While staring into the mirror, Filia fell under light spell. Her denim shirt hung loosely over her white tank top, as she stopped in her tracks to she put it on. Her thoughts naturally turned to yesterday. Where does she go from here?

Her informant, Kyle, said nothing about a next meeting. They parted ways shortly after the Aberdon incident and the thought of another meeting date completely slipped Filia's mind. She then wondered if they'd run into each other in school. Needle in a haystack kind of situation, but stranger things have happened. They were in the same grade, that much she knew, but they didn't share any classes according to her knowledge.

When she looked back at yesterday's incident at the abandoned house, it seemed like needless melodrama. All the spinning and piercing sound and fainting was so Victorian novella. Any normal, sane person would've concluded that their bodies reacted that way because it was expected to. After all, there was absolutely nothing that her senses actually, physically, felt, saw or heard. She had passed the threshold of normalcy long ago.

The doorbell rang.

She shook her head and finished getting ready. She was already thinking of an apology and excuse for her would be lateness. The redhead, Justin, was at the door.

"Hi Filia!" He said with full zest. "How are you today?"

"Fine," she smiled and stepped out. "Sorry for taking so long."

"You didn't take long at all," he smiled.

The first thing one would notice about Justin is his appearance. He was small, and that was no overstatement of value judgement. He didn't even reach five feet and his weight was in the double digits. It was hard for him to shop anywhere other than little kid's stores. That was apparent enough, with his white shirt with a kitty drawn on it and small beige pants. Didn't seem to bother him one bit. Nothing did. If he dressed like a kid, he sure acted like one too. Filia never saw him without a smile, and all that he said was filled with zest and excitement.

"Today's the twenty first..." he started.

Another thing one would quickly notice is his particular little obsession. He had this incurable love - nay, passion - for all things numerical. "...Which really isn't too good for what I planned, which was six and sixteen..."

From mathematics to numerical counting to numerology to Gematria, the ancient Cabalic art of corresponding names to numbers, he slipped them in everyday conversation with glove-like ease.

"But shouldn't be too bad. After all, twenty one doesn't have a bad connotation to begin with," he said that with a smile to which she reciprocated.

They dodged the hydrants and crossed the streets to the rhythmic rambles of Justin's numerical fantasies. It put her to shame that she couldn't keep up with a good deal of what was said. Which didn't matter on account that he probably didn't understand much of what she said either. Childish innocence prevented him from ever being tired from confusion, and listened attentively to everything. He was like her personal cheerleader.

She didn't have much to say on that route to school. Filia was recounting the events of the day before a million-times in her head until she had gotten sick of it. The trip wasn't a long one, but there was a considerable pause of silence between the park and the cobblestone entrance to the school.

The bell rang as they landed on the first step of the entrance. Kids from left and right dragged their feet inside. She clutched her backpack and realized that she was standing alone. Behind her was Justin, who was nodding his head and moving his lips in a way she knew well. He was counting how many people there were.

She snickered inwardly. It wasn't like she could return to the "normal world" after her experiences, since she never was in the world of normality to begin with.

He came back for her at lunch, her personal junkie. He seemed much less suspicious or secretive than before. In his white t-shirt with black sleeves, beige pants and bland expression, he sat in front of her as if they were old friends. Without a word, pretending not to notice Filia's stares, he just started eating.

"Hello?" She said.

"Hi," he replied.

One leg up, bent to rest his chin on his knees, he continued eating. The cafeteria was starting to empty out. This is why she chose this particular time, people would eat early to have more free time, and the noise would be away by then. Kyle, more likely than not, just followed her schedule. 'Coincidence' would not be an excuse that held up for her.

She smiled crookedly. "So… er… how's it going?"

"Mrs. Anderson."

Her fork clanked on the plate. "Excuse me?"

He looked up at her. "You want more of this, don't you? Even if you didn't exactly find the holy grail last night, I'm pretty sure you don't wanna give up so early, am I right?"

And he did have the annoying habit of being so, and this was only day two. Filia looked around and leaned closer, "Yeah, sure."

Now, to outside onlookers this would really look like a drug dealing situation. "That's not what you said. You said Mrs. Anderson. It wouldn’t be Mrs. Anderson, mother of Nathan and Julia, would it?"

"The one and only."

"So what's this about, then?" She pushed her tray aside. Their voices were now echoing through the relatively emptied out area. She didn't think the cafeteria lady and two rapper kids needed to hear this, even though it was something completely expected of her. "Wait, let's get out of here first."

"Last night, at ten," Kyle stated once they left the giant gate-like doors and into the next room. Considerably more crowded and noisy, but Kyle huddled closer to her ear as to drown out the rest of the activity. "Our Mrs. Anderson, completely broken and without visible reason, called the local priest. She asked, no, demanded for an exorcism. Whatever is in her house, it's been there for a while now."

Filia nodded. "Strange and mysterious stuff, but why wouldn't Julia and Nathan contact me about it?"

Kyle snickered. "Do you really need to ask?"

That was true. They were in her class, practically inseparable those two, but were also the quietest of the lot. They never talked. Even during presentation times they had to struggle to get their words out, as if they haven't spoken for months.

