The three of them returned to Akiyama's office, but Mephisto disappeared in a puff of pink smoke after releasing whatever weird spell he'd placed on the lock when they'd left. Rin knocked before opening the door, but he felt so uneasy. A demon that could possess demons? The implications were huge.

Akiyama didn't look like she'd moved much. She was still hunched over her knees in a chair in front of her desk, but she lifted her head when Rin and Daphne came into the room.

"No sense in beating around the bush," Daphne said, grabbing her old chair and pulling it up to sit in front of Akiyama. "We know the kind of research you were engaged in, and that you are still engaged in it."

"We'd appreciate your cooperation in this, Director," Rin said, smiling as kindly as he could for as sick as he felt. "Please."

Akiyama held Rin's eye, then looked down and sighed. "Let me begin by saying that I have not been engaged in research for a number of months."

"The evidence would suggest otherwise," Daphne said.

"Yes, I feared as much…"

She went quiet. Daphne and Rin exchanged expressions, but said nothing. They waited, the clock on the wall filling their silence with ticking. Akiyama drew a breath in.

"The exorcists whose bodies you found on Miyajima, they…they were members of my research team, but recently they became much more—I'm not sure—driven than I was," she said. "Our experiments grew too dangerous and I called a halt to the research, but I suspected they continued without me. Unfortunately, my suspicions were confirmed when the two of you showed up to tell me they were dead."

"Tell us about your experiments, Director."

"We wanted to find a way to bind any demon with an exorcist the same way familiars are bound to their Tamers," she said, sitting up fully. "If the two of you have read what little of my research is still available, you'll know this has long been an interest of mine." She glanced between the two of them and Rin nodded.

"After some…unfortunate results with a particular experiment, my research was disbanded, removed from the database, and I was sent out here to Hiroshima."

Daphne folded her arms. "Unfortunate how?"

"Three participant exorcists died and the demon they'd bonded with destroyed our lab."

Under different circumstances, Rin might have laughed. That sounded absolutely ridiculous, and it was, except that this was the same research he'd read about—horrific dissection of demons and familiars—and it had apparently led to the manifestation of a demon capable of possessing other demons.

"You continued your research after an accident like that?" Daphe asked, incredulous.

"It worked," Akiyama replied. "Don't you see? It worked. We successfully bonded non-Tamer exorcists with non-familiar demons. It was possible, and I couldn't let anything put development on hold."

"So you continued your experiments in secret?"

Akiyama nodded. "Over the course of several years, I gathered a team as dedicated to the work as I was. We developed a series of artificial spells and binding agents that were successful in summoning low-level demons for a short period of time, and after that some of the team—the nine you found on Misen—were eager to move onto high level demons right away. I could not, in good conscience as a scientist, push the experiment that far yet. We needed more evidence, more security, but they were insistent. I couldn't persuade them, so I called the experiments to a halt. I thought maybe I'd smoke them out, wait for them to see my point and then do things correctly, but recently I've begun to suspect that they kept working behind my back. Which they evidently did."

Daphne sat up. "Your spells—the binding agents or whatever—do they have any effect on the demons? Do they leave any marks?"

"The spell relies on a basic five-pointed star within a summoning circle, but it's augmented with Aria scripture. Depending on the kind of demon you want to summon and the kind of bond you want to form with it, you add to the summoning lines or change the scripture. Any imperfections and you lose control."

"Okay, but is there any way to tell that a demon was summoned by one of your spells rather than manifesting on its own or with a Tamer?"

Akiyama thought for a moment, but nodded. "The spells sometimes enhanced a demon's power—which was one of the reasons I wanted to hold off on summoning anything high level. We'd summon coltars as strong as goblins. There were environmental effects as well—minor changes in gravitational pull."

Daphne glanced up at Rin. "Like the eye wash station in your lab?"

"Exactly. Objects rolling in odd directions, or being attracted to the site of manifestation, things like that."

Nodding, Daphne stood up and took a step toward the door. "Director, if you would wait here, please. Rin—hallway…" She opened the door and held it for him, shutting it softly behind her and putting her hand over her mouth, her brow furrowed. "This is bad," she said.

"Akiyama's researchers summoned that demon we've been dealing with," he replied.

"That's the best explanation, yeah."

"And the demon we've been dealing with is one Azazel was keeping imprisoned in Gehenna for…being dangerous."

"It must have been what killed them. I can almost guarantee it was those artificial spells that broke the demon out," Daphne said. "I don't know how Azazel was keeping it in, but I doubt the method was brand-new-fake-Tamer-spell-proof."

"What do we do?"

Daphne shook her head. "I really don't know."

"Do we trust Akiyama?"

"Well, she's not dead, so that's a start."

"At the very least, we know for sure she wasn't involved in summoning our demon." He felt weird saying "our" but it seemed the easiest way to describe it. The thing had kind of latched onto them after all. "She was genuinely surprised when we told her the others were dead."

"As far as I'm concerned, she doesn't have any reason to keep up the charade." Daphne pursed her lips. "And I don't know why she would fabricate lies as elaborate as what she just told us."

"So we trust her."

"No. But I'll trust what she said is true."

Rin nodded firmly. He could agree to that. The whole situation had put him on edge, honestly. Was this what Daphne felt like when she got into those dangerous moods of hers? Like there was something lurking around every corner waiting to pounce? He had an inkling that it might be.

"We need to ensure Akiyama's cooperation and get back to Academy Town and hunt this thing down," Daphne added. "ASAP."

"I agree."

"Good," Daphne said and put her hand on the doorknob to go back in. "Hopefully she'll agree to do a little of the legwork for us. The fewer times I have to come back to Hiroshima the better."