Noun; the phantom sensation of something crawling on one's skin.
Pulling her blanket over her head, Maka rolls over on her stomach and silently screams into her pillow, fingers curling tightly around its edges. Sleep had been so close; after stifling her irritation from her disagreement with Black Star, she'd finally felt her thoughts begin to drift towards the dark of dreaming, and then Spirit had announced his return from the store by letting the front door close with a slam.
She lets herself grumble into the mattress for a few minutes, then kicks off the sheets, flinging them to one side. Her fingers scrabble on her nightstand for her phone; the light from the screen only makes her eyes burn for sleep more, but the time on the clock and the noise Spirit makes downstairs tells her there is little point in trying to find sleep again.
But there might not be a point to going out tonight, she thinks. There's been no word from Stein since she called a week ago, even though he promised another update before their meeting. With a sigh, she presses her fingers against the corners of her eyes for a long moment and watches as phantom figures weave themselves on the ceiling before sitting up.
Reaching under her bed, she pulls out the map usually kept in her desk, studying the places she has explored, eyeing all the areas she hasn't, and feeling the familiar frustration in her chest awaken. In every place she's turned, dead ends have cropped up one after another; finding Soul in her sleep has become all but impossible, her midnight walks along the Rift have yielded nothing, and now she has to keep an eye out for other poltergeists infected with black blood.
She's running herself ragged only to end up going nowhere.
Smoothing the map on the bed, she shoves her thoughts away. She still has whatever Stein has crafted for her, even if it is her only hope to get out of the rut she is stuck in. Briefly, her mind flits to the approaching trip with her mother and her eyes trail northward on the map, finding the series of zig-zagging lines that is Silver Canyon.
The canyon, which spans nearly twenty miles, is one of the weakest parts of the Rift in the country, something Marie had told her after a particularly long night of cleansing the aftermath of banished poltergeists. Since then, she hadn't been able to shake the thought of finding a hole in the part of the Rift running through the canyon and crossing the Rift herself. As more time passed, the idea had planted itself more and more firmly in Maka's mind, although, without a weapon, it was something she had given little serious consideration.
But now, the possibility of a weapon is so close that she can almost taste it, and what seemed like the bones of an impossible idea has taken on the flesh of a plan. Touching one of the points of Silver Canyon, she lets out a breath and clenches her fingers. If she survived venturing into Abeyance once, then she can do it again.
Rising from the bed, she walks over to her desk and fastens the straps of her bag before sweeping her hair into a ponytail. She lets herself stare into the room's transparent darkness for another moment, then swings the bag on her shoulder, heading for the door. There is little use in solidifying ideas until she is certain that she has a weapon; she'll make a final decision after she meets with Stein.
Spirit is sitting in the old armchair next to the couch when she peers into the living room, hair tied back as he concentrates on a report in his hand. The fabric of the chair is fraying in most places, but he still refuses to replace it, even though the chair now creaks ominously whenever he or Maka uses the footrest.
At the sound of Maka approaching, he looks up, the worried furrow between his brow disappearing as he spots her. "Heading out?"
"For a bit." Her teeth worry at the tip of her tongue before she twists her words with a lie. "Black Star wants to hang out at the diner."
His head tilts to one side. "I thought you already hung out today."
"We had a video call with Tsubaki." The hurt on Black Star's face pops up into her vision as she busies herself with snagging a jacket from the closet next to the living room to avoid looking at Spirit. "But we also want to decide where to go once Tsubaki comes home tomorrow and that's something we couldn't decide in front of her."
He closes the folder, pinches the bridge of his nose, like he does when he has run into a dead end, and shakes his head as he opens his eyes. "I thought she wasn't coming back until sometime next month."
"So did I," says Maka, perching on the edge of the couch's armrest as she shrugs on her jacket. "But she said her lab project finished early so she wants to start her vacation as soon as she can." Nodding towards the report, she asks, "New case?"
"Old case," he replies. "The murder cases here and in Moricio."
Her heart plummets to the pit of her stomach and her smile fades. "I thought that you said you were done working on those cases."
"Officially, yes." Spirit taps on the front of the folder. "But there are too many cases like this that go cold," he says. "And I don't want these people's deaths to go in that category."
"But what could you find that two homicide investigation squads couldn't?" She tries to soften her words when she sees a slightly stung look flash in Spirit's eyes. "What I mean is that you shouldn't take on the responsibility of solving seven murders."
"Well, I was looking back at some witness reports, and I did find something interesting." Spirit flips open the folder and rummages through the stack of papers inside. "There are a few people who said that they saw a strange person in black clothing in the area of the crime scene and then there is this picture."
She looks down at the photograph in Spirit's hands. The image is grainy, but it's impossible not to recognize the outline of the creature from Abeyance.
"This is the best idea that we have of what the killer looks like, though most of the other detectives don't think it's much to go on," Spirit says as Maka stares at the photo, a chill spreading through her veins. There was no way her father or anyone else should be able to see the creature, much less for a camera to be able to take a photograph of them.
Finding her voice, she says the first thing that comes to mind. "They don't look like a killer."
"You don't have to look like a killer to be one," Spirit answers mildly. "Though they're just a suspect for the time being."
"True." Maka licks her lips, and tries to keep her tone casual. "So what are you going to do with the photo now?"
"I have a friend in Moricio's forensic technology department that agreed to analyze the photo for anything else we can get from it," he says, tucking the photograph back in its place in the folder. "After that, I'll send it out to the other police departments in the region."
"That's a good idea." Relief loosens some of the tension she's trying to hide. "A tip line might help too."
"Maybe." Spirit's voice sounds dubious. "There are some hideouts in the forest and the old town that they could be lying low at, so I might check some of those out."
"No, you can't do that!" The words burst out before she can check herself, making Spirit start. Maka jumps up to her feet, hooking a loose strand of hair behind her ear and wending her fingers together. "I mean," she says hastily, "To search on your own seems dangerous at worst, tedious at best."
Spirit scrutinizes Maka, eyes slowly narrowing the longer he looks at her. "I haven't said anything, but you've been acting a little odd lately and I don't think it can be blamed entirely on your mother's return." A concerned frown forms on his face. "You look exhausted too."