"Their mother is the ultra religious type," he said. Closing up to her even more, it probably seemed like boyfriend and girlfriend. "Insisted that this was demonic activity, and insisted even more loudly that the priests come right away. They can't, you know? First of all, they need permission from a higher authority to perform exorcisms. And, way more importantly is that they don't like to get involved in these things. Too medieval."

At the bottom of the stairs Filia stopped. Between locker and stair was a silent spot where they could talk. She leaned on the side of the locker, and Kyle placed a hand not too far from her face and came closer.

"Are you sure these are the kind of rumors you want people to spread?" Kyle said slyly.

"Better they think that than have any suspicions of nefarious activities. We're the two weirdos of the school, aren't we?"

It was only a matter of time before the whistles came in. "Yeah, but two weirdos getting together must have some pretty freaky getting it on activities. If worse comes to worse, I have a slew of blackmail material for some people around here."

"Anyway," Filia said. "What were you saying?"

"Right," he nodded. "She claims its demons. I say it be something less drastic. Demons in their highest, Christian sense of the term, hardly ever appear, you know? They're lords of infernal habitations, why bother coming to this place? No. I say she's hiding something we don't know. Or maybe that her house is just a psychic whirlpool for lesser spirits to invade her house."

Filia stood up straight and with an exaggerated laugh-sigh exclaimed, "How do you know this?"

He mimicked her activity and shrugged. "I just do. It's..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know 'no big deal'. But it is a big deal, you know."

"Maybe." He said. "Anyway, I trust you want to pursue this further?"

"You know it."

Endocrine glands, genetics, reproduction by mitosis, and… Oh, screw it. She wasn't listening. She knew well she wasn't listening. It was about time Filia stopped pretending and started doing what her eyes were begging her to do since class started.

They were, as usual, tucked together in the obscure corner of the class. Julia and Nathan. Mousy was too kind a word to describe -like was more fitting. He was skinny but with a chubby face. Normal crop hair cut for his cinnamon-brown hair, and eyes which seemed to float around the eyeballs. He wasn't ugly, but not handsome either. Julia, on the other hand, looked like a wreck. She was sickly, almost shivering, with a vaguely anorexic look to her. Her hand, which was the only thing under her neck not covered by a cheap black dress, was bony. Pale was an understatement to describe her. Her skin was almost cracked. But despite it all there was still something very ethereal to her appearance, like a sickly martyr, more beautiful in illness than in health.

He looked out the window while she was struggling to write in her book. Come to think of it, had they not mastered the art of blending into the wall, child services would be crawling up their asses like nobody's business. They never talked to anyone, their complexion would make a vampire look like a Californian surfer, and no one knew where they disappeared to after class.

Sure, she wouldn't pretend she knew everyone in the class. But she heard of them, at least. There was Lemya, the transfer student who managed to make friends with the high crowd fast, and her nightly excursions to a small hotel-bar at nights. Didn't take a stretch of the imagination there. And Demitra, the goth girl whose place of the class was called "the black hole", everything bright and cheerful just sucked away in her corner. She even painted her desk black, much to the chagrin of the entire faculty. Demitra, in all her “grrrrr” power and demonic presence, simply brushed them off. Donnie the class jock, who seemed to be on the tip of every fangirls’ tongue, Cecilia the girl who couldn't stop lying to save her life, Johnny the klepto whose outfit screamed Happy Days, the twins Jennifer and Lydia, and the surprisingly dull (considering the rest of their merry little class) Jimmy. And this was only the two back rows.

But Julia and Nathan? Nothing. Not a word. She could hardly write a paragraph about them if she had to, and it'd be filled mostly with her musings about them and their physical appearance. How could she get to their house? Would she have to strike a conversation with them, act all casual and friendly to people who could barely utter two syllables to anyone?

Filia glanced at them again, still staring out the window and struggling with the almighty pencil, which was more like a hammer under her hand, and the prospects of small talk vanished in the air. With a sigh, she resigned herself to the fate of scribbling down punnet squares and whatever she missed on the blackboard.

Like a hand from the abyss the Deep Throat tapped her shoulder as soon as she got out of the school hall. She didn't pay much attention at first, too busy talking with Justin, but the soon tipper-tap turned into an imposing tapping and throat clearing.

"You ready to go?" Kyle said casually.

"What? Now?" He gave her that 'why not' look, and she found no appropriate eye signal to counter it with. She turned to a surprised Justin and said, "I'll catch ya later, is that alright?"

"Huh? Oh, sure!" Justin said. "Till tomorrow then!"

"Well now," she turned back to Kyle, but he was already in front.

"Come on, don't wanna waste time."

"Wait!" She caught up with him. "Aren't we going to wait for Nathan and Julia? I mean we can't just enter the house and start flashing some fake ghostbuster badges..."

Even though she did catch up, she lost him once more. She had to run to keep up with his fast walk. He said, "That's why we have to hurry and get there before they are. We can go there and pretend to be waiting for them."

Was he serious?

"And when they get back...."

"That's a bridge we'll burn when we get there." Kyle concluded.

