There was a lot to discover wandering the L.A. strip. Michael found an old-fashioned ice cream shop where he turned on some tears for the counter lady, so she would call Mama Constance to come get her lost trick-or-treater. The lady gave him a big scoop of ice cream to eat while he waited, and even put whipped cream and a cherry on it.

His grandmother was anxious when she got there but, when she saw no one was injured, she could breathe a little easier. "What're you doin' all the way up here?" she asked, smoothing her upswept hair. Then she crouched beside his chair so she could get a better look at him.

Michael kept shoveling Rocky Road into his mouth while she took off his scarecrow hat and petted his blond hair back. She sounded concerned but he could hear the angry edge to her tone. That meant he needed to eat as much ice cream as he could before she took it from him.

"I got lost," he said around the treat.

"Lost?" Constance echoed. She assessed the boy's behavior. He didn't seem terribly traumatized for a lost child. "Where are Father Jeremiah and Ethan?"

Michael shrugged and scooped more ice cream into his mouth. He was starting to get an ice cream headache but he ignored it.

Constance clamped down on the feeling of dread that instantly rose up. Michael couldn't have done anything to Tate but she wasn't so sure about the fate of the priest. "Well," she said, forcing a smile as she straightened. "I think we should head home and see if they turned up there. They're gonna be worried." She reached for her purse and turned to the clerk. "How much do I owe you for the ice cream?"

The woman smiled big and waved her off. "It's on the house."

Constance tipped her head, caught between gratitude and insisting on paying her way. But her thoughts were clouded by knowing just how near to death the poor cashier had been without even knowing.

"Thanks," the blonde woman said in a dazed way that confused the clerk. Then Constance turned to her grandson. "It's time to go."

Michael scooped faster, getting ice cream on his face. "Almost done."

"Now," Constance insisted and reached for his arm.

The boy whined when she tugged him out of the chair. He tried to grab one more spoonful but she snatched the spoon out of his hand. She tossed it back into the cup on the table and, sending the clerk a tired smile, hurried the fussing scarecrow out onto the sidewalk.

"Happy Halloween!" the clerk called after them.

—

Fortunately, Constance was able to reach Father Jeremiah on his cell phone. When she found out what happened, she yelled at him through the phone the whole way home. Michael had to sit there listening to her shriek like a magpie about risks and carelessness—and she wasn't even yelling at him. She drove badly too, making it a hair-raising trip home despite encountering no one else on the residential roads.

When they got home, Father Jeremiah was already there and looking strained. Mama Constance sent Michael to his room so she could yell at the priest some more. She was so upset, she didn't even notice the boy took his candy bag with him.

He dumped the small haul on his bed and looked at it. It was a sad showing: Barely two handfuls. He discovered it wasn't any fun sorting it without Ethan. It was just boring old candy. The nine year old was too full of ice cream to even think about eating any of the loot. In general, the whole thing was very disappointing.

Michael heard something glass break downstairs. He kicked off his shoes and curled up among the pillows near the head of his bed. He didn't like it when Mama Constance got mad like that, even if it wasn't aimed at him. The noises bothered him. She was like a stranger when she was that angry. Unpredictable. He couldn't remember her ever getting that mad at Father Jeremiah before, either, which bothered him more.

He put his fingers in his ears to block out the sound. That helped, some.

—

Father Jeremiah let Constance rant at him for a while. He knew he deserved that for letting his ward get away from him under such dangerous circumstances. The blonde woman's tirade ranged all over the map, from irresponsibility to the dangers Michael presented the world and vice versa. It was degrading but he was willing to put up with it, right up to the point where she threw a glass at him.

She'd finished the vodka in it and, in a surge of fury, lobbed it at him. She was drunk enough by that point that she missed him but the attempt alone flipped a switch in him. In two steps he was across the kitchen, right up in her personal space. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her arm back behind her hip. She looked up at him, dark eyes angry and a bit uncertain. He hadn't laid hands on her like that before. She could feel the physical and spiritual strength pulsing off him like heat from a generator.

"You need to stop," he said in a quiet, very calm voice. His grip on her wrist was iron.

Her lips trembled. No man told her what to do! But trying to twist free from his hold didn't work. "Let go of me," she said, voice quivering with rage and the tears she was holding back.