It's exactly what she knew would happen eventually, but all she has braced herself with is denial. "There's nothing wrong, nothing specifically," she says, sitting back down and forcing her voice back down to its normal pitch. "There's just been a lot of change in the past two months."
His frown grows. "What other change?"
"AP testing, choosing colleges to apply to in the winter." She grasps at whatever comes to mind. "Thinking about the future."
The look on Spirit's face softens. "I understand stress, I've seen the all-nighters you've pulled before a big test," he says. "But the way you've been acting is different than that."
Maka swallows and resists glancing at her watch-creating a new lie to keep track of is too much to add to the knot of lies she's already made. "I may have been," she says slowly, "Talking to someone at school."
"Talking?" The transformation of Spirit's expression would be comical under normal circumstances. He blinks rapidly as if he has just been smacked in the face. "Talking or talking?"
"The one without the innuendo." Playing with the strap of her bag, she chooses her words carefully. "We were close throughout the school year, but towards the end of the year, we had a fight." She ignores the pain tightening like a vice in her chest. "He stopped talking to me."
A few moments pass before Spirit speaks. "Was this fight about him pressuring you into doing something you didn't want to do, or anything like that?" When Maka shakes her head, he runs a hand through his hair in apparent relief. "Well, I'm glad to hear that, though I know that doesn't make it hurt any less."
Another beat of silence follows as Spirit opens and closes his mouth. "Did you like him?" he asks finally.
"Yes." Maka clenches her hands in surprise at how quickly she replies, but unlike other matters, there is no part of her that is hesitant or wants to change her answer. "I do."
Spirit's face goes through another series of expressions, settling on one mixed with caution and sympathy. "You know how I feel about you and relationships," he says. "But I wish you would have told me." His voice is filled with the reluctant acceptance of someone on the gallows.
"It wasn't that I didn't want to." In this, she can be honest. "We were forced together on a group project, we didn't agree with each other about a lot of things at first, but eventually we became friends." She rubs her thumb across her palm, gaze trailing to her lap. Something in the anger and hurt in her chest has shifted; her voice hovers above a whisper. "I don't even think I realized how I felt until now."
"Oh, sweetie." The compassion in Spirit's voice brings the tears she's been repressing for the past week to the brim of her eyes. "You are worth so much more than someone who doesn't value you."
"It's not that," she says quickly, voice rising. "We both care about each other." Immediately, doubt crows out a laugh in her mind, but she remembers how Soul looked at her when he pulled her out of the poltergeist's madness. "There was a misunderstanding, and it blew up."
"I see." An awkwardness now tinges her father's words. "Is there a way that you could.." he trails off for a moment. "Get in contact with him again?"
"He won't answer any of my messages and he left for the summer." She swipes angrily at her eyes and rolls back her shoulders. "Maybe for good."
"I'm sorry," he says after a long moment. Shifting forward in the recliner, Spirit scratches the back of his neck. "I don't think there's anything I can say that's truly comforting, other than maybe this," he says.
Bringing his hands together, he pauses, and Maka leans in. "Everything in your life," Spirit says, "Eventually you have to either hold onto it or let it go."
Maka waits until it's apparent Spirit has nothing to add on, and then she raises an eyebrow. "That's it?"
He nods. "That's it."
"That isn't-" she searches for something diplomatic, "A lot."
"Well, the most complicated matters have the simplest solutions, and most people don't even know they have those two options," he says.
Conceding the point with a tilt of her head, she glances to the kitchen, where the pots from this morning are still soaking. There is so much to say about the news at breakfast, but she is barely wrapping her mind around it, and this is not the place or time. "How does it feel to have Mom back when you'd already let her go?"
Spirit's gaze goes temporarily distant. "Neither your mother or I are the same person we were when she left, so the person I let go of is still gone," he says softly. His eyes lose the haziness of memory as he looks at Maka. "But it just goes to show that life has a way of bringing back people and things you thought were lost for good, even if it's in a way that's different from before."
Reaching out, he pats her knee. "Now it's up to you to decide which this boy is."
His expression abruptly becomes an exaggerated kind of stern, the green in his eyes turning steely. "I do want to meet this boy if things work out. I have a few things to say."
"Sure, Papa." She bites back a laugh at the irony, and rises to give him a hug. "I need to go, but thank you."
"Anytime," he says, looping the arm with the report around her. "Be careful."
The edge of the folder presses against the back of Maka's neck like a dull knifepoint as she gives Spirit a final squeeze. "You too."
From behind Soul, the low susurration of Medusa's voice wafts through the air, occasionally interspersed with Crona's muffled whimpering. Other than a pair of pale eyes stretched wide, their face is a snarl of jagged fissures today, tears of black blood streaking down from the maze of crevices and staining their skin in an inky smear.
He steals a glance towards the stand of trees behind him. The tangled outline of Crona's body resembles the contortionist he saw once at the circus with Wes when he was alive.
Stretching out his legs, he turns forward again and watches the tips of the flames of the fire ebb and recede in a constant dance, just barely grazing the soles of his feet. It would hurt if he plunged himself into the flames, he knows this, but what he doesn't know is if Medusa would be able to douse the flames before they could do enough damage to his body.
His hands dig into the soft mud as he forces his thoughts away, too morbid even for a dead person.
You're worse.
Medusa's words float through his head again, lingering on the surface of his mind's eye, and his gaze goes back to the fire. But maybe it's what he should do, he thinks. There was a vicious delight in the witch's eyes when she told Soul he is worse than her or Crona; he doesn't have any clues to what she has planned, but he does know it is more insidious than he could imagine.
He pushes the dirt caked on his fingers off with his thumbnail. And if it has anything to do with him, he'd rather be dead for good than take part in it.
"You look hungry."
The mouth of the shadow snake wrapping its tail around Soul's foot moves in time with Medusa's voice. With a yelp, Soul jerks away, scrambling to his feet as the snake dissipates into smoke.
Whirling around, he spies Medusa watching him with an observant eye a short distance away, arms crossed and a half-smirk painted on her lips. Her voice is soft but sharp. "I can see it in your eyes."
"You see nothing." The urge to put as much space between him and Medusa as she approaches is almost overwhelming, but he refuses to be a coward in front of her again.