"The only thing that'll get burned," she said. "Is our asses if we just burst in there without any excuses. Ever heard of planning?"

"Yeah, it's that thing people do when they're too chicken to live," he laughed at his own joke. "Come on, it won't be too tough to squirm out of it once we get what we want."

"Which is what, exactly?"

"Information for your article?" He said. "Isn't that what you want?"

Thank you Mr. Obvious.

"I am not winning this, am I?" The crossroad sign held the two street names she recognized. Mrs. Anderson wasn't too hard to track down. Her address was posted on a bulletin board for a garage sale two weeks ago that was never removed.

"Nope."

"Fine. Whatever." She stopped at the end of the street; a sudden October breeze caught her by surprise. "I've been made into a fool before. Let's just go there."

"I'm sorry but Julia and Nathan haven't arrived home yet, but please make yourselves comfortable." The portly middle-aged woman greeted them at the door. It just took a brief introduction and a white lie to get them in. She wasn't dressed for visitors, and was a bit shocked and hesitant to let them in. But Filia felt it was more than the fact she was in a nightgown and light wool sweater that made her so uncomfortable.

The place was conservatively decorated with browns and reds and various earth tones. She signalled them to sit on the red couch with woollen pillows, decorated with a picture of a mouse she probably sewed herself. There was, however, one thing that was completely intolerable and got worse by the second. Filia wanted to comment on it after she got in. Maybe she wasn't accustomed to the smell, having never had a pet, but the sudden whiff of cat urine that attacked her was extremely strong. And the more she breathed in, the stronger the sensation was.

"Sorry to intrude. We know that not a lot of people come here..." Kyle said.

She didn't take long to reply, "It's nice to have company around. It's a shame they don't bring their friends over here more often."

"They told us they didn't want to us to come." Kyle said, his voice lowered and he spoke more articulately than usual. So that's his 'lying tone', Filia thought. She took note of it. "They seemed afraid about something."

"I have no idea where they get that from." The smile she had was obviously fake. She wasn't even trying. "I swear those children have over-active imagination sometimes. It might be a while before they arrive. You might.... you might want to go upstairs and get the book."

Kyle whispered to her. "I knew she'd say that, score." His voice returned to lying mode said: "Is… er... is the cat upstairs? I'm allergic to them."

Ah, so it wasn't just her imagination. But, Filia thought, isn’t it a bit too curt to just say it that way?

Her knees trembled, she said weakly, "We have no cat in the house."

OK. Now Filia had good reason to be suspicious. But once again she was stuck with the proverbial wall that wouldn't go away. The question now, she thought, was where to go from here? Kyle sprinted upstairs after giving her an affirmative nod.

She cursed under her breath. Then she turned to , who was fidgeting nervously, knees close together. She was staring at the floor, unable to move or anything. Filia waited for the footsteps to announce Kyle's arrival.

"Got it. We're gonna leave now."

When they got out, Filia couldn't help but feel the anti-climax. "And now what are we going to do when they come back home and say they don't know us?"

"What would happen? I took nothing of theirs, she can't say anything." He pointed to the book, which was his.

"Found anything?" She asked. The weather had already turned grey, either from evening, or clouds, or both.

The sudden appearance and disappearance of the freezing winds made his hair even messier than usual.

"Nothing clear-cut. The smell is definitely worse from upstairs, along with some other shivering feelings."

But the words she cared most about were 'nothing clear-cut'. She sighed. "That was a bust, what do we do next? We can't just let it go. I'll never allow it. Not that we're so close to a real giant story over here. But we still have to find proof. Damn it. The proof is always..."

Kyle wasn't even listening to her tirade. He kept looking at something next to him. "Filia?"

"..and we're still. What?"

"Look at that." He pointed to the wall of the Anderson house.

It took a while for her to realize exactly what she was staring at. But she recognized, hidden neatly by bushes, the faded geometric symbols of seemingly random squiggles and squares written on the wall with faded chalk. When her eyes adjusted themselves, she knew what she was looking at.

Woah.

"That's a demon sigil, isn't it?" She said.

As if that didn't take her by surprise, there came another comment. "We'd be pretty bad samaritans of us to see the sigil right there and do nothing about it, wouldn't it?"

She shook her head, the headlights of a car illuminated them briefly. "Riiiight. I'll get the mop and bucket."

"No. No." He was sounding downright enigmatic. "The sigil has already been charged, washing away the physical part would do absolutely no good."

Her eyes lightened up like the streetlamps around them. If they were on the same wavelenght, then Filia would be the happiest little geek this side of the universe. "You mean…"

He placed his finger on his forehead in a semi-salute position. "We'll have to evoke the demon of the sigil to get it done."

That just made her day.

The room had eyes, the walls had ears, the ceiling had nostrils and the floor had a mouth.

Mrs. Anderson whimpered pitifully when the lamplight burned. It was the third one this week. It was almost as if she had been expecting it to, or at least had the foresight to know it wasn't out of the norm for this cursed house. But it wasn't the surprise that made her fear… it was the all-too-familiar.

