16. DEMON(S)

Seth and I stared at each other, neither of us willing to answer.

"Guys?" Ana said. She snapped her fingers between our faces. "Guys. Come on. It's just for fun."

"What if the house is haunted?" I asked her. "You'll be too freaked out to sleep here."

"Luckily for me, I'm moving out soon!"

I laughed at her. "Bitch," I joked.

"You used to love getting spooky. Come on," she pouted.

I looked at Seth and he sighed in defeat. "Fine," he finally agreed.

"Okay," Ana said, placing her hands on the planchette before I stopped her.

"First, we drink. Then we speak to the dead," I told her, filling up our glasses. Seth had brought lemons in lieu of chaser and it was more pleasant than I'd expected. We all drank a bit, and then we settled in.

"This is weird," Josh said.

"And wrong," Seth said.

"Oh, shut up. It's fun," Ana said to them both. She cleared her throat and closed her eyes. "We call upon the spirits that are near us tonight," she said, feigning intensity. She didn't really believe in any of this stuff. When she said it was fun, that's absolutely all it was to her.

I, on the other hand, was terrified right now. Clearly there were things that I didn't understand in this world. I'd only opened the door today attempting to peek inside, and now I was pushing it wider and wider. I wasn't sure if I was ready for all of this.

"Is there anyone with us?" she asked openly. The pointer crept slowly to the word YES. "What should we ask it?" Ana whispered to us.

"Are you a ghost?" Josh asked loudly. Ever so slowly, it slid across the board to NO. "Well what the hell, then?"

It started with HELLO, which was nice enough. Then it moved to the L... then the I. I jerked my fingers back and it stopped moving.

Ana started laughing and playfully smacked Josh's arm. "You're moving it!" she accused.

"I swear, I'm not," he laughed.

"Liz looks too freaked out for it to be her." She eyed Seth. "Never would have suspected you, Clearwater."

He just smirked in response, but I had a feeling he hadn't been moving anything; he was barely even touching it.

Ana put her fingertips back to the planchette. "All in, Miss Legs." She smiled with satisfaction as I rolled my eyes and touched the pointer once again. "Are you a male or a female? Or do you even have a gender?"

The pointer slid to just the letter F. I took a hand off to do shots and raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Are you a lazy not-ghost entity?" Can't even spell out the whole word.

As soon as I put my fingers back, it went to NO, then to E, L, I... I withdrew my fingers once more.

"Stop spelling your name out!" Ana laughed.

"My bad." I'd rather her think that it was me than some fucking demon or something.

Both Seth and Josh were taking drinks or stirring theirs up while Ana pouted at me for a moment. It was just her fingers and mine touching the planchette when it basically fucking came alive. It was shooting around the letters, almost too fast for my eyes to catch.

Not too fast for Seth's eyes, though.

"I will find the witch," he said, his eyes locking onto me with this look of malice that absolutely did not belong on his usually kind face. "And I will burn her."

"Fucking freaky," Ana said. "So... everybody saw that shit, right?"

"Yeah, Ana," Josh said.

"I'm so freaked out now! What the fuck was that?!"

"Don't be scared, Banana. I'm sure whatever it was, it just got its wires crossed with us," I lied. Surprisingly, I didn't feel the least bit panicked. I'd had the Oh Shit moment, and then immediately snapped out of it. It was stupid anyways; I was like ninety nine percent sure I couldn't be burned in any capacity. Flame Retardant Liz.

I got up and left the room, heading for my basement. I shut the door behind me and focused hard on creating a light to guide me through the pitch black room. It worked, but it worked too well; my whole arm was ablaze and thunder shook my house. I had to learn how to control this shit.

I took my candle-flame sized fire down the steps and grabbed a few guitars. I kind of wanted to show Ana what I could do, but I wasn't ready yet. I wasn't sure how she'd react... but then again, it was Ana. Of course she'd think it was cool as fuck.

I returned and handed Ana one guitar, then left the third leaned against my bed. I sat beside it and started picking around at a few notes until something caught, then I played some Marilyn Manson And The Spooky Kids while Ana came in around the chorus. We sang together and then I flowed into another song, going for a mashup.