Her smile grows. "If you insist."
Soul looks back towards the forest rather than rise to her baiting. There is no sign of the creature-Crona-in the woods or the fire. Glancing away, he asks, "Where is Crona?"
"Halfway across the Rift, most likely." She gives a dismissive shrug, as if she had already forgotten about them.
A wave of disgust ripples through him. "Aren't they your child?" he asks. Beyond them, the dark stain of the Rift stretches across the sky like a pair of jaws yawning open. "How could you make them cross a place like that?
"Am I supposed to let blood and maternal instinct affect my decisions?" Medusa says. "A weapon is a weapon and Crona was nearly exactly what I needed."
"Oh, I-" Soul cuts off the retort forming on his lips, body tensing. "Nearly?" he repeats. "What do you mean?"
"What I mean is that then you came along." Although Medusa is perfectly still, the tangle of shadow snakes coiling and writing across her skin makes it appear like her body is fragmenting and putting itself back together again.
He's enveloped in a sensation reminiscent of being plunged in ice water. His feet draw him closer to the witch without him realizing it. "What," he says, voice going quiet, "do you mean?"
"Not yet." She shakes a finger at him like he's a child. "All in good time."
"And if I decide that I don't want to wait till then?" he challenges, hands balling into fists. "That I decide to move on into the afterlife permanently?"
Medusa's smile widens into the grin of a predator. "If I really believed you'd do that, then you'd be strung up on one of my sister's webs," she says, running a finger down his face before he can flinch away. "But if you're referring to whether my plan fails, then I'll just wait for another soul like yours. It's not like you're the first."
"I've waited over a millennia for another opportunity like this." Her nail presses lightly into the skin just below Soul's eye before she drops her hand and moves to step around him. "I have the patience."
Watching as she disappears back into the forest, Soul waits until he can no longer hear Medusa's footsteps to bury his face in his hands, letting out a breath through gritted teeth instead of screaming.
Lifting his head, he lets his arms drop and starts to make his way back to his place by the fire.
He will stay, for now.
The glare of Stein's glasses is all Maka can make out of his face as the door to his lab creaks open and he peers through the gap. "You're late."
"You never called," she retorts, squeezing through the door's narrow opening as Stein steps back.
"Was I supposed to call again?" He adjusts his glasses, which are tilted lopsidedly on his face. "I must have forgot."
She snorts, but her reply dies when she takes in the state of his laboratory. To say the lab is in a state of upheaval would be an understatement; chalkboards Maka has never seen before are positioned haphazardly throughout the room, covered in illegible writing and drawings that have been crossed out and drawn over again. Elsewhere in the lab, it appears that everything Stein had been storing in his cabinets has been strewn across every table in the room, spilling out onto the floor.
Eyeing, she carefully negotiates around the pile of metal parts halfway blocking the door. "You've been...busy."
"Did you expect me to go on vacation after you asked me to make a weapon for you in two weeks?" he says as he falls back into a chair Maka didn't see amid the chaos. Somehow, he manages to roll away in spite of the mess, weaving around the piles of equipment and materials. "Watch your step."
"I didn't know what to expect," Maka replies. She follows him carefully, gaze falling on a series of beakers filled with liquids that let off an angry hissing as brightly colored vapors stream from them. "Though I guess this shouldn't be much of a surprise."
"It's not enough to just make a weapon." A tower of books and various tools Maka doesn't recognize wobbles dangerously as Stein nearly crashes into it. He makes a sharp turn down a makeshift aisle, heading for the very back of the lab. "The soul of the ghost fortifies the weapon, makes it far more durable and lethal than any man-made weapon."
"I see the challenge," says Maka. She rounds the corner to the tiny nook that hooks behind the main space of Stein's lab. "So what did you do-"
The rest of her question trips to a halt as her gaze falls on the scythe resting on Stein's lab bench. Like her old scythe, a jagged stripe of black runs down the blade, but that's where the similarities end.
"I guessed that you didn't need the additional trouble of acclimating to a new weapon." Stein picks up the scythe, hefting it in his hand. "Lightweight alloy; I mixed a little tungsten in the blade, though it's not quite the same strength as your old weapon. But since you don't have a bond distributing its weight anymore, I decided to prioritize agility and flexibility."
"Will it still defeat poltergeists and other Rift creatures?" Maka asks. Her gaze trails up and down the scythe. Its handle is an inky black that runs up the blade in a jack-o-lantern smile, which is mirrored on the other half of the blade in a grey-green color.
"You'll have no problems with Rift monsters, but with poltergeists and demons, that's an entirely different matter," answers Stein. Putting down the scythe, he dons a pair of gloves and picks up a cloth soaking in a bowl next to his equipment that has a sharp acrid smell to it.
She frowns in curiosity. "What are you doing?"
"Do you know what reaping truly is?" Stein asks as he squeezes the excess liquid from the cloth. "And why you need to be bonded to another soul to be a reaper."
For a long moment, Maka thinks and then she gives a reluctant shake of her head.
"The soul in the weapon is what cleaves the soul from the poltergeist's body and forces it to move on. Without the soul, you're just hacking away at something that's long dead." In small, careful sweeps, Stein rubs the cloth across the blade, working his way from the point to the handle. "And even I cannot engineer a soul."
Even with the last month's events, the reminder of Soul's absence still burns like a wound that refuses to close, but she ignores the feeling, pushing it to the side. "I don't think anyone can."
"In any event, the chemicals and poisons I've infused in the blade should be enough to paralyze a poltergeist for a while, though I'm not sure how effective they would be on a demon." Setting the cloth back into the bowl, Stein strips off his gloves and moves to open a drawer in the bench, presenting a pair of black, leatherlike gloves to Maka. "You'll have to come back periodically to re-inculcate the scythe with poison and you should always wear those gloves when handling the scythe."
"Noted." Maka takes the gloves and bites her lip before asking one of the two questions Stein's talk brought to the forefront of her mind. "Would this work on a creature that has black blood?"
"Another question that is unanswerable for now." Raising up the scythe, Stein holds it out to her. "Though I do have an interesting hypothesis to show you."