It was darkness. Just darkness. Had it been anywhere else, it wouldn't have made anyone except the phobic blink. Mrs. Anderson knew she wasn't in one of those groups. She'd handled dark areas for a long time. But the room slipped the darkness like a sinister glove of a murderer ready to do his work.

The place was not silent, it was noise sucking. It was not dark, it chased away all light. It wasn't gloomy, it was the breeding group of a diabolical melancholy. There was nothing physical about it, all she felt, she felt in Spirit. She clutched to a crucifix and recited a prayer. It calmed her down, made her body feel protected, but it still wouldn't go away. Like a diver in a cage, although he was safe, sharks were still surrounding and lurking around him.

The woman desperately wanted to grab the remote control and just turn on the TV, any light to banish this feeling. But she was too paralysed to search for it. Mrs. Anderson wailed in despair when a frightened cry emanated from upstairs.

The sigils, so she read, were the 'body' of the demons. It was their way to manifest into the world, and, sufficiently summoned, get their power from the sigil, which will be discarded when the demon need be taken away. That's what she read anyway. Energy vortexes and strange manifestations sound appealing from a distance, but she got a vague sense of the ridiculous and the frightful now. So, right, what -is- going to happen now – the beginning of a horror movie, or a silly little playground prank that'll make both of them embarrassed?

Either way, the second she heard about Kyle's plan, she rushed home to get her very own copy of the Goetia, the book on summoning spirits that supposedly came from Solomon (of course, Filia being her, just happened to have a book on conjuring the unnatural and hellish under her bed. Emergency situations and all).

He stopped by her house, her parents being out as usual, and they went straight to the bedroom.

Kyle unpacked his bags and went to the computer in her room, connecting online. Despite whatever doubts she had, she was feeling incredibly flustered at this incredible opportunity right now.

"I have the instructions right here. So we'll need to do a circle first. With all the divine names of the seven planets engraved from top to bottom." She took a deep breath and tried to suppress her high-pitched squeal to no avail. "And the seals and sigils of the angelic hierarchies, and the magical alphabets all attached to it. What are you going to use?"

"String." He said dryly.

"…OK. Next we need the triangle."

"Already done."

Back up here, her fantasy scenario was slowly crumbling piece by (string!) piece. "String again?"

"No. Scotch tape."

"Right." Her face dropped. With an optimistic beat, her last stand, she yelled out, "sigils! We'll need sigils next."

"The printer is taking them out as we speak."

"String, tape and paper." Majorly broken-hearted. "You are so taking the romance out of this."

He smiled at her. "Do -you- have silver and gold and calf skin?"

"I get your point."

‘The candles were placed in front of the 'triangle'. She dimmed the lights and they both entered the 'circle', while staring at the printout sigil, placed inside the scotch-tape area. It was so unreal, yet there was a a vague feeling of reality's incoming impact.’

"Who are we summoning?" She said.

He lit the candle. "I drew the sigil and compared it to the rest. It's goetic all right. A certain Andras."

"Andras...." Her encyclopaedic brain zipped through pages and pages of irrelevant trivia, but the name was still freshly engraved from her skimming of the book. "Wait a second, are you nuts? Andras is the demon who'll attempt to kill those who summon him."

"That's the one." So freaking casual.

"Did you understand the words? Kill. Summoners. Us!"

"No he won't. We have the protective circle."

"String." Filia corrected.

"'Sides," he spoke in a pseudo-scholarly voice, "we technically aren't doing a new summoning, just working on the one that's already in progress."

"Would such clause-like loopholes really matter when he comes screaming at us with a spear?" Her instinct was to just run away and end it all right now. But there was something inside of her, probably a death wish she never knew about before, that kept her from moving and forced her to continue through this. Curiosity did kill the cat, it appears.

"I don't doubt clause-like loopholes come from his neck of the hellish woods, it'd be just like home to him." He cackled.

She didn't say anything for the time being. He started the invocation (much less impressive than the long babble in her book, but the minimalism was starting to grow on her), and they both sat in the middle of the circle.

Filia stared at the triangle intently. Giddy wasn't the word that could describe it. She bit her trembling upper lip, trying to refrain from giggling like a little schoolgirl. But, after he did all his words, and they were staring at candle and incense smoke for a while now, she just had to say it.

"Nothing's happening."

"Sure it is," he spoke in such a condescending voice.

She looked around. "Funny how something happening is a lot like nothing."

"It won't appear from a portal in the kitchen or a pillar of fire and smell of sulphur," he said in the same tone. "Once in the circle and the sigil has been set, there exists no more coincidence. Everything should be accounted for."

"Hmmm...."

"Look at the incense smoke."

She did. "Yeah?"

"If you can hear us, sway to the right." As he said that, she stared at the smoke. It rose like silk ribbons, chaotically swaying to the subtlest of breezes. All of a sudden, it uniformly went to the right.

"That could easily be the wind."

"If you are ready to answer our request, please sway to the left." Sure enough, the chaotic swirling turned left under Kyle's words.

"Hmmm....." Filia had to test it out for herself. "Can you hear me?" Admittedly, speaking to smoke was more than a little embarrassing. "Stay still. Sway right. Sway left."