In response, he took hold of her other wrist. She didn't fight him as he drew that arm behind her back as well. It left him almost embracing her but the restraining hold wasn't a hug. It was a contest of wills.

"I don't like it when you get violent," said Jeremiah in that same calm voice.

It was hard to hold onto her anger when he was being like that. She suspected he was doing something to her but she couldn't call him out on it without knowing what to accuse him of. "You're such a damned pacifist," she spat, but the edge was gone from her tone. "I thought Satanists were supposed to be all about violence."

"And how many have you known?" The priest's expression remained unchanged but there was a hint of a smile in his words now.

Her jaw set but it was mostly an act now. "Just one. And he was a pain in the ass."

Jeremiah allowed the smile to surface and reeled her in closer, into an actual embrace, and released her hands. "Didn't you say it's better to feel pain than nothing at all?"

"Yes," she said, brows arching. "But that wasn't carte blanche for you to go telling me how to live."

"I wouldn't dream of it," he said. "I'm content with telling you how to conduct your afterlife."

She smacked his chest but there was no strength to the gesture. "Pain in the ass."

He stole a kiss then let her go. "I need to speak with Michael."

Constance nodded and busied herself with cleaning up the kitchen. She wouldn't interfere. He was far better equipped to deal with her grandson than she was, where it came to situations like this.

—

Michael was in bed when Father Jeremiah came into his room. The boy had changed into his pajamas already and didn't make eye contact.

"You already know what you did was dangerous and foolish," the priest said as pushed the door shut behind himself. "Do you want to tell me why?"

Michael's mouth scrunched in a lemony way and he plucked at the fuzz on the blanket. "I thought you'd be mad because I killed the worm-man."

Jeremiah came over to the bedside. "It surprised me," he said. "But I'm pretty sure the.. worm-man was going to hurt you."

Michael looked up, brow crinkling curiously. "It's okay to kill something if it's going to hurt me?"

"In general," the priest said. "Yes. There are exceptions."

"Mama Constance?"

She wasn't one Father Jeremiah had been thinking about but... "She's an exception. The same goes with all of your family. You should never, ever hurt your family."

"Even if they're hurting you?"

Jeremiah cleared his throat. The rash of tough questions wasn't anything they'd covered in his training. "Not even then," he said. He hoped he wouldn't regret saying that, later.

"What was the worm-man?" Michael asked.

Another question the man didn't have a ready answer for. "I don't know," he admitted. "I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of new things in the future. Things we'll have to learn about. But you can't go running off like that again for that reason. We don't know what's out there or what it can do. I'm sure you can handle yourself against another one of those things, but what if he has a bunch of friends?"

Michael couldn't imagine a worm-man having friends but then he considered himself a pretty fun person and the few friends he had were all dead, with the exception of the priest. Maybe worm-men had worm-man-friends. He tried to picture a worm-man gathering but it was too weird.

"It's not safe," reiterated the priest. "You should have headed home, not up to the strip."

The guilty look crept back over the boy's round face. "I got lost."

Jeremiah wasn't buying it. "You found your way to the ice cream shop just fine."

Michael had no defense for that so he just smiled sweetly. That didn't work on the priest nearly as well as it typically did on Constance.

"Tomorrow, penance," Father Jeremiah said. His no-nonsense tone said he was serious. "You'll do the entire Litany of Abbadon—" Michael was already groaning, so he raised his voice to be heard. "And you'll use both buckets."

The buckets each held a gallon of liquid easily. Jeremiah had filled them with sand. The punishment was grueling enough if the boy had to hold one while he recited the lengthy scripture of Abbadon. Two buckets would be torture. Which was entirely the point.

The activity wasn't entirely punitive: It reinforced important information Michael would need to understand later and it also reinforced the social contract between mentor and pupil. There would come a time when Michael would understand how powerful he really was. Jeremiah had to do what he could in the meantime to steer that power in the direction it needed to go, before the boy figured out he didn't have to listen to anyone.

...

Author's Note:

Happy post-Halloween! I love writing this stuff around this time of year. There's no shortage of inspiration. I watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers for the first time in yeeears. I am definitely tapping that vibe somehow.