Quickly putting on the gloves, Maka takes the scythe. Like Stein said, the scythe is light in her hands, and even without testing it out, she can feel the gentle whisper of death radiating from the blade.
"Pinch the handle twice," Stein says.
She looks up at him, unsure that she heard Stein correctly. "Do what?"
"Pinch it," he repeats as he puts on a pair of reflective goggles. "There's another reason why you need to wear those gloves."
Still eyeing Stein in confusion, Maka does as he says, squeezing the scythe twice.
A gasp escapes from her as a brilliant light emanates from the scythe's blade; the light travels down the handle in two bright stripes opposite of each other. But although the light jabs at her eyes, it is cool and soothing in her hands, even through her gloves. Twisting her head away from the light, she holds the scythe away at an arm's length. "How do I turn it off?"
She can't make out Stein with the light blazing in front of her. "The same thing that you did to turn it on."
Quickly, she squeezes the scythe another two times and the light extinguishes itself. Maka rubs her eyes with her knuckles, bright spots still staining her vision.
"Recognize where the light comes from?" Stein asks before she can yell at him for not warning her about the light.
She frowns, pursing her lips as she contemplates the scythe's blade, before the recollection of the cube Stein showed her when she snuck in comes back to her. "The cube?"
"It was mostly made out of the same material as what I fashioned for your scythe, so it just took a few modifications to add it onto the blade and handle," he says. "And there is this."
He points to the cross of metal sticking out where the blade of the scythe meets the handle. "Push it."
"It's not going to issue some poisonous gas, is it?" she grumbles under her breath, moving up on tiptoes to push on the cross.
"Not quite," he answers as the blade retracts into the handle. They both watch as the scythe folds into a small cube that easily fits into the palm of Maka's hand as she picks it up. "Without a bond to cloak your weapon, I felt carrying around a six foot tall scythe would be rather conspicuous."
"Agreed." Maka shrugs off her bag to stow the scythe cube inside one of the inner pockets. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me until you know it works." Stein meets her eyes as he hands her a pair of reflective glasses. "I do expect to hear back on how well the scythe works."
"I'll test it out tonight." An excitement she hasn't felt in a long time bubbles up in her chest and thrums through her veins.
"Include as many details as you can."
"You'll get a full lab report." Maka tucks the glasses away in a side pocket and looks back up at Stein. She hesitates in saying goodbye-Tsubaki's return tomorrow brings back the memories of what she confided in her and Black Star at the mall. Drumming her fingers on the lab bench, she asks, "Do you remember when I told you about the friend who could see my old scythe?"
"Did you ask me not to?" he asks as he starts to straighten the equipment on the bench.
"She's begun to see things," Maka says. "Well, just one thing," she corrects herself. "I think it might be a demon, but I'm not sure."
Several beats of silence pass. "In the exorcisms I've attended, the soul of the person being possessed has often been so altered that they are able to see the demon haunting them and occasionally other nearby ghosts," Stein says, finally. "After the demon was exorcised, they were no longer able to see the demon or anything else."
"But why would a demon target her?" Maka asks, brushing a lock of hair out of her face. "The only link she has to the supernatural is me, and I haven't seen in her in weeks."
He gives a shrug. "We've never been able to find a commonality between the people demons choose to haunt," he says. "Give me her name and I can open a case for a reaper to come and investigate."
"No!"
Heat crawls into Maka's face at her outburst and she looks away from Stein. "She's coming back home, and I want a little time to do some digging of my own," she says. "One week at most."
She doesn't need to glance up to know that Stein's impassive gaze is drilling into her. "And what do you think you'll find in a few days?"
"I don't know," she answers honestly. "But I have a few ideas." There's a tense pause, and she peeks up, not quite looking at Stein.
"Fine," he says after what feels like an eternity. "One week. After that, you have to hand over the case to the DWMA."
Relaxing, Maka lets out a sigh of relief. "Thank you."
"But I still want to know what's going on." He pulls a tiny machine from his pocket. "Have this on you while you're around your friend. It'll record the energy and activity of anything supernatural around you."
"Got it." She takes the the monitor and slips it in her pocket; it resembles a cell phone, only smaller.
"Now you'd better get a move on if you really want to test out that scythe," says Stein. He resumes organizing the equipment on the bench. "And remember, you have one week."
She scowls as she starts to make her way to the door. "I'm not going to forget."
"Happy hunting," Stein calls from behind her.
As soon as she is out of the laboratory, Maka quickens her step, fighting the urge to look right and left for Marie and Azusa as she rapidly walks for the elevator. The tension between her and the two clairvoyants from refusing to form a bond with a new ghost has slowly dissipated, and she doesn't need it to reignite by being found here on her night off.
The knifepoint her nerves are stretched over does not vanish when she gets to the elevator. She jabs violently at the elevator button, plunging forward as soon as she hears the soft chime of the doors opening.
It's less the force of colliding into the person exiting the elevator, but the small grunt that they let out that startles her. Stumbling back, Maka screws her eyes shut, praying that she did not hear the voice she thinks she just did.
"Maka?"
Reality is unkind, she thinks, keeping her eyes closed for another moment before opening them to greet Azusa. "Hi."
Papers float gently past Azusa's body, but she doesn't seem to take notice as she looks down at Maka, eyes widening. Her expression is one of genuine surprise, an emotion Maka has never seen on the clairvoyant's face. "What are you doing here?"
"I went to visit Stein, but I'm heading home now." She bends down to pick up the papers Azusa dropped, heart racing. Technically, she supposed to still be on "vacation", and, given the psychic's abilities, everything will fall apart with a poorly constructed lie, so she decides to run with the truth as long as she can. "I was coming to see when I would be back on the schedule, but I also wanted to ask Stein a few questions."
"Questions?" Taking the papers from her, Azusa's critical stare lights across her face. "About what?"
"My father." Panic and abrupt inspiration makes her voice higher than normal, and she clears her throat. "Stein told me that our abilities are genetic," she says, fighting to keep her tone even. "I was curious if he had ever seen anything like what I can do in my dad."
"They did go to college together, didn't they?" Azusa's gaze doesn't pull away from Maka's face, but the analytical look in her eyes dims slightly. Stepping back into the elevator, she gestures to the space beside her and Maka has no choice but to walk in and stand next to her.