All of these commands were done instantaneously. Filia had rehearsed her reactions before, but none of them came out when she realized, yeah, there was something in here. There definitely was, and she felt both elated and sober about it.

"According to the sigils, you're the one whose big ol' sign has been attached to the wall, huh? I take it you've been chained there to cause some nasty business." Kyle said.

Filia had a much more dramatic response. "Foul infernal demon! I invoke thee Spirit, by the seal and authority that God has given me! Manifest yourself physically lest I take thy sigil and burn it! I command you to!"

Okay, Filia fell back, startled by her own melodrama. What the hell was that?

"I'm embarrassed for the both of us." He said with a touch of humour. He then turned back to the smoke. "It's been causing quite a lot of distress for the person inside the house. Oh, wait." He laughed. "Who am I talking to? As if you cared what happened in there. Can't blame ya. But still, the fact of the matter is that one way or another that sigil has to come down. So now I wonder if we're going to do it willingly, or the hard way?"

Filia stood there, watching Kyle's profile literally talking to thin air. The total casualness of his conversation astounded her. He was talking to a Goetic spirit, the demons that were conjured through ages past and had a whole formal system surrounding them, and it seemed like a normal dinner conversation.

She focused on the smoke with full concentration. Still she saw nothing. Her ability to visualise was terrible, one of the reasons why she never attempted to do these things by herself. Being affronted by hypnotic patterns and restful smell of this smoke, she gave into temptation and closed her eyes.

She snapped awake, but still blinked a few times before she realized she was completely sleepy. Not completely awake, but still enough to see and hear everything, her muscles shuddered as she struggled to keep what little consciousness was left.

That was when she saw it.

Between blinks the smoke seemed to form an image. Though it was vague, she could confirm that there was something there. It was like noticing strange formations in a thick-foggy day then realizing what it was. The shape is apparent, but the mind needs time to record what it is.

Something in her head said, "try as you might, that sigil is a defective one. It holds no more power. The true sigil is within the summoner himself, and that is between I and him.". She would've dismissed it as crazed sleep-deprived ramblings had the voice not distinctly had a tone of it's own, much different than the one her mind usually has.

Kyle apparently heard that too. He said, "Fine then, you can leave."

They spent a few hours just sitting around, brainstorming what to do. They weren't the types to say die, even in the face of more complications. She felt like some sort of weird duo, like Mulder and Scully (though there wasn't much Scully-ing going on in the room). But still, the fact of the matter is – they did a summoning! Filia was still high off of that fact, and could barely suppress her gleeful joy after all was over. Sure, the squeal did break the solemn atmosphere, but Kyle wasn't the kind to care much for solemnity. At least her knowledge of him from two days didn't say so.

Kyle leaned his back on the bedpost. Filia sat in an upside down position on the chair, the blood rush being a definite inspiration before, but there wasn't anything noteworthy in this case.

So a summary of the situation would be that they had called out to the darkness, someone gave them a reply.

Now they just needed to give a response to that.

So their response was typically eccentric. They skulked around the house the next day; the grey brick house with a black roof, the most colorless one amidst the typically bright pastel colored neighbourhood. Filia wasn't exactly sure what she was doing there, at the break of dawn at all times. Things were still shadows around them as the rosy colors flooded the place in no time.

"Who’s that?"

"Max, their older brother."

Filia sized him up completely, like the journalist-instinct in her usually did. It was no unpleasant task though. Max had no trace of ugliness in him, not even banality. The face seemed to be glowing, there were no rough features or jagged ends, his skin was ultra smooth, and his brown eyes were both intense and soft at the same time. Dark brown hair fell delicately on his face with the perfect haircut. He was tall and lean, dressed in a mix of leather and regular clothes. His appearance was quite nice, a blend of Bad Boy and Guy Next Door and just about everything else spawned from the collective-mind that fashions Cuteness.

"That's it!" Filia concluded. "That must be the demon user!"

"What makes you say that?" Said Kyle.

"Simple," she nodded. "He's way too pretty to be natural."

"You put way too much thought in these things."

"Wait," she stroked to her chin. "I think I've seen him before. He was with Amelia, that's it."

"Sometimes I think I just don't pay enough attention to the people around me." Amelia said.

They made their way to the school nurse's office. Amelia was there, and Justin was helping her out as usual. They walked into the middle of the conversation, and Filia was taken aback at that statement.

Amelia could be summed up with one word: Motherly. Like the benevolent earth mother who cares and nurtures for all her children, the twenty-something school nurse had every inch of her bones infused with compassion. It was the sweetest thing to see, or dreadfully frightening for all pessimists out there. As was usually the case at this hour, Justin was there, helping her.

Her red hair was naturally curled and slumped to her shoulders. She wore gloves, which were on practically all the time, and was arranging box sets with Justin. A whole stock was on the bed. Filia stood by the doorway, waiting for a good timing.

"No way! You're really the best." Justin took a box and placed it on the white shelf opposite the bed. “Even your name is eighty seven, which has nurturance and all that."

Amelia smiled in her usual way, eyebrows raised maternally and teeth flashed briefly. "That's good to know." She turned to the door. "Hello Filia."