Seth grabbed the third guitar, a Yamaha that I'd given to him pretty early on. He flowed in with me and picked up when I would slow down. He had gotten so good at playing, but I wanted him to find his own style; right now he was just playing the notes, he wasn't feeling it yet. That was my next I'm-home-all-the-time-and-bored project.

He went from Barenaked Ladies to an intro that I didn't expect to hear, and then he actually started to sing. "And in your eyes, I see so much more... than that place you always go back to. You can pull yourself away from the face that constantly haunts you..."

I picked up and went to another Darkest Hour song. "Oh, you and me, we're the same. Asking for more... more than the numbing existence offered us all. What did they say? What did they do... to make you crawl back here? Despite everything that you've been through, you're still right here." I sang much louder. Habits.

He slowed it way down and softened it up before reciting part five of The Wasteland, which he knew was one of my favorite pieces of poetry ever written. "After the torchlight red on sweaty faces,
After the frosty silence in the gardens
The agony of stony places
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder, of spring, over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience."

The lights came back on then, cutting him off with surprise. He looked at me and shrugged before getting up and taking the guitars back to their stands. Ana blew out a couple of candles.

"I'm finishing this drink before I go," she announced.

I giggled. "You're going to sleep good tonight."

She put her cup down and frowned at me. "I just realized that we can't do this anymore once we move."

I held my hand up and she clasped hers with it. "Hey, thunder buddies for life!"

"For. Life," she declared before chugging the remains in her cup. She kissed me on the cheek with a, "Night, baby," and then she and Josh left while I blew out another candle.

"Don't do that anymore," Seth said as soon as they were down the hall and our door was securely shut. It was one of those things that I'd almost expected but still shocked the hell out of me.

I kept my back to him. "Why? Are you afraid?" Of me?

"Fuck yes, I'm afraid!" he spun me around by my shoulders, looking at me with this odd mix of desperation and sternness. "Just please, no more magic."

I bit at my lip nervously, unsure of how to respond. I didn't want to quit; I had just gotten started! I opened the box and there was no turning back now.

"Please," he begged.

"I don't understand why you're so freaked," I finally said. "Maybe I shouldn't have jumped headfirst, but I mean... it's so cool! I can do real magic, Seth. Please don't take that away from me."

"It's evil!"

"I'm not religious anymore! Good, evil... it's all man made. This isn't." I snapped my fingers and boom, fire. "This is beautiful."

He squashed the flame with his bare hand. "It's not about religion. It's about you speaking a few words or just thinking too hard and making the sky rip open. You have no idea what you're messing with."

"Then I'll find out!" I said in return. "Being afraid of something doesn't mean you have to bury it. Let me figure out what I'm doing. We can find a way to understand this... if it really is harmful, I'll stop. I swear."

He sighed. "Fine. But no more Latin until you know what you're doing." His eyes scorched into me. "Promise?"

"Promise," I smiled. Want to know how I know that I'm a terrible person? He said no more Latin and I agreed. Of COURSE he meant no more magic, it was obviously implied, but that wasn't what he said and therefore, not what I agreed to. Loopholes.

His phone started to ring and he grabbed it. "It's Mark," he said before answering. I went outside to smoke and when I came back, he was putting his wet jeans back on. Such a disappointing image, unless you had a vivid imagination and could then replay it in reverse. "I have to go pick him up. Will you make up the couch for him?"

"Yeah... Is he okay?"

He's fine but his car is broken down pretty close to us. I told him I'd take a look in the morning." He peeked out the window. "Hopefully it's not storming like this then. Mind if I take the Cam?" I grabbed the keys off the dresser and tossed them to him. He caught them without turning away from the window.

"Be careful," I told him. He kissed me on his way out. I laid down and turned on the tv to a music channel. Lamb of God was playing and I was rocking out when there was a light knock at my door. "Come in!"

Ana popped into the room and zeroed in on the bottle we'd been sharing earlier. "Want another drink?"

"I sure do," I smiled.