"That's right." Maka keeps her eyes rooted on the mission briefings papering the glass walls as the elevator begins to move. "And I know Stein had an interest in the supernatural even back then."
"Spirit was assessed at the same time as you were when we first visited," says Azusa. "It quickly became evident that he possessed no abilities whatsoever."
"Yeah, I kinda figured." The elevator seems to move at an agonizingly slow pace, and Maka resists the urge to shrink away from Azusa. "When he didn't see the giant scythe I was towing around, I guessed that my abilities came from my mom, but I wanted to be sure."
The slight noise of acknowledgement Azusa gives and the subsequent silence that follows makes the anxious knot gnawing at the pit of Maka's stomach grow larger. In her bag, the weight of her scythe feels as heavy as a lead block. She presses her hands to her sides to refrain from fidgeting, and attempts to keep her thoughts from dwelling on the scythe, even though she is fairly certain that Azusa only gives the impression that she can read minds.
When the elevator finally opens to the portal floor, she hides her relief, turning to say her goodbye to Azusa, only to find that the clairvoyant is exiting the elevator well. The dismay in her voice is difficult to mask. "This is your stop too?"
"There's a report of something strange near the Rift," answers Azusa. She stops suddenly, nearly causing Maka to crash into her again. "Actually," she says, the appraising look in her eye returning as she turns around, "it might help if you came along with me."
"Go with you?"
Azusa's eyebrows lift slightly. "Weren't you the one who said you were eager to be back? Or would you like to quit again?"
"No, I'm not." Her words are hard and sharp, but her heart plummets to her stomach, and for a few seconds, Maka's mind scrambles to find an excuse. "But I don't have a weapon anymore," she finally manages. "Wouldn't that be dangerous?"
"Any poltergeist we encounter would have to be banished." The way Azusa's voice tightens is almost imperceptible. "I was also under the impression that you have a certain disregard for danger."
A vicious warmth floods her face. "Only when it's necessary."
"It could be soon."
The grimness in her answer takes her aback. "What do you mean?"
Twisting back around, Azusa says, "You can see for yourself and tell me what you think."
Swallowing, Maka stays where she is for a moment, and then follows after her reluctantly. The smart thing to do would be to make an excuse, but there's nothing she can say to make her refusal not seem like a lie, nor can she deny that her curiosity hasn't been piqued.
Her reflection stares at Maka from all sides as they walk through the hallway and pass the metal portal doors, warped and hazy. It's close to how she feels these days, she thinks as Azusa leads her past the door going back to Orcus Hollow, and she nearly opens her mouth to speak when the clairvoyant beats her first. "How are things going with Marie and Kilik?"
"There's not much to do but stand around while Marie purifies the space." A sudden surge of bitterness flooding up into her mouth threatens to rub her throat raw. "Kilik and the twins take care of the rest."
Even without turning around, Azusa's laser stare drills into her. "Without your presence, the leftover auras of the poltergeists are more likely to escape and wear down the Rift. Do you think so little of that just because you're only standing around?"
The burn in her cheeks returns. "It's not like I don't know that." It's a struggle to keep her voice even when their last in-depth conversation resulted in her removal as a reaper; Azusa had had the final say in that. "It just doesn't seem as much as I used to do."
"But it's what you can do." Azusa stops in front of one of the last doors in the hallway; with her black clothing, her reflection in the door's surface is an indistinct shadow. "Staying focused on what you can't do will only wear you down."
Maka blinks in surprise-Azusa's words are an odd echo of what Spirit told her earlier. Clasping her hands behind her back, she grudgingly acknowledges the truth in Azusa's reply. "I'll try to remember that."
"Good." Pulling the door open, Azusa gestures to the darkness in front of them. "Shall we?"
This portal crossing seems to take less time than the others Maka has taken; whether it's because the distance is less or that she walks faster with Azusa is behind her, she doesn't know, but according to her watch, only fifteen minutes have passed as they exit the portal and emerge into small and musty-smelling cellar. Dirt and dust rain down on her as she straightens up, knocking her head against the ceiling.
"Mind your head," says Azusa.
She gives the clairvoyant a scowl she can't see. "I thought you were psychic."
"Do you see everything just because you have eyes?" There's a slight shuffling sound from behind Maka as Azusa moves around, though it's too dark to see what she is doing. "I see what is relevant to my survival, visions of anything else are generally sporadic."
Her mouth forms a slight scowl, but curiosity overtakes her. "How can you see the present and the future at the same time?"
"After a lifetime of visions, it becomes similar to white noise," Azusa replies, letting out a small grunt as the ceiling suddenly flips open and moonlight floods in. The spidery branches of the trees surrounding the tiny cellar they're in stretch out toward the sky, bleached skeleton-white by the moon. But it's the screaming wind raging above her that seizes her attention, shaking the world so hard even the stars seem to rattle.
"What is this?" Maka has to yell to make herself heard as Azusa holds out a hand to help her up. Out of the shelter of the cellar, the wind buffets her relentlessly, ice-cold and razor-sharp, making it impossible to see anything but what is in front of her. Tears fly to the corners of her eyes as she reaches for the glasses Stein gave her, pushing them on her face.
Azusa's voice is carried off by the wind, bouncing off of the trees in unearthly echoes. "Something strange."
"I can see that." Maka raises her voice as loud as she can, wiping her eyes as her vision finally adjusts. "But what is it?"
Either the wind dilutes her words too much or Azusa chooses not to answer; the clairvoyant swings the door to cellar portal closed with an astonishing ease, given how much the wind is howling, and strides off.
Maka scrambles after her, nearly knocked off her feet as she tries to keep pace with Azusa. The wind steals her breath, keeping her on the brink of suffocation as she gasps for air. It is difficult to see even with the glasses, especially with the wind pushing against her as if it were alive. Her knees buckle as she struggles forward in stops and starts; the wind not only feels like a living creature, but like a malignant being, intent on slamming her into the ground. Squeezing her hands into fists, she grits her teeth and continues to stagger onward-she has no idea how Azusa walks through the wind so easily, but the strength she built up from her months as a reaper hasn't faded completely and she refuses to be left behind.