Filia smiled. "Hey."

Kyle was behind her, hidden from view. They had set up this whole scripted plan in an attempt to get information as smoothly as possible. She had acting experience, and Kyle seemed decently equipped with the ability to lie.

The red headed boy was still stacking boxes. She said to him. "Justin, coming?"

He stopped to flash her his usual wide grin. "Hi Filia!" He waved and jumped. "I'll be out in a second there's just too many things to do."

"Why don't you come in and sit while we're finishing up?" Amelia offered.

"Sure." Kyle standing behind her entered at the same time.

"Oh, whose your new friend." Amelia smiled and nodded warmly at Kyle.

"Hey," he did a quick wave. "Kyle. I've never been around this corner of the school so we've never met paths before."

"Thought so, I tend to remember all students who come in here." The sad (or good?) part was that Amelia probably did remember each and every single student. He inspected the room a few time, as if checking out the small cubic square of sterile instruments and medicine. They had planned this out, and now Filia waited for his turn to speak.

"They tell me that. You're Amelia, right?" Kyle got a confirmation nod. "Do you know someone named Max?"

. Filia would seriously strangle that boy. Talk about unsubtle!

She turned to Amelia, getting ready to explain herself out of this little mess. What she was took her by surprise. The kindly nurse, the one whose expression was nothing but soft joviality, was replaced with something quite familiar.

She had actually stopped smiling.

Amelia stuttered. "Wh...why?"

"Someone named Max told me to say 'hi' to you." Kyle said.

Filia was starting to see where this was going. Still, she couldn't help but feel strangely uncomfortable at the darkened expression Amelia had. Justin was the only one who still happily went along his business.

"No." The school nurse shook her head. "That doesn't sound like something he'd say, no."

Kyle insisted, "Which I thought was weird since he said it almost grudgingly, and suddenly told me to..er...leave him alone?"

She sat down and looked at the floor. A sigh. "That's him alright."

"Weird fellow." Kyle shrugged, digging his hands in his pocked. "I would've left him alone even if he didn't tell me. He just had that general air of, you know, someone you don't want to mess around with. Something not normal, like....like...."

"Like the gods are walking behind him every step?"

"Yes." He said, pretending to know what she was talking about. Filia sat with her back to the wall. He definitely had experience in this kind of thing.

"Like his clothes are made of luck, and he bathes in fortune every day?" Amelia continued.

"Heh, something like that."

"He's always been that way." She said, forcing a smile. "Anything he does he succeeded as, things were thrown at him from the heavens for absolutely no reason, and he really...deserves none of it. I hate to speak ill, but he's a complete jerk whose had everything thrown at him despite of it. I thought he could be nice underneath, but.....oohhh, Max...."

By then she was just ranting to herself, shaking with rage as she held a Kleenex in her hand. Amelia didn't have it in her to actually tear it. Filia laughed nervously.

"I'm so sorry to hear that. Men are such jerks," she eyed playfully the two men in the room. Justin reacted with shock while Kyle just smiled cynically. "Justin I'll catch up with you later."

"So then that confirms my suspicions." She said outside, away from the still ranting Amelia. "Heaven blessed? I'd say more like demon-controlling. But really," Filia whispered in Kyle's ear. "did you have to give the poor woman such a complex?"

During break that afternoon she caught a glimpse of Julia sitting by herself, something unusual. The mousy girl looked deathly ill in both physical appearance and manners. She looked down at the table in front of her, mumbled a few squeaks to herself, and looked up at the sky again.

"Hi," she gasped when Filia came to greet her.

There was a thick pause at first. Julia's strands of hair fell on her face as she tried to get the right words. "He..llo.."

"What are you doing.." she asked casually, but trailed off at the paper on the table. Julia was drawing. At first she made an attempt to cover it, but then she just let go. The picture didn't lack any artistic qualities, but the content itself was what made Filia raise an eyebrow. It was a man with the head of an owl. It was Andras, the demon who was cursing their house.

Did she see the spirit in the flesh? Filia remembered her own experience with the nasty critter, by now it seemed more like a dream that'd flicker in and out of memory.

"That's so pretty!" Filia said. "Where did you get the idea?"

"Well...uhhh...I..."

"Yes?" Nathan called from behind her. "What do you want?"

Rather than tempt fate, and an angry looking brother, Filia left. Her main beef was with the third blood relative, anyway.

The breeze never gave up. Max was a few feet ahead, walking away obliviously. The trees surrounding him let loose little red leaves. Seeing such a guy with leaves blowing behind him looked like some sort of painting.

"Hey Max!" She called out first attempt.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even a stop to check if that was in fact his name being called out. She zipped up her earth-tone green jacket and walked up to him, calling again. Nothing. She could've sworn he was even walking faster.

Kyle laughed from behind her. "Now I see what shocked our poor Amelia."

This, Filia thought, was totally a challenge. She huffed. "Oh yeah? Think you can escape from me that easily? I wouldn't have survived a week as a journalist if I didn't know how to pester people."

