In the girl's toilet
A dull thudding sound caught Bakura's attention as he headed down the hall in the direction that girl had said Myrtle was. Frowning slightly, he veered off, shoving open the door from which the sounds seemed to be coming. It was a bathroom.
He looked around, taking in the rows of stalls and trying to figure out what was causing the noise that had caught his attention. Ah, there it was. One of the stalls was shaking, as if someone was trying to break it down. Considering the situation for a moment, Bakura decided that whoever was inside would probably forgive him for breaking in on them.
Catching hold of the handle, he braced his foot against the stall and heaved it backwards, pulling the flimsy door right off its hinges and sending him staggering backwards with the force of his pull. He had been expecting it to be more difficult, subconsciously bracing himself for the kind of resistance that the stone sarcophagi presented. Recovering himself, Bakura stepped close enough to see inside the stall and blinked, brows flying upward as he surveyed the scene in front of him.
Myrtle lay on the floor, blinking up at him through watery eyes, her legs held together at what had to be a very awkward angle from where she had obviously been using them to slam against the stall door. "Are you all right?" he asked, reaching down a hand to help her up.
She took his hand, but didn't try to get to her feet, instead shaking her head and asking him to get her wand. "They used the leg-locker curse on me and I need to break it before I can get up." Bakura nodded and went over to pick up the discarded wand lying in a corner, bringing it over so that Myrtle could undo the curse.
"So what happened?" he asked, leaning against the plastic of the stall and watching as Myrtle tried to work the cramps out of her legs. "I asked that girl, Crouse, where you were and she said she'd seen you go through here, but that doesn't explain what actually happened to you."
"Crouse?" Myrtle's head snapped up and she stared at him. "She told you I was here? But she was one of the ones who did this to me!"
"I see," Bakura nodded, bending down to help Myrtle to her feet. "That would probably explain why she looked so scared when I asked her where you were." He wrinkled his nose in disgust and kicked the stall door out of his way as he helped the limping girl back to their common room. "I should probably go tell someone that's broken," he added mildly.
Myrtle shook her head. "You shouldn't really have been in there, although I am glad you came to rescue me. I don't want you to get in trouble over it. Just leave things as they are and someone will report it."
Shrugging, Bakura lifted her over the step and deposited the surprised girl onto one of the green couches that lined the walls of the Slytherin common room before running upstairs to get the book he had been reading last night. He hadn't had a chance to look at it since, but as it didn't look like Myrtle was in any shape to be walking to the library today he might as well see if there was anything else useful in it.
He settled on the sofa next to her, found his place and resumed reading as Myrtle curled up against his shoulder and rested her chin on his shoulder so she could see what he was reading. Courteously, he held the book up for her perusal, rereading the section that had caught his attention last night to make sure that it really did say what he had thought. If his suspicions were correct, then Zoku was a demon – had always been a demon – and was still here, trying to manipulate him into working with him once again.
It did make sense. He had wondered even then why the priest's soul monster would desert his own ba, but he had been so eager to get to the Pharaoh that he had disregarded the contradictory nature of the being and gone ahead anyway. Looking back at it now, he thought that if he had followed the plan that Zoku had laid out for him he would have almost certainly ended up killing a lot of people, which would have sat with a demon perfectly.
"Myrtle," he began mildly, turning to look at her and seeing her wide eyes and the way she was staring at the book he was holding. "How do you find a demon's name?"