Her hair whips back and forth in time with the wind's frenetic rhythm; there is something malicious in the wind's unending scream, something that gives Maka the sensation of phantom teeth scraping and biting at her skin. The feeling grows the longer she walks and, along with the cold sinking into her legs, makes moving her feet feel like moving blocks of lead. To keep herself from focusing on the numbness spreading through her calves, she moves her gaze around as she follows Azusa-it's all but impossible to tell much about where they are, even with her glasses. All she can make out is that they appear to be in the outskirts of a forest, although there is something far greater than trees looming ahead of them.
Minutes that feel more like hours tick by before they reach the end of the forest, Azusa still a few steps ahead. The wind abruptly extinguishes itself in an angry howl as soon as they pass the last tree and Maka tips forward dangerously, the extra force she put into moving throwing her off-balance. Azusa reaches out a hand before she can fall on her face, steadying her.
"Watch yourself." She glances at Maka and then lets go of her, shifting her gaze back in front of them.
She give a single nod, still out of breath in spite of the absence of the wind. The silence that follows after having her eardrums pummeled by its raging screams is smothering, but that is not what renders her speechless.
The entrance of Silver Canyon splits open in front of Maka, the jagged walls of the canyon shooting straight up into the sky like the fangs of a snarling beast. In the light of the moon, the quartz streaks that paint the canyon walls silver are turned into a glinting ivory. Parting her lips, she rips her gaze away from the canyon and to the cabin next to the entrance that acts as a ranger station-the lights are out and the makeshift parking lot in front of it is empty, even though they're in the middle of tourist season.
"Why are we here?" She fights the shiver crawling down the back of her neck; the infectious song of the black blood pulsates weakly in her veins and calls her forward, inviting her into the canyon.
"There was a sighting of a poltergeist showing odd behavior earlier today," says Azusa, stepping closer to the entrance. "Some ranger reports said that parts of the canyon caved in for no apparent reason, although you and I know why." Part of her shadow unravels itself from her feet as she speaks, reshaping itself into a demon sniffer. "The canyon gets busy at this time of year, so the canyon was evacuated by a contact of ours and a reaper was dispatched to take care of the poltergeist."
"Seems normal." The volume of the song in her blood creeps higher. Her muscles tense with the urge to run, but she pushes her heels into the ground, and bites the tip of her tongue. If she gives away that she knows what is waiting for them, then it won't take very long for Azusa to put together how she knows and even less time to figure out what she has been doing on her nights off.
"It was, until the reaper didn't check in like he was supposed to." Azusa inspects the wooden sign hanging across the mouth of the canyon, examining it as if she was about to interrogate it. "And then the signal on his DWMA communication device went silent."
"So you think the poltergeist got the better of the reaper?" she asks.
"Maybe." She stares into the canyon for another moment before glancing back at Maka. "But the reality is that reapers are killed by poltergeists, Rift creatures, and demons all the time. What isn't normal is for their bodies to vanish."
"And you want to find out what happened for yourself." Maka looks down at the sniffer, which is now curled around Azusa's feet. Its eyes glow like coals, even on a bright night like tonight. "Is that the reason you brought one of your sniffers?"
"Part of it." Rubbing a finger down the side of her face, Azusa goes back to contemplating the canyon entrance. "It also helped anchor me while walking through the wind, which was the last thing the rangers reported before evacuating."
"Which you think is part of the poltergeist's doing."
"Most likely, but we won't get any real answers standing around," Azusa replies. Something in her face tenses ever so slightly, but the steely calm in her eyes remains the same. "I know I asked you to come, but you can go back and wait at the portal, if you would like."
"No." Maka's answer is automatic. Her courage runs too thickly for her to do anything but follow through with her word, even when it'd be wise not to. "If we're nearly there, then I'm not going back."
Azusa gives a sharp nod. "Very well."
The grinding of loose dirt underneath their feet is the only noise that breaks the artificial silence as they enter the canyon. Maka's nails cut half-moons into her palm; now that her panic has subsided somewhat, she can tell this poltergeist's madness isn't as strong as the first one's, but she doesn't know if or how that might change when they find it.
Shadows from the canyon walls throw them into darkness as they walk into Silver Canyon. An odd feeling comes over Maka as she and Azusa follow the main artery through the canyon, a heaviness pressing down on her perception. A prickly unease digs into her skin-it feels like the same presence from her walk in the forest outside her house two weeks ago, but unlike last time, she does not reach out with her perception.
Instead, she peeks over her shoulder, though all she can make out are the vague outlines of rocks and the canyon walls. She looks forward again, heart drumming in her chest, but she can't keep herself from glancing behind herself every few minutes.
"Something wrong?" The sound of Azusa's voice makes her jump in the air.
"No," she says quickly. "I thought I heard something, but there's nothing there."
"Using your perception, I see." Azusa's words are approving. "Smart move."
Maka clears her throat. "Right."
"How close is the poltergeist?" Azusa asks after another minute of walking. The opaque figure of the sniffer detaches itself from her shadow. "It would be help to know if the poltergeist is moving toward or away from us."
"Um, well-" A death rattle coming directly over their heads cuts off Maka's answer. They both look up in time to see the dark outline of the poltergeist dropping down at them from the canyon wall.
"Move!" They break apart as another two poltergeists drop from the wall, letting out high-pitched screeches. Maka lets out a yell as one lunges forward, swiping its arm in arc, the tips of its nails grazing her cheek.
The poltergeists' madness is a roar in Maka's ears; the world becomes a blur as she struggles to stay above it, calling Azusa's name. "Go!" she hears the clairvoyant shout. "I will find you later!"
Stumbling back, Maka fumbles for her bag as the poltergeist charges at her again, black blood streaking down its chin as it screams again, and catches a glimpse of bared teeth that look more like fangs. Her reaper instincts snap into place even as fear, sharp and acrid on her tongue, mixes in with the familiar rush of adrenaline and she narrowly avoids backpedaling into the canyon wall, hearing the dry hiss of another poltergeist above her.
