered. "No."

He managed to get his voice steady again.

He also managed to meet her eyes.

And her eyes were laughing at him even if she was decent enough not to let it show on her face.

"You're just a friend." he insisted. "We're just friends."

She tilted her head slightly to the side. "Am I with Peeta in your world?"

He made a face. "Hell, no." She didn't seem disturbed in the least by that piece of news. They were so easy with each other… A lot more at ease than Mellark was with Katniss, or so it seemed to him. They obviously knew each other very well – better than they did in his world. It was his turn to study her with a small frown. "Aren't you in love with him?"

"I love him." Madge answered, averting her eyes to look back at the notebooks. "We grew up together. The rest kind of… happened."

Because it wasn't like there were a lot of choices, he surmised, and maybe… Maybe he could get that. Hadn't he believed he and Katniss would end up together one day because… Well… It was easy to think that way. They came from the same place, they shared the same values – or they used to – and they were headed in the same direction.

He took another sip of his disgusting tea. "Where's your family?"

He hadn't seen the mayor or his wife yet. And there weren't exactly a lot of adults around that he could have missed them.

"Dead." she said with barely a hint of pain in her voice. "It's been a few years now. Effie took me in." She toyed with her pen for a minute while he tried and failed to find something comforting to say. When she looked up again, she had a forced smile on her lips. He wondered if she had learned that from the witch. "So, I'm single in your world?"

The abrupt change in subject made sense, he figured, even if he would have liked to move away from the possible embarrassment. "Yeah."

Her smile softened into something less forced but full of mischief. "Maybe you should do something about it, then."

He opened his mouth to deny having any kind of romantic intention toward her again but then he closed it and watched her, choosing instead to play it cool. "Maybe I will."

He held her gaze a lot longer than necessary but she wasn't looking away.

The strange moment was shattered by the front door slamming shut and the sound of Mellark's staff hitting the floor. He didn't pause when he walked into the library until he had reached the closest chair and dropped on it with obvious relief.

"Are you alright?" Madge immediately worried.

"Fine." Mellark dismissed with a wave of his hand but there was perspiration on his brow and he was white as a sheet. "Lots of healing magic. Need sugar." Gale hadn't found sugar to sweeten the tea but he figured that stuff was awful enough to give anyone an energy boost so he pushed his mug in front of the other boy. Mellark took it with a grateful nod. Two long sips and he placed it back down with a disgusted face. "Remind me to show you where we keep the good stuff."

"Where's Effie?" Madge was all business again, alert and a little frightened.

"Still out there." Mellark shook his head, not looking very pleased with his adoptive mother. "We lost four. And it's touch and go for Delly. I'm not… I'm not optimistic."

The girl reached across the table to cover his hand, tears shining in her eyes. "I'm sorry."

Mellark licked his lips, his own eyes a bit teary. "I did what I could. Maybe Effie can do more."

"Effie doesn't do healing magic anymore." Madge reminded him in a whisper.

It took Gale a moment to place who Delly could be. A plump blond girl whose parents owned the only shoe shop in town… She was a happy enough girl. Always laughing in Seam's High hallways… And now she was dying.

All because he had made a stupid wish.

Again, he shrugged the oppressing weight off his shoulders.

Delly wasn't dying. Katniss wasn't dead. Posy was alright.

He just needed to fix it.

"How bad is it really, Peeta?" Madge asked, dread in her voice, bringing Gale back to the situation at hand.

Mellark seemed reluctant to answer. He rubbed his face, ran his hand in his hair, tugged a little at the roots before he met his girlfriend's eyes… "Bad. They keep sending reinforcements. We don't have enough fighters. Effie is holding them at bay for now but… You ask me, we're at the beginning of the end." He shook his head, turned back to Gale with a determined look on his face. "If you really want to get back to your world, you should find that demon fast."

Because otherwise, he would be too dead to try.

Gale heard what the boy wasn't saying loud and clear.

°O°O°O°O°

Haymitch paused to take a deep breath that burned his lungs, turning his gaze to the rising sun and its pinkish hues in the distance over the top of the trees. Something uncoiled in his belly at the sight. Something always uncoiled in his belly when he watched the sun rise. It was a leftover from a childhood overrun with vampires. The sun meant safety. Or it used to be. Now it simply meant another shitty day to muddle through.

Hauling a two hundred pounds demon up a woody hill to find a discreet place to bury the corpse had never been his idea of fun and, once more, he thought about Chaff with regret. He was still raw over his death and he missed him approximately twenty times a day but, right then, what he missed above all were his muscles. Being a demon hunter was easier with a partner.

He dragged the corpse over another thirty feet up the slope and started to consider just dumping it in the closest ditch. After all, the place wasn't exactly thriving with people. No wonder.