With a sudden sprint she reached in front of him and blocked his path. His expression changed from shock to disgust frequently. She loosened her knees; ready to block any path his twitching body would take. He stared at her with those deep eyes and finally spat out, "what do you want?"

"Hey," she smiled. "I'm Filia and..."

"I don't know you."

Back up a bit. Start over. "No, you don't, but I'm a friend of Julia's and..."

"I don't care." He said.

That made her blink. She took a deep breath. "Oooohkay. Well, I just really wanted to talk to you and . . . "

"I don't care," he said, he seemed ready to tackle her if she continued to block her path. "I don't really care about any of this. What's wrong with you? Just leave me alone."

All the words flew away from her mouth with a foggy-breath. He took advantage of her split-second disorientation. Kyle caught up with her and she regained her senses.

"That's why pretty people should never talk," she concluded with a frown. "It's always a letdown."

When his silhouette disappeared into the distance, Filia considered running after him and following him around for a bit more, but the only exercise that would be is one of futility. She just sat on the leaf-filled patch of grass outside the fence and sat there for a while. He was not too far away, Kyle's presence was starting to become like a shadow now.

"We could try summoning it again," he said. It was as if he was trying to console her.

"Nah," she hugged her knees. "Better just call this quits. Sucks for the family who have to live in that house, but we can't really do anything about it."

Leaves were crunched. A feminine figure was running towards them. As she got closer, the misted tears welling in her eyes were visible to Filia. "You know about the house, right?" She said almost out of breath.

Filia hesitantly nodded.

"We have to do something," Julia said. "Max..Max...is in serious..danger."

Nathan slammed the door shut and locked it. His sister was sitting on the tip of the bed, staring blankly at her reflection on the mirrored doors of the wardrobe. She didn't even bother to turn around and look at who it was or what they wanted, she probably already knew.

The curtains were only half closed, letting the moon reflect a bit inside. Her profile looked so beautiful, so angelic, under the moon. Something definitely fitting the Princess, like the stars and the moon were writing her beauty just like her Prince did. She turned to him as he turned on the faint nightlight.

"How are you, my Princess?" He bowed gallantly. With his imagination he was no longer in a darkened room with his sister, but a prince at a crystal ball greeting his beautiful princess in the brightest of robes.

She didn't have to say anything. Her faint sigh spoke enough poetry to fill his heavens. "The Dragon came by today," she looked up at him with her deer-like eyes. "I tried to get him away but it didn't work."

This was the third time this week the evil dragon had invaded their castle. Nathan saw red and shook himself. They had fought so hard to get him away. The spirit said that if he draw his sign on their palace that he could protect their house from anything. This was a month ago, and the dragon had visited many times since then.

"Never trust a spirit to do a knight's job," he, the princely knight, would do what any good princely-knight would do.

Julia's gasped when she saw him pull out a gleaming metal object from his pocket. He jumped on her before she could scream, pinning her on the bed and covering her doll-like mouth. "Shhh, don't speak, don't speak. You knew this time would come. I have to slay the monster for the happiness of us all."

Then something unexpected happen. His beautiful, ethereal maiden with the silent strenght and mystical expression did something earthly and mundane. She struggled, "no."

She said it again, louder, "No. No NO!" Feebly she managed to pull him aside. Though her own attacks didn't hurt, she accidentally scratched her brother's cheek with her nails.

He stopped as the blood trickled down his cheek. He understood now. His heavenly maiden was corrupted by that beast. Nathan shook even more. "So..." he said. "He has you under his curse too. The only thing that was mine, and he had to take it away with his magic powers. Even my powers couldn't stand up to his. Fine then," Nathan burst out of the room. "I'll have to do it myself!"

For such a wispy little fae, Julia outran both Kyle and Filia. So, it was Nathan who had drawn up the sigil. Julia told Filia about it, how he had heard about the demon, and wanted to use him to go against Max. Now that it had failed in it's task, Nathan would finish the job himself.

When they calculated where Max would be, they spared no time to reach there before Nathan would. Julia was leading. When the handsome older brother was in view she called out for him, her voice cracked from under use.

Filia stopped to regain her breath. It was completely dark now, the streetlights illuminating the path. Max, as if recognizing the voice, dragged his heels and stopped. He turned his eyes with a sigh and said, "what do you want?!"

Julia hugged her older brother, who winced and tried to pull her away. Filia was unsure wether this was a tender act, or an attempt to shield him from the incoming attack. As the two siblings re-united, Filia saw a figure stalking them. There was Nathan, walking furiously, waving the weapon in his hands. Filia's warning yell was covered by a louder, more surprising bang. Julia screamed, clutching Max tighter (again, much to his ignorant chagrin) and bracing for the impact.

Nothing. It took a while before anyone opened his or her eyes. When they did, there was a red stain and a burn on the sidewalk.

Nathan lay lifeless on the ground, smoke disappearing above his head. Filia's eyed the area. "What the hell just happened?"

Kyle said, "he.....tripped. Huh, of all the things."

As blood slipped from underneath Nathan's lifeless body, she couldn’t help but feel a chill from all of this. The chilling of her book about the demon filled her mind. "... Andras sows discord and may slay the invoker..."