The bag nearly slips from Maka's hands as she dives away from the cliff and feints left to avoid running straight into the charging poltergeist, holding the bag tight to her chest as she sprints away from the poltergeist horde and into the heart of the canyon. Moonlight illuminates the dark as she rounds the bend and hurtles down one of the smaller veins splitting off from the main ravine in the canyon, the walls narrowing in on her sharply. She doesn't need her perception to sense the two poltergeists chasing after her, nor does she need to look behind her to know that they'll be on her in an instant if she slows down. A knifelike ache forms in her lungs as the trail sharply goes uphill; running in the canyon is worse than in the forest-there are no trees to run into or slow her down, but that only makes it easier for the poltergeists to follow, and gives her no time to put on her gloves and pull the scythe from her bag.
She gasps as the path ahead abruptly morphs into a dead end. Without stopping, she whips her head left and right, spotting a small opening to her right, barely large enough for her to squeeze through. The hand of one of the poltergeists brushes against her back as Maka dives into the gap, followed by enraged shrieks when the poltergeists find they cannot fit.
It's a stroke of short-lived luck, however. Maka takes no more than ten steps when she crashes into rock, bright spots exploding into her vision. The bag falls from her hands as she stumbles forward, reaching out her arms as she tries to shake off the pain radiating down her body and feels nothing but the rough surface of the canyon wall.
"No." Blinking once in disbelief and then again, she pushes against the wall, as if it will open up if she presses hard enough. For one panic-filled moment, she's a child again, banging against a door that won't open as smoke from the fire in the basement curls in her lungs and a demon with red eyes toys with her.
"Hey, kitten."
A half-formed scream rips from Maka's lips as something small and soft jumps onto her shoulder. She reacts on instinct, yanking the thing away from her and raising it high in the air to slam it into the wall.
"STOP," screeches the cat in her hands, swatting at Maka's fingers. "I'm trying to help you!"
Maka freezes, the cat's voice finally registering in her brain. She stares up at Blair, all but completely speechless. "You?"
"Yes, me." The alarm in Blair's golden eyes disappears, and she squirms impatiently in her hands. "Can I help save your life now?"
Even the sounds of the poltergeists trying to squeeze their way into the cramped space doesn't sink through her shock. "Wha-"
"There will be time for questions later," says Blair, struggling harder. "If you let me go now, that is."
Mouth snapping shut, Maka bites down on her questions and sets Blair on the ground. The cat stretches, shaking out her legs. "Now," she says. "I can distract those things, but only for a few moments, so your scythe boy better come out from wherever he is."
"I can handle this." Distantly, the pang of memory makes itself known, but Maka snatches up her bag from the ground, pulling the gloves from her pocket. "Go."
Blair's expression is quizzical, but she gives a shake of her head. "If you say so."
Grabbing the cube from its pocket, Maka swings her bag onto her shoulders and balances the cube in her palm, looks down at it expectantly. It does absolutely nothing; for a split second, panic threatens to take over, and then she remembers Stein's words when he demonstrated how to use the scythe.
The cube disappears in a flash of light the instant she squeezes it twice, and the feeling of a small metal cube in her hand is replaced by the smoothness of the scythe's handle. For an instant, she locks eyes with her reflection gleaming dully in the blade, then lets out a breath, moving to hold the scythe close to her body as she starts to follow Blair.
"You humans are so slow." Maka jumps at the sound of Blair's voice as she wedges her way into the narrow crevice. "I'll never understand why you moved from using four legs to two."
"Evolution, for one, and I'm also carrying a giant scythe," she huffs in reply. Angling the scythe so the blade is facing the entrance, she hooks her hair behind her hair. Ahead the screams of the poltergeists have subsided into angry groans and keening, though the outlines of their shadows are clear as they pace back and forth in front of the mouth of the tunnel. "What's your plan?"
Blair sounds almost offended. "A cat never has any plans."
"I don't th-" She darts away before Maka can get the rest of her sentence out, and Maka lets out a "Hey!" before snapping her mouth shut and charging forward to keep pace with Blair.
"Keep up!" She barely has time to register Blair's words, only catching a glimpse of the cat launching herself at the poltergeist closest to the entrance and landing squarely on its face. It lets out a furious yell, spraying black blood as it attempts to claw Blair off, but she easily evades its clumsy swipes, jumping down onto its shoulder.
Instinct guides Maka as she runs forward to meet the poltergeist; vaguely, she registers madness pulling at the corners of her mind and the other poltergeist twisting around to charge at her as she brings down the scythe down in an arc, squeezing the handle tightly. The blade illuminates in a searing flash as the point hooks into the side of the poltergeist and Maka drives in the blade nearly to the hilt.
Blair gives a small yowl as the blade's point burrows its way through the poltergeist's body, just underneath its shoulder blade and only inches below where she balances on its shoulder. "Wait 'till I'm off until you do that!"
"Maybe if you'd take care of the other one," Maka says with a labored grunt as she yanks the scythe out of the poltergeist and spins around in time to kick the other poltergeist in the chest. It stumbles, but this poltergeist is less decayed and more lithe than the other one, and manages to dodge and lace its arms around the handle of her scythe.
She wobbles, nearly doubling over to keep her grip on the handle. The light from the scythe burns the rotting hands of the poltergeist, allowing her to regain her balance, but the poltergeist still scrabbles to reach Maka's arm. Black blood streams down the decaying crevices etched in its hands, but the scythe's light repels it.
Bile rises in her mouth as the poltergeist's fingers reach hers and blood stains her gloves black; even through the gloves, death's touch is putrid and freezing, nothing like Soul's coolness. She tries to wrench the scythe away, but the poltergeist's grip is strong and rigid.
The song of the poltergeist's madness drums against Maka's ears as it uses its hold on the scythe to pull itself forward. The scythe's light seems to temper the madness, but that doesn't stop the poltergeist's rancid breath from bearing down on her as its face comes within inches of hers.
A blur of purple flies past Maka's face as Blair launches herself onto the poltergeist's face, claws out as she swipes at its eyes. "Why are you freezing?"
Maka blinks as the poltergeist lets out an outraged screech, tightening her grip on the scythe's handle. Yanking hard on the scythe, she breaks the poltergeist's hold on it and slams the back of the blade into its chest, hard enough to send the poltergeist tumbling to the ground. Deftly, she swings the scythe around and brings it down, silencing the poltergeist's shrieks.