The loud ringing of his phone interrupted his thoughts before they could truly turn moody and he dropped the corpse, wiped his hands on his pants and pulled the phone out of his pocket. Just to check who it was before he let it roll to voicemail. The only people who would reach out to him were people who knew to call him when they spotted troubles of a certain kind. He hadn't been taking jobs lately, since Chaff… He had sent a few in other hunters' way, directed the really special ones towards the Council of Wankers…

No, lately, he was roaming. Free spirit and whatnot. Killing whatever demon he accidentally tripped over.

But the name on the screen was Mags and he tried not to skip her calls if he could help it. She wasn't getting any younger and her health, his spies told him, wasn't what it used to be.

"Hey." He tried not to sound too gruff but he failed. Gruff was his default nowadays. "What's up?"

"I wasn't expecting you to pick up." Mags answered, a bit tentatively.

His adoptive mother was a lot of things but tentative was rarely one of them. It made him frown. "Just finished a job. I'm doing the clean-up. Ain't the fun part."

"Right." she said and left it at that.

He waited but she didn't add anything and that made him frown deeper. He turned to the south as if on instinct. He hated himself for it. He hated himself for whatever the hell it was he was doing. Torturing himself, Chaff would have called it. Looking back instead of looking ahead.

"You need something, Mags?" he prompted after a whole minute of silence on her part. "You've got a job for me?"

He might make an exception for her. Take the job. Take the money too as he was starting to be short. With any luck it would take him somewhere far away. It would give him an excuse to ignore that pull in his guts that had never left him, not even after twenty-five fucking years.

"Where are you?" she asked.

Not an unreasonable question if she did have a job.

But he found he didn't want to tell the truth. Because… Well, because of the fence he could guess at if he looked south, stretching toward the sky as if anything would try to jump over it when, really, they should have worried about what was going on underneath. They never discussed the place they used to call home or what had become of it. They never discussed his mother or Hayden or Mabel. They had stopped discussing that when he had skipped town with Chaff at seventeen and never stopped running.

"I'm in the States." he offered because he figured that was broad enough of a location. After all it was a big world and he wasn't always in the same country. If whatever job she wanted to give him was on the other side of the globe… Well, he could take a plane but there was probably someone just as competent who was closer. He had every intention of stopping at that so he wasn't sure what made him blurt out the name of the closest town already knowing he wouldn't need to specify what state it was located in. She would recognize the name. She knew the names of all the towns bordering that ridiculous fence.

"So close to the Seam…" Mags murmured, sounding a bit out of breath. Anxious.

It might have been because it had been more than two decades since she had uttered that name to him but… Somehow he didn't think so.

"Not that close." he grumbled. "It's what… six hours out?"

Probably less since the roads would be empty of cars. Nobody would stop him for speeding. Sure there would be an army of vampires and demons to go through but the day was young and…

He cut that train of thoughts clean.

He had been fantasizing about it too much since Chaff had passed.

It was like the amount of liquor he consumed on a daily basis.

A thin dangerous edge to dance on.

He hadn't toppled yet and he wasn't going to.

"I was hoping you were in Europe." Mags whispered with regret. "Somewhere far away."

"Mags." He frowned harder, kicking the dead demon just to give himself something to do. And maybe because his toes were numb. He had been out all night, after all. It was winter. He was cold. He wanted to go back to his crappy motel room and order a pizza. Have a few beers. Maybe watch some porn if he was feeling generous with himself. "What's going on?"

"I got a call for you." she confessed after another whole minute of silence.

"Yeah?" That was unusual but, he figured, not unprecedented. There were plenty of people in the business who knew they were related or who would make the link between him, his mother and his mother's Watcher. If someone was determined enough to find him… Well, he wasn't that hard to track. "From whom?"

"Fate." she deadpanned without any amusement whatsoever.

He snorted. "Hope you told her she was a real bitch." Mags was silent, pensive maybe. He wasn't sure where she was getting at with her metaphors but he humored her. "And did Fate leave a message?"

"Yes." Mags sighed. "But I'm not sure I want to pass it along, boy. I didn't take the fate thing seriously until you told me where you were."

Again, his eyes caught the barely visible edge of the fence in the distance.

He felt it in his guts. That pull. He wasn't sure if it was fate or the weird burritos he had for dinner the previous night but… He felt it. "What's the message?"

Mags was silent for so long that he wasn't sure she would even answer.

When she finally did, her voice was full of regrets and fear for him.

"Help me."

So... Madge is NOT a unicorn and we get our first glimpse of Haymitch XD It seems like Neverland is in trouble though... Do you think Haymitch will come to the rescue? Can Gale figure that demon thing out before it all collapses? Let me know your thoughts!