She went and paid respects to Nathan's funeral. Kyle was there from a background too, but they didn't stay with each other that day. Filia instead stood close to Julia, who was silent and tearless the entire time.

Mrs. Anderson was sobbing enough for everyone there. Max stood beside her, the beautiful loser looked especially delicious in his black business suit. Filia tried to hide her grin (and flustered expressions). How ironic, in any other logical circumstance it'd be the older brother they would be burying that day.

Once the rites were over, Julia nudged Filia. She said she wanted to take a walk by the graveyard.

"When we were younger," Julia said, walking away from the funeral. "Nathan and I would pretend to be Prince and Princess of some magical land. Max would be the nasty Dragon."

"I especially like the dragon part." She said. Still, Filia found herself stealing glances at Max behind them.

"He...Nate...he'd been depressed for the longest time. He'd spend all his time in his room. Mother said I should go upstairs to keep him company. But truth is...I hated going there. He'd ..." Julia became silent and looked at the ground.

Filia's flesh crawled. "Oh man...”

"And said he'd kill me if I tell. He also made me draw these drawings. Of a naked man with an owl head. I don't know why, but those drawings really really disgusted me. He then started going to talk about all this prince and princess thing. I feel so very horrible for saying this, but I'm glad he's gone. My brother is dead, and I'm saying it like its a good thing. I really must be as horrible as he says I am..."

"You're being a freaking saint." Filia protested. "I'd be throwing a party in your place..."

"It wasn't that bad...." She stopped.

"You have got to be kidding me, right?" Filia stared at her straight in the eye.

"Things could've been much different if I just..." Julia muttered.

"I could slap you, you know that? None of this was your fault. Geez, he's really screwed you up, hasn't he?"

"S...sorry. Accepting really was much better than resisting."

"I saw a Julia the other day," Filia hesitated at first, what she was going to say sounded so much like a sermon. It was so easy to just go on talking like that with Julia. "Who managed to stand up to that creep and tell us what was wrong. Now that your biggest obstacle is gone, you don't have to be anyone's slave girl. This is an oppertunity for you, right?"

The day was mildly cloudy, but a beautiful shade of gray made the sky look pearly. The cemetary was a large one, with many rows of graves on otherwise meadow-like hills and green grass. The cobblestone streets betrayed the age of this land.

"Yeah." Julia said. "An oppertunity to start over."

"Exactly!" Filia snapped her fingers.

"I...er...do have one thing to ask you."

"Yeah?"

She seemed like she didn't want to speak, but Filia tapped her feet to get it out. "Please don't write about any of this. I...I just wouldn't be able to live with it. And besides, it'd be much better to just bury this with him, and my past."

"Gotcha. I wouldn't dare intrude."

Besides, she had more than enough material with the evocation incident.

Filia literally skipped to the presses that day. It was less enchanted than the TV shows or books made it seem. She just looked either stoned, drunk, or really really prissy. Not to mention the many times she almost collided with people.

No worries, no cares. Stoic persona be damned, she had a reason to be happy. The article, her little baby, had finally been purified of all those grossly stupid stories she had to write. Now there was something actually worthwhile.

Kyle met her outside the office, a copy of the school paper in his hand. "How was she?" He asked.

"Typical vicitim mentality." Filia shrugged. "She blames herself for it, I can't believe people like that."

"She's been through a lot. But, off the record, wasn't that a cool experience?"

Her heart was so open to display today. Filia's elated mood made her simply laugh at loud at the joke, weirded out people in besides her or not. "That's just horrible. I can't disagree though."

She continued. "So then...what about Max? He seems to have it all and deserves none of it. Isn't that what people generally summon these demons for."

"One of those 'life is unfair oh please god take me now things'? Luck doesn't always have to be demonic in origin." He said nonchalantly.

"I've been meaning to ask this. Demons." She said as they walked out the hallways. "What exactly were we dealing with?"

"According to some, Goetic demons are parts of our brain that take image in our own mind."

"And you believe that?" She said.

"Maybe."

"Or that they really are creatures living in hell waiting to make people suffer." She mused.

"Maybe."

"Or," She went ahead. "They're something very close to us, something all-too-human. Everyone has shadows, everyone has faults, demons are just personification of those."

And yet all he could say was, "Maybe."

"That's hardly an answer."

"Honestly I don't care." He jumped over a small puddle of water. "What does it matter wether it's A, B or C. It happened, it's there, that's all that's really important."

"I'll stick with a more consistent version. Chaos isn't really my thing." Filia said.

Filia saw people with the school paper in hand, the page specifically turned to the column with her toothy picture on it. She felt proud that she didn't have to resort to lies ever again-

' "When the demon was summoned," said X she had to keep some distance to avoid controversy "the whole room was filled with an oppressive darkness which was just....abysmal. I never use that word, because it makes no sense, but that's the only thing I can thing of. Then he appeared in front of us with an awesome presence which spoke of great majestic ness and incredible power. My hands shook, how else could I feel when this giant, monstrous being appeared in front of me, simply waiting for me to recite what I wanted!"

-Well, old habits do die hard.