Thankfully, Akiyama did agree to keep quiet about her research and the fact that Daphne and Rin knew. Daphne had no reservations about bullying her into keeping an eye out and reporting any manifestations that left behind that gravitational distortion as well. So, the Okumuras left Hiroshima and finally, blessedly returned home.

Things had been busy over the weekend, with plenty of reports of demon manifestations involving that five-pointed star. Daphne left Rin to sort through them and returned to her classroom. Her English students had been without their teacher for more than a week, and she had been without their sanity-inducing normality. For once, she was glad to stand at the front of the classroom and lecture on Yeats to a group of high school students who could not have cared less. It made her feet feel a little more firmly planted on the ground.

After school, she met up with Rin.

"There doesn't seem to be a pattern to the manifestations yet," he said, showing Daphne a map of Academy Town and the area around it that had each instance marked. "But I asked that anything with the gravitational effect get flagged. We'll be notified every time a manifestation like this occurs."

Daphne glanced over the map as she listened. She couldn't discern a pattern either, but there were only eight plotted points.

"Oh. I also filled Mephisto in on what we know."

She looked up. "And?"

Rin shrugged. "He didn't say much."

"Typical."

"He seems to think we're more than enough to deal with this demon—whatever it is."

There was an uncharacteristic shiver in Rin's voice. He even looked away, focusing his gaze blankly on the opposite side of the room. Daphne leaned over to put herself in his line of sight.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, just—" He shook his head. "Something about the demon makes me uneasy."

"We were definitely playing with fire before," Daphne agreed.

"I don't think we should try to draw it out again."

Daphne shivered herself, thinking of that time in the bathtub in the girls' locker room. It had manifested with so much power, the whole room had been under the influence of the gravitational after-effect. They'd been reckless—chasing things down mountains and intentionally seeking after a power they didn't understand. Granted, that was kind of their M.O., but Daphne had to agree with Rin. If this was a demon Azazel had kept imprisoned—regardless of the reason—it was probably best dealt with via a very long stick.

"We won't need to," she said, and tapped a finger on the map. "We'll monitor its activities this way."

Over the course of the next couple of days, a few more demons manifested that showed the movement of the five-pointed star. Daphne and Rin went down to each site, took notes, and made observations. Daphne would have liked to have left one or two of the demons un-exorcised, just to see if the effect would eventually wear off, but of course that wasn't permitted. They left the actual exorcisms to the crews on site and departed each having learned relatively little.

Both of them returned to their standard teaching schedules. Even their typical load of exorcisms reverted to normal. Gradually, more and more manifestation points were plotted on their map. A pattern emerged. The demon was moving away from Academy Town, headed north.

Distant field offices were notified of the potential, asked to report any manifestations that matched the description provided. They did, but after another couple of days, the trail went cold. Either the field offices weren't reporting, or the demon had stopped manifesting. Daphne didn't know what to make of it.

"Why would it attach itself to us and then move so far away?"

Rin had relaxed as the trail had led north, away from them, but now that things had changed he was unsettled all over again.

"I don't know," he said. "But I don't like it."

Spirit ached to leave her beings behind, but it was an evil she was certain she had to endure. With each demon she possessed, she gained a clarity of mind, a strength of limb, and in order to bond with her beings—in order to become one with the dark one—she would have to be at her strongest, best, most clear.

So she sought after demons whose power she could siphon.

She was willing to go as far as needed, willing to fight as many others as it took. As she traveled, she lost track of her beings and could no longer sense them, but she knew where they would be. She had left her mark.

With each possession, Spirit grew.

Daphne had been so caught up in the whirlwind of bizarre manifestations and secret investigations that she didn't notice her period was late. But when she did notice, she noticed. The realization hit her harder than anything that had happened over the last few weeks and she knew instantly, without a single test, what it meant.

She went out for a test anyway.

She left immediately, running down to the nearest drugstore and grabbing the first pregnancy test she could find. It was she could do not to throw up with anxiety, to keep her eyes from watering, while she waited at the checkout. She didn't even go home—she went straight into the bathroom at the drugstore. Staring at the pink strip with a plus sign, all she could feel was…nothing.

She couldn't be pregnant.

Not now.

She couldn't be pregnant.

She couldn't be.