Her chest heaves as the sound of the madness fades into quiet, though her iron grip on the scythe doesn't loosen. In front of Maka, Blair extracts herself from the mangled remains of the poltergeist, daintily shaking the dust from her body. The cat moves around the poltergeist and lightly leaps up onto Maka's shoulder. "Well, that wasn't so hard, was it?" she says.
The rush of bittersweet melancholy is unexpected; the aftermath of a reaping is too familiar, too close to Soul. "Not hard at all."
A strong pull on her perception brings her out of the moment, her head snaps up as she focuses and then swears under her breath.
The weight on her shoulder shifts as Blair's head tilts to one side. "What is it?"
"Azusa is coming," she says, squeezing the handle.
"The clairvoyant?"
"How do you know so much about my life?" She stows away the scythe cube in her bag, stripping away the gloves and walking faster along the path. While she knows Azusa doesn't have her perception, Maka doesn't know what Azusa could have seen with her vision, or if her demon sniffers can detect the poltergeists. "Where have you been?"
"Around here, sometimes other places," the cat says. Her tail twitches nervously as she speaks. "But I've been keeping an eye on you here and there."
"It would have been helpful if you had made yourself known one of those times." They round a bend; there is more light now that the moon is rising, but every shadow still seems to move, and the low moan of the wind running through the canyon sounds like a poltergeist preparing to attack.
Blair's voice is evasive. "I had some things to attend to."
"I'd like to hear about that," she says as they emerge into the main gorge of the canyon. She pauses, checking herself for traces of black blood. There are scrapes on her legs from cramming herself into the tunnel, but nothing that can't be explained away. She glances at Blair-she spent years thinking she was a normal cat, but she doesn't know if Azusa or her sniffers will see through her ruse. "Though you should probably go for now."
The cat's tone becomes slightly miffed. "Why?"
"You used to help the enemy, for one," Maka answers as she takes Blair off her shoulder and sets her down on nearby rock. Azusa's presence tugs on her perception even harder-she can't be more than a couple minutes away. "And there's a lot of things Azusa can't know about, including what happened back there."
"You and scythe boy going rogue, I see." A knowing gleam enters the cat's eyes, and she stands, giving a sniff. "Tell him I think it's rude he stayed in the scythe, but I say hello anyway."
She bounds away before Maka can say anything, lithely jumping up onto the canyon wall and disappearing from view in a few swift movements.
The ache of remembering paralyzes Maka; she stares after the spot where Blair vanished for a moment before coming back to herself. Snapping back into action, she continues to put as much distance possible between herself and the poltergeists. Like Stein predicted, the poison in the scythe blade did its job: the beat of the poltergeists' souls is muted but still present, a barely discernible blip on her perception field.
Her pace quickens-she can only hope that it's enough to mask the poltergeists from Azusa and the sniffers.
It only takes another couple twists in the canyon path for her to spy the outline of the clairvoyant. Maka takes a deep breath to steel herself before rushing forward. "Azusa!"
"There you are!" The usual calm in Azusa's voice is gone as she hurries to Maka. "I haven't been able to see you in my vision since I banished the last of the horde." Strange, blackened burns spot her hands, and there are several rips in her clothes and a weblike crack in the right lens of her glasses, but she doesn't pay her wounds any attention. "What happened?"
"Two of them came after me, but I outran them." She tries to sound a little more out of breath. "But the canyon is a maze and I got lost, I only found you with my perception."
"Can you still sense them now?" Azusa gestures to her sniffer, which appears to have grown several sizes. "We need to find them before they can infect other poltergeists or creatures."
Maka shakes her head a little too quickly. "So you know what it is?" she says. "What's infecting them?"
"Black blood." A humorless smile spreads across Azusa's lips as she holds up her hands; now that Maka is closer, she can see where the blood has eaten away her skin. "My banishing reflexes weren't fast enough, for once."
"I'm sorry." The words come out before she can stop them. She had known about the poltergeists being infected with black blood, but she was so preoccupied with finding Soul that she dismissed it as a fluke, an unfortunate crossing with the winged creature.
A frown of concern replaces the expression on Azusa's face. "There's nothing for you to be sorry about," she says. "To get away from a horde like that with only injuries like these is practically nothing." She pauses. "But there is something else that worries me."
"And that is?" Maka says, even though a sinking feeling in her stomach tells her that she already knows.
It's clear that Azusa is uncomfortable by the silence that comes before she answers. "A feeling of uncontrollable hysteria came over me while I was banishing the horde. It's why I have these," she says, nodding to her hands. "A poltergeist grabbed hold of me when the delirium hit. Luckily, my sniffer was nearby."
She swallows, guilt crawling under her skin. "I felt something similar."
Several moments pass before either of them speak. "What do you think it means?" asks Maka finally.
Azusa lets out a sigh. "I wish I knew."
"I do know this, however," she adds on, straightening her glasses. "Trouble is rising."
Far above them, the gauzy veil of the Rift glints dully in the moonlight. Maka knows that the phantom rasping and the whispers of monsters calling to her from the Rift is only her imagination playing tricks on her, but that the places where the Rift looks almost threadbare is not.
"Yes," she agrees in a quiet voice. "It is."
It is well after midnight by the time Maka's truck turns into her driveway and she stumbles from her seat like the drunk drivers she watched her father arrest when he used to take her on his night patrol. Her head feels like a sponge that's been wrung out and left in the sun; she can barely feel the ground underneath her feet as she staggers toward the front door. The porch lights are still on, but Spirit is not there, or on the couch the in the living room.
It's probably a good sign, she thinks semi-coherently as she trudges up the stairs, though she'll still have to explain herself tomorrow. But even with everything she's experienced in the past two hours, she is too tired to care about her father, or Blair, or the plague of infected poltergeists; a giggle trips out of her mouth as she hits her shin on the last step and nearly faceplants - possibly a result of her run-in with the poltergeists, though she suspects not. She doesn't even consider the idea of taking a shower, lurching into her room without turning on the light and over to her bed, falling on top of the blankets.
Maka's not sure when her eyes close, or if they were ever open at all, but when her eyes open again, Soul is standing